Godzilla Minus Zero (2026)

Godzilla Minus One took a country the war had left at zero and dragged it below. So where does Minus Zero leave it? Rebuilding, a little better off, but not quite back to where it wants to be, which is exactly when you don’t want Ghidorah turning up. Stick around anyway, because we’ve got thoughts.

Minus Zero opened in Japan on 3 November 2026, Godzilla Day, 72 years to the day after the 1954 original and three years after Minus One. Takashi Yamazaki is back writing, directing and supervising the effects, and the sequels he says he had in mind were Aliens and Terminator 2. It’s 1949, two years on, and Koichi, Noriko, Akiko and Noda are all back, joined by Professor Murakami, a biologist carrying the scars of the war. It’s the first Japanese production Filmed For IMAX, and for Yamazaki it’s personal. He grew up in Matsumoto, and as a kid he was gutted by how briefly Ghidorah passed through his hometown in the 1964 original. This time he gives it the full treatment.

The 1954 original made Godzilla a horror, the sequels bring in other monsters, he drifts into being the good guy, and eventually someone reboots the lot to make him scary again. You can only pull that trick once per cycle. Minus Zero is where Yamazaki’s run hits that fork, and he brings in a second monster straight away. Does that tip it into big, silly kaiju fun, or does he keep the grit? Mostly the latter, helped by the film’s best idea. With the Americans circling, Godzilla is still a monster, but he’s our monster.

In this episode we get into whether the title is terrible or quietly clever, how a Glasgow anime distributor ended up owned by Toho, why there’s so little Godzilla in a Godzilla film, whether Ghidorah is a natural disaster or an invader, the new professor and the line between intense and cartoonish, orphanage and hospital scenes that stopped us in our seats, era-appropriate mad science and some very obliging crows, whether the final fight needed one more round, an emergency watch of Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster and its rock-volleying, and whether Yamazaki is a nail in the coffin or a kick up the backside for the MonsterVerse.

Full spoilers, so see it first, then bring tissues, count the crows, and settle in.

Listen now on Patreon. Missed our Minus One episode? It’s free wherever you get your podcasts.

Journey Through Sci-Fi is a sci-fi film history podcast hosted by James Payne and Matt Willcock, taking one big science fiction idea through the decades, two films at a time.

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