W.B. at the Movies: Godzilla Minus Zero

The Godfather, Part II. The Empire Strikes Back. Aliens. That’s all I can think of right now.

As a rule, the sequel to an outstanding motion picture is not as good as the first film. Those three are among the handful of exceptions where the second chapter is as great or arguably greater. And that, I’m a little disappointed to say, was my first thought Thursday evening as the end credits began to roll after Godzilla Minus Zero.

Godzilla Minus One remains not only my favorite Godzilla movie but one of my favorite films of all time. I should have known that the thrill I felt at the end of that movie was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Let me try to set that disappointment aside.

Takashi Yamazaki’s new offering is an outstanding achievement in motion picture making. His last film earned the Academy Award for its special effects wizardry, and the special effects in this one are three times as powerful. I love movie music, and the musical score of this film is as brilliant as I’ve ever heard. I attended my first viewing in a Dolby Atmos theater surrounded by the sound system, which may be an undue influence, but I would nominate this film for the award in sound achievement as well.

I would also nominate Yamazaki for his direction and his screenplay, but he should have earned those recognitions last time, so I will not hold out hope.

It was delightful to see the characters from Minus One again, having a chance to enjoy their happily-ever-after in the days before a new menace rises. It was compelling to see them meet new challenges and new complications. My heart was appropriately rended at the heart-rending scene at the end of the movie, involving a little girl and her adoptive parents, and my heart soared at the final resolution. I loved those characters. I still love them.

The film also has echoes of the very first movie in the series way back in 1954, when the scientist who has developed a technology to conquer the monster wrestles with the horror that could result if the weapon is ever placed in less scrupulous hands. I adore when this franchise leans into its anti-war themes.

This is one of the greatest Godzilla movies ever made, and the folks at Toho Co. Ltd. once again proved that they make the best films in this 72-year-old franchise. The American movies of the last decade are pretty darn good, but the Japanese best understand the heart and soul of the Godzilla saga.

And in that last paragraph lies the answer to why I began this little essay with a sense of disappointment: This is one of the greatest Godzilla movies ever made. I consider Godzilla Minus One one of the greatest movies, of any stripe, ever made.

Without reservation, I recommend Godzilla Minus Zero to my friends who enjoy kaiju and other monster movies. Without reservation, I recommend Godzilla Minus One to my friends who enjoy movies, period. That’s the whole difference.

Day of decision

“You did this,” he murmured to the man in the mirror. “Every step and misstep brought you to this place. Oh, you had some help and some enablers along the way, but the responsibility is all yours. No one manipulated your fate to put you here; this is the sum total of your every action all tallied together.”

He surveyed the room, thinking, and realized this was so.

“If I had done this before, I would be in a different place now. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the second-best time is now. And so now, where do I plant the first tree?”

He surveyed his life and looked for fertile soil. At first he thought he saw only fertilizer, but then he realized it was the despair talking.

“I can do this,” he said. “All I have to do is decide what ‘this’ is.”

Just as he needed to decide, waves of indecision washed over him and held him in place.

“No, not now,” he insisted and resisted. “Now is not the time to sit and wait. The waiting must end. Time now to act.”

But what? Do what? Act how? The choices were endless, and he had to pick one.

“Of course! I can — no, that would — then this — this is the way — but that might lead me down to —”

The second guesses led to third guesses and on beyond zebra. “Are you really making Dr. Suess references now?” he scoffed, but the thought made him laugh, and he remembered the admonition to “be silly sometimes.”

“What if I were to be silly every day?” he asked himself, but, “No, that’s what got me into this mess in the first place: I overdosed on silliness. Or was I not silly enough? Should I have taken silly to the next level?”

And just like that, he was focused on the past again.

“Stop looking back, this is today,” he repeated like a mantra, until he worked his way back to the present moment. All was fuzzy around him, but that was his aging eyes fooling him. Clarity began to arrive, slowly but decidedly.

“Decidedly,” he sighed. “That word again. I really must decide what to do. Bold action all at once. Oh, no, baby steps, one at a time. What am I going to do?”

He took a next step, and it was the one that made all the difference.

Great anticipations

I am just a little bit older than Godzilla. I was a year and a half old when Gojira was released Nov. 3, 1954. Late this afternoon, I plan to sit down in a comfortable chair and watch the first local showing of the latest film in the series, Godzilla Minus Zero, the sequel to Godzilla Minus One, the first in the 72-year franchise that moved me to tears.

Three years ago I was electrified by the story as I watched it up on the big screen. I walked out of the theater dazed, struck by lightning. It was the most important Godzilla movie since the first one as director Takashi Yamazaki dragged the franchise back to its serious and horrific roots.

The early spoiler-free reviews suggest that the new film may be even better, continuing the big themes that separated Minus One from almost everything that came before.

That 2023 film wasn’t only about a giant monster stomping on buildings, although it did win an Oscar for those special effects. The film was about recovering from war, overcoming shame and devastation, everyday humans rallying against a daunting adversary, building family, building friendships, and of course, “Those of us who survived the war are meant to live.”

Yamazaki leaned into the idea of Godzilla as a metaphor for the nuclear bomb and made a profoundly anti-war film, and that theme above all lifted his movie above the rest of the Godzilla canon, standing beside only the original 1954 entry.

Humanity will advance when it overcomes its monsters and beats its swords into plowshares once and for all. It could be that the monsters will plague us to the end of time with countless sequels, but we do have hope. The ghosts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have kept that monster at bay for 81 years, and may it always be simply a metaphor played out with CGI effects and not actual blood and gore, never unleashed into reality again.

We have a responsibility to live, to overcome the challenges and make a difference. Godzilla Minus One made a difference; I’m hoping that Yamazaki’s lightning has struck a second time.