Godzilla Minus Zero review: bigger, bloodier and almost as good

Following the best Godzilla film in decades was always going to be a monstrous job. Takashi Yamazaki has very nearly pulled it off.

Godzilla Minus Zero, the sequel to 2023's Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One, is bigger, bloodier and far more ambitious than the film that made Yamazaki a star. It doesn't hit the emotional highs of the original, but as monster spectacle it's as good as the genre gets. Our score: 8 out of 10.

Critics broadly agree. It sits at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and 78 on Metacritic, where none of the 23 reviews counted so far is negative.

The film picks up in 1949, with Japan still rebuilding from the war and from Godzilla's last rampage. Then a new dragon-like creature tears through Matsumoto City with violent winds and beams that bend gravity. Scientists study it, and disaster chief Kenji Noda gives it a name: Ghidorah. Fans of the franchise know what that means. Three heads are coming.

Ryunosuke Kamiki and Minami Hamabe return as former kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima and Noriko, and Masami Nagasawa joins as meteorologist Makoto Aoyama. Godzilla, of course, isn't done either.

Yamazaki wrote and directed the film and supervised its visual effects again, and this time he had more to spend: Minus One cost under $15 million, and he has said this budget is bigger. It's also the first Japanese production filmed for IMAX, and the first Godzilla film to be rated R in the US, for "some violent content/bloody images".

The biggest Godzilla yet

The case for Minus Zero starts with what's on screen. Minus One won the Oscar for best visual effects on a fraction of a Hollywood budget, and Yamazaki's team at Shirogumi has gone bigger in every direction. Ghidorah's arrival over Matsumoto is a set piece built for the IMAX frame, and the trailer's glimpse of the Statue of Liberty shows how far the film is willing to throw its scale.

The critics who love it really love it. Collider's Victoria Luxford called it "a near-perfect sequel" in a perfect-score review, and Variety's Owen Gleiberman wrote that "when you do it right, what seemed old can become timeless." GamesRadar went further, calling it "easily one of the best films of the year."

The story has more going on, too. The New York Post's Johnny Oleksinski praised plotting he called "twisty, smart and unpredictable," and Next Best Picture's Dan Bayer said Yamazaki "delivers spectacularly." For a franchise film in its 39th instalment, that's no small thing.

Where the heart went

What Minus One had, and what made it a phenomenon, was a human story as gripping as its monster: a pilot's guilt, a makeshift family, a country trying to forgive itself. That's where Minus Zero loses ground.

RogerEbert.com's Clint Worthington said it "doesn't quite reach the miraculous highs of its predecessor," and IGN's Scott Collura found it lacks "the same level of emotional resonance." Inverse felt the human storyline is looser this time, TheWrap thought some later passages turn silly, and the South China Morning Post was let down by the ending.

There's also the question of whose film this is. GamesRadar called it more of a Ghidorah movie than a Godzilla movie, which will thrill some fans and frustrate others. The harshest verdict came from Screen Rant's Ben Gibbons, who called it a "remarkably mediocre film" and argued it drifts towards the action-heavy, story-light Godzilla films Hollywood makes.

Those complaints are fair, but they're the complaints you make about a very good sequel to a great film. Minus One set the bar where almost nothing could clear it. Minus Zero gets close, and on spectacle alone it clears it easily.

If Minus One made you a fan, this is unmissable, and it's built for IMAX: the 2 hour 15 minute, R-rated film opens in US cinemas on Nov. 6, with early IMAX screenings from Nov. 3. Box office trackers expect an opening of $25 million to $35 million.

Godzilla has never looked bigger. He just has a little less to say.