Godzilla Minus Zero (2026)
Starring: Minami Hamabe,
Ryûnosuke Kamiki, Masami Nagasawa, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Min Tanaka,
Sakura Andô, Yuki Yamada, Sae Nagatani, Jun Kunimura, Munetaka
Aoki, Kuranosuke Sasaki, Seiji Akitsu, Wes Wing, Miou Tanaka
Director:
Takashi Yamazaki
Special FX
Director: Takashi Yamazaki
I don’t think very many
fans expected Godzilla Minus One to
be as successful, financially and critically, as it was. It made over
100 million dollars worldwide on a budget of only 15 million dollars
and walked
away with an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, taking out blockbusters
like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning,
both of which were about fifteen times
more expensive. The Japanese Godzilla,
which had long been the butt of a joke when it came to “dated” FX
methods, had beat Hollywood at its own game for a fraction of the
price. Hell, none of the MonsterVerse movies featuring Godzilla have
gotten so much as a nomination.
So, I guess it went without
saying that there would be a sequel to this movie, although the very
ending suggested that there were still a few things that director
Yamazaki wanted to explore. We got “First Look Teaser” about six
months ago, which featured an American actor talking in the
background and what appeared to be the image of floating city. The
first teaser came out two months later and, to be honest, looked like
it was going to be “more of the same” as the first film, with
imagery that suggested the morality of trying to defeat Godzilla
using very large bombs.
Then we get got the official
trailer just two months before release. This one opened all sorts of
avenues for speculation. Something about a weather forecaster prodigy
whose abilities looked almost supernatural. And “fighting fire with
fire.” And the return of the image of floating buildings and the
mention of “Operation Narukami,” which means “God of Thunder.”
And then a familiar cackle playing over the imagery. Okay, so I think
fans knew what general direction the movie was going in, though not
necessarily how the pieces would fit into each other.
The film kicks off in
1949—two years after the events of the first films—in the thick
of things: the city of Matsumoto is being ravaged by a large, green
dragon-ish monster. Among the only survivors of this attack are
Professor Murukami (Min Tanaka, of Keanu Reeves’s The
47 Ronin and Blade
of the Immortal) and his assistant,
Hagiwara (Kô Maehara, of Shin Godzilla
and Kamen
Rider Black Sun). They return to Tokyo
to report to Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka, returning from the first
film), who is now in charge of Japan’s crisis response bureau. We
learn that the dragon is the evolution of an organism from space that
arrived on Earth via meteorite. The organism absorbs and assimilates
whatever life it comes in contact with it, which leads the scientists
to dub it “Ghidorah,” being a combination of “hydra” and
“chimera”. It may look a little off, but knowing that in
Japanese, “hydra” would probably be pronounced as “He-duh-rah”
and the ‘ch’ in “chimera” is pronounced like a “k,” which
is just an aspirated “g’ sound, one can appreciate the play on
words.
Anyway, Ghidorah is now off
in the mountains sleeping off the energy spent in the last attack. As
Japan is still occupied by the American Armed Forces, the Americans
get involved, albeit indirectly (once again, so as not to stir up the
Soviets). They give the Japanese some of their best weapons, namely
some modern jets and a very large aerosol bomb. At the same, one
member of Noda’s team, a lady named Makoto Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa,
who had played one of the Shobijin in
Godzilla: Tokyo SOS and
Godzilla Final Wars,
and who is known around here for the Kingdom movies) has come up with a Plan B. You
see, Aoyama is meteorologist of considerable talent and has a knack
for not only predicting thunderstorms and hurricanes, but their
severity, too. She thinks she can use the weather to their advantage
in fighting Ghidorah.
Now, about those jets. Noda
and his team have managed to scrounge up a few willing pilots to take
on Ghidorah, although morale is rather low. I mean, fighting Godzilla
is probably scary enough as it is. But what about a flying monster
with a flexible neck and greater blast radius? That’s almost
suicide. This is where Noda decides to bring in an old friend: Koichi
Shikishima (a returning Ryûnosuke Kamiki). Although Noda doesn’t
want Shikishima to risk his life again, especially now that he and
Noriko (Minami Hamabe also reprising her role) are married and have
officially adopted little Akiko (Sae Nagatami). But maybe by giving
the pilots some of his acquired wisdom on flying close to monsters
without getting oneself killed, some of the fear may be allayed.
Yeah, that’ll work.
Obviously, Noriko doesn’t
even like the idea of Shikishima going as a consultant, let alone
flying if yet another pilot gets cold feet and drops out. You see, in
the very last scene of Godzilla Minus
One, we learned that Noriko had
survived contact with the shockwave that followed the atomic
explosion caused by Godzilla’s breath. But viewers noticed a little
black mark growing on her neck. And what was that? Well, Noriko has
contracted what may best be called “Godzilla’s Disease”.
People exposed to Godzilla’s tissue initially develop
Wolverine-esque healing abilities, but quickly succumb when the bony
spines start growing in the darndest places, like a kaiju
version of Epidermodysplasia
verruciformis. All of the other patients have died from it, but
Noriko is a soldier. Nonetheless, she doesn’t think she’s long
for this world and thus doesn’t want Akiko to become an
orphan…again.
Unfortunately for all
involved, yet another pilot drops out of the project, thus forcing
Shikishima to participate in the attack on Ghidorah. Aoyama’s
plan—dubbed “Operation Narukami”—is pretty clever by 1949
technology standards: fire a giant copper-lined harpoon into Ghidorah
and let the lightning (which she is so good at predicting) do the
rest. Initially, the plan looks like it works. But then Ghidorah, the
Borg of the Godzilla universe, not only adapts to the lighting, but
involves into a form that we fans are much more familiar with today.
And whatever it didn’t destroy of Matsumoto the first time is
absolutely screwed
in ways we fans have never seen. At the same time, a Japanese naval
vessel is almost capsized by Godzilla, who has since regenerated his
body completely. This leads Professor Murakami to suggest that they
fight fire with fire by having the two monsters fight and then
bombarding the (presumably) wounded victor with all they got. But how
to get Godzilla to where Ghidorah is? Well, Murakami has a plan, but
he’s going to need someone who was up close with Godzilla to make
it work…
Much like Godzilla
Minus One, this film places a large
focus on the human characters. Once again, much of the film is about
scarred (some literally), traumatized people doing their best in an
impossible situation to preserve Japan for the next generation.
Shikashima is doing okay until he learns that Godzilla is still alive
and slips back into his PTST/survivor’s guilt, at least initially.
Aoyama is plagued by memories of the destruction that a recent
typhoon wreaked on Japan, in which disaster she played the role of
the Cassandra. Professor Noda is holding it together, but even he has
to deal with the knowledge that the weapons he had developed for the
war effort cost many young men their lives.
And then there’s Professor
Murakami. Murakami shows up at the crisis control headquarters almost
completely spaced out, simply muttering, “I survived again.” We
assume he’s referring to Godzilla’s attack on Ginza, but that’s
only part of the truth. He was also in Hiroshima on August 6th,
1945. It was while wandering through the ruins of the city in a
zombie-like trance that he discovered that his family—his wife,
daughter, and grandson—were almost completely carbonized in the
explosion. The experience has left him occasionally suffering from
audio hallucinations and stupors, but as the film reaches its
conclusion, his PTSD has graduated into delusions of revenge.
The greatest strength of
this movie is that the human characters matter throughout and most of
them do not get relegated to standing around watching the final
monster duel. Everyone has something to do, especially when things do
not go as initially planned. I can forgive Aoyama having to spend
much of the climax just standing atop the only remaining building in
Ginza to watch the spectacle, since she had done her part to get the
monsters there in the first place. But we care about characters, even
the nameless pilots who are honestly afraid to engage in combat with
a kaiju,
something we never seen in even the best Japanese monster flicks.
And by the end, there are
some real high stakes for everyone, both because of the monsters and
because of outside forces. The movie does bring in the theme about
the misuse of scientific innovation, not too unlike Serizawa’s fear
that his Oxygen Destroyer might be used as a weapon. In Gojira,
the fear was abstract. In Godzilla Minus
Zero, the fear is concrete. One group
is willing to exploit their current political power to get their
hands on a powerful weapon, even if it means depriving individuals of
their civil rights. And on the macro scale of the Cold War, there is
some level of justification of why they would want such a weapon (we
need to have it before a more dangerous power gets it), but on a
micro scale, they look like horrible people. I could have gone
without some of the extra melodrama in the last scene, but oh well.
After all, so many of these movies end with people standing around
looking relieved that Godzilla won (or was defeated, depending on the
movie), so a bit more focus on the characters is welcome.
The movie does have some
real flaws, however. The first two involve a pair of subplots that
don’t get developed enough. We learn early on that during the
events of the climax of Godzilla Minus
One, that the American Air Force was
ready to drop a nuke on Godzilla if Operation Wadatsumi (Wadatsumi?
Narukami? Makoto? I’m getting Genshin Impact flashbacks here) had
failed. And they seem particularly interested in doing so again with
Ghidorah. Only that the possibility is brought up once…and then
never mentioned in the film again. There is also the subplot about
Murakami’s descent into madness, which gets resolved in an almost
offhand manner almost as soon as it’s brought up. It does result in
one of the most horrific scenes in the film, but I think a little
more could have been done with it.
Part of the problem is that
there is simply too many characters and too much going on for these
subplots to really be able to flesh out all aspects of the story. On
one hand, all of the characters get their chance to shine, some even
have multiple chances to do so. The main story beats are generally
well handled, too. But eventually something will get the short
shrift, and that ends up happening with those two subplots…and
Godzilla himself.
Long story short: Godzilla
may very well have less screentime than he did in Godzilla
vs. Megalon; Terror of Mechagodzilla;
or Godzilla ’14.
But to be honest, that tends
to be an issue whenever Godzilla plays the hero. If he doesn’t have
another monster to fight, then there’s not a lot that Godzilla can
do onscreen without losing audience sympathy. Some films get around
this by giving him multiple opponents to fight, like in Godzilla
vs. the Sea Monster where he fights
Ebirah, the Giant Condor, the Red Bamboo jets, and the entire Red
Bamboo base. But by the 1970s, he was just appearing on cue to
fight, like in Godzilla vs Gigan and
its follow-up. And since this only has one monster to fight, Godzilla
ends up getting treated the way he did in the 1970s.
Speaking of 1970s, there are
a number of callbacks to other films and even some unmade scripts.
When we first meet Hagiwara and Prof. Murakami in the midst of
Ghidorah’s rampage, they are wearing yellow windbreakers like the
scientists in Ghidrah, the Three-Headed
Monster. When Ghidorah evolves into his
more well-known form, we see him destroying a Shinto Arch in the
foreground, much like that film, too. The scene of the space organism
absorbing the local wildlife reminds me of the script for the unmade
1994 Jan De Bont Godzilla,
which is how the Gryphon monster was born. The visual aesthetics of
Prof. Murakami’s lab feel like they came out of the original 1954
Gojira.
Also, the device used to attract Godzilla reminds me of the one used
in The Return of Godzilla (or
Godzilla 1985,
if you will), but with Yamazaki’s own personal stamp on the device.
Moreover, the angle at which the camera is set up when Godzilla shows
up in front of New York feels like it was inspired by a similar scene
in Destroy All Monsters!
And some of the imagery at the end of the climax will remind fans of
Godzilla 2000.
The special effects are, for
the most part, expertly done. The only effect that threatened to take
me out of the movie was one of Shikishima driving his motorcycle down
the street. But the monster effects and city destruction scenes were
great. And this movie cost between 13 and 19 million to make, about a
tenth or less of the budget of, say, Godzilla:
King of the Monsters. Ghidorah is
probably at his scariest since his original appearance. And the
filmmakers didn’t even need to hide the CGI behind rain, snow, or
smoke. We get nice loving daylight shots of Ghidorah, and it looks
great. Also, the official name for Ghidorah’s electric bolts has
always been “gravity beams.” Well, in this movie, he truly does
have a gravity beam attack, in way that might have been hinted in
things like “Zone Fighter” and Godzilla
Final Wars, but never explored on this
level.
The movie did get some
hubbub about getting an R-rating. The film is by no means a “Hard
R,” but the scenes showing the victims and survivors of Godzilla’s
rampage and the Hiroshima bombings will most likely disturb younger
viewers. This also goes for the now-infamous dream sequence, which
paints an especially grim picture of those who thought Godzilla was
their hero. The monster fight is also especially graphic, with both
monsters utilizing battle techniques I don’t think I’ve seen in
these movies. It’s a little disappointing that, if you edit out the
human scenes, there isn’t a whole lot of actual fighting, but they
make every hit count.
To me, a kaiju movie has
to have a good score. That is just as
important as the quality of miniatures and monster wrestling. That is
actually one of the reasons I have such a hard time getting into the
Showa Gamera films, X From Outer Space;
and Yongary,
Monster from the Deep. Or some of the
low-budget kaiju films
that genre fans made from 2007 throughout the 2010s. Low-budget
scores on a Cassio keyboard just don’t cut it for kaiju
eiga. Naoki Sato is back on board and
his theme for Ghidorah, “Eclipse,” is especially atmospheric in
context. Sato does reuse Godzilla’s main theme (by the legendary
Akira Ifukube) whenever he appears onscreen. Certain tracks from the
first movie, especially “Determination,” play at key moments of
the climax.
So, did I like Godzilla
Minus Zero? Yes, I did. A lot. It had a
generally strong human story with characters you liked and who felt
developed for the most part. It has great special FX and a solid
score with some strong individual tracks. Ghidorah has never been
this imposing and scary, even in Godzilla:
King of the Monsters. Its showdown with
the jets is genuinely suspenseful and even a bit freaky at times. I
don’t know if it will enter my list of all-time favorites, but it
is proof that you can make Godzilla vs. [Another Movie] without all
the seriousness and depth that his best solo efforts boast. Bring on Godzilla Plus One!
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