Movie Review: The Showdown of the Year in “Godzilla Minus Zero”

As a direct sequel of Godzilla Minus One, Godzilla Minus Zero is set two years after the events of the first film. It finds post-war Japan still rebuilding before a new kaiju terrorizes the city of Matsumoto. This dragon-like creature flies and shoots beams of electricity from its mouth, a monster that scientist Professor Kanji Murakami (Min Tanaka) has named it Ghidorah. Returning from the first film to try and stop the monster are key survivors from the original cast, including former pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryonusuke Kamiki), who is now married to Noriko (Minami Hanabe), as well as Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), the director of an agency assigned to deal with monster threats, Seiji Akitsu (Kuranosuke Sasaki), and many others. Joining them is a meteorologist, Makoto Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa).

But Ghidorah is a different beast altogether. When all human efforts fail, Professor Murakami suggests a desperate gamble: lure Godzilla, who has regenerated and resurfaced from the sea, into Ghidorah’s path and let the two titans battle it out. Executing this plan relies on Noriko, whose survival of Godzilla’s attack in Godzilla Minus One letf her with a connection to the kaiju.

At a little over two hours, Godzilla Minus Zero never overstays its welcome or overplays its hand. The film shows great restraint in showing the kaiju with one glorious peek at Ghidorah at the start of the film and another at the beginning of the second act and then keeping Godzilla scarce until the finale. It builds tension by keeping the focus on the characters, who become a sort of symbol of Japan trying to rebuild itself after World War II. From an outsider’s perspective, I watch this film and see a Japan that is struggling from the weight of their participation in World War II and the horrid aftermath of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As the characters travel across Japan from Matsumoto to Tokyo, we see the extent of the damage left by Godzilla in the previous film alongside the fresh destruction that Ghidorah is doing in this movie. Yet these images of ruin evoke very similar imagery of wartime devastation. In its own subtle way, Godzilla Minus Zero stands as an anti-war film, exploring both the collective effects of that trauma – the sociological and individual trauma – that it has on post-war Japanese society.

Interestingly enough, the Americans make their way into the narrative by offering planes and bombs to help stop Ghidorah, while the Japanese team are trying to find other ways to stop the kaiju. The nuance of these scenes and the depictions of Americans are warmongers, who solve every problem in front of them with a weapon, is very evident to me and positions the film to question the use of the atomic bomb on Japanese soil. 

These geopolitical touches add rich layers of depth to the film, brining into sharper focus the domestic relationship between Koichi, Noriko, and their adopted daughter Akiko (Sae Nagatani). By recognizing that children are the ultimate victims of any war, this is given enough space and time to fully explore this storyline, allowing it to become the heart that grounds this film and gives it its emotional core.

But when Ghidorah and Godzilla are finally given their screentime and they get to battle it out, the result is nothing short of breathtaking, it’s one for the books. Director Takashi Yamazaki returns for the sequel alongside his Academy Award-winning visual effects team, to really make the kaiju sequences pop on screen. Yamazaki amplifies the scale of this story using sprawling wide shots to fully encapsulate the size of this story. The effect is truly epic. Godzilla and Ghidorah are titans, huge in comparison to the humans, and when they are on screen, it has the power to put everything into perspective. These characters and all their hopes, dreams, and suffering is so tiny compared to these massive kaiju. We’re bugs. We’re ants. And we have to work together to try and protect what is ours. These kaiju bring out the best and the worst in people. It’s like war. It’s like the atomic bomb.

I really, really enjoyed this movie, and I am glad I saw it in the cinema rather than in some streaming platform in a television at home.

My Rating: 4.5 Stars

Godzilla Minus Zero is a spectacle built for the big screen. Make sure to catch it in theaters, preferably on the largest screen with the best sound system you can find, to fully experience its massive scale and emotional impact. Click here for showtimes.