One of the genuine surprises of 2023 was Godzilla Minus One, a movie that actually had me asking myself, “I’m I really choking back tears at a Godzilla movie!?!?!?” Yes, I was. It was a kaiju movie that was as interested in the humans as it was the spectacle of the monster and its destruction, and it went on to win an Oscar. Therefore, I have been eagerly anticipating this sequel, Godzilla Minus Zero.
Minus Zero continues the story two years after the events of Minus One, in 1949 postwar Japan. The country has established a Disaster Response Bureau in the wake of their encounters with Godzilla, a team of scientists led by Dr. Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka). When a new monster encounter sends his team scrambling for answers on a new plan of attack to fight back, he enlists the help of Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), renowned for previously besting Godzilla, to train a group of pilots. Shikishima soons finds himself thrust into a massive fight for the survival of Japan, as does his wife Noriko (Minami Hamabe) who has mostly recovered from her injuries from the first film, though with lingering side effects, when Godzilla also suddenly reemerges.
The beauty of the first film was that it told a relatable, human story of fear, guilt, failure, and, ultimately, redemption in a bleak circumstance. While a little of that is sacrificed this time around in the name of bigger spectacle, there is still plenty of human stakes at play in this film. We see more of human fallout of not just the destruction wrought by Godzilla, but also World War II. Survivors still carry a guilt of being alive when their loved ones are gone. Others carry a sense of shame over their previous work.
The characters all process these in different ways. Some are spurred on in their work to do the right thing this time around. Some are determined to never make the mistake they made last time of not standing up for what they believed was right, choosing to stay silent because it was comfortable for everyone. Others lament the circumstances and wonder if they will ever know peace again. And some contribute to the efforts, but secretly harbor dark thoughts of vengence.
Another aspect of what made Minus One so good was that the humans in the story were looking for scientifically grounded answers in combating Godzilla, relatively speaking of course. This carries over to Minus Zero in several plans that are executed to try and fight the new monstrous threat and Godzilla when he reemerges from the ocean depths. Oddly enough, a meteorologist factors heavily into the strategy, Makoto Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa), which technically makes Godzilla Minus Zero and Pressure competing twin movies in 2026 about the involvement of 1940s meteorology in strategic battle planning (Pressure, of course would be the Deep Impact to Godzilla Minus Zero‘s Armageddon).
I have not seen all of the previous Godzilla movies ever made, but I know that there are twin fairies that have a psychic connection to Mothra, for instance. There is a similar thing done here, with Noriko, which pays off the end of the first movie where we see black formations on her shoulder.
While Shikishima was the main protagonist of the first film, it is more balanced this time to involve Noriko more in the overall plot. In fact, Noriko becomes a living ethical dilemma. She has the opportunity to step up and do something that could save the country, but it could also cost her her life. It could also result in her becoming a military test subject. She feels compelled to act, even if it puts her life with Shikishima and their adopted daughter Akiko (Sae Nagatani) at risk. Akiko continues to pull at my heartstrings, as she did in Minus One. It’s weird to say that Sae Nagatani is the best crying child in movie history, but I think it is true and it broke my heart every time she burst into tears.
One of the complaints I have seen regarding Godzilla Minus Zero is that the film could have used more Godzilla. He is absent for roughly the first hour of the movie, with the majority of that time being devoted to fighting another kaiju and regrouping after an attempt to kill it. The action in Minus Zero is amped up, which I think makes sense because they couldn’t just make another movie about Japan trying to fend off and defeat Godzilla. Instead, it becomes kaiju vs. kaiju at the climax with a plan to hopefully defeat whichever monster is left standing. The pitting of the two behemoths against each other and Japan being stuck in the middle also reflective of the Japanese standing in the post-WWII world of a medium global power reduced to rubble and being stuck between the superpowers of the emerging Cold War in the USA and USSR.
All of the action sequences are expertly designed and look incredible, including the opening of the movie and the climactic battle. The highlight reel of the film, though, may be a beautifully executed dogfight between a squadron of fighter jets and the new kaiju (I’m purposefully avoiding spoiling which monster it is), culminating in an tense moment of a larger military plane attempting to drop a payload directly above the flying monster as it pursues Shikishima’s plane.
Godzilla Minus One set an incredibly high bar for its sequel, mainly because of the deeply human story at its heart. Godzilla Minus Zero has an emotionally wrought human element at its center too, but it is slightly less resonant than its predecessor. Nevertheless, it ties back nicely to Minus One, has thrilling action sequences, and still keeps the focus as much on the humans as it does the monsters and grapples with some moral and ethical dilemmas that most actions movies never comes close to questioning. That makes Godzilla Minus Zero a more than worthy sequel.
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