All monster movies can be read as metaphors, whether they’re intended to be or not: It’s not much of a stretch to intuit that the fearsome creatures we meet in the movies— whether they’ve been catapulted from outer space or brought to life by our own hubris—represent the unnamed fears we struggle with every day.
asserted
we → read → fears
Even so, there’s something particularly poignant about Godzilla, the raging reptilian behemoth who made his first appearance in the 1954 Japanese sci-fi classic of the same name.
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who → ’ → name
The United States had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima only nine years before; Godzilla, stomping listlessly through the streets of Tokyo, was both a symbol of nuclear destruction and an expression of the kind of rage that can’t easily be put into words.
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that → drop → words
He didn’t ask to be born, yet here he was, clumsy, solitary, misunderstood.
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he → ask → ?
If you could, you would shoot fire from your mighty jaws too.
uncertain
you → shoot → jaws
Godzilla has been resurrected over the years, but rarely so inventively as in writer-director Takashi Yamazaki’s 2023 stunner Godzilla Minus One, in which a kamikaze pilot, Ryunosuke Kamiki’s Koichi Shikishima, tries to return to normal life in his shattered country, even as he feels shame over his own failure to take action in the war's last days.
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he → resurrect → days
Godzilla Minus One wasn’t just a showcase for a magnificent monster; it was a thoughtful, beautifully paced picture, one that took its time to unfold, and its focus on human redemption was as delicate as its star kaiju was grand.
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kaiju → pace → redemption
Godzilla Minus One might have been a tough act to follow.
uncertain
One → follow → ?
But Yamazaki’s new Godzilla Minus Zero doesn’t so much try to surpass its predecessor as to cap it like a protective bookend.
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Zero → try → bookend
It’s a magnificent entertainment with a melancholy heart.
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It → ’ → heart
It’s 1949, shortly after the events of the earlier film, and Koichi has at last leaned into the comforts of domestic happiness with Noriko (Minami Hamabe), the woman he met, and at first resisted, after his wartime return, and their adopted daughter Akiko (Sae Nagatani).
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he → ’ → return
Godzilla has supposedly been vanquished, though of course we’ll learn otherwise.
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we → vanquish → course
And as Japan rebuilds from both wartime devastation and from Godzilla’s rampage through various cities, including Tokyo, a new threat arrives from outer space—and this one can fly.
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one → rebuild → space
Ghidorah is an elegant flying beastie straight from the margins of a medieval manuscript.
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Ghidorah → fly → manuscript
His head, aglitter with feathery scales, is small, neat, furious; his wingspan could wipe out several city blocks at once.
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wingspan → wipe → blocks
He shoots a golden death beam from his beaked mouth, and he has regenerative powers that appear to make him indestructible.
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him → shoot → powers
Before Ghidorah even shows up, it’s clear that no one has recovered from Godzilla’s earlier rampage.
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one → show → rampage
Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), the brainy, principled naval weapons engineer who figured so prominently in the earlier film, heads up a bureau whose chief aim is to deal with giant marauding creatures.
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aim → figure → creatures
He once again needs Koichi’s help, and also enlists some new talent, including ace meteorologist Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa) and Professor Murakami (Min Tanaka), a respected science whiz who lost his family in the bombing of Hiroshima and who harbors, not so secretly, a simmering resentment toward the U.S. military.
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who → need → military
Meanwhile, the U.S. military officers now stationed in Japan prove their untrustworthiness without even trying.
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officers → station → untrustworthiness
The plot of Godzilla Minus Zero is a whirl of characters trying to redeem themselves for their past mistakes, or feeling so much anger toward an aggressor that their own moral compasses go awry.
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compasses → try → aggressor
Guilt, suffering, and justified rage all loom large in Godzilla Minus Zero, and though this is science-fiction, Yamazaki is also keyed in to the real-life underpinnings of his fictional characters’ feelings.
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Yamazaki → loom → feelings
One dream sequence, in particular, hints at the effects of a nuclear attack on the human body; it’s brief, but it’s both alarming and affecting.
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it → hint → body
Yamazaki has said his film is in part a response to Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which didn’t show the effect of the atomic bomb on people.
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which → say → people
is fiction, but its sense of history courses through its bloodstream even so.
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sense → course → bloodstream
They are—unsurprisingly, given the majestic special effects of the earlier movie—superb.
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They → give → movie
The plot involves some wackadoodle science that doesn’t make much sense, but you needn't worry about that.
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you → involve → that
Ghidorah, having flown into town from God-knows-where, is a displaced ball of anger.
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God → fly → anger
Wherever home is, he’s far away from it, and deeply unhappy.
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he → ’ → it
His golden breath has electromagnetic powers—at one point it uproots both structures and people, Wizard of Oz-style, and whirls them in the air, only to later smash them to the ground.
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it → have → ground
There’s nothing nice about him, but in his somber, unruly rage, he is beautiful.
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he → ’ → rage
And then there’s Godzilla himself, who appears to be—and must ever remain—unkillable.
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who → ’ → ?
His enormous, unmanageable tail swings to and fro as he once again clomps through Tokyo, a city that has had no time to recover from his previous visit.
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that → swing → visit
Tossing his proportionately tiny head, he roars with anguish and frustration.
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he → toss → anguish
When he gets really mad, gorgeous but deadly blue radioactive spines sprout from his back.
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spines → get → back
He has the body of a tyrant and the mind of a toddler.
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He → have → toddler
No wonder we both fear him and feel protective of him.
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we → fear → him
He’s both our villain and our destiny, a vessel for incompatible ideas that we can’t always resolve with human logic.
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we → ’ → logic
He’s not just coming for us; he is us.
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he → come → us
In Godzilla Minus Zero, we're again invited to tremble before him—but, once again, not without tenderness.
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we → invite → tenderness
The Aporia
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