Save Us, Godzilla!

Godzilla Minus Zero, the sequel to Godzilla Minus One (which, in my opinion, was the best movie of 2023), begins with a terrifying monster attack on Matsumoto City, already in progress. This monster is King Ghidorah, a legendary Toho Studios Godzilla foe, which arrived on Earth attached in protozoal form to a meteorite, but quickly evolved into something more… sinister. After the attack, which director Takachi Yamazaki directs with brutal, realistic grimness, a much-beleaguered Japan must rally once more to figure out how to combat an apocalyptic threat.

Godzilla Minus Zero ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: Takachi Yamazaki
Written by: Takachi Yamazaki
Starring: Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Min Tanaka
Running time: 135 mins

That sense of Japanese exhaustion in the defeated post-War era is what gave Godzilla Minus One an extra layer of depth that’s long been missing from the Godzilla franchise, and is certainly missing from the “Legacy of Monsters” universe that currently stars Godzilla in the West. In Godzilla Minus Zero, Japan is not only still digging itself out from under a brutal loss of World War and the aftereffects of the atomic bomb, but it’s also recovering from Godzilla laying waste to the Ginza district of Tokyo in 1947. The apocalypse has already visited Japan twice, and now another kaiju arrives, making things that much worse.

The humans come up with a plan to defeat King Ghidorah. It goes poorly. And so they must rally, and quickly, in order to save Japan. Fortunately, something has awakened in the Pacific. Godzilla has returned, and now we see the franchise entering its “Save us, Godzilla!” era, where humanity’s greatest enemy may just become its greatest savior.

If the plot description doesn’t make it clear, Godzilla Minus Zero begins to move this franchise away from demi-realism into super Godzilla cheese. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. People don’t go to Godzilla movies for interpersonal drama. Unfortunately, Godzilla Minus Zero contains about 20% percent too much rind.

Our hero from last movie, former Kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), has settled into a life of relatively dull domesticity with Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe), who survived the original Godzilla attack so well that it infected her with “G-cells,” which give her little scaly bits on her back and a golden eye that allows her to communicate with Godzilla through an absurd lever-based scientific device that emits animal “resonance waves.” That’s a fun little B-movie trick that allows the Japanese to summon Godzilla when they need him. But it’s also an absurd setup that lacks the resonance of the previous movie, where Kōichi has to kill Godzilla to help him get over his war trauma.

The sequel’s emotional center is an elderly scientist, beautifully played by Min Tanaka, who not only survived the Godzilla attack on Ginza, but also had the misfortune to be on vacation in Hiroshima the day the U.S. dropped the A-bomb. Through him, we see the movie’s two most horrifying sequences: The aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing itself, and also a mad revenge fantasy sequence where he imagines manipulating Godzilla to go berserk, knock over the Statute of Liberty, and vaporize New York. That, plus some unexplained Cold War shenanigans from U.S. military personnel who seem to have brought their acting style over from a 1950s Godzilla movie, provide the needed historical content.

The film’s final third is the set piece we wanted to see, an epic, gory battle between Godzilla and King Ghidorah in the arena of a ruined Ginza district. The scene keeps criss-crossing back and forth between the monster fight and a series of absurdly bandaged Japanese scientists and soldiers. The movie doesn’t play their injuries for laughs, but it does play them as a kind of camp nonsense, when all we really want to do is watch the monsters rip each other to shreds.

It all sets up nicely for a sequel. There are so many more classic Godzilla monsters to appear: Rodan, Mothra, MechaGodzilla, and many more micro-eras of alternate history. Yamazaki hasn’t made a masterpiece with this sequel, but he’s laid the groundwork for a franchise that even the mighty Godzilla can’t topple.