Images courtesy of GKIDS Films
GODZILLA MINUS ZERO— 4 STARS
LESSON #1: NO NON-JAPANESE ENTITY SHOULD EVER TOUCH THIS CHARACTER AGAIN— I’ll be blunt, narrow-minded, and selective. Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus Zero, the direct sequel to his brilliant Godzilla Minus One, is the second straight film—and third if you go back to 2016’s modern reboot of Shin Godzilla from the directing team of Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi–-that stands as superior and concrete proof that no non-Japanese studio or filmmaker should ever touch this historic kaiju character again. I don’t care if Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, or the great Steven Spielberg himself develop some kind of kismet hankering to make a Godzilla film. They don’t belong anywhere near it.
What Godzilla has become inside the five films (and, soon to be, six this coming March) of Warner Bros. Pictures’ MonsterVerse franchise series is a cartoonish embarrassment. Sure, there are versions of Godzilla in the property’s long, 72-year history that are playful romps of rubber-suited, model-destroying entertainment. Sure, those new WB films made their respective boatloads of money playing in that same type of sandbox. Those cheesy and approachable versions have their easy and disposable places in the rotation of movie escapism, but at what cost to the betrayal of the character’s roots and potential?
Watch the serious-as-heart-attack takes from writer/director Takashi Yamazaki of Godzilla Minus One and Godzilla Minus Zero and be religiously converted. They return Godzilla to its place as a proper terror and stomping metaphor for larger connective themes completely discarded by Hollywood films that would rather stage CGI action figures punching each other for arbitrary reasons. Eschewing the big studio machine to work on shoestring budgets with a shrewdly efficient eye for DIY filmmaking, Yamazaki and his dedicated team of artists in front of the camera and behind it have, in two compelling films, created a stunning, scary, and tangible monster with renewed life to extend its legend and stand the test of time.
LESSON #2: TELL A HUMAN STORY FIRST— Like Godzilla Minus One, the angle that elevates and unlocks Godzilla Minus Zero from the other pretenders is its insistence on telling a human story first and a monster movie second. If you’re going to have a big scary creature come and destroy homes and take lives, the gravity of those losses increases when the people and places have been established to actually matter. When done right, one key death can feel like a thousand. When they don’t, any collateral damage is just disaster movie fodder for the sake of body count and spectacle. This is all such a simple stance of common sense and hierarchy that it’s stunningly bad when so many other movies can’t meet that bar or, worse, don’t even try. Even though I’m picking on this past decade, I didn’t forget about you, Roland Emmerich. You failed this first in my lifetime, and the stink still permeates.
The year in Godzilla Minus Zero is 1949. Two years have passed since Godzilla’s defeat at the hands of a collective effort of dozens of organized Japanese World War II veterans combining explosive assault with advantageous scientific gambles. In many ways, the extreme post-war survivor’s guilt central in Yamazaki’s first film has multiplied in some directions where new death has occurred, but also evolved into renewed purpose to carry on and heal. Those who survived have tried to rebuild livelihoods. Former kamikaze pilot and death blow deliverer Kōichi Shikishima (Your Name’s Ryunosuke Kamiki) has reunited with and married his feared-to-be-lost love, Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe of Shin Kamen Rider), and started a family orphanage home with their adoptive child, Akiko (Sae Nagatani), and trusty neighbor Sumiko (Shoplifters star Sakura Ando, unfortunately given less to this time around). At the more national level, Shikishima’s former employer and trusted science leader, Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka of the Always: Sunset on Third Street series), has surrounded himself with fellow specialists to head the country’s Large-Scale Disaster Response Bureau to prepare for the next grave national threat.
Sooner than anyone would like, after Godzilla’s path of destruction, a new flying creature that can shoot lightning bolts from its mouth emerges and demolishes Matsumoto City in the Nagano region. Noda’s team, including a recruited Shikishima advising new pilots, mobilizes to brainstorm an effective defensive response while researching what makes this new monster—dubbed Ghidorah—tick, looking for any advantage or weakness to exploit. Meanwhile, to everyone’s horror—especially Kōichi’s and Noriko’s—Godzilla is found alive, prowling the oceans on the other side of the country. When a smartly planned counterattack on Ghidorah fails, the next wildly ambitious plan is to—fears be damned—pit Godzilla against this now three-headed titan.
While the promise of this showdown in Godzilla Minus Zero fires up the nerve-wracking cues of Naoki Satō’s enveloping musical score (and maybe shuffling a little ELO in my own head), what is considered more than possible kaiju fireworks is whether or not our ordinary people can survive these steep prospects. Each of the motivated protagonists, including new cast additions on Noda’s team played by Min Tanaka of 47 Ronin and Mother’s Masami Nagasawa, knows the odds and goes through reflective scenes weighing whether or not to continue with the perilous operations or, with respectful understanding and no calls for cowardice, make the equally difficult choices to step away and care for their loved ones. For Kōichi and Noriko, that means escaping with Akiko or staying to fight and risk making her an orphan again. Let me tell you; a crying child is a hell of an arm-twister.
LESSON #3: TELL A MONSTER MOVIE SECOND— The road to these tough decisions and the focus on the human elements, even if they gobble up considerable running time during the rising action and denouement, do not take away from the ever-present threat of the monsters. The jaw-dropping—and jaw-chomping—displays of kaiju power engineered by Takashi Yamazaki’s Oscar-winning special effects department are a sterling feast for the eyes and ears. Just as was the case three years ago, what Yamazaki and his deft hands are doing for under $15 million to sear IMAX-level screens and blow out Dolby speakers puts massive blockbusters with 20 times the budget to shame for their detail and grandeur.
All of that constitutes the magnified power wielded by Godzilla Minus Zero. You have dramatic substance made to be as invested and important as the showy spectacle worthy of your big screen ticket price. So few movies truly do that, where heart-stirring tears flow alongside the pulse-quickened hairs standing up on the back of your neck. Miraculously, Takashi Yamazaki has captured that complete experience of depth and care for two films in a row. His hands are the honest hands—the serious hands—and the only hands that should be moving this scaly, spiky, and eternally famous instrument of cause and calamity.
LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1444)
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