Something happened while I was watching 2023’s Godzilla Minus One: I found Godzilla scary. Most of the time, Godzilla is too big to really show as a threat to tiny humans. Sure, he steps on things and blows stuff up, but the relatively tiny humans involved are no longer involved really something you can notice. How many Godzilla movies show the big guy, whether he’s the hero or the villain, step through a seemingly deserted city and then do whatever it is the giant lizard is going to do. Minus One had a gound-level approach, and for perhaps the first time since he debut decades ago, the effects of Godzilla’s stomping through appeared on screen, seeing the thing kill who knows how many people just by walking through. And somehow, the special effects looked as good as many big budget American movies at a fraction of the cost.
I mean, was there any possibility I wouldn’t see the sequel?
It’s 1949, and a giant monster is attacking Japan. This time, it’s not Godzilla. It’s some mysterious creature that came to Earth on a meteor, one that evolves and, in the opening moments, looks like some sort of flying dragon. Named “Ghidorah” by Mr. Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) as a portmanteau of “hydra” and “chimera,” the government’s Large-Scale Disaster Response Bureau has to deal with this new threat, coming with some help from the Americans, who no doubt have their own agenda, and Professor Murakami (Min Tanaka), an older man who lost his entire family to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Unfortunately, the attempts to kill Ghidorah only make him worse. Oh, and Godzilla is back.
From there, Noda and his team, including returning characters pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and his wife Noriko (Minami Hamabe). Noriko had somehow survived a major attack from Godzilla in a manner that she probably should not have happened, but there’s an explanation for that. The only real solution to the problem of both Godzilla and Ghirdorah seems to be to let them fight each other, where it comes down to whether Godzilla’s regeneration is better than Ghirodah’s evolution. Will anyone survive the encounter?
Like Minus One, Minus Zero does a lot of things right. Godzilla and Ghidorah both look great, and the sheer scale and weight of the monsters are hard to ignore. Ghidorah also has some rather intense attacks beyond his traditional lightning blasts from one of his mouths. Pretty much anything involving these two monsters is top-notch.
However, the movie’s biggest weaknesses is the same as every Godzilla movie, no matter who makes it: the human characters are not as interesting. This time around, it felt like there were too many human-based plotlines going around, ranging from Norito’s survival, Noda’s moral qualms about weaponizing living creatures, or Murakami’s desire for revenge against the United States for the atomic bomb. Credit to the movie for trying to make the humans in one of these movies interesting, but for me, it mostly didn’t work. That said, I figure most people who saw and enjoyed Minus One will like this one too. I did, but not as much as the previous movie.
Grade: B-
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