If you haven't watched Godzilla Minus One, do so. This text will contain spoilers and the movie is (very) good. Don't believe me, believe Kevin Smith. Or even my wife who said that the film was alright - that's very high praise for a kaiju-movie coming from her. So, spoilers ahead.
Are those who haven't seen the film gone? Is anyone still reading this blog anyways? Alright, let's talk about that ejector seat.
For me as an attentive viewer and a German, the whole thing wasn't just telegraphed, it was announced. You can clearly read "SCHLEUDERSITZ" when our hero gets into the plane for the first time. And then the mechanic goes "There's one more thing to show you" and the camera cuts a bit further away for like half a second when he bends over to show our man something behind him.
Then the professor has a speech about how the Japanese didn't respect human lives enough in the past, even designing airplanes without ejector seats. This isn't just Checkov's Ejector Seat. It's clearly told.
But why is that so? The plane our hero uses is a Japanese one. I at first thought it to be a Dornier Pfeil but it was actually Kyushu J7W Shinden with details such as the actual armament correctly stated in the film. Cool. But the fact that the ejector seat is labeled in German is a plot point. Of course, were it labelled in Japanese, the (presumed domestic Japanese) audience would have seen that and the dramatic moment in the end would have been spoiled (as it was for me). But then it could have been unlabeled without losing any credibility. No, the makers of that plane model had decided that the thing would have a German-made ejector seat.
Interesting. That makes this aircraft component into something with its own presumed backstory. Now I know that Germany, in the last days of the war, sent their allies in Japan some high-tech fighter components via cargo submarine. This was to give the Japanese jet-fighter tech to use in maybe somehow clawing their way back from defeat. That was, of course, in vain – unbeknownst to the Axis powers, the US was in the final stages of developing nuclear weapons, which would make such conventional warfare obsolete when it came to all-out war for the existence of a country.
Anyhow, how did that German ejector seat get into that Japanese prototype plane? There are two possible paths. One is that it was put in there when the plane was built: It was a testing platform with highly unusual aerodynamics, so it would make a lot of sense to give a test pilot the option of ejecting. So the engineers took components from a German shipment of fighter-tech and installed it into their prototype.
The other option, which I prefer for story-purposes, would be that the mechanic in the film installed it while getting the plane to working condition again. The same shed that housed the plane may have housed some other leftovers from the war – including parts from Germany. Now that mechanic decides to build in that ejector seat, so that the protagonist can go on his vengeful Kamikaze-run – and live. Because he has forgiven him for being a coward when facing Godzilla the first time. And I like that version best.
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