在两人均于2024年奥斯卡金像奖上获奖后不久，《哥斯拉-1.0》导演山崎贵在《奥本海默》日本首映期间获得了与克里斯托弗·诺兰交谈的机会。“作为我们交谈的一部分，我对他说：‘总有一天我想制作一部回应你电影的作品，’”山崎贵回忆道。“我当时脑子里想的是开发一部直面广岛的电影。但接着我又想，‘等等——哥斯拉本身就是核战争的隐喻。也许我可以把两者结合起来，拍一部既是哥斯拉电影、又是对《奥本海默》的回应的作品。’”
Shortly after they'd both won Academy Awards at the 2024 Oscars, Godzilla Minus One director Takashi Yamazaki got a chance to speak with Christopher Nolan when Oppenheimer premiered in Japan. "As part of our conversation I told him, 'One day I think I would like to make a response to your movie,'" Yamazaki recalls. "In my mind I was thinking I'd develop a film that looks directly at Hiroshima. But then I began thinking, 'Wait—Godzilla is itself a metaphor for nuclear war. Maybe I can combine the two and make a Godzilla movie that is also an answer to Oppenheimer.'"
这并非异想天开；自1954年首部电影问世以来，怪兽之王确实一直是原子弹的行走的、毁楼的寓言。但观众可能会震惊于《哥斯拉-0.0》（2023年《哥斯拉-1.0》的续作）作为对《奥本海默》的全方位回应，其程度之深。在这部已有四分之三个世纪历史的系列中，从未有哪部电影像《哥斯拉-0.0》这样直白地触及原子弹——连原版都不例外。
It wasn't a crazy idea; the King of the Monsters has indeed been a walking, building-smashing allegory for the atomic bomb ever since the very first film in 1954. But audiences may be shocked by the degree to which Godzilla Minus Zero, the follow-up to 2023’s Minus One, is a full-throated response to Oppenheimer. No movie in this franchise that's three-quarters of a century old has ever been as explicit about the bomb as Godzilla Minus Zero—including the original.
《哥斯拉-0.0》是一部紧张、常令人毛骨悚然的影片，探讨宏大主题，同时还让大个子与另一只怪兽对决，呈现一场动作场面丰富的视觉奇观。
Minus Zero is an intense, often gruesome film that tackles big themes, and it does this while also giving the big guy another kaiju to fight in an action-packed spectacle.
故事设定在1949年，即第二次世界大战结束四年后、哥斯拉在《哥斯拉-1.0》中似乎被击败两年后，续集讲述了一只新怪兽袭击仍在重建中的日本。基多拉是一条来自外太空的巨龙，在开场大戏中摧毁了一座城市，此后变得更加危险。山崎贵除执导《哥斯拉-1.0》并掌管视觉特效外，还撰写了《哥斯拉-1.0》的剧本，他承认这只经典怪兽的外星来历比他为《哥斯拉-1.0》创造的更接地气的世界观要荒诞得多。
Set in 1949, four years after the end of World War II and two years after Godzilla was seemingly vanquished in Minus One, the sequel has a new monster attack a still-rebuilding Japan. Ghidorah, a dragon who arrived from outer space, destroys a city in the opening set piece and only gets more dangerous from there. Yamazaki, who wrote Minus Zero in addition to directing it and helming the visual effects, admits that the classic kaiju's alien background is a bit goofier than the more grounded world he'd created for Minus One.
基多拉体现了所有哥斯拉续集都面临的挑战：只有哥斯拉一只怪兽的电影可以是严肃的隐喻，但一旦开始添加其他怪兽供其对战，该系列似乎注定会变得愚蠢。山崎贵在制作《哥斯拉-1.0》时留意避免这一问题。娱乐奇观当然少不了，但考虑到前作触达的受众远超预期——以1000万至1500万美元预算在全球斩获逾1.14亿美元票房——山崎贵认为续集有义务“深入挖掘，甚至探讨一些令人不适的题材”。
Ghidorah speaks to a challenge that all Godzilla sequels have faced: movies where Godzilla is the only monster can be serious metaphors, but as soon as you start adding other kaiju for him to fight, the franchise seems doomed to turn dumb. Yamazaki was mindful of avoiding this with Minus Zero. The entertainment spectacle would be there, of course, but especially considering the previous film reached a much wider audience than anyone expected—making north of $114 million globally against a budget between $10 million and $15 million—Yamazaki thought the sequel had an obligation to "really dig deeper and even explore some uncomfortable subjects."
当包括神木隆之介饰演的回归主角敷岛浩一在内的角色试图独自阻止基多拉却屡屡失败时，村上教授公布了一项发明，能够引诱哥斯拉（原来它仍然活着）前往基多拉所在地。计划是让两只怪兽厮杀，以便人类有机会对虚弱的胜利者实施“致命一击”。从纸面上看，这是该系列在60、70年代较为幼稚的昭和时代可能出现的情节。但村上教授的过往创伤和隐秘图谋将《哥斯拉-1.0》推向了更具挑衅性的领域。
As the characters, including Ryunosuke Kamiki's returning protagonist Kōichi Shikishima, try and fail to stop Ghidorah on their own, a professor, Murakami, unveils an invention that could lure Godzilla (who it turns out is still alive) to Ghidroah's location. The plan is for the two kaiju to fight so the humans might have an easier time doing a coup de grâce on the weakened victor. On paper, this is the sort of plot that you might expect from the sillier Showa era of the franchise, in the '60s and '70s. But Professor Murakami's past trauma and hidden agenda push Minus Zero into more provocative territory.
村上幸免于难，但在回溯至事件发生后的即时后果的闪回镜头中，观众看到他的女儿和孙子并未幸免。虽然广岛和长崎的原子弹爆炸一直是哥斯拉背景故事和寓意的关键部分，但它们从未像在《哥斯拉-1.0》中那样成为情节的一部分。《哥斯拉-1.0》中哥斯拉的原子吐息唤起了蘑菇云和随之而来的大规模毁灭，但在《哥斯拉-1.0》中，我们看到了核死亡实际上对人类造成了什么后果。村上家人焦黑的尸体呈现出一种比该系列常规表现更为血腥、更具人类尺度的暴力。
Murakami survived the bombing of Hiroshima, but as the audience sees in a flashback to the immediate aftermath of the event, his daughter and grandson did not. While the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been key parts of Godzilla's backstory and significance, they've never been part of the plot in the way they are in Minus Zero. Godzilla's atomic breath in Minus One evoked a mushroom cloud and the resulting mass destruction, but in Minus Zero we see what nuclear death actually does to humans. The charred bodies of Murakami's family are a much more graphic and human-scale sort of violence than is normal for the franchise.
但《哥斯拉-1.0》走得更远。在一个村上想象哥斯拉通过袭击纽约市向美国复仇的场景中，怪兽向曼哈顿释放原子吐息，动作突然切换为慢动作。毫无防备的美国人惊恐地仰望，巨大的火海爆发并吞噬了他们。我们看到他们的面部皮肉剥落。《奥本海默》因未展示其主角研制的原子弹的效果而受到批评。《哥斯拉-1.0》则以恐怖的细节展示了这一点，山崎贵表示，他在描绘核死亡时受到了另一位美国大片导演的启发。
But Minus Zero goes even further. In a sequence where Murakami imagines Godzilla getting revenge on the United States by attacking New York City, the monster unleashes atomic breath on Manhattan, and the action suddenly switches to slow motion. Unsuspecting Americans look up in shock and horror as a massive inferno erupts and engulfs them. We see the flesh peel off their faces. Oppenheimer drew criticism for not showing the effects of the bomb its subject created. Godzilla Minus Zero does so in horrifying detail, and Yamazaki says he was inspired by a different American blockbuster director in his depiction of nuclear death.
“重要的是要让尽可能多的人看到原子弹的效果到底是什么样子。看到纽约市发生的暴力事件，我回想起《终结者2》，詹姆斯·卡梅隆在片中向观众展示了核战争对我们的摧残，”山崎贵解释道。“我想唤起类似的感受，因为让人感觉真实可感非常重要——以一种能震撼我们想像力的方式，让人不禁感叹：‘哇。这是真的。这是一种极其暴力的行为。’”
"It was important to show as many people as possible what the effects of an atomic bomb would really look like. With the violence we see in New York City, I think back to Terminator 2, where James Cameron shows audiences what nuclear war does to us," Yamazaki explains. "I wanted to evoke something similar because it's very important for it to feel relatable—to jog our imaginations in a way that says, 'Wow. This is real. It is a very violent act.'"
虽然大苹果（纽约）的毁灭只是一个令人毛骨悚然的梦境场景，但在《哥斯拉-1.0》的其他部分，美国的形象并不怎么光彩。驻扎在战后日本的美军在提出协助对抗基多拉时，怀有不可告人的目的。他们执意要控制这个引诱哥斯拉的装置，以便将这只怪兽纳入他们的核武库，到影片结束时，美利坚合众国被塑造成为一个次要反派。
While the Big Apple's destruction is only a terrifying dream sequence, the United States doesn't come off especially well in other parts of Godzilla Minus Zero. The American forces occupying postwar Japan have ulterior motives as they offer "help" in the fight against Ghidorah. They’re invested in controlling this Godzilla-luring device so they can add the kaiju to their nuclear arsenal, rendering the US of A as a secondary antagonist by the end of the film.
其他电影，如2016年的《新神王大白鲨》和1991年的《怪兽大白鲨对决三头龙》，也曾批评美国。（后者以闪回的方式呈现未变异的大白鲨在二战中踩踏美国军人，讲述一名美国人回到过去摧毁日本，因为未来日本经济过于成功。）但《零减一》不讨好美国的描绘却显得不同——考虑到《零减一》在纽约市首映，似乎并没有对美国抱有真正的敌意。
Other movies, like 2016's Shin Godzilla and 1991's Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, have been critical of the United States. (The latter, which features flashbacks to a pre-mutated Godzilla stomping American GIs in WWII, is about an American who travels back in time to destroy Japan because it's too economically successful in the future.) But Minus Zero's unflattering depiction feels different—though considering that Minus Zero had its world premiere in New York City, there doesn't appear to be any real animosity towards the U.S. Yamazaki says he intentionally avoided making the American military too prominent in Minus One, instead having the army be "an almost unseen threat" throughout the film, but the 1940s setting meant that it was inevitable that the Yankees would take on a more explicit role.
山崎表示，他有意在《零减一》中不让美国军方过于突出，而是让军方在整部影片中“几乎不可见的威胁”，但1940年代的背景意味着美国人不可避免地扮演了更明确的角色。“随着时间的推移，真正审视美国与日本之间的关系很重要，”山崎解释道。“我深入研究了美国和日本的军事力量与紧张关系，最终形成了我们所看到的故事。”
"As time passes, it was important to really take a look at what that relationship between the U.S. and Japan was," Yamazaki explains. "I went down the rabbit hole and did a lot of research about U.S. and Japan's military forces and tension, ultimately leading up to the story we see."
《零减一》里有很多内容，但山崎认为怪兽能胜任。“大白鲨是唯一能承担所有重量的生物、怪兽或实体，”他说。山崎找到了一种方式，让《零减一》成为一部激动人心的大白鲨续集，并回应《奥本海默》。如果他真的拍摄第三部大白鲨电影，他将面临不同的挑战：该怎么命名。
There's a lot going on in Godzilla Minus Zero, but Yamazaki thinks the monster is up to the task. "Godzilla was the only creature, kaiju, or entity that could handle all that weight on its shoulders," he says. Yamazaki found a way to make an exciting Godzilla sequel and respond to Oppenheimer. If he ever makes a third Godzilla movie, though, he'll face a different challenge: What to call it.
“我们从《零减一》走向《零减零》，所以现在我们是中立的，”山崎有些害羞地说。“如果有续集，这可能是我们必须解决的最大问题。”
"We've gone from Minus One to Minus Zero so we're now neutral," Yamazaki says somewhat sheepishly. "That might be the biggest problem we have to solve if there is a sequel."