In 2023, director Takashi Yamazaki reinvigorated the long-running Godzilla film series with Godzilla Minus One, a complete reimagining of the iconic character and its origins that floored audiences and critics alike. With a human story that explored the lingering fallout of the end of the second World War while also introducing one of Godzilla’s most fearsome and impressive avatars to date, Minus One quickly rose to the top of fan rankings and even scored an Academy Award win for Best Visual FX from a scrappy skeleton crew that included the director, himself. Yamazaki returns to the series with a follow up that has very big, one might say monstrous, expectations to live up to. Does this sequel fit the bill?
Boy, does it ever. Bigger, badder, and certainly louder, Godzilla Minus Zero is a rousing, crowd-pleasing monster melodrama that doubles down in every department. It’s an atomic blast of action, intrigue, and good, old-fashioned kaiju-stomping fun that is a worthy successor to its already iconic antecedent.
It has been two years since the events of Godzilla Minus One and Japan is still reeling from the compound devastation of World War II and the sudden, unwelcome landfall of the massive, irradiated titan, Godzilla that left much of Tokyo in ruins. Just as the nation has begun tentatively finding a way forward, another giant monster rises, this one more aggressive and agile than the last, sending the already hobbled nation into collective trauma shock as they scramble to find a solution. This time, it looks like their old enemy, Godzilla – less dead than everyone assumed – may be their only salvation as the two giant monsters square off in some of the most incredible battle sequences ever designed.
Godzilla Minus Zero brings back all of the previous film’s primary cast, we pick up with failed kamikaze pilot-turned hero Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), his wife Noriko (Minami Hamabe), and their adopted daughter Akiko (Sae Nagatani) trying to live a normal life when this new kaiju threat calls Kōichi back into action.
Heading up the newly formed Large-Scale Disaster Response Bureau is Dr. Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), who planned the mission that temporarily sank Godzilla at the end of the previous film. This time he’s joined at the Bureau by battle-scarred biologist Kanji Murakami (Min Tanaka) and hot-shot meteorologist Makoto Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa), whose wild theories connecting the mysterious new dragon-like kaiju to storm patterns may prove to be the key to its defeat.
Long-time Godzilla fans have already gleaned the identity of the classic monster who clashes with Big G in Minus Zero from cues in the trailers, but even if you know who it is, you’ll never expect the way in which it manifests and the ferocity it brings to the film. Yamazaki’s monsters are vicious, and their impact and the human toll of their attacks is never glossed over for the sake of a good action scene, which already puts these film several rungs above Legendary’s Monsterverse films (which I happen to enjoy quite a bit) in terms of objective quality.
While we spend the most time with our returning human characters, whose trauma from the last attack is nowhere near healed, even unnamed human victims are treated with respect and their loss is felt every time an attack destroys a town or a village. Yamazaki takes the time to mourn and observe the effects of his monsters’ temper tantrums. In Godzilla Minus Zero, the year is still only 1949, meaning Japan is still actively rebuilding from the war and the tragic dual atomic bombs that decimated the nation both physically an emotionally, now with monsters to deal with, it’s almost too much to bear, and those stacked tragedies weigh on everyone.
As much as Godzilla Minus Zero is a film about giant monsters laying waste to Japan, it is perhaps even more about individuals and a nation attempting to move forward after tragedies have torn them apart. Each character is broken in a way that directly impacts every decision they make, some logical, some immediately tragic, and some potentially catastrophic. It’s blatantly unsubtle, screaming its frustrations at the audience at decibel levels that are already sending Apple Watch trackers into conniption fits at IMAX screenings. But who needs subtext, when the text looks and sounds this badass?
Though there is certainly an argument to be made that Godzilla Minus Zero is repeating a lot of what its predecessor did, that’s really just the nature of the series over the last 70 years. Rarely, though, have any direct sequels followed up with characters that we actually care about as well and effectively as Yamzaki’s films have, and certainly none have even attempted this scale of action. Godzilla Minus Zero doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it certainly soups up the engine and puts the whole thing into overdrive, delivering enough kaiju-sized emotional and physical wreckage to have monster movie fans weeping tears of joy. Fans will not be disappointed, Godzilla Minus Zero brings the goods.