‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ Is a Serious Fantasy—With Two Magnificent Monsters

Godzilla has been resurrected over the years, but rarely so inventively as in writer-director Takashi Yamazaki’s 2023 stunner Godzilla Minus One, in which a kamikaze pilot, Ryunosuke Kamiki’s Koichi Shikishima, tries to return to normal life in his shattered country, even as he feels shame over his own failure to take action in the war’s last days. Godzilla Minus One wasn’t just a showcase for a magnificent monster; it was a thoughtful, beautifully paced picture, one that took its time to unfold, and its focus on human redemption was as delicate as its star kaiju was grand. Godzilla Minus One might have been a tough act to follow. But Yamazaki’s new Godzilla Minus Zero doesn’t so much try to surpass its predecessor as to cap it like a protective bookend. It’s a magnificent entertainment with a melancholy heart.

It’s 1949, shortly after the events of the earlier film, and Koichi has at last leaned into the comforts of domestic happiness with Noriko (Minami Hamabe), the woman he met, and at first resisted, after his wartime return, and their adopted daughter Akiko (Sae Nagatani). Godzilla has supposedly been vanquished, though of course we’ll learn otherwise. And as Japan rebuilds from both wartime devastation and from Godzilla’s rampage through various cities, including Tokyo, a new threat arrives from outer space—and this one can fly. Ghidorah is an elegant flying beastie straight from the margins of a medieval manuscript. His head, aglitter with feathery scales, is small, neat, furious; his wingspan could wipe out several city blocks at once. He shoots a golden death beam from his beaked mouth, and he has regenerative powers that appear to make him indestructible.