Godzilla Minus Zero

As I noted in my review of 2023’s Godzilla Minus One, I’m not an avid follower of kaiju (giant monster) movies. Much like today’s superhero flicks, to me they have a kind of sameness. But they undeniably have a following, not to mention a social impact. For more on that, see Takeshi Dylan Sadachi’s thorough and engrossing article in this magazine, “Godzilla: The Kaiju That Remembers.”

But Godzilla Minus One (a prequel of sorts to the original 1954 movie) charmed my socks off with its blend of reality (set in a leveled postwar Tokyo), its unabashedly cornball but still emotionally resonant plot about a man (a guilt-ridden failed kamikaze pilot), a woman and a child of no particular relation coalescing amid the ruins to form a family. It had a subtle anti-nuke undertone, and the heart-stopping, terrifying and simply beautiful special effects earned an Oscar for director Takashi Yamazaki, who did it all on a budget smaller than a Tom Cruise flick spends on friggin’ catering.

It was a wonderful moviegoing experience, about the common man rising to the challenge in the absence of decimated police and otherwise engaged military, complete and satisfying. It was a high bar to clear, but I had high if cautious hopes for this sequel. Alas, you know what they say about high hopes.

First of all, the big G-man doesn’t even appear until after the 90-minute point, and after that he (it?) gets only about 10 minutes of screen time. Instead, the filmmakers fall back on the old superhero/kaiju chestnut of introducing and offering the origin story of a rival lizardy thing to fight in the form of the three-headed, flying King Ghidorah. The previously effective home drama is milked for all it’s worth, the kid’s irritating, the plot is unforgivably messy, and the acting is, unsurprisingly, uniformly hammy. Oscar repeat doubtful. Oh hush, you don’t read this section for praise.

Bottom line: It’s a pure Godzilla movie, not one of the best but a bit better than most of the monsterverse films you may watch this year. I found it to be a disastrous disappointment.

Side note: three out of four characters are smoking cigarettes, apparently missing the irony that tobacco has historically killed way more humans than kaiju monsters and nukes, or even wars, combined. Just sayin’. (135 min)