The Hidden Benefit of ‘Godzilla Minus One’: Understanding Budgets and Costs Imposed by organized labor and anti-capitalist Activities

There is another essential attribute of the new Godzilla film, Godzilla Minus One, at the heart of the global populist movement that is important to talk about.  Probably the most important thing in the world that has lingered always in the background and is now apparent for all to see.  In talking about how good Godzilla Minus One is, the obvious question everyone has is how could Japan produce a movie like this when the same kind of blockbuster produced by Disney in America would cost 300 million dollars.  The average moviegoer could watch Godzilla Minus One, Indiana Jones, and the Dial of Destiny and think they are of the same quality in every category: acting, special effects, music, writing, scale of production, everything.  So how was Godzilla Minus One so profitable, whereas all the current Hollywood productions or movies anywhere in the world these days, especially where the financial influence of the World Economic Forum has its hands in the production, are not able to compete?  Well, this is something I have been talking about for many decades and I said this was going to happen to the film industry for many years.  Unionized labor has destroyed the financial models of movie production, shown dramatically when a foreign film like Godzilla Minus One is shown in a movie theater along with the latest blockbusters produced by Hollywood and other markets.  Because of many market conditions unique to recovery from COVID lockdowns, theater owners are desperate to show anything that the public might want to see.  Just two or three years ago, a movie like Godzilla Minus One would not have played in a movie theater in the United States.  People would never see it, but in today’s market, where Hollywood products can’t keep up with demand, a movie like Godzilla Minus One gets a chance to be seen, which has burst down the door to an issue that can only be revealed by direct competition.   

Much of the way we are told about success in the world has been shaped by labor unions attached to the film industry, the mainstream media, and government reporting.  The ultimate solution to broken budgets and general performance everywhere in the world, no matter the product, is to make labor unions illegal, especially in government work and situations that prevent a competitive environment.  America has gone through just this sort of thing when it comes to the car industry, or most sectors of manufacturing that can’t compete with cheap foreign labor.  Well, it is not that the labor is cheap in foreign markets, but instead that the communist labor unions, all of which were formed out of elements of Marxism, have driven up the cost of labor not just in the increases in headcount but in how much each one actually costs.  When the government reports the numbers, as they do in American and European markets, of course, they will give a spin that suits them, not necessarily one that is reflected in reality.  Then, when the trade journals are either in unions themselves or are very sympathetic, the coverage has been how much studios spend on movies to make, not on their quality.  This has certainly been the case with Disney where to satisfy their radical employee base, all connected to labor unions, the approach has been to just outrun the costs, which have crippled them in 2023.  When it costs 500 million dollars to get a blockbuster out the door and into a theater, disaster is not far behind.  For a lot of these Hollywood productions, a movie budget to satisfy all the labor demands that you see at the end credits of every motion picture, 200-300 million on actually making the movie, then another 200 million in marketing to feed the machine, a film has to make a billion dollars at the box office to get into a profit category, and that just isn’t realistic, as Disney has discovered in 2023. 

Then, to make matters worse, these Disney movies have been loaded with content people don’t want to see.  The filmmaking has been lazy, and the product is lackluster when it gets to the screen.  It shows when all the people making the movie are only in it to get paid.  A film like Godzilla Minus One was created by hungry filmmakers full of passion, evident in what ended up on the screen, shocking many people.  But this is the exact reason why government reforms never happen and why budgets get wrecked in all production environments where Marxist labor unions have driven up costs and taken away the ambition of good merit from the products they produce, such as in public education in America that has become useless to most people for all the same reasons.  The labor costs too much and doesn’t do enough of what it’s supposed to.  When labor unions take over the management of an endeavor, they determine the pay rate and how many people need to be involved in the process, which then blows up all the financial attributes.  In a situation like this, where a side-by-side comparison isn’t usually available, the problem becomes apparent in the movie industry.  But this same rot is in just about every endeavor that involves money and financing, even in American intelligence agencies.  I will have some serious horror stories to provide about the CDC and how President Reagan was thinking of cutting the entire department, giving rise to Dr. Fauci’s radicalism.  Most bad things happen when lazy people seek funding not based on performance but emotion, such as fear of a new virus that can be manufactured in a lab and released from Wuhan, China.  That’s a topic all its own. 

The trick in hiding all this from the public has been to control the narrative, and the labor unions have been attached to most of the reporting.  But in 2023, because the declining Hollywood product has most abused theater owners, they have had to turn to direct competition to survive, which has set up this obvious matchup.  The same occurred when the Japanese entered the car market, and the Big Three in America found they could not compete in cost and quality because unionized labor took away competitive factors that could keep the costs down for the consumer.  Most of the problems in the world, including the CRs that Speaker Johnson is trying to work through Congress to keep the government open, are due to the outrageous costs of supporting all those expensive government employees.  Even the funding of Ukraine, which has been a topic, is to spend billions of dollars to pay for the massive administrative state government there to support this globalist employment structure.  All of them are failing under their weight; what they do for the world isn’t worth the money it costs to keep them.  Populism is rising everywhere because people would rather see Godzilla Minus One than the latest holiday offering by Disney and the other major studios.  The labor unions seek to destroy competition to justify their outrageous costs and sluggish performance.  But because of their actions, they have forced competition to overtake them to satisfy the market demands of a hungry public that wants to see a good movie, buy a nice car, or have a government that works for them and doesn’t get in the way of what society needs.  I know we are in a time when union supporters are moving toward Trump, and Trump is pro-union, and it’s not as much of a political issue for Republicans as it has been or should be.  But when you want to know why things are so expensive, why so many useless people perform the work, and how they keep their jobs underperforming constantly, the source is the Marxist labor unions that have embedded themselves in the process.  Where they aren’t, the quality and profit improve dramatically.  And if we are ever going to drain the swamp, the government unions will have to be made illegal.  And any future budget controls taken out of their hands, from the local public school to the control of the FBI and CIA.  Organized labor has destroyed them all. 

Rich Hoffman

‘Godzilla Minus One’: The best movie in the world

Simply stunning

Before you think to yourself, oh, there are so many things going on in the world, why do I care about a movie review for a new Godzilla movie? Well, this is something different, this Godzilla Minus One movie. It makes quite a statement, and it is currently destroying the rest of the films being produced in the world, from Bollywood to Hollywood, all places where the World Economic Forum financing has influenced movie content. I’ve been asked several times this year why I’m not out there producing and making movies, as I have wanted to most of my life. And my explanation was that the whole machine is messed up, it costs too much for unionized labor, so the budgets are wrecked. To get funding for the movies, you must have progressive messages in them. The entertainment media has been filled with more progressive political activists who set limits as to the kind of messages that get out to the public, and the theater owners’ associations are often too sensitive to all these politics to back releases. But then there are times when the market is desperate, theater owners are drowning for good content and Hollywood hasn’t given them the kind of movies that people want to see. Online streaming content is eroding the enthusiasm for in-theater distribution. So a foreign film like Godzilla Minus One gets made under the radar and gets into theaters with great passion and enthusiasm, and people get surprised. This is exactly what Godzilla Minus One is: a magnificent surprise, and what I think is the best movie in the world presently, and certainly one of the best to come along in recent memory. On a budget of only 15 million dollars, it’s everything a movie should be, and audiences are reacting to it in very positive ways, for good reason.

I wasn’t exactly planning to see the movie in theaters, I was going to catch it on Apple+ or whatever streaming service was carrying it around Christmas time.  But my grandchildren love Godzilla; it’s been a big part of their childhoods. They were talking to me about the new Godzilla/King Kong movie by Legendary Studios coming out in 2024, probably in March, and they were very excited about it.  That’s when I said, “Well, you know, kids, there is a Godzilla movie playing at Liberty Center right now.  Do you guys want to go see it?”  And I was surprised that my oldest grandson knew everything about it, and yes!  He wanted to see it right away.  So off we went to watch a movie that I thought might have some cool monsters in it.  But it would be filled with subtitles, and I didn’t know if they’d like it much.  But, being Godzilla fans, they could at least say they saw it.  Well………………what a surprise we were in for.  This wasn’t just a great movie, it was a masterpiece.  It reminded me of the many past films I have loved, particularly Yojimbo, the great Akira Kurasawa classic.  This wasn’t just a movie about Godzilla destroying Tokyo once again.  This was a very emotional film about the state of the world and the perseverance of human civilization to overcome the mistakes of governments and live their lives honorably, nobly, and without fear.  Godzilla served as the device that brought this out in people and it was Biblical in scope and magnificent in its execution.  When the movie ended, I just sat there, stunned by what I had just witnessed.  My grandchildren were thrilled, of course, but this was undoubtedly a benchmark in history that I fully realized.  Wow!

Now, I get to go to Japan, and I like to share as much of that experience with my family as possible.  I love Western culture for all its variety, but I love going to Japan because the Japanese are honorable people with self-confidence and a spirit of perseverance.  No matter how many different people I interact with from Japan, that is a foundation assumption about them.  When I need to go to the grocery store to get food and snacks while traveling, the people I deal with bow deeply when doing business and treat the meeting like it’s the most important thing they’ll ever do.  Even at the airports, everyone you deal with is highly respectful.  Walking around Tokyo or any big city, there is no crime, and everything is spotless.  The world could learn a lot from their culture, which I talk about occasionally.  Japan is a good country with good people who are persistent and honorable.  And I enjoy dealing with them on their turf.  Godzilla Minus One is a uniquely Japanese film about their culture and the value of honor as an individual.  The entire point of the movie was about living up to honorable expectations and being a good person, which has been missing so much from all modern movies filled with progressive political messages imposed by the influence of the World Economic Forum.  All that was removed entirely from Godzilla Minus One, and the film had a wonderful sense of freedom that was jaw-dropping in its relief.  I didn’t care that the entire movie was in subtitles.  It was delightful to watch. 

The main character is a Kamikaze pilot who lacked the killer instinct to fulfill his mission, so he ducked out of a fight just as the war ended.  He felt tremendous guilt about this, and it haunted him deeply.  In the aftermath of the war, he ends up moving in with a young lady and her adopted little girl, all war orphans.  None of them are related.  But the girl and the guy sleep in the same house but in separate beds.  And there is no sex.  They lived like this for over three years.  That’s not to say there wasn’t love; they grew to love each other deeply.  But no sex.  In a World Economic Forum-financed film, the girl would have left the guy after three months of no sex, which would have been the dumb plot of the entire movie.  Godzilla Minus One is about much more than sex and relationship problems.  It’s about overcoming self-doubt, becoming great, and earning the right to lead a family by conquering personal demons.  This was great stuff; people lost in the world are soaking up this message like a dry sponge.  And you know what’s best about the film?  The filmmakers had the guts to give it a happy ending, a real happy ending in every way that an audience could hope for.  The movie is undoubtedly about Godzilla, but he served almost like a godly figure, much like Job’s story from the Bible.  Without Godzilla, Job would have had no reference point.  But because of that reference, greatness had an opportunity to grow, and it brought people together as individuals to achieve beautiful things.  What a great message in a world filled with failure.  Along comes this little ray of light that is turning out to light the way for the world in ways nobody thought was possible.  Yet, there it is.  I can’t recommend it enough!

Rich Hoffman