Godzilla Minus Zero Review: Bigger, Louder, Chonkier, and Beautiful

Godzilla Minus Zero had no choice: It had to go bigger. That’s because the highly anticipated sequel to Godzilla Minus One has a lot to live up to, as writer/director Takashi Yamazaki’s Oscar-winning box office hit featured engaging characters, grounded pathos, great action, and plenty to say about life in post-World War II Japan. When you make an elevated take on cinema’s most famous kaiju that’s also a rip-roaring good adventure… Yeah, the pressure’s on to top yourself. Fortunately, Yamazaki found the obvious but also smartest solution to the problem: Why not have two giant monsters on the attack? Enter King Ghidorah — one of cinema’s greatest dragons ever, in the opinion of Consequence — who ends up dominating the first half of the movie after crashing into 1949 Japan and fucking shit up with his energy blasts and gravity powers. Ghidorah’s arrival comes two years after the events of Godzilla Minus Zero, finding that Kōichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and Noriko (Minami Hamabe) have chosen to lead a quiet life focused on caring for their adopted daughter Akiko (Sae Nagatani), while Kenji “Doc” Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) is now the head of the emergency response team devoted to reacting to ...