Godzilla Minus Zero review: R-rated sequel follows in the cavernous footsteps of the first

Like a certain King of Monsters sleeping at the bottom of the sea, it was difficult to see “Godzilla Minus One” hitting theaters in 2023. A historic success of 10 million dollars, which nevertheless won 116 million dollars at the box office (and an Oscar for best visual effects, particularly remarkable given the budget). That’s no small feat for the big lizard, considering he’s spent decades, a Roland Emmerich film, and a still-struggling MonsterVerse trying to make waves in America. Instead, Godzilla worked best when it stayed true to its Japanese roots, both with bigger experiments like 2016’s “Shin Godzilla” and the more populist thrills of “Minus One.”

The latter’s success meant that a sequel wasn’t far away, and “Godzilla Minus Zero” serves as a simple continuation of Takashi Yamazaki’s classic histrionics. This branch of the Zillaverse is far from deconstructionist: these are straightforward, no-nonsense monster and war films that use Japan’s post-war period to play on traditional war film tropes under the auspices of its apocalyptic monster battles. “Minus Zero” doesn’t quite reach the miraculous heights of its predecessor, but the old boy still has plenty of bite.

It’s been more than two years since former kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), with the help of former weapons designer Dr. Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) and the might of the Japanese military, sent Godzilla to a watery grave. Unfortunately, that’s not the end of Japan’s monster problems, as a recently discovered dragon-like kaiju has just wreaked havoc on Matsumoto, leaving few survivors aside from desiccated weapons scientist Dr. Murakami (Min Tanaka). Dr. Hoda, now in charge of a specialized group meant to deal with creatures like this, calls on Shikishima, now a settled family man with his wife Noriko (Minami Hamabe) – whose short survival in the last film will factor into the plot in a surprising way – and his daughter Akiko (Sae Nagatani), to help advise his new group on how to deal with the creature.

What the creature is and what role it might play in this new feud with Godzilla, we were asked not to say out of surprise. But suffice to say, “Minus Zero” draws on Toho’s history to add new dimensions to Yamazaki’s war melodrama. And, of course, the titular titan appears (eventually), although his presence exists as a force of nature that must be led more than stopped, controlled more than conquered.

And those moments when he or his fellow kaiju appear contain more of Yamazaki’s inventively harrowing scenes of urban destruction: where “Minus One” uncovered tons of inventive monster tension on the open sea, “Minus Zero” carries that anxiety into the air in a daring dogfight midway through the film. Unlike the first one, this one is rated R, and you can see why: Yamazaki lingers longer on bodies charred by nuclear hellfire or thrown from great heights, and even Godzilla gets a few pieces torn off in a way that seems bloodier than we’ve seen yet.

In many ways, much of “Minus Zero” feels like a reprise of similar thematic material to “Minus One” and suffers from this repetition. The first film gave its characters an emotional catharsis from all the ghosts they chased during the war; here, with Shikishima and others relatively settled, we have to introduce new characters with their own survivor’s guilt or chips on their shoulders. There’s Dr. Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa), a meteorologist whose inability to predict a tsunami in time to prevent many deaths motivates her to make amends alongside Dr. Hoda. And of course, Dr. Murakami has his own connection to Japan’s nuclear past, manifested in visions revealing some of the most haunting atomic images in the series.

Few of these characters are rendered with anything finer than broad strokes, the actors throwing themselves enthusiastically into their two-dimensional roles. Each of them has their own character trait and they will play it with absolute commitment. After all, Yamazaki enjoys building collectives of tenacious individuals willing to work together to develop complex plans to capture, stop, or eliminate these world-ending threats. As in the previous film, the biggest emotions come from watching our tenacious heroes hatch plans, watch them fail, and pivot until they arrive. maybe do things right.

In this regard, “Godzilla Minus Zero” echoes the wartime morality plays of classic Hollywood, even as it moves away from the apparent nationalism of the previous film and toward a broader critique of governments and systems and their willingness to cast collective security on the altar of tactical superiority. Even Godzilla might be worth keeping, if the right government can direct him toward his enemies.

The big guy has long been an apt metaphor for Japan’s postwar nuclear anxiety, but that subtext is made painfully obvious in “Minus Zero,” from inventive scenes of destruction (our new enemy can use energy to lift buildings out of the sky, “Doctor Strange” style, and throw them back to the ground, a legitimately terrifying image) to Japan’s lingering animosity toward its new American allies. The United States is arriving here in greater force, more like paternalistic guardians than true friends. Like so many Japanese films with English-language sequences, the American actors strangely chew on poorly translated dialogue, making it seem even stranger than the kaiju our heroes fight.

But “Minus Zero” finds little romance in its desultory, nationalistic saber rattling. He’s too preoccupied with the wailing of children who don’t know when their moms and dads will return, or the Spielbergian staring out the train windows at indescribable devastation. It’s Yamazaki’s stock with his scaly leg from the “Godzilla” series: using the monster as an avatar of collective wartime guilt, sublimated impulses of vengeance against those who dropped the bomb in the first place, and, finally, losing faith in the power of our institutions to protect us and simply clinging to the family and friends we trust.

This review was filed from the premiere at the New York Film Festival. It opens on November 6, 2026.