GODZILLA MINUS ZERO. If you haven’t seen director Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus 1 (2023), which he wrote with Ishiro Honda and Takeo Murata, by all means do so before heading out for its sequel. (It’s streaming on a couple platforms now.) Not only are there plot lines, character arcs and themes to follow, but to jump in straight from one of the recent American productions could leave you with both aesthetic and emotional whiplash. Watching (or rewatching) the 1954 original Godzilla (Gojira) is a wise pregame move as well, not that it connects directly to Yamazaki’s reboot. Rather the first appearance of the fire-breathing lizard rocked from his underwater cradle by the atomic bombing of Japan during World War II takes us back to the time and place these newest films revisit and place in stark relief the themes they etch onto the screen in fire, rubble and smoke.
Godzilla arrived in Japanese theaters just shy of a decade after the nation’s surrender with Tokyo heavily firebombed, Hiroshima and Nagasaki leveled and civilians burned alive by atomic bombings. It’s clear enough the monster is a metaphor for war and nuclear destruction, but I will never get over the image of a Japanese audience sitting in a likely rebuilt theater reliving the destruction of cities, the fleeing crowds, the invaded island and the military in the streets so soon after the real thing. The anger at the government, too, is raw, particularly from the women of the island, and it’s impossible not to see the frustration of a citizenry who’ve lost faith in their leadership after a disastrous era of militarization, colonization and war. (Ahem.) For all its retro-1950s creature-feature thrills, there is a gut-wrenching social and political commentary running through the movie and, despite some rebellious urges, a cleaving to traditional values like self-sacrifice.
The early rubber-suited popcorn sequels from Toho Cinemas, which I also loved growing up and will never turn against, mostly let those heavier ideas go, though Shin Godzilla (2016) is highly critical of government inaction. The American takes on the classic kaiju have run the gamut from straying into the unfortunately Jurassic (Godzilla, 1998) to the amped-up, multi-monster throwdowns of the so-called Monsterverse kicked off by Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). (The most recent installment was Godzilla x Kong, 2024, for anyone who needed that question answered or to see the showdown turn into a CG buddy movie oblivious to what must be a massive human death toll.)
Godzilla Minus One took an Academy Award for visual effects but its greater ambition is a cultural shift. Instead of leading scientists and statesmen, our heroes are failed kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and Godzilla survivor Noriko Oishi (Minami Hamabe), with whom he’s taken in an orphaned infant in the ruins of Tokyo, along with the majestically coiffed scientist Dr. Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka). They are, like their equipment and homes, not the best of the best, but what’s left after the war. With them, Yamazaki crafts an engrossing and heart-pounding action movie with Oscar-worthy effects and stomach-dropping shocks, but also a poignant drama and, possibly, a truly radical anti-military and anti-imperialist Godzilla movie. It’s heart-rending in places and the significance of its stance against noble suicide is hard to overstate in the context of Japanese culture. (Noda’s speech to the assembled volunteers is incredible.) Again, see it before you venture further.
In Godzilla Minus Zero, we come back to Shikishima, Noriko — whose injuries have miraculously left her with only some bandaging and an eye patch two years on — and Akiko (Sae Nagatani), now a toddler. Noda is back on monster duty when a meteor crash yields a wildlife-eating blob that takes on aspects of its prey and evolves into a flying dragon creature the team dubs Ghidorah. After an attack in Nagano, a meteorologist (Masami Nagasawa) becomes the unlikely star of the team with her ability to predict the monster’s whereabouts. Shikishima, despite having sworn off risky missions for the sake of his family, is pulled back into a plan to stop the creature that involves American planes and Japanese pilots. When things go from bad to worse to worse than that, Noda and his team decide to go with the kaiju they know, pitting Godzilla against the seemingly unstoppable newcomer. And as they scrape together a plan to get the two in the ring, secrets emerge about Noriko’s injuries and others’ motivations, leaving Shikishima, Noriko and Noda grappling with dire choices.
The focus is not as tight in the sequel, maybe because Yamazaki is writing alone here or because we’re juggling two monsters this time. We’re also moving forward with these characters instead of unraveling their stories and traumas. It’s a looser movie but our investment holds over and the tension does, too, with every attempt and failure to execute a plan and subdue the creature an absolute nailbiter. The monsters themselves bring the awe both visually and in their fantastic sounds — the roaring, the crunch of buildings and some wild surprises I’d hate to spoil. Every loss hurts (though from the audience giggles here and there, I wonder if some of the cultural and language nuance was lost in translation), which is something rare in a monster movie, as is the genuine weight behind its consideration of responsibility and its turn away from vengeance and violence. R. 135M. BROADWAY.
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the managing editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400 ext. 106, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Bluesky @jfumikocahill.bsky.social.
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For showtimes, visit catheaters.com and minortheatre.com.
This article appears in El Niño is Here.
