What a hoot!
The movie opens with the city of Matsumoto under attack from a giant creature that looks quite a bit like a dragon - think a more working class Smaug. Armed with a 16mm camera, a scientist named Kanji Murakami (who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima) and his assistant document the creature's rampage through the city. They are able to bring their film back to Kenji Noda and his crack team at the Large-Scale Disaster Response Bureau.
We learn that this new leviathan came from outer space as a kind of tentacled, clear goo that ate or absorbed the local fauna and grew into the monster that wreaked havoc on the poor Matsumotoans.
Teaming with the U.S. military, a plan is made to deal with the creature, named Ghidorah, who's taking a nice nap after having wrought destruction across the land. A fuel-air bomb proves ineffective so Noda's team attempts to electrocute it. While they're successful in zapping Ghidorah, the electricity does not kill the beast. Not only does Ghidorah shake off the zap, it grows 2 more heads. Oof!
Felicitously, Godzilla, thought to have met his demise in Davy Jones Locker, reappears and Noda's group decides the only option left is to have Godzilla fight Ghidorah. One monster would surely not survive the encounter but leave the victor in a bad way, vulnerable to mankind's arsenal of destruction. To do this, Murakami devises a way to use someone who was left with some Godzilla DNA in her body to act as a lure, essentially, and lead the newly-reconstituted lizard to Ghidorah for a death match.
The woman who got that DNA in the previous movie, Godzilla Minus One, is the lovely Noriko Ōishi who has married the pilot from that same movie, Kōichi Shikishima. Shikishima flies the plane with Noriko connected to Murakami's vacuum tube-laden gizmo which broadcasts her Godzilla essence and lures the creature to Ginza, Tokyo which got destroyed in the last movie. There Ghidorah is hanging out he having been lured to the site by some Van der Graaf generator thingies and the promise of their tasty megavolts. Or was is the amps?
Monsters fight, humanity is in grave peril, and people sacrifice themselves to save mankind. And the monsters fight even more!
Watching the spikes on Godzilla's tail and back start glowing blue got me all excited. My heartbeat quickened in anticipation of stuff blowing up and a grievous blow being dealt to Ghidorah. Fun!
My friend and I caught it on a Marcus Ultrascreen and not an IMAX so we saw a widescreen version of the movie projected onto a really big screen that had the same aspect ratio as your normal, average screen. Or that's how I make it out. I'd love to see this on IMAX as the monsters are framed to emphasize their height and make them all the more imposing.
Godzilla Minus Zero was an absolute blast and must be seen on a big screen - IMAX, preferably - at all costs.
OK, onto the trailers! Marcus shows many fewer than AMC but they also crank the volume way up for them.
