Godzilla Minus Zero - London Film Festival: Monstrously good sequel

Is it better the beast you know, or the beast you don’t know? That’s the question on everyone’s mind when a new, mutating kaiju descends on 1949 Japan in Godzilla Minus Zero, the sequel to 2023’s Oscar-winning box office blast, Godzilla Minus One.

It’s been two years since the devastating events of the first film, and Japan is still recovering from the effects of World War II and Godzilla’s rampages. Thanks to the heroics of former kamikaze pilot, Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), Godzilla was blown to smithereens… or was he?

The beast with atomic breath re-emerges right at the worst possible time: the government’s Disaster Response Bureau are grappling with a new threat, a dragon-like alien they’ve named ‘Ghidorah’, who has arrived on earth and torn through Matsumoto city. The Bureau is now directed by Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), who returns from the first film alongside Kōichi, who is now married to the returning Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and father to their adopted daughter, Akiko (Sae Nagatani).

Help has arrived in the form of determined weather forecaster, Makoto Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa), who expertly uses her meteorological knowledge to map the movements of Ghidorah. But initial efforts to stop the creature only make matters worse: in a quite gruesome sequence, it spawns two extra heads, an extra tail, and golden scales. With the presumed-dead Godzilla now regenerated and a fired-up Ghidorah on the loose, the scientists decide that if humans can’t destroy either, their only option is to let them fight. The result is a staggering visual spectacle, but one that balances exhilarating action with intelligent social commentary and high emotional stakes.

Writer-director Takashi Yamazaki has taken everything that worked so brilliantly in Minus One and turned it up by quite a few notches. A higher VFX budget means even more high-quality, impressive, sometimes gory sequences, but the personal character drama doesn’t get lost in all the action, either. It’s just as compelling and very moving, making up for the odd occasion when the plot becomes a little far-fetched or tangled.

Once again, the creatures serve as allegories for heavy themes which still resonate in Japan and which the film’s Japanese makers are therefore uniquely poised to tackle. The burdens of grief, guilt, government failures and trauma from WWII, particularly the atomic bombings, are deeply felt, and there are some quite harrowing scenes which illustrate this. Godzilla Minus Zero asks moral questions that American blockbusters simply do not.

Countless film and TV adaptations might have been made in the seventy years since Godzilla first rose from the depths in the original 1954 film, but as the big beast stomps onto our screens once more, it’s clear that it won’t – and shouldn’t – be the last we see of him.