Godzilla Minus Zero

Stomping Ground

Godzilla Minus Zero
Directed by Takashi Yamazaki
Japan 2026
Toho
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: Some spoilerage in this one.

Following on from Godzilla Minus One (reviewed here), writer/director Takashi Yamazaki returns with a direct sequel set around two years after the events of that first film. And, I have to say that, while it’s a lot more kaiju heavy than I was expecting after the last movie, Godzilla Minus Zero absolutely adds to the first film, not taking away anything and, while not being quite as good a movie, absolutely giving us, yet again, one of the greatest of the Toho Gojira franchise films. 

All the main cast are back for this, which takes place in 1949, during the American occupation of Japan after World War II but, there’s a new, flying creature on the block, which the science guys are calling Ghidorah (although it’s not, quite, the Ghidorah we know just yet... that comes later in the movie). Professor Noda, played by Hidetaka Yoshioka, now runs a kind of anti-kaiju, anti-disaster committee but with the new monster on his watch, he needs a pilot with combat experience against it. So he enlists Kôichi , played again by Ryūnosuke Kamiki. What both Noda and Kôichi’s adopted daughter Akiko, played by Sae Nagatani, don’t know as yet is that Noriko, played by Minami Hamabe, Kôichi’s girlfriend/joint parent to Akiko, has been infected by her near fatal encounter with Godzilla in the last movie (I really don’t understand how) and is going through some kind of Cronenbergian body horror with parts of her body mutating into something very Godzlla-sympathetic. However, everybody else who has had the same symptoms, so far, has died from this process. 

And then Ghidorah is aroused and angry and, despite new science lady Makoto on the scene, played by Masami Nagasawa, with her plan to use the natural elements of the weather to defeat it... it then transforms into the three headed version we mostly know these days as King Ghidorah. And then, of course, a long thought dead, regenerated Godzilla shows up and also starts stomping various Japanese locales. And I’ll leave you just there with the story summary.

It’s a really great movie and, like the first one, concentrates more on the human characters and the way they deal with the stress of their situation rather than leaving it all up to the monsters to carry the film. That being said, there are a lot more scenes of kaiju carnage and, if you’d have asked me, I would have said there’s a lot more Godzilla here. And I now know I would have been totally wrong in that impression. The Big G only had a combined screen time of around 11 minutes in the previous film but, startlingly, he’s been cut down to only six minutes for this sequel. Perhaps I didn’t notice so much because there’s so much of Ghidorah to fill in those giant monster gaps. 

And the film has its fair share of magical moments. For instance, Naoki Satô gives us another brilliant, somewhat minimalistic but powerful score to the movie but, of course, in those Godzilla moments, he brings back the Akira Ifukube themes to get the blood pumping. Another wonderful moment I didn’t even realise I was missing because they withheld it for the right moment, is when Ghidorah finally mutates into the familiar three headed version we are familiar with... and his trademark vocalisations are suddenly thrown into the mix. 

And, like I said, although the director relies on the same kind of tactics as the first in terms of having the kaiju threat the impetus for the human drama, there are more clichés from these kinds of films found in this one. Specifically, the one thing I wasn’t expecting to see, which was the idea of a ‘mental link’ between one of the main human characters and Godzilla, once again used to exploit the idea of getting a giant monster to follow you to where it’s best needed. 

And then there’s Akiko. Godzilla Minus One was pretty moving and this one doesn’t pull the punches either. All I’ll say is... that screaming kid is a pretty good actress. Bring some hankies with you.

And I think that’s where I’ll leave this one, although I’ll also give myself the thick-headed, ignorant award of the year for buying into the countdown implication of the title. It hit me just as the movie was about to start that King Ghidorah, in at least one film of the 1960s, was known to his masters as Monster Zero. So I should have seen that coming as soon as the title was announced. But... asides from that...   

Godzilla Minus Zero is a fantastically well acted, beautiful looking, fast paced triumph of the kaiju eiga genre and it definitely needs to be seen on a big screen. I’m a little worried about a sequel because they killed off my favourite character in this one (yeah, like I’m going to say who that is) but I’ll be first in line if they can persuade the writer/director back for a third installment. There’s also a nice anti-American sentiment in the film, especially during what I assume is a ‘revenge dream sequence’, where the Statue of Liberty is knocked asunder and New York suffers from something similar to what happened to Hiroshima back in the 1940s. This may well be a contender for best movie of the year.