Godzilla Minus Zero review: The epic monster melodrama fans have been roaring for

I have a confession and some good news. First, a confession: While watching Godzilla Minus Zero in a theater, I squealed and screamed in excitement loudly and repeatedly. I even threw my hands up at one point, as if I were going down the sharp hill of a rollercoaster ride. Now, good news: No one was any the wiser to my giddy noise. (And I wasn’t the only one whose hands took flight!) 

The sequel to the critically acclaimed and fan-revered Godzilla Minus One offers a soundscape so rich in roars, along with a booming score, that I could barely hear my own screams. And bonus good news: You will likely echo my enthralled reaction, because Godzilla Minus Zero is awesome, in the classical sense of the word. 

Godzilla Minus Zero is a sensational sequel. 

Godzilla Minus One writer/director Takashi Yamazaki returns, picking up his kaiju saga two years after the events of the last film. In Godzilla Minus Zero, Japanese pilot Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is now a celebrated hero because of his ace flying in the final assault on Godzilla, which sent the massive monster back to the depths of the Pacific Ocean. His love, Noriko (Minami Hamabe), has healed from her wounds from Godzilla's attack, but wears a conspicuous eye patch. And their gleeful daughter, Akiko (Sae Nagatani), is the envy of a scrappy flock of war orphans cared for by their gruff but compassionate neighbor, Sumiko Ōta (Sakura Ando). 

Meanwhile, friend of the family and silver fox with gorgeous hair Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) has been promoted to the head of a military unit dedicated to eliminating future kaiju threats. So, when a new creature rises, taking flight with a terrifying ferocity, Noda turns to some old friends for help. 

Harkening back to the early Godzilla movies, Yamazaki balances scenes of massive monster destruction with sequences of human drama. The post-World War II melodrama in the first film revolved around Shikishima, a disgraced kamikaze pilot who was at first too cowardly to sacrifice himself for the greater good. In the finale, he finally risked his life to topple Godzilla — and he survived! And this time, the public opinion on such an escape shifted in his favor. 

In its sequel, he is challenged to risk their safety to build a better future for Akiko. After the long battle for Shikishima to even acknowledge the love his family cobbled together in the ruins of war, it's a thrill to see him so openly affectionate with both — and a brutal blow to realize he is once again risking everything to preserve them. 

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Godzilla Minus Zero goes harder than any Godzilla movie before. 

In the franchise's 70-year history, Godzilla Minus Zero is the first of these films to be rated R. Yamazaki uses this as an opportunity to turn jaded adult viewers into giddy kids again, freshly awed by the might of these monsters. 

As has been teased in advertising around the movie, Godzilla Minus Zero sees the rise of Ghidorah, an extraterrestrial dragon with wings and gravity beams that allow it to lift buildings from their foundations and drop them like bombs. Far from the clunky costumed actors of the original films, Yamazaki's crew has built a monster that is seamlessly realized and absolutely electrifying. 

First, Ghidorah attacks Matsumoto City, turning the daily lives of civilians into a waking nightmare. These scenes of devastation are exciting and disturbing, reconfiguring the gruesome realities of war with a sci-fi bend that makes them distinctly harrowing. But things get even more intense when Godzilla returns for a monster-versus-monster battle. In these sequences, the R rating allows Yamazaki to take the damage against these iconic creatures to a jaw-dropping extreme. The gore is shocking and exciting in these sequences. But elsewhere, graphic violence is used for a more humane purpose. 

Echoing the previous movie's message about the horrors of war, Godzilla Minus Zero introduces new character who is a hibakusha (a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing). Through his perspective, the graphic evisceration of atomic weaponry is made horrifyingly clear. Men, women, and children melted and scorched beyond recognition. It is soberingly horrendous. 

This is a brilliant balance of violence. With the monsters, the battles resurrect the wonder I experienced watching those original movies on battered VHS tapes, lying belly down on my friend’s fuzzy living room carpeting. Then, the toll taken on human bodies demands audiences recognize the difference between these fun fantasies of violence and the terrible truth of it in the name of war. 

Knitted together with outstanding visual effects and an earnest ensemble, Godzilla Minus Zero is truly epic. It demands to be seen in theaters, where its visuals can hit like an atomic breath and its soundscape can rattle your very bones. 

Let yourself be swallowed by that roar. You won't regret it. 

Godzilla Minus Zero was reviewed out of the New York Film Festival. The movie opens in theaters and IMAX on Nov. 6. 

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