After really enjoying Godzilla Minus One, we get the highly anticipated sequel which takes place two years after the previous movie. The film follows Shikishima and his wife Noriko along with her daughter Akiko. The new threat starts off as gelatinous blob that by consuming local wildlife turns into a new form and gets given the name Ghidorah. After failing to kill it and once they realise that Godzilla is in fact alive, they decide to let Ghidorah and Godzilla take each other out and hope that the surviving one is weak enough to get picked off by the Japanese.
Ryunosuke Kamiki is ok as Shikishima. He doesn't have as much presence as he did in the previous film and it's only his connection to Noriko and Akiko that made his involvement have some meaning. Minami Hamabe is the stranger of the two as Noriko. One of the things that bothered me in the last film was that she seemingly died and when it was revealed that she had survived, all she had was a bandage over her eye and not a single scratch which seemed unlikely. That lack of cuts actually forms part of the plot because we learn about the fact that she has some of Godzilla cell would normally be totally ridiculous but in this film it works perfectly fine. I thought that Min Tanaka gave the best performance in this film as Kanji Murakami. He has the most substance to his character because he has some sort of PTSD from the terrible things he saw in the war including family members burnt to death.
I thought that the score from Naoki Sato. There are the classic Godzilla moments but the rest of the score is great to point which I actually thought it was better than the score from The Odyssey. That's a bad one by any means but this one was magical. I also thought that special effects were great. Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Takayuki Ueki and Eisin Okubo all did an outstanding job to make the effects look great, there were a couple of slightly iffy shots but for the most part every effect including the looks of Ghidorah and Godzilla were epic.
Ghidorah's evolution in the film is rather good. He starts off with just one head and after the epic action scene, he grows two more heads to become the Ghidorah that we all recognise and the effect is very good. He is the main threat and he is an impressive villain to go against Godzilla. When Ghidorah first appears in 1964, the fights never looked entirely convincing because it looked like two people in costumes on a giant set. In this film with the improvement in effects 62 years later are much more awesome to watch.
One thing that I wasn't expecting was the portrayal of the Americans as the baddies. They are prepared to give the Japanese the planes but won't give them the pilots. There is also the belief that they will weaponise Resonance wave technology and it's quite satisfying when the house has been set on fire. The last time we see Murakami is when he is being arrested by the Americans which suggests that there might be another appearance of him in a future film cause that is quite a downbeat way to end his fantastic involvement in the story.
The only minor issues I have with the film is that it takes a little longer to get into top gear. I was never bored but felt that Godzilla needed to get involved for things to start building up to something. Also there was a lack of Godzilla that always bothers me. It's about an hour before he appears properly but then he starts to fight Ghidorah then I momentarily forgot until writing this review.
This film isn't as good as Minus One but that was sort of to be expected given how good that film was. It still pretty damn good. I had very high expectations and they were still met which shows how good this film is. I don't think we need another one in this period. The film does end with Shikishima, Noriko and Akiko riding off into the sunset so it's possible that we might get one several years from now. I think we are getting a sequel to Shin Godzilla which is something I am looking forward to because the Toho Godzilla films are better than the Hollywood ones and there is nothing anyone can say to change my mind.
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