Takashi Yamazaki’s behemoth-sized Kaiju sequel, Godzilla Minus Zero, took the world by storm over the weekend. Despite the fact that it is an R-rated, predominantly Japanese-language release, it beat out the competition and became the top-grosser at the domestic box office over the weekend. On top of this, the film earned glowing reviews from fans and critics alike, many of whom praised the new entry as a high-water mark for the overarching Godzilla franchise as a whole.
But amongst all of this overwhelming positivity, there have also been some early critiques emerging, and one of the most notable is that Godzilla himself doesn’t actually get that much screen-time in Godzilla Minus Zero. The King of Monsters is only on-screen for approximately fifteen minutes of the film’s two-hour-plus runtime, which has apparently rubbed some fans the wrong way. However, to complain about such a thing is to both fundamentally misunderstand the history of this franchise and to miss the point of what makes Godzilla such a screen-presence so endearing and compelling. Because when it comes to Godzilla in Godzilla Minus Zero, less is absolutely more.
First and foremost, the idea of Godzilla having a limited amount of screen time in a Godzilla movie is not a new idea; it’s literally been the bread and butter of this franchise for decades. Across all of the live-action Godzilla films, the titular character only averages thirteen minutes of screen time per film. That means that Godzilla Minus Zero is actually above average with regard to how much time is spent with Godzilla himself.
But furthermore, I can simply not fathom leaving the theater after watching Godzilla Minus Zero and thinking, "My thirst for Kaiju action has gone unquenched." This is a film whose literal opening frame is spent throwing viewers immediately into the thick of it, delivering jaw-dropping and gargantuan-scaled spectacle time and again, centered on both Godzilla and other Kaiju creatures. The three-headed golden elephant in the room here is King Ghidorah, who serves as the film’s shrouded-in-secrecy antagonist, and whose presence takes up a significant amount of screen time in its own right, before Godzilla ever even enters the picture. Ghidorah dominates several early scenes and even gets a sequence so ludicrously action-packed and high-stakes (the aerial dogfight set piece) that it could have easily served as a third act finale in any other film.
Beyond all of that, though, when Godzilla does show up, the extent to which Yamazaki and his team make the absolute most of him cannot be overstated. He is consistently an imposing and monolithic screen presence, and every single action beat centering around Big G is essentially immediately unforgettable. And the truth is, whether individual audience members are smart enough to clock this or not, this is what you really want from a Godzilla film.
You can spend two full hours with the overgrown lizard, but if he’s not doing something jaw-dropping, then what’s really the point of having him there? Godzilla Minus Zero utilizes Godzilla in expert and articulate fashion, and if you’re too busy sitting there pressing ‘start’ and ‘stop’ on a timer to appreciate a scene in which Godzilla and Ghidorah are literally tearing each other limb-from-limb, then there’s simply no helping you.
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