Del reviews ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’
Image courtesy of Toho Studios and Robot Communications
“Godzilla Minus Zero” Starring Minami Hamabi as Noriko Ôishi, Ryûnosuke Kamiki as Kôichi Shikishima, Jun Kunimura as Dr. Ogata, Hidetaka Yoshioka as Kenji Noda, Sae Nagatani as Akiko Shikishima, and others. Directed by Takashi Yamazaki. Written by Takashi Yamazaki. Two hours, 15 minutes. Rated R.
Plot summary: Just when you thought it was safe to go back into Tokyo Bay a new menace has emerged, one so powerful that only Godzilla himself can stop it.
Spoilers: Absolutely!
Del’s take
It doesn’t matter how good or bad a movie “Godzilla Minus Zero” is.
It doesn’t matter that it stomped its way to the top of the box office here in the States on its opening weekend.
The only thing that matters is: Will Mladen like it?
Mladen was traveling this weekend and could not join me to see this 39th iteration of the Godzilla franchise, which is a shame. I could really use his Godzilla expertise. Mladen is to Godzilla what people who wear Maxipads on their ears are to a certain corpulent, tangerine-tinted, pedophile-adjacent dictator-wannabe.
I think Mladen will like “Minus Zero,” although I know he doesn’t like the title. He’s already dismissed it as “dumb.” The rest of the movie is pretty good, though I think Mladen will agree it doesn’t quite measure up to the slightly more sensibly named “Godzilla Minus One.”
“Minus Zero” is a flat-out sequel to “Minus One.” Same universe, same storyline, same allegorical elements, same characters. In fact, the anti-war and Thank You – NOT – America for Hiroshima and Nagasaki elements are even more on the nose than in “Minus One.”
In this outing, Kôichi Shikishima, the reluctant hero of “Minus One,” is married to Noriko Ôishi and has accepted the ever-blubbering Akiko Shikishima as his daughter. Life is mostly good until a new threat arises, a dragon-like creature that hatches from a fallen space egg, begins devouring the local wildlife and then lays waste to Matsumoto City by shooting radioactive lightning bolts from its mouth. The creature is dubbed Ghidorah, which I believe is Greek for “What the fuck is that?” Ghidorah could be the answer to a fun riddle: What starts the movie with one head, then three, then two, then three?
The Americans, who are still inexplicably tiptoeing around the Russians at this point in the Minus timeline, take a more active role in defeating the giant kaiju wreaking havoc on Japan. Their solution? A humongous thermobaric bomb. Unfortunately, all the bomb does is piss off Ghidorah, which responds by growing three heads.
What follows is an attempt on the part of “Minus One’s” plucky band of scientists, pilots, fishermen, and, in this case, a sexy weather forecaster, to destroy Ghidorah by luring it into battle with Godzilla.
If it all sounds a bit silly, that’s because it is a bit silly. But nobody goes into a Godzilla movie expecting “Schnidler’s List.” The fact that there is any subtext at all speaks well to director/writer Yamazaki’s ambition to bring more to the Godzilla table than disaster porn. In fact, it is one of these sequences, where in a flashback to Aug. 6, 1945, Dr. Ogata remembers finding his incinerated family amid the smoking ashes of Hiroshima, that “Minus Zero” earns its R rating. Grim stuff for what is usually fun monster movie fare.
The soundtrack effectively conveys the serious tone of “Minus Zero” and in many ways reminds me of the soundtrack for “Minus One.” The cinematography is just as breathtaking, with long, loving shots of cities reeling under the onslaught of monster mayhem. Sound effects were equally comparable.
Structurally I thought “Minus Zero” contained one flaw, a long, expository piece just after the opening sequence that stalled the narrative flow. Also, for a movie featuring two warring kaiju, the monsters spend surprisingly little time on the screen. Another gripe: The CGI seemed rushed and drew more attention to itself than in “Minus One.” And there was a bit toward the end of the movie involving the little girl Akiko that could have been left out with no penalty to the film. In fact, it damaged two of the other characters for no good reason.
Still, “Minus Zero” is a good movie and certainly a worthy addition to the Godzillaverse. I’m giving it a B+. It aspires to be more than a simple monster movie, but it doesn’t do anything to advance the franchise beyond what we saw with “Minus One.”
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.