'Godzilla Minus Zero' is the 'Godfather: Part II' of Godzillas

Crown the King of the Monsters the King of the Movies, because the lizard so nice we named it twice—you say Gojira, I say Godzilla—is about to stomp back into international cinemas and yet again prove itself the undisputed best beastie of them all. Three years after Godzilla Minus One won the 70-year-old franchise its very first Oscar, writer-director Takashi Yamazaki’s critically-lauded instant fan-favorite has (perhaps inevitably, although we’re still waiting for Shin Godzilla 2 dammit) spawned a sequel, And if Godzilla Minus One was The Godfather of Godzilla Movies then Godzilla Minus Zero is 100% its Godfather: Part II. This new kaiju era’s a killer. Rawr two times for emphasis!

Leaning even harder into everything that made the first film so unexpected and so beloved, Godzilla Minus Zero is first and foremost still a war-time melodrama about guilt and heroism—about humankind’s tendencies for terrible and beautiful extremes. Extreme love and extreme horror as an endless cycle wreathed upon our heads; a thorny snake-eating-its-tail crown we wear as we drive ourselves into an underworld of our own making, with only our one-on-one connections keeping us even the slightest bit sane. (Sound familiar?) That ouroboros just happens to be a literal creature stomping beside us here—and it’s got two big hips and a blue whistle that’ll blow you back into the next county.

Picking up a couple of years after the first film left off with Godzilla having seemingly been blown to bits (spoiler alert: it wasn’t), Post-War slash Post-Monster Japan is not exactly thriving, but people are just starting to dig themselves out of the rubble. Most importantly former kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki)—the one who Luke Skywalker’d the big lizard to save the day last time around—has made his orphan-pack from the first film into an official family unit, with him and Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and little Akiko (Sae Nagatani) finding into a fragile stability at last. They seem genuinely happy (but you’d be remiss to get too up in your “awws” just yet).

Then there’s everybody’s favorite scientist with the beautiful bouffant of gray curls, Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka)—he’s been appointed the director of Japan’s large-scale emergency response team and has, since we last saw him, been busy leading the country’s defense against tsunamis and such. (And “such” is carrying a lot, a lot, of weight.) Indeed as we circle back to him here he’s just been handed one of Japan’s leading meteorological thinkers Dr. Makoto Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa), who whaddya know will prove instrumental in the terrifying threats looming ahead. And boy do they loom.

Because as much as this film does once again keep its focus down tight on its ground-level characters and their continued emotional journeys, we’re not exactly inside an Ozu movie here—monster mayhem must inevitably come slithering up out of the ocean once more. And what mayhem! Proving he earned that Best Special Effects Oscar and then some there are awesome-in-the-old-fashioned-sense sights to behold here. Not to mention that Godzilla Minus Zero is the very first movie in the franchise’s seventy years to earn an R-rating, and it’s really not difficult to understand why once it starts digging in its claws (and fangs) (and talons) (and nuclear fire breath). You’ve never seen this much carnage in a Godzilla film. (I mean what is this, Gamera???)

But it’s not just the kaiju killing-fields we’re talking about here. Yamazaki makes the subtext of this franchise explicit and especially haunting text this go-round, flashbacking us straight into the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima horrors via a biologist named Kanji Murakami (Min Tanaka). Murakami was there the day Americans dropped the bombs and murdered millions, including his entire family. Needless to say he bears nightmarish scars carved deep into his mind and being from that experience, and they are ones that are still mutating his present state. Currently doing work studying the long-term effects of the radiation that Godzilla infected the district of Ginza with in the first film, Murakami’s work brings him fatefully into the orbit of all our favorite old familiar faces. And in ways you might not see coming at first. And be glad you didn’t.

That said even though Godzilla Minus Zero stomps down its front door with an immediate scene of kaiju horror that stakes its claim at frame one, it does feel vital to step askance of spoilers because there are great pleasures to be had in the film’s numerous reveals. So please excuse a review that plays it as vague as this one will—there’s really no need to get into further specifics anyway because Yamazaki has gifted us yet again with a feast so rich and satisfying on all fronts. You could just talk about the deeply moving story of war orphans it presents and step out of the kaiju’s shadow entirely if you felt the need—not that Godzilla would allow such impudence. But it definitely depends on a familiarity with and fondness for the characters—I can’t imagine what a Godzilla novice would make of it, jumping into the franchise via this movie, which spends the majority of its runtime on these folks’ traumas and interactions.

And why wouldn’t it? We fell in love with Kōichi and Noriko and Akiko and Noda last time, and seeing them confronted with a world where the horror refuses to end is just as upsetting and just as riveting as you expect it to be. Director Yamazaki is smart and savvy enough to get that and keeps the stakes personal and human-scale even as entires cities crumble. Nobody expects the radioactive metaphors to stay dead—we read the newspapers. But Godzilla Minus Zero exploits that sinking feeling of despair and eventually a rising tide of resiliance that comes to meet it with genuine crowd-pleasing aplomb. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll shudder in awe at the sheer mountained-faced spectacle of it—truly Godzilla Minus Zero is a dream sequel, fully living up to the spectacular promise of the first and cementing these films as the crown jewels shining up there on that big ol’ lizard’s head.

Godzilla Minus One just had its World Premiere at the New York Film Festival. It opens in the U.S. on November 6th.