The follow up to the hit TOHO studios reboot of the Godzilla franchise, Godzilla Minus Zero finds itself in an interesting conundrum, as it excels beyond Minus One’s kaiju action, but also triples down on the human melodrama that isn’t going to work on anyone that didn’t enjoy it the first time.
Taking place two years after the events of Minus One, where Godzilla was destroyed, a new Kaiju threat arrives in the form of a dragon-like creature that arrived from outer space. Riding on a meteor, it quickly evolved, adapted to, and from, its new earth habitat, only to quickly destroy the neighboring city that it landed near. After the carnage on the unsuspecting city of Matsumoto, we learn that some of our characters from the first film (in particular Hidetaka Yoshioka’s Nado) have been tasked with preparing for the eventual return of a kaiju to Japan.
Nado and his team devise a plan to destroy the kaiju, named Ghidorah, and for that he must recruit our ex-kamikaze pilot hero from Minus One, Ryunosuke Kamiki’s Kōichi Shikishima. Shikishima has settled down with Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe), who somehow miraculously survived a Godzilla attack in the first film and happens to be infected with Godzilla cells that will ultimately kill her. Their adopted daughter, Akiko (Sae Nagatani), spends her time not being an orphan at the local orphanage Noriko works at, but has become very adored by her new parents and shares that love in return. Nado, Shikishima, and meteorological wizard Makoto Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa) devise a plan to take out Ghidorah, but the kaiju only grows in power and sets into motion a series of events that lead to Godzilla’s return and a more global threat for the former enemy of Japan, the United States.
While that juicy tease of Godzilla in the U.S. doesn’t really materialize, we do get a dream sequence set in NYC that serves as a highlight of the film. A brutal and vengeful piece of destruction that is graphically depicted to one character’s glee. The kaiju action in general is the only reason to see the movie if you are asking me, as it is awesome to behold the imagery director Takashi Yamazaki and his effects teams put together; if only there was more of it.
Like, we just needed one more sequence, but we are mostly at the mercy of watching all of the old faces getting back together again, with some very drawn out abandonment drama centered around Akkio and her parents’ role to play in the endgame of Minus Zero. Sure, it’s nice to see some of the old gang, but they don’t really get a whole lot to do together, and are more here to be canon fodder for the human side of the film’s final set-piece. It’s all not only underwritten, but our main lead in Shikishima continues to be the worst part of these two films (I can’t watch this guy cry anymore), while Nado’s role has had most of the fun sapped out of it as he is elevated to a more central lead vs. fun side character.
Having said that, everything going on with the elder scientist Kanji Murakami (Min Tanaka) is delightfully over the top and bonkers, and is clearly Yamazaki’s best invention in his script outside the kaiju chaos. Ōishi’s story is also quite clever when she isn’t being wasted in the domestic drama unfolding with her family as the “G-cells” plot goes from being a silly coda to Minus One and turns into one of the most clever plot beats in this film surrounding Godzilla.
So, why should you see Minus Zero when there doesn’t seem to be all that interesting stuff to watch on what takes up the vast majority of the run time? Well, and I can’t stress this enough, the kaiju stuff is face meltingly awesome. The birth of Ghidorah’s final form, the terror it causes in its anti-graviational wake, Godzilla’s heat blasts, and a final battle that goes into the record books as one of Godzilla’s best yet, it’s not to be missed if you’re a fan of these kind of films. Yeah, you might be bored to tears waiting in-between the 3 set-pieces that dot the film, but it really is worth the wait to see this on the biggest and loudest screen possible; it’s that good.
Yamazaki’s Minus One lost me a bit in its human choices in the film’s final moments, and his instincts are no better here, and that’s a shame. Thankfully, he and his team put their enhanced budget up on the screen, with some truly amazing character models and scenes of destruction that are borderline pornographic for kaiju fans. You can’t miss it, even if it doesn’t work as a whole.
