When Ishirō Honda’s original “Gojira” debuted in 1954, it demanded to be taken seriously — even though it was about a giant, fire-breathing lizard. Horror movies about enormous animals were big business in the 1950s, and some of the American films in the genre had ideas — not nuanced ideas, but ideas nonetheless — about the dangers of science gone amok in the nuclear era. These anxieties about a destructive radioactive cataclysm were pervasive in the U.S. But “Gojira” used an eldritch leviathan as an analog for the nuclear bomb’s devastating impact on Japan. Its horrors reflected recent, traumatic, excruciatingly real memories.
Watching “Gojira” today, in the wake of everything the “Godzilla” franchise later became, can be strange. In the wake of “Gojira’s” success, a sequel was rushed into development, “Godzilla Raids Again,” which found a second Godzilla returning to attack Japan (the original was vaporized by a weapon of mass destruction). Since that was a little repetitive, even for a sequel in the 1950s, Godzilla also fought a giant ankylosaurus named Anguirus. That’s where the metaphor began to strain. Godzilla attacks once and it’s a powerful allegory. Godzilla attacks and also has to wrestle a spiky turtle creature… less so.
Over the decades since, Godzilla has starred in over three dozen movies — sometimes with Anguirus, who eventually became Godzilla’s canonical best friend. The monster grew into a reluctant antihero, then an honest-to-goodness hero, then a kids movie icon. Godzilla was popular, but the message was lost. So eventually the series was rebooted with a more serious tone in 1984’s “The Return of Godzilla.” Then, in the sequel to that, Godzilla fought a giant haunted rosebush. In the next sequel, the human protagonists time-traveled to World War II, in a battle witnessed by Steven Spielberg’s dad, and — well, I think you can see what I’m getting at here.
Released in 2023, Takashi Yamazaki’s Oscar-winning, ingenious “Godzilla Minus One” marked the latest attempt to reboot the franchise and return to the monster’s grim, portentous roots. By setting the story even earlier, directly in the wake of World War II, and focusing on human characters who were were not only traumatized but ashamed to the verge of suicide, “Minus Zero” became the most emotional and character-driven film in the entire series. It was a triumph of visual effects, but also of human drama and thematic depth. It’s not just one of the best Godzilla movies. “Godzilla Minus One” is one of the best films of its decade.
Its oddly-titled sequel, “Godzilla Minus Zero,” tries to maintain the operatic tone and historical commentary. To some degree, it succeeds. But it falls into the same trap that every sequel to a solemn Godzilla movie fell into before. It’s difficult, but not impossible, to take Godzilla seriously when the monster is an allegory. It’s harder, and maybe even impossible, to take the creature equally seriously when it’s wrasslin’ another beastie — especially one with little, if any, meaning of its own.
“Godzilla Minus One” begins with Godzilla’s arch-nemesis, Ghidorah, attacking a city. It’s been a while since the events of the original film, and former kamikaze pilot Kōichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is finally at peace, living happily with his wife Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and their adopted daughter Akiko (Sae Nagatani). Their friend Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), an ex-Naval engineer who devised the plan that killed Godzilla in the first film, is now in charge of a Special Disaster Response Bureau. And Ghidorah is a very special disaster indeed.
Ghidorah has never been a terribly complicated monster. He’s from outer space, which invites readings as a metaphor for American interference after World War II. Director Takashi Yamazaki touches on that, but his film makes a stronger case that the lightning-breathing dragon is a metaphor for natural disasters, specifically hurricanes. “Godzilla Minus Zero” introduces a new character, Masami Nagasawa (Makota Aoyama): a meteorological genius who blames herself for all the lives lost during a cataclysmic storm she predicted, even though the government ignored her warnings. (Her story is not unlike the recent World War II movie “Pressure” — except it’s got giant lizards, which is one of the hundred reasons it’s better than “Pressure.”)
How do you stop an unstoppable storm? You get Godzilla to punch it to death. After a series of Godzilla-less plans not only fail to stop Ghidorah, but make the monster even stronger, it falls to Japanese scientists to use sci-fi technology to summon the beast and start kicking ass. From that point on “Godzilla Minus Zero,” a fine film full of excitement and grandeur, is noticeably sillier than “Godzilla Minus One,” forcing Yamazaki to work overtime to amplify the melodrama. It’s a great Godzilla sequel, maybe even one of the best, but it’s not one of the great Godzilla movies. Unlike “Minus One,” the substance and the spectacle are at odds.
The earnestness of “Godzilla Minus Zero” is strained compared to its predecessor, and heavily reliant on story contrivances. It still has power, since the cast is committed 1,000% and Yamazaki is an incredibly skilled director, but one can see the film wobble under the uneven weight of its dramatic ambitions and increasingly absurd storyline. The emotional depths reached in “Godzilla Minus Zero” have more to do with our residual investment in the characters returning from “Godzilla Minus One,” rather than what actually transpires in the sequel.
But although it’s important to discuss the ways “Godzilla Minus Zero” falls slightly short, it’s equally important to emphasize it’s an impressive Godzilla movie when taken in its proper context. Struggling to come up with an ambitious and satisfying sequel is the franchise’s status quo. Despite those evident difficulties, “Godzilla Minus Zero” is one of the most ambitious and satisfying Godzilla sequels so far. It doesn’t match the unhinged delirium of Ryūhei Kitamura’s “Godzilla: Final Wars” or the borderline profundity of Honda’s ridiculous “All Monsters Attack.” Perhaps only Masaaki Tezuka’s “Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla” and “Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.” can rival or surpass “Minus Zero’s” ability to make an outlandish concept feel grounded in human strife. And I assure you, that’s some kaiju-sized praise.
The post ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ Review: One of the Great Godzilla Sequels, but Not One of the Great Godzilla Films appeared first on TheWrap.
