Godzilla Minus Zero Has a Lot to Lose
The boat in Godzilla Minus One looks hopelessly inadequate for the creature chasing it. Its minesweeping crew has to improvise with what little it has, and the scene makes every available metre of deck feel precious. Before Godzilla Minus Zero, that is the sequence worth revisiting. It also leaves the sequel with a problem.
The new film opens in Japan on November 3, with US IMAX early-access screenings that day and a wide North American release on November 6. Takashi Yamazaki returns as writer, director and visual-effects supervisor. Toho bills this as the first Japanese production filmed for IMAX. There is plenty of reason to want a large screen.
But the boat chase works because you want those particular men to get home. Another impressive attack will have to earn that feeling again.
Two years ought to count
Toho's synopsis moves the story forward two years, to a country struggling to recover its ordinary life. That interval is the detail worth getting excited about. It gives the sequel something to do beyond putting familiar people in danger again.
In Godzilla Minus One, Koichi Shikishima's wartime guilt makes a home with Noriko and Akiko seem almost beyond his reach. The possibility of that family gives the destruction its cruelty. Godzilla can take away a future Shikishima is only beginning to allow himself.
A sequel should let the intervening years matter. Show us what someone has learned to enjoy, or a relationship that has become harder to leave. Sending everyone straight back to their old suffering would make their first escape feel cheap.
In a February 2024 interview with Toho Kingdom, Takashi Yamazaki explained what he had set against the first film's destructive force.
I want the sequel to take that conviction seriously. Hurt these people, by all means. Let the lives they have built change what they do when the creature comes back. Otherwise, their recovery becomes a pause button between attacks.
Yamazaki has described the difficulty himself. In a 2023 Moviefone interview, he said he wanted the human drama and Godzilla's story intertwined, with both interesting enough to hold their own. The boat crew is a good place to see that intention at work: their company becomes something worth protecting, so their terror has a cost.
Keep watching after the chase
Make Godzilla Minus One the catch-up this week, and stay with the crew once the immediate danger passes. Notice whether you want another scene with them even when nothing is chasing them. That is the useful test to take into Godzilla Minus Zero.
The sequel can find its own way to scare us. I will be more interested in whether, when Godzilla leaves the frame, I still want to be there.
