Godzilla Minus One piracy was inevitable — but everyone is to blame

Godzilla Minus One has proven one thing: the arrogance of distributors is thinking movies are in their control and not the audience who wants to watch them. Piracy is their fear that has become reality — and nobody is innocent.

I remember the stone age of movie piracy; the infectious minefield of Limewire, the scratched car boot sale DVDs with appalling cam-rips, the endless buffering on crappy ‘watch-free’ sites that’d riddle your screen with RAM-seizing pop-ups. 

Nowadays, you’d think nobody had seen the scary blacksmith from the F.A.C.T. advert or considered the fact “you wouldn’t steal a car.” The advent of super-fast internet and its untameable scope has made piracy nearly impossible to combat — and irresistible for the impatient among us. 

Godzilla Minus One is the perfect example. It was one of the biggest success stories of 2023: a bona fide Japanese blockbuster with cinema’s most iconic monster, outpacing everyone’s box office projections and becoming a historic Oscar winner. All of its many accolades aside, it’s this simple: it’s the best Godzilla movie that’s ever stomped across cinemas. 

Godzilla Minus One made two big mistakes

Toho

Unfortunately, it’s in the custody of unfortunate caretakers for Western audiences. Toho has been in charge of Godzilla since his big-screen birth in 1954, and the franchise’s home entertainment distribution outside of Japan has been notoriously frustrating over the years. For example, Shin Godzilla took an extra four months to arrive in the US after its physical release in Japan. 

But Toho’s head honchos aren’t entirely daft: by restricting Blu-ray and DVD production and distribution, they corner their own market. Japanese audiences (and anyone else in the world who’s desperate to own it) are forced to fork out for a premium release, and they also can’t import a cheaper copy. Here’s another thing: they rarely, if ever, have English subtitles. 

Just look at Godzilla Minus One’s Blu-ray release: a gorgeous three-disc box set… that doesn’t have English subtitles, dubbing, or a wallet-friendly means of purchase outside Japan. 

That’s problem one of two, but the second is even more annoying: it came to Prime Video on May 1… but it’s only available in Japan! Even if you use a VPN to circumvent its geo-lock restrictions, there’s another problem: there are still no subtitles! 

The consequences have been severe: it’s quickly become the most pirated movie in the world right now, topping torrent sites and illegal streamers. Not only that, but people have painstakingly translated and jotted down subtitles and made them free to download alongside the film. Who’s to blame? As Gary Oldman once screamed, everyone. 

First off, your inability to wait for Godzilla Minus One (or any movie, for that matter) isn’t a good enough excuse for piracy. Look what happened to Veruca Salt with all of her “I want it now!” whining — she was a bad egg, but you just sound like a child. 

Unfortunately, people’s demands for close-to-immediate streaming after a movie’s theatrical run have grounds, given the constant, unceremonious dumping of films on VOD (or even PVOD, meaning an exorbitantly priced rental) regardless of their performance in cinemas. This made sense coming out of lockdown; many people weren’t ready for such a communal experience, so it was inclusive of everyone. 

But it’s undoubtedly made audiences more entitled and open to piracy, especially with it being so difficult to police; how many people do you know that happily proclaim to own a “dodgy stick”?

So, with Godzilla Minus One, it has to be asked: what did they expect? Did they really think they could get away with releasing both a hard copy of the movie that anyone in the world could order if they were willing to spend enough and dropping it on streaming, where the film could easily be accessed with a bit of VPN know-how and, evidently, downloaded and uploaded for thousands of eager pirates online?

It is bafflingly naive. Those who’ve downloaded it haven’t done the right thing — they’ve done the only thing. Where there’s a will, there’s a way — and Toho paved the road to piracy with short-sighted intentions. 

In the meantime, you can find out other new movies you can stream (legally) this month.