GODZILLA MINUS ZERO REVIEW: TWO KAIJUS, TOTAL DESTRUCTION, ONE HELL OF A MOVIE

I absolutely loved Godzilla Minus One. It was my favorite Godzilla movie, and I honestly didn't think Takashi Yamazaki would be able to top it. I just saw Godzilla Minus Zero, and I'll be damned if he didn't manage to make an even better movie. What I can't wrap my head around is how these Japanese productions manage to look and feel bigger in almost every way than the American MonsterVerse movies. Hollywood throws enormous amounts of money at Godzilla and Kong, yet Yamazaki somehow makes every building that comes crashing down feel like a genuine catastrophe.

The movie picks up in 1949, with Japan still struggling to rebuild after the atomic bombings and Godzilla's destruction just two years earlier. Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), Noriko (Minami Hamabe), and their daughter Akiko are trying to get on with their lives. Koichi believes he helped kill Godzilla, and the family is hoping they've finally put that nightmare behind them. Considering what they went through in the first movie, they've certainly earned a little peace. Unfortunately, this is a Godzilla movie, and that peace doesn't last very long.

Ghidorah shows up, and from that point on he pretty much owns the movie. He isn't the Ghidorah we know right off the bat. He's considerably smaller, but just wait! He's vicious enough on his own. Then Godzilla enters the picture, and all hell breaks loose. The whole time I kept thinking about Rocky III. Ghidorah is Clubber Lang to Godzilla's Rocky. He comes in swinging, gives Godzilla everything he can handle, and seems to enjoy every second of it. This is Ghidorah's movie as much as anyone's, and he's a prick! When he finally reaches his last form, he's one hell of a sight.

The destruction in this movie is immense. We're watching a country that has barely begun recovering from the horrors of World War II getting absolutely leveled again. Yamazaki understands how to make destruction feel enormous because he never forgets what's happening to the people caught in the middle of it. He shows you what the Kaijus leave behind, too, and it's ugly. It's something I wish the American MonsterVerse movies handled better, because there are times when those films seem more concerned with how cool the Kaijus look fighting than what all that destruction actually means.

Thankfully, Yamazaki also understands that we need people worth caring about when the Kaijus aren't on screen. Bringing back the characters from Minus One was absolutely the right decision. We already know this family, we know what they've survived, and watching them get dragged back into another fight makes the stakes feel that much higher. There isn't a stretch of this movie where I found myself waiting for the next Kaiju battle. The characters are interesting enough to carry everything between those sequences, and the movie never really slows down. There's almost no extra fat that needed trimming.

Hidetaka Yoshioka is another standout as Kenji Noda, the former weapons engineer who helped defeat Godzilla the first time around. He's a man carrying the guilt of the terrible things he felt he had to do during the war to protect his country, and now he's being put in a position where he may have to make those kinds of decisions all over again. You can feel it tearing him apart. Yoshioka was excellent in the first movie, and I think he's even better here. He's a huge part of why these movies work so well. The people trying to figure out how to stop the Kaijus are every bit as interesting as the Kaijus themselves.

There's also a particularly disturbing subplot involving Godzilla's cells affecting people, with scales and spikes beginning to grow on their bodies. It's an interesting direction for the story to take, and one that adds another layer of horror to everything happening. Godzilla's biology has been explored in the franchise before, but seeing that kind of physical transformation happening to people makes the whole situation considerably more unsettling.

Then there's the R rating. When I wrote about Godzilla Minus Zero receiving an R rating, I was curious about what exactly pushed it past PG-13. Having seen the movie, it's basically the blood. We see quite a bit of the aftermath of the Kaiju attacks and the atomic bombings, including the terrible injuries left behind. It's certainly disturbing material, especially considering the historical context, but I didn't find anything particularly over the top. I've seen considerably worse get away with a PG-13 rating, so figure that one out. I wouldn't have wanted Yamazaki to tone any of it down, though. Those images are part of the story he's telling.

Visually, this movie is absolutely stunning. Godzilla looks amazing, Ghidorah is incredible, and the effects are top-notch throughout. Yamazaki directed, wrote, and supervised the visual effects, and the attention to detail is right there on the screen. This was also the first Japanese production filmed for IMAX, and I can't imagine a better way to experience it. The sheer size of everything is incredible, particularly when the Kaijus start going at each other. I still have trouble believing how much more impressive these films look than some Hollywood productions with considerably larger budgets.

And then there's the sound. Good Lord, the sound! I saw this in IMAX with my wife, and she actually had to cover her ears during some of the louder sequences. I probably walked out a little more deaf than I was when I walked in, but my ears have had their day, and the Kaijus needed to be heard! The sound design is absolutely insane, and when Godzilla makes his appearance and those horns start playing his theme, the hairs on my arms stood at attention. That's what I want from a Godzilla movie. Give me the biggest screen you can find and make sure everybody in the building knows he's arrived.

I do have one complaint, and it's something that happened a couple of times throughout the movie. There are some really jarring editing cuts, particularly during the explanation of a plan to deal with Ghidorah. The scene practically cuts off in the middle of a sentence and jumps straight to the aftermath of the explanation. I understand what Yamazaki was going for. He wanted to preserve the surprise of the absolutely crazy stuff that was about to happen, and I appreciate that. But there's a smoother way to handle it. The cut was so abrupt that it briefly pulled me out of the movie, and there were a few other moments where the editing had the same problem.

Those cuts are relatively minor complaints compared with everything else Godzilla Minus Zero delivers. The pacing is excellent, the returning characters are worth spending time with, and Ghidorah is one of the best parts of the entire movie. Yamazaki has managed to make something that feels absolutely massive without sacrificing the people at the center of the story. That's what made Minus One so special to me, and somehow he's managed to improve on it.

I went into Godzilla Minus Zero thinking there was no way it could surpass the first movie. I walked out thinking I'd just seen my new favorite Godzilla film. Takashi Yamazaki has now given me two extraordinary entries in this franchise, and I absolutely want to see what he does with it next. Just give the editor another pass at those cuts.