Godzilla Minus Zero Review

This review is based on a screening timed to the New York Film Festival. Godzilla Minus Zero opens in theaters in Japan on November 3 and in North America on November 6.

Godzilla movies have long had a problem: What do you do after the initial thrill of a quote/unquote serious Godzilla origin story? Can the filmmakers somehow continue the deep thematic underpinnings of that first adventure, even while upping the visual ante with more giant monster action? How do you offer a probing commentary about the world we live in – which is what the best of the genre is known for – when you’ve got skyscraper-sized lizards slugging it out MMA-style?

Godzilla Minus Zero Images

It is under these circumstances – or should I say restrictions? – that Godzilla Minus Zero enters the ring. As the sequel to the much-praised Godzilla Minus One from three years ago – a picture that dealt with, among other things, notions of survivor’s guilt, hope in the face of hopelessness, found family, and more – Minus Zero is on the ropes from the start. Can returning writer-director Takashi Yamazaki wring even more out of his characters, who have already been to hell and back, while also blowin’ up stuff real good? In a word, no.

The film takes place two years after the events of Minus One, with Ryunosuke Kamiki back as Kōichi Shikishima and Minami Hamabe returning as Noriko. Kōichi, as fans of the Oscar-winning previous movie (for Best Visual Effects) will remember, is the former would-be kamikaze pilot from World War II who was instrumental in defeating Godzilla the first time around. Now married to Noriko, the woman he took in after the American air raids on Tokyo, the pair have also adopted Akiko, the orphaned baby they had cared for after that same disaster. Living happily together as a family, there’s only one thing that can ruin this idyllic picture… well, two things, since not only is Godzilla of course back, but there’s a new monster on the scene as well.

Minus Zero opens with a sequence of devastation, as this new critter lays waste to countless helpless civilians as they flee in the streets, avoiding both falling rubble from the buildings crumbling around them and lightning breath from the creature’s mouth. Yes, as fans have already figured out and as the marketing for the film has teased, this is Ghidorah, also known as King Ghidorah in the larger Toho mythology, and generally the archnemesis of the big guy for whom we have all gathered once again. (Ghidorah has also been referred to as “Monster Zero,” which helps to explain this film’s title.)

These scenes of destruction and terror are breathtaking, with Yamazaki and his team of visual effects maestros once again managing to keep their creatures from feeling like CGI monstrosities. No, rather, Ghidorah, and Godzilla when he eventually shows up too, just appear to be real monstrosities – humongous, slow-moving, reptile-like, and all-the more terrifying for it. Ghidorah also distinguishes himself from his counterpart with his scary yet herky-jerky, almost cat-like mannerisms.

So as soon as that first-round bell rings, the movie has already proven its VFX bona fides – to no one’s surprise. But it has also confirmed that a Godzilla Part 2 inevitably means more monsters. And look, none of this is to say that there’s anything wrong with a movie where Godzilla has to rip his own arm off because his foe’s teeth are sunk so tightly into it. We all love monster-on-monster action, but there’s no denying that the more of a mash a monster movie becomes – be it of the Toho, Universal, Alien/Xenomorph, or whatever else variety – the more it loses its edge as the human characters and their emotional baggage run the risk of looking puny in the face of these god-like creatures.

Remember what Bogart said in Casablanca? “It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” Yes, I’m quoting Humphrey Bogart in a Godzilla review, but if there’s an issue with Minus Zero, it’s that the travails of Kōichi, Noriko, and little Akiko just pale when considering the scope of destruction that Godzilla and company are capable of. Whereas the first film framed that destruction through the lens of the trio’s trauma, not just in regards to the giant monster but also specifically around what they went through in the war, that resonance is missing here.

In fact, the most interesting character in Minus Zero is perhaps the most under-served. Kanji Murakami, played by Min Tanaka, is a scientist whose work is key to battling the monsters this time around. He’s also kind of warped, with Tanaka getting one scene in particular that is a bit too spoilery to describe here, but is also a highlight of the film. As with Kōichi and Noriko, and indeed every character in the film, the war irrevocably changed his life, and the scientist is still struggling to cope with that reality while he works to prevent a pair of living A-bombs from doing even more damage to humankind.

Speaking of which, a much ballyhooed sequence first glimpsed in the trailer last spring involving Godzilla and the Statue of Liberty is certainly something to behold here. Toho has asked critics to not reveal the specifics of this particular scene in reviews, but suffice to say that it is both everything you’ve imagined and theorized about, and at the same time none of that at all. It does connect back to Tanaka’s character in one of his darkest moments, and as a result is one of the film’s most memorable incidents of Godzilla-on-human action.

But that brings me back once again to the feeling that kept bubbling up for me while watching Godzilla Minus Zero. Even as Godzilla sets upon what looks like Spider-Noir’s version of New York City, the whole emotional underpinning of the scene is tied to Tanaka’s Murakami. Unfortunately, the character’s true motivations and how they’re ultimately resolved in the film play as more of an after-thought than Minus Zero’s thematic or emotional core, and for that film suffers.

If there is a central theme at work here, it’s the idea that no matter how hard we as a species try, we can’t outrun our own mistakes – and we’re gonna keep making them over and over again, despite the efforts of the best among us. Minus One ended with a hint of what was next for Noriko; while she miraculously survived a Godzilla attack, she also now bore a mysterious scar on her neck from the experience. It’s no surprise to learn in Minus Zero that it was no mere scar, and that in fact Noriko is now also a very important player in the fight against the monsters. But she, like Kōichi, is also a pawn in a greater game that’s happening on the world stage involving the monsters. The regular folks on the ground are the ones bearing the trauma of the battles that have been fought, but the powers that be don’t seem to care…

By the final act, you know where this is all going, and that’s fine. Monsters must brawl, and as with Minus One, the period setting of this film really adds to the luster of the visual effects and action scenes. Seeing Kōichi back in the pilot seat, this time of 1949-era fighter planes, is thrilling, and the various schemes concocted by the returning Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), now the head of the “Large-Scale Disaster Response Bureau,” are often ingenious and satisfyingly crunchy in their attempts to slow down and ultimately stop Godzilla and his enemy.