Godzilla Minus Zero: When it comes to kaiju movies with thrills and weight, the Japanese do it best

Godzilla has been one of the most enduring movie monsters ever since he first appeared on screen in 1954.

In that 70-year period, there have been almost 40 films, most of them Japanese. The Americans had a red, hot go at various English-language versions, including the recent series of five movies starting with the 2014 Godzilla.

The US ones are not bad movies, per se, the best of them are even pretty good. Godzilla vs Kong, released in 2021 during the pandemic was a particularly metal offering that clanged with cacophonous spectacle, a welcome reprieve from how small-screen our world had become at that time.

For a decade, mainstream audiences in the West had largely recalibrated their conception of Godzilla movies until 2023 when Godzilla Minus One came along to remind us that, oh yeah, when it comes to a roaring, nuclear-enhanced, city-crushing prehistoric monster, the Japanese really do it best.

Godzilla Minus One, if you’ve never seen it (rectify this, please, it’s excellent), reset the story as something more intimate – as intimate as a big monster flick can be – reframing it as an allegory about trauma, regret and reconciliation in post-war Japan. It melded those more internalised themes with Godzilla’s ever-present conversation about nuclear power.

That film was made on a budget of $US10 million (a sliver of the $US150 million it cost to do the 2024 American Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire), earning back more than 10 times at the box office and collected an Oscar for visual effects.

That there would be a sequel was a foregone conclusion, not just because of the success but because it was a story in an existing, long-standing franchise, so it’s not like it would be “selling out”.

Godzilla Minus Zero, directed by Takashi Yamazaki, picks up two years after Godzilla was seemingly defeated by a group of outsiders including failed kamikaze pilot Koichi (Ryunsuke Kamiki) and engineer Noda (Hidetake Toshioka).

Noda is now the director of large-scale disaster response, which means when a new kaiju threat emerges, it’s his team’s job to formulate a plan. But how do you fight against Ghidorah, a dragon-like creature with extra-terrestrial origins and the uncanny ability to adapt?

The monster attacks Japanese cities, plunging the still war-torn country back into chaos and trauma. Koichi is called back to action, and a new character, female meteorologist Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa), joins the team.

Ghidorah is formidable, and his presence seemingly triggers Godzilla to resurface, not at all dead and quite regenerated. It’s thought the only way to defeat Ghidorah is for Godzilla to join the fray.

But can you ever control a nuclear-powered monster? The metaphor is not unobvious.

The film is packed with hold-your-breath action set-pieces, impressively rendered by the production’s visual effects team and with a barely expanded reported budget of $US13 million.

The thrills are well choreographed and suspenseful, and it engages your clenched attention all the way through. It’s a monster movie so you expect it to be gargantuan and over-the-top, but Godzilla Minus Zero still manages to have grounded stakes.

When the two kaiju are looming over a destroyed Ginza, tearing and roaring at each other, shooting beams in all directions, you’re invested in a way that a brassier film might bump you out.

That’s in large part to Godzilla Minus Zero rounding out the action with emotional and thematic weight.

Its characters have stories and stakes – the young couple trying to make a future with an adopted war orphan, the grandfather whose whole family was reduced to mere shadows by the American attack on Hiroshima, and a physical mutation caused by “Godzilla cells”, a clear parallel to nuclear fallout

The two Godzilla Minus films do not obscure the monster’s long link to nuclear weaponry, and they comment on the aftermath of war and imperialism by both the Japanese and American governments, avoiding any problematic nationalistic revisionism.

These movies are smart and thoughtful as well as entertaining. It’s exactly what a Godzilla action flick should be.

Rating: 4/5

Godzilla Minus Zero is in cinemas