Table of Contents
Godzilla Minus Zero delivers spectacular monster action and ambitious themes, but its lacklustre human story holds it back
Following the massive success of Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One three years ago, Toho’s oversized atomic lizard is back to terrorise silver screens and this time, it’s not alone.
After their clunky yet eventually successful mission at obliterating Godzilla in 1949, Japan experiences two years of relative peace before the country faces another threat in the form of Ghidorah, an extraterrestrial being that has taken on characteristics of local wildlife.
Now married after their shared ordeal in the previous film, pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and Noriko Oishi’s (Minami Hamabe) quiet life with their adopted daughter Akiko are thrown into turmoil when Koichi is roped into a mission by the Japanese government to kill Ghidorah.
Due to her “entanglement” with Godzilla when it destroyed Ginza, Noriko is also sought after by scientists who have discovered that, due to her survival, she has contracted mutagenic cells from the lizard that might be the key to killing the new threat.
Bigger monsters, bolder spectacle
Reportedly costing only US$3-10 million (RM12.1-40.5 million) more than its predecessor’s US$10 million (RM40.5 million), Godzilla Minus Zero impressively goes even bigger in the scale of its action and the scope of its postwar Japan themes.
As the latest entry in the modern golden age of Godzilla films, Minus Zero is here to do two things only: entertain the audience by the same way the American Monsterverse has done with cinema-wall-shaking kaiju-on-kaiju violence and expound further on how Godzilla is an allegory on atom bombs.
Rather than the over-the-top, WWE-style action of the Godzilla and Kong films in the Monsterverse, Minus Zero’s more restrained, gritty and graphic — both the monsters and humans in the film — are properly banged up from well-storyboarded action sequences.
An aerial sequence early in the film involving Japanese pilots in a dogfight out of their depth against Ghidorah will have audiences on the edge of their seats, as an inverse of the boat sequence from the first film.
Human story falls short
Unfortunately, Minus Zero suffers from the same flaw as most Godzilla films: its human storyline is weak.
However, the story of Koichi, Noriko, Akiko and the other Japanese characters in Minus One was very strong.
It explored the survivors’ guilt of not just Japanese civilians who came out the other end of World War 2 but also Koichi as a kamikaze pilot who fails to carry out the only requirement of his job.
Minus Zero is largely a retread of this, with some family drama (and bad child acting) thrown in.
Briefly, the saving grace in turning the film interesting appeared to be the character of Kanji Murakami (Min Tanaka).
A deeply scarred scientist who was not only present at Hiroshima when the “Little Boy” was dropped on it but also at Ginza when Godzilla destroyed the city.
Kanji has a disturbing breakdown and fantasises about leading Godzilla to New York, with the lizard vaporising the city, as his revenge for what the Americans inflicted on Japan.
Rather than circling back to it, writer-director Yamazaki does not commit to the idea and instead opts for a more sanitised narrative route to cap off the film.
If the film had opted to manifest Kanji’s revenge, the Minus Zero would have soared higher than a three-headed space dragon.
READ MORE:
Tribute to Patrick Stewart (1940-2026): Farewell, captain
