GODZILLA MINUS ZERO... The Minus should be applied to how much GODZILLA we get in this movie... FAR LESS!
In this sequel to MINUS ONE our favorite Atomic Breathing Lizard gets a Plus One for this Kaiju party and it basically steals the show!
Just as gorgeous as Minus One, Takashi Yamazaki knows how to make a monster movie. When any Kaiju is onscreen, every breath in the theater is held. Hey Academy, just move that Oscar over to the side and save it for Yamazaki. No one can match him for best visuals this year!
Combined with incredible sound effects and score, this is a must see theater experience. While I was disappointed in Godzilla's arc in this film and there are plot holes and a bit of overkill on the melodrama, I ultimately enjoyed this film. The new Kaiju was very cool.
To Qualify my position, GODZILLA MINUS ONE was my #1 movie of 2023.
This year's GODZILLA MINUS ZERO sits at #7 for me in a year of very good movies.
6. Project Hail Mary
7. Godzilla Minus Zero
8. The End of Oak Street
Godzilla Minus Zero has A+ VFX and Sound with a C story line that should have left us feeling better about Godzilla for an overall grade of B. If you can afford to see 7 movies in theaters this year, this is one you should definitely go see!
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Yamazaki gets the hardest part right: the kaiju action is the best the franchise has ever put on screen. Ghidorah's arrival in Matsumoto, the gravity beams lifting trains and buildings, the mid-air brawl, and the final beam duel in Ginza are all bigger and more brutal than anything in Minus Oneand shooting for IMAX shows. Godzilla feels genuinely dangerous again, bigger, meaner, and harder to kill, and the regeneration horror (an arm ripped off and regrown mid-fight) earns that R rating.
The cast is still strong. Kamiki and Hamabe sell the Shikishima family, Min Tanaka is magnetic as Murakami, the Hiroshima survivor whose revenge plan against America is the film's darkest and most interesting idea, and Aoyama's storm-tracking gives the human plot a fresh angle.
Where it loses it's A grade is the human story. Minus One was a perfect, tight arc: a man learning to live. Minus Zero asks "how much can these people endure?" but doesn't deepen Shikishima so much as put him through it again. Also there is a lot of exposition in the middle stretches between the battles. Murakami's New York revenge thread resolves more like an afterthought than the core it deserved to be.
And for a film marketed as "everything ends here," the ending doesn't end much: Noda dies, but Godzilla is preserved by the US military "for future use" and the family goes on the run over Noriko's G-cells. That's sequel setup, not a finale.
Verdict: Spectacular, well-acted, and absolutely worth the biggest screen you can find, but it's the first Yamazaki Godzilla where the monsters outshine the people instead of the other way around. And we would have liked more of the star of the show!
