Godzilla Minus Zero Q&A: Takashi Yamazaki Has Wanted to Destroy His Hometown With King Ghidorah Since 1964

Light spoilers: This recap mentions a few scenes and effects shots from Godzilla Minus Zero. No major plot points.

As a kid, Takashi Yamazaki made a deal with his parents: let him see a single movie, and he’d never ask to see another. The movie was Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. It was 1964, the year he was born, and the poster promised that King Ghidorah was coming to Matsumoto, his hometown. Sixty-two years later, he has made the King Ghidorah movie that kid wanted to see.

Producer Kazuaki Kishida told that story at a Los Angeles IMAX screening of Godzilla Minus Zero on November 1, during a post-screening Q&A The Nerd Wire attended. The panel included Shirogumi’s visual effects team and the film’s two sound leads. Film journalist Anthony Breznican moderated, and the guests answered through an interpreter. The quotes below are the interpreter’s English, lightly trimmed.

On stage were producer Kazuaki Kishida, VFX supervisor Takayuki Ueki, VFX artist and compositor Tatsuji Nojima, production and post-production sound mixer Hisafumi Takeuchi, and sound designer and Foley artist Natsuko Inoue. Breznican opened by saying that “nothing makes you feel smaller than doing a Q&A at an IMAX theater.”

“We were very adamant about not compromising”

Breznican’s first question was about how hard the sequel hits. He called it a Godzilla movie “with real teeth.” Kishida said the explicitness was deliberate, and that it applies worldwide.

“We were very adamant about not compromising on the creative, and Yamazaki insisted that the entire world see the same film as it was intended.”

Kazuaki Kishida, producer

The reason, he said, goes back to 1954. Kishida described the original Godzilla as “a very strong human drama-driven movie.” The Minus films are built to honor that, so the human drama and the kaiju action “can coexist” instead of competing for screen time.

What “Minus Zero” actually means

If the title sounded like a typo to you, Kishida knows. He explained that some branches of mathematics keep the negative sign on zero to mean you are approaching zero from below. That is the arc of the series. Minus One showed postwar Japan pushed back into the negative. Minus Zero, he said, is “mankind’s attempt to repent for their sins,” with people “almost praying to approach what is neutral.”

Why King Ghidorah: a grudge from 1964

Asked why Yamazaki picked King Ghidorah out of Toho’s whole roster, Kishida first said the director “just really loves King Ghidorah.” Then he told the full story. Yamazaki and Ghidorah are the same age: both debuted in 1964. Matsumoto, the city seen at the start of Minus Zero, is Yamazaki’s hometown, and Ghidorah attacks it in the 1964 film.

As a child, Yamazaki saw a poster at a public bathhouse announcing that Ghidorah was coming to Matsumoto. He offered his parents that deal. Then, Kishida said, he sat in the theater and watched Ghidorah fly over Matsumoto Castle, “and that’s it.” His parents kept him to the deal. Kishida passed along the director’s own verdict:

“It took me 55 years, but I finally made the King Ghidorah movie I wanted to see as an elementary school student, using other people’s money.”

Takashi Yamazaki, as quoted by Kazuaki Kishida

Breznican’s reply: congratulations from Los Angeles on finally destroying his hometown.

Two monsters, one of them with three heads

Ueki also worked on Minus One, the film that won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. He said his first reaction to the new screenplay was “How dare you? Who wrote this screenplay?” His team had barely finished Minus One with 35 VFX artists, and this script looked like more than twice the work. The kaiju-on-kaiju grappling scenes were the hardest. Even so, he said, the crew enjoyed it: “Almost felt like we were in some kind of camp. A fun camp.”

His favorite shot is the first one in the film. The team gave it five VFX artists, which Ueki called “a lot of resources” for a single shot, because it had to set the tone right away. The team did get more money this time, but not many more people. Minus One was famous for its small budget, and the crew grew from 35 artists to 41.

The Water Boy goes from 200 million particles to 2 billion

Nojima earned the nickname “the Water Boy” for Minus One‘s ocean work. He walked through Godzilla’s entrance in Minus Zero, where the monster rises from the sea and drags down a ship with people still on deck. It looks like one continuous take, but it’s three shots stitched together. Actors performed on a tilting platform, then the camera moves into a corridor as water floods in, and then a wide shot reveals Godzilla.

Getting the ship, the water and Godzilla to work together took new R&D. On Minus One, Nojima said, the pipeline could render about 200 million particles on screen at once. For Minus Zero he developed new techniques that render 2 billion. Breznican pointed out that all of this started as a hobby for Nojima.

Using silence as a weapon

One of the film’s loudest moments is a silent one: the sound drops out when a rocket is fired. Takeuchi said he works with three levers, dialogue, sound effects and music, and the goal with Godzilla and Ghidorah was for the audience to feel the monsters “through your bodies.”

“You don’t just turn every level up to 11. Subtraction is actually quite important in the process.”

Hisafumi Takeuchi, production and post-production sound mixer

The quiet scenes with people in them, he said, are what give the kaiju scenes their impact. He also added a reminder for the IMAX crowd: this was not a 4DX screening. “If you felt your chairs rocking, that was just the sound effects.”

Ghidorah’s golden beam, built by two departments

Breznican singled out the crackle of Ghidorah’s golden destruction beam, and the two departments explained how it was built. Ueki said a movie with the sound off loses at least half its effect. On the beam, he said, adding the sound design was “not just 2x, it goes even farther than that.” Inoue said that by the time she starts her work the visuals are usually nearly done, and watching Shirogumi’s footage is where her ideas come from: “I begin to see sound.”

Ueki admitted his team kept adjusting the beam past its deadline, which made more work for the sound team. He also gave Nojima credit for the beam’s lightning look. Nojima watched a lot of high-speed lightning footage on YouTube to get the motion right. “So he’s not only Water Boy now,” Ueki said. “He’s also Lightning Boy.”

Three heads that harmonize, and a Godzilla roar made of steel

Inoue designed both monsters’ roars. Her idea for Ghidorah came from an early Shirogumi clip of the dragon roaring on top of Matsumoto Castle. The three necks were twisting, and to her the heads looked like they were singing. So she didn’t give each head its own roar and personality. “These 3 heads should harmonize.”

Godzilla’s roar uses no animal recordings, so Ghidorah’s is built from animal and insect sounds instead. The first version still didn’t sound scary to her. The missing piece was people: she recorded herself, then another Foley artist, voicing anger and fear, and added those samples to the roar.

Godzilla’s roar, like the one in Minus One, starts from the 1954 original as a tribute. Inoue then added layers so it holds up on modern sound systems. She tried animal sounds and rejected them. What worked was steel warping, bending and creaking.

Harder than a three-headed dragon: a four-year-old

Breznican’s last question was for Kishida: as a producer, which is scarier on the page, a three-headed kaiju or a crying four-year-old? Kishida picked the four-year-old right away. Akiko was two during Minus One. He said the crew learned to watch for her nap time, kept the camera ready, and when she started getting cranky, Kamiki’s Shikishima began his scene.

For Minus Zero, Yamazaki gave Akiko a lot more dialogue. Kishida said the team quietly held auditions, and the same actress from Minus One tried out. She acted and cried in front of all of them, and she was so good that he “felt so foolish” for doubting her. His verdict: she deserves the award for Best Actor.

Godzilla Minus Zero opens in Japan on November 3. In North America, Toho and GKIDS start IMAX Early Access screenings on November 3, Godzilla Day, ahead of the nationwide release on November 6.

More Godzilla Minus Zero: Read our spoiler-free review · Watch the “Everything Ends Here” trailer