10 Best Films Set In The Pacific War

Wait, what? What the hell is a Kaiju movie doing on this list?

Well, for one, it has several major scenes set during the war in the Pacific, which focus on a doomed unit of Japanese troops on an island under bombardment from American warships, and they're surprisingly poignant in their representation of stoic determination in the face of unsurmountable odds.

More importantly, this movie, in its surprisingly evocative consideration of survival and of the historical consequences of defeat, shows us that war films don't always have to be literal. It doesn't need to foreground intrigue, war-is-hell philosophising, or painfully realistic grimdark bloodshed to qualify as a film that has something interesting and unique to say about human conflict.

Time-travellers from the 23rd century attempt to rewrite the past in order to prevent future devastation befalling Japan. It all goes wrong, of course, in a gleeful, noisy spectacle of explosions and Kaiju battling. The time-travellers' plan to remove Godzilla from history is foiled, and he comes back bigger than ever, facing off against Mecha-King-Ghidora in a tremendous finale.

Godzilla Vs. King Ghidora is a powerful warning against our human tendency to misremember the past. The more we try to suppress the trauma, the more it haunts us.