By now the whole world knows the greatness of GODZILLA MINUS ONE (2023), the surprisingly serious and deeply moving WWII drama take on Godzilla that was a surprise international sensation and even won the best visual effects Oscar. Now writer/director/visual effects supervisor Takashi Yamazaki and most of the main characters have returned with the direct sequel GODZILLA MINUS ZERO. Yes, this is one of the rare Godzilla movies where we all would’ve been mad if they didn’t bring back the humans! This time they’re as important as the monster to us.

It’s two years after the end of the last one and I will mark this as a SPOILER just because I hadn’t seen it in advertising, but the opening scene is an attack on Matsumoto City by a dragon who will be given the name Ghidora. It wasn’t until near the end of the movie that I thought oh geez, MINUS ZERO = MONSTER ZERO. Why didn’t I figure that out? This version of the famously jerky monster doesn’t necessarily come from Planet X, but he did come as a blob on a meteor that absorbed animals and used them to create his earth form.

A biologist named Kanji Murakami (Min Tanaka, BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL) has a close call with Ghidora and is sent (still dirty from the rubble he crawled out from under) to advise Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka, THE HIDDEN BLADE). Noda was the adorable bespectacled leader of the civilian Godzilla defense force in part -1, now he heads the government’s Large-Scale Disaster Response Bureau. The team also gains Makoto Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa, SHIN ULTRAMAN), a brilliant meteorologist who blames herself for her dead-on typhoon predictions being dismissed by the powers that be. But Noda believes in her.

Kōichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki, RUROUNI KENSHIN: KYOTO INFERNO) – the deserter kamikaze pilot who finally got over his reputation as a coward by not kamikaze-ing Godzilla – is now married to Noriko (Minami Hamabe, SHIN KAMEN RIDER), who sometimes helps their neighbor Sumiko (Sakura Ando, SHOPLIFTERS) with the home she runs for war orphans. They’ve adopted Akiko (Sae Nagatani), the kid they found in the ruins, which makes everything they do in this movie way harder. They have to say goodbye to her so many times.

Like GODZILLA MINUS ONE itself, the Ghidorah situation has caught the attention of the Americans, who send them a bomb and repurposed military plane to drop it with, though Noda is smart enough not to count on them, and has Aoyama come up with a weather-based backup plan. In the grand tradition of Godzilla movies we get a few scenes with English-speaking actors who are clearly some of the few available and/or were not able to be directed as well as as the Japanese-speaking performances. I think it would’ve been funny if the success of MINUS ONE led to them getting, like, Jon Hamm or somebody. No offense to Wes Wing (WHISPER OF THE HEART), but he’s no Jon Hamm, let alone Don Frye.

(The most accomplished American in the cast is KONG: SKULL ISLAND director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, but I didn’t notice his or SHIN GODZILLA director Hideaki Anno’s cameos.)

Kōichi ends up advising Noda’s small group of pilots how to go after Ghidorah, but they resent him for not flying himself. There’s lots of tension between him wanting to fly and feeling a responsibility to his wife and kid not to risk dying.

And then Godzilla shows up. Apparently whatever was left of him was able to regenerate. So that’s an issue.

There’s a clever way that Noriko stays involved in the story, set up at the end of the first movie, and drawing off the long-held kaiju movie tradition of a human character with a connection to a monster. We learn that some of the survivors of the attacks were infected by “Godzilla cells,” which caused protrusions from their skin that look like Godzilla’s back spikes. It turns out Noriko is the only person who’s been able to survive such an infection, leaving her with a yellow eye and a few small spikes on the side of her neck. Dr. Murakami has a method called a “Resonance Wave” and inspired by crows’ flocking methods that will use Noriko to lure Godzilla to the same area as Ghidorah, in hopes one will kill the other and in the process get injured badly enough that the humans can finish him off. The ol’ FREDDY VS. JASON maneuver.

As in the previous one there are themes of survivor’s guilt and moral questions about what is acceptable to do in stopping these monsters. Kōichi believes their plan for Noriko is akin to the role he rejected as a kamikaze pilot – a human being exploited as a weapon of war. If she can be used to control Godzilla’s movements then governments will fight over her.

There are definitely some scenes that are (by my barometer) over-the-top in their melodrama – Kōichi has some real tantrums about this stuff, we have to watch the kid cry for a painful amount of time (worrying that this kid actor must’ve really had to be upset), and a huge reveal about Dr. Murakami comes across almost like a parody. But I can forgive those, especially since there are so many bits that really do move me. I like when it has time for emotions that usually get glossed over in a kaiju movie, like the shock, horror and disbelief on Kōichi when he hears the report that Godzilla has returned. It’s not just that he thought he saw him die, it’s that his entire self worth is based on the belief that he stopped him. Later he nearly breaks down, saying this thing is going to chase them forever.

The way we come to know Murakami really underlines the melancholy feeling of these movies. After escaping Ghidorah he mutters something about surviving again. Soon, in flashback, we see him surviving Godzilla’s earlier attack. And then another one of surviving Hiroshima. He went to the coast and came back to find his family all dead. While studying Ghidorah genetic material he hallucinates the voice of his grandson, and throughout the movie he sees little flashes of the charred corpse he last saw him as. (That might be why this is the first ever R-rated Godzilla movie.) I don’t think it quite jibes with the parts where he’s more of an anime villain, but he’s an interesting character, and the focus on Hiroshima is extra interesting because we know the director knows how many Americans are watching.

Once again Yamazaki goes long stretches without any monster scenes, and makes it work. Admittedly it’s following the template of a perfect movie that already surprised us, and can’t match that power. When I’m conscious of “oh, this is this movie’s versionof the part where we find out that actually the mechanic convinced him he should live and added an ejector seat” it can’t possibly be as impactful. But it’s good shit. And once again the monster FX and action are superb. Each introduction or re-introduction of the monsters is among the biggest thrills I’ve had from any 2026 movie. As in the first one, the score by Naoki Satō is excellent, and then any time the old Godzilla themes come in I feel even more hyped.

The blockbuster set piece highlight is probly the air battle – it’s like TOP GUN: MAVERICK with a lightning-coughing dragon – but when he inevitably transforms into the Ghidorah we all know (hail to the king, baby) my smile nearly wrapped all the way around my head. He has anti-gravity breath that’s a great gimmick for monster fights but it’s also a psychological attack on Kōichi. He can no longer be above the earth and away from the collateral damage because the buildings are floating past him and he can hear the cries of the victims.

By this point we’re invested enough that they could almost get away with not making the monster fight great, but don’t worry, they wouldn’t do that. These boys are vicious. I like when Ghidorah is biting Godzilla’s spikes and yanking them out like he’s pulling teeth. And when he loses a head and then he just has one neck hanging there limply from that point.

I only have one misgiving about the movie that’s significant, and I want to discuss it, but it’s a MAJOR SPOILER because it’s the climax of the movie. Godzilla has been revived, we’re ready for him to fuck up Ghidora, but holy shit, Ghidorah starts to glow blue too, he starts to have Godzilla type spines popping out of him, he has regenerative powers like Godzilla, he grows back his missing head, and maybe I imagined it but I thought his heads also started to look like Godzilla? And he has his atomic breath. I didn’t see it coming, but it was foreseeable – just as he used earth animals to gain his original form, he has appropriated Godzilla’s powers to become something even deadlier!

At this point my mind started to spin about the poetic significance of all this. These movies take the ideas of violence and war seriously, so this has meaning. It’s escalation. They brought their weapon Godzilla to try to take out Ghidorah, and Ghidorah responds by building up his own weaponry. The problem is only multiplying!

I guess while I was busy contemplating this I missed the important story point that Godzilla defeated Ghidorah. According to Wikipedia, “Ghidorah loses control of its heat rays, allowing Godzilla to kill Ghidorah with his own.” But I didn’t catch that so when it ended I wondered what What happened to Ghidorah? I would assume I’m just dumb or spaced out, but my wife didn’t follow it either and later when I mentioned it to a friend he said, “I thought I was crazy!” But let me know if it’s just us.

In my confusion I wondered if this was meant as a middle chapter. I looked it up, and Yamazaki says there’s a 50/50 chance he’ll want to do another one after his next movie. He would be sad not to do another Godzilla, but he likes where he left things. And it makes sense. It’s always going to be a shaky peace, isn’t it? Never conclusive.

What would the next one be? It occurs to me that the best of the classic monsters (besides Jet Jaguar, who could be played by Jon Hamm) would be Mothra or Minilla, either of which would work with the title GODZILLA PLUS ONE. But can you really keep doing these serious war metaphors while adding more and more lovable monsters? Only one way to find out.

Anyway, this sequel can’t match the original, but I loved it. If this is the not-as-good Godzilla movie of our era then we’re in a golden age.