Review: 'Godzilla Minus Zero' packs a lot of serious stuff into a monster movie — but it's all entertaining, ear-splitting and exciting

The new “Godzilla Minus Zero” demonstrates that one of the down sides of modern special effects is that the creatures of filmmakers’ imagination look so realistic that we as viewers have to take them seriously. 

In “Godzilla Minus Zero,” a direct sequel to 2023’s “Godzilla Minus One” (whose visual effects won an Oscar), writer-director Takashi Yamazaki explores the aftermath of World War II in Japan, survivor’s guilt, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the morality of scientists faced with the unthinkable. It’s a lot more than big monsters breaking stuff — but because it is also about that, it’s ferociously entertaining.

The new movie starts in 1949, about two years after Godzilla attacked the Ginza neighborhood in Tokyo the last time. Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki), the pilot who destroyed Godzilla at the end of the last movie, has married his girlfriend, Noriko (Minami Hamabe), and they’ve adopted Akiko (She Nagatani), the orphan Noriko rescued. Dr. Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), the engineer who devised the way to kill Godzilla, now runs a disaster response unit, waiting for the next monster attack to hit Japan.

Noda’s team doesn’t have to wait long. Scientists have found a meteorite that left some kind of living material, which has apparently sucked up the available nearby animal life and fused the DNA into a new monster — a dragon-like creature with wings and a talent for shooting bolts of energy out of its mouth. Noda’s crew gives it a name: Ghidorah. 

Noda enlists Koichi to advise the volunteer pilots tasked with trying to destroy Ghidorah, a plan that doesn’t go well. Plan B is to use lightning storms to direct Ghidorah to go somewhere they might be able to rein it in — an idea devised by Noda’s very sharp meteorologist, Miss Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa). 

With Ghidorah taking up their efforts, Noda’s team almost doesn’t get the news that Godzilla isn’t as dead as we thought. Enter Professor Murakami (Min Tanaka), who has an invention that might lure Godzilla away from population centers. It’s risky, and also ethically suspect, since it involves using Noriko as bait, since she’s been infected with Godzilla’s DNA. Murakami has another ethical issue, because his family was killed in Hiroshima and he wants revenge against the Americans who dropped the A-bomb.

This isn’t your grandparents’ “Godzilla,” where a guy in a rubber suit could destroy cardboard recreations of Tokyo, and the acting that accompanies those scenes is allowed to be cheesy.

Yamazaki balances those high-minded themes with effective action sequences, and when Godzilla finally makes his entrance, it’s as exciting and terrifying as it should be. (The thundering sound design, particularly in an IMAX theater, will scare the bejeebers out of most moviegoers.) Yamazaki also gives his cast room to pull at the emotional threads here, and in particular Hamabe’s Noriko and Nagasawa’s Miss Aoyama shine out as women who carry on despite their fears.

“Godzilla Minus Zero” brings added depth to both the Godzilla lore and the human characters trying to survive a monster in their town. It’s a worthy successor to the 2023 movie, and shows the promise of continuing the franchise for as long as the big guy can roar.

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‘Gpdzilla Minus Zero’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 6, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for some violent content/bloody images. Running time: 135 minutes; in Japanese with subtitles.