Over in the Monsterverse, Hollywood’s take on Godzilla is becoming increasingly silly. His last appearance, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, saw the fearsome kaiju having a cheeky nap in Rome’s Colosseum in-between mega-bouts. Back in his native Japan, however, the monster is no joke. 2023’s Godzilla Minus One, from original production company Toho and director Takashi Yamazaki (the “Japanese James Cameron”), was a stunning, back-to-basics, 1940s-set reboot which found a freshly emotional, politically charged direction for the prolific series.
Putting aside the confusing title (surely “minus zero” equals positive zero?), this direct sequel continues the first film’s approach: more heart-in-mouth action; more staggering visual effects on a budget to give Hollywood a run for its money; more emotional human storytelling that, this time, is occasionally overwrought.
We pick up two years after the events of Minus One, which saw Godzilla seemingly killed, and post-war Japan seeking to rebuild. An electrifying opening sequence confirms that while Godzilla may be gone (yeah, sure!), a new unstoppable kaiju has arrived. Yamazaki shows his talent for staging disaster from a ground-level perspective, imbuing an immersive sense of terror and peril that most monster movies lack.
This remains the most confident vision of this storied national icon.
The set-pieces are just as impressive as they were in the previous film: one thrilling dogfight sequence through the air plays like The Dam Busters crossed with House Of The Dragon. Laced through this city-levelling shock and awe, Yamazaki again centres the national collective trauma that it symbolises; one plotline even makes the implicit subtext of the series more explicit, in a devastating way.
But some of the drama feels overcooked, with a story less compelling and more clichéd than before. Dialogue, whether in the original script or the English subtitles, plays out a little hammily (“Will we ever live in peace?” wails one character), which would be fine for a B-movie, less so for one with A-movie aspirations. Some narrative choices feel familiar, too: there is an echo of the “Let them fight” scene from Gareth Edwards’ 2014 take, while one character’s flair for weather-forecasting is a mirror of this year’s Pressure. And after a two-hour-plus runtime that occasionally drags, it ends on a note of pure melodrama that will either leave your eyes rolling or watery, depending on your constitution.
Yet this remains the most confident vision of this storied national icon, one teeming with trenchant anxieties and emotions. As the original theme by Akira Ifukube blasts through — blended with Naoki Satō’s frantic, heart-rending new score — in his 39th big-screen appearance, Godzilla still has the power to make us tremble.