A couple of brief thoughts on Godzilla Minus Zero

1.) Before seeing the new Godzilla film, I was curious if it was even possible for it to be as good—or even nearly as good—as 2023's Godzilla Minus One. That's because so much of what seemed to make Minus One so good was how unique it was among Godzilla movies. You know, the fact that it was a period piece, the fact that it was set immediately after World War II, the intense focus on the human characters and their melodramas, the fact that long stretches could go by where a viewer might forget that they were even watching a Godzilla movie, the fact that it scanned so much as a prestige picture that just so happened to have Godzilla in it and so on. 

A sequel, by virtue of being a sequel, would quite necessarily lack those unique elements, then and could, at best, merely repeat them. Could the creators therefore pull off a second movie that was as good as their first without the benefit of so many unique elements, I wondered.

As it turns out, they did. Godzilla Minus Zero is very good. 

2.) Good God, that King Ghidorah design...! It doesn't alter any of the core elements—the monster is still gold, it still has three heads, two tails and giant bat-like wings—but it's cooler and scarier than any previous version, particularly in how those elements are precisely arranged and how it moves on the screen.

After seeing this, I did kind of want to revisit the 2019 Godzilla: King of the Monsters, as that was the only other time we've seen a computer-generated King Ghidorah on the big screen. (This Ghidorah is certainly better lit than the 2019 one was; here, he always appears in broad daylight, whereas his fights with Godzilla in King of the Monsters took place at night and then at night in a rainstorm.)

3.) I had heard that the film was going to be rated R, the first Godzilla film to receive that rating in the franchise's 72-year history. I couldn't imagine why. How violent, how gory could a giant monster fight really be? I mean, I've seen Gamera and Godzilla gush blood during the Showa era, and the former sever a limb in Revenge of Iris. Could this really be any worse?

I...wasn't prepared. I think the rating is simply for that one particular fight, a fight during which I found myself squirming in my seat. (Especially when Ghidorah seemed to be attempting to eat Godzilla alive; that wasn't the goriest, most violent bit, exactly, but jeez it was uncomfortable to watch...!).

4.) The head they killed off was the dumb one from King of the Monsters and the many memes that followed, right...?

5.) The use of sound and music was incredible...particularly in the opening sequence and the later usage of Akira Ifukube's original, 1954 Godzilla theme, which hits sooo much harder in a movie theater, where you can feel the vibrations than it does emanating from the speakers of a television set or laptop. Ifukube's contributions to Godzilla's power and longevity should never be underestimated, and this film is a great example of why.

6.) Akiko and family sure stuck it to those snotty war orphans at the end there didn't they...?