REVIEW: ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ is one of the loudest, gnarliest and sappiest (?) kaiju sequels ever
Godzilla returns to fend off a new foe in Godzilla Minus Zero, directed by Takashi Yamazaki.
The longest-running criticism of Godzilla movies is that the human characters never matter. They’re usually paper-thin victims of giant monster destruction, meant to give us something to look at when the beasties aren’t on screen. And in a more cynical sense, these characters often help pad out the runtime, since (especially in the CGI era) the more Godzilla and his enemies are on screen, the larger the budget grows.
Beginning with 2023’s Godzilla Minus One, however, we started to see a shift away from that trope. Director Takashi Yamazaki (who also contributes to the VFX) gave us an ensemble cast with emotional arcs, reinforcing the psychological impact that the arrival of Godzilla would have on a population already battered by World War II. Thus the subtraction in the title: as the filmmakers understand it, Godzilla’s emergence brings Japan to a point lower than nothing. In the sequel, the goal is to preserve what they’ve rebuilt in the face of a new kaiju threat, holding things at “zero”.
Yamazaki’s approach succeeds again in this new installment, not only letting us see his version of Godzilla face off against one of the franchise’s archvillains, but also capturing some surprisingly complex character work with the human cast. It’s a stunner on a technical level, too, with huge set pieces shot on IMAX and presented in a tall aspect ratio for full immersion.
It was only a matter of time before these period-piece Godzilla movies began to introduce other kaiju. As important as it is to make the first Minus film about the nuclear legacy of Japan, like the 1954 original, there’s perhaps only so much material you can get out of having a radioactive lizard come onshore a few times, smash some stuff and be repelled by scrappy humans. So in Minus Zero, Godzilla begins to transition away from his role as a force of nature, and more towards the protector of humanity that he’s being depicted as in the ongoing American film series known as the Monsterverse. Time will tell how much of a battle royale we’ll get from Yamazaki; it gets increasingly hard to sustain the seriousness of the human drama when Godzilla is swinging his foes around, hammer toss style.
Shikishima, his wife Noriko, and their daughter Akiko.
The protagonists of Minus One return, with the fighter pilot Shikishima (Ryūnosuke Kamiki) and his wife Noriko (Minami Hamabe) reluctantly grappling with how they’re uniquely skilled at dealing with kaiju. Primarily, they’re concerned with abandoning their adopted daughter Akiko, and that’s where the movie might grate on you slightly. There are a few too many scenes of Akiko bawling, whether because of trauma from the earlier attacks or the thought that her parents might leave her behind. There’s also a lot of sequences where the adults yell at each other about the right way to deal with the monsters, to the point that you get a little impatient to return to the smashing and stomping.
To be clear, the level of destruction in the movie isn’t minimized in any way. Minus Zero makes full use of its R rating to depict some fairly stomach-churning shots of what Godzilla (and nukes more generally) can do; it’s a noticeable departure from the Monsterverse, where for all that series’ charms, the human toll is often minimized.
And when the showdown between Godzilla and his nemesis (who I’m keeping vague for minimum spoilage) finally happens, it’s a no-holds barred matchup, with limbs and heads being lopped off (albeit temporarily). Yamazaki’s Godzilla isn’t the athlete that you see running alongside King Kong in the Monsterverse (or sliding on his tail like in Godzilla vs Megalon) but when he wants to move, he does it viciously.
While some of the marketing taglines for this movie suggest “there is no third time”, it’s worth wondering if that’s the hope of the poor characters being knocked around in these movies, or a hint that Toho wants to go in a new direction for their next Godzilla outing. Personally, given the ending of Minus Zero, I’d be down for at least one more round in this sub-series. Give us Mothra, or ideally a baddie that hasn’t been licensed for the American productions yet, like Destroyah or Hedorah. Somehow, this franchise continues to grab our attention for over 70 years and counting, and Yamazaki has proven he’s the right filmmaker to lead it.
Godzilla Minus Zero gets three and a half stars out of four.
Stray thoughts
We don’t really see the aftermath of Godzilla’s final blast of his heat ray to finish off his opponent.
The Japanese defence forces are pretty good about building kaiju traps on short timelines!