‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ review: Badass monster sequel is sensational

The awesome “Godzilla Minus Zero,” which had its world premiere Saturday night at the New York Film Festival, embraces the principle that has guided this franchise for seven decades: The ‘zilla you know beats the Ghidora you don’t.

In the latest thrilling addition to the “Minus” saga, as has long been the case, Godzilla goes from deadly destroyer to humanity’s last best hope to defeat an even worse foe — King Ghidora.

Yet “Zero” is not the typical “vs.” venture we’ve seen so many, many times before. The Japanese film delves into places both familiar and previously unexplored in this series. Instead of one long, CGI-heavy death match, the plotting is twisty, smart and unpredictable. And, as in “Godzilla Minus One,” the human beings are somehow as engaging as the skyscraper-sized angry dinosaurs. What a thought! 

It’s been more than 20 years since Japan’s Toho pitted two giant beasts against each other onscreen. American studio Legendary Entertainment, which licenses characters from Toho for their IQ-lowering “Monsterverse,” delivered one more recently in 2024 with the dumb-as-rocks “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.” 

“Zero” has come to wipe that sorry schlock from your memory.   

The truth is, Japan just does Godzilla better. Especially this series’ director, writer and special effects designer Takashi Yamazaki. 

His sequel picks up close to where the last one left off. In 1949, two years after Godzilla laid waste to Japan, kamikaze pilot Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and his wife Noriko (Minami Hamabe) are pretty, pretty sure he’s extinct.

But you know the old saying: When one door closes, a three-headed dragon awakens. Something like that.

A frightening winged creature with a possible connection to outer space arrives, and scientists call the flapping menace Ghidora. 

Back from the last flick, Disaster Response Bureau head Dr. Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) teams up with a meteorologist, Makoto (Masami Nagasawa), to quickly figure out why the terror goes where it goes and to strategize how to swat the freakin’ fly.

Koichi, the best pilot in the land, gets dragged kicking and screaming for that second bit. And maybe a little too willing to help with the cause is the U.S. Military.

Each person has an involved and fascinating backstory. Nerdy Noda is traumatized that he couldn’t prevent more carnage during the first go with Godzilla. And Makoto, while driven to succeed, is still full of guilt over a botched weather report during a typhoon that claimed many lives.

Noriko has been left with an eye injury (one that doesn’t meet the eye) from the events of the previous flick.  

And everybody, in one way or another, still suffers from the scars of World War II. The bombing of Hiroshima plays a meaningful role here. And the whole crew has a hardened exhaustion from conflict and loss. For them, the fighting never really stopped. It just became reptilian. 

A fascinating new character is Kanji (Kin Tanaka), an eccentric old biologist hiding consequential secrets. And little Akiko (Sae Nagatani), Koichi and Noriko’s adopted daughter, amps up the stakes with cuteness. I can’t remember ever watching a kid actor cry this hard in any other movie. Kind of worrying, actually.

And this affecting film — which, yes, has some occasionally silly dialogue — is one of two “Godzilla” entires I know of in which the audience might shed a tear.

Now, for those of you who don’t turn up to this franchise for emotional sensitivity, the battles are fantastic. The creatures are realistically textured and stomp with believable tonnage. As ‘zilla and ‘dora rip each others’ guts out, the viewer perceives the pain. That’s quite impressive for 3D animation.

The 1940s setting lifts everything visually, too. The many buildings that unfortunately get crushed are ornate and easily distinguishable from the one next door. That’s a nice shift from Monsterverse movies, in which the final clashes look like a glass and steel smoothie.

The post-war setting also forces the clever characters to use ingenuity to stop the cold-blooded killers. There aren’t any Instagram reels of Ghidora, or a whole scene where some guy with glasses furiously types on a laptop while not blinking. The scientists also don’t over-explain what these creatures are while we zone out. “Zero” is old-school and badass.

It’s the exact opposite of “The New Empire,” which, lest we forget, made one of its main characters a podcaster.

The end of the film is hugely satisfying, violent and ultimately touching, but it doesn’t have the firm-footed finality I was anticipating. That expectation came from the trailer, in which they flatly stated, “There is no third time.” 

Um, why not? The last scene sure makes it seem like there should be. There have been 38 Godzilla movies since 1954. The world is ready for one more good one. And I definitely am not talking about 2027’s “Godzilla x Kong: Supernova.”