The king of all monsters” rises from the briny deep once again, as Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures newest incarnation of the iconic/atomic reptile has premiered on the big screen in the 2014 remake “Godzilla.” Directed by up and coming director Gareth Edwards, “Godzilla” takes the Kaiju genre to a whole new level with monstrous destruction and the most astonishing/daunting version of the creature that has ever been seen.

The picture starts in 1999 at a mine in the Philippines, where Dr. Ishiro Seriwaza (Ken Watanabe) and Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins) arrive to discover the gargantuan remains of a prehistoric beast along with large cocoons, one dormant and one hatched.

At the same time in Jiro, Japan, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) and his wife Sandra Brody (Juliette Binoche) rush to their jobs at the nuclear power plant after seeing off their son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to school. Joe instructs his wife to take a team of engineers to ensure the core of the plant remains unscathed after a series of power surges and earthquakes, but disaster strikes as the tremors initiate a melt-down, trapping Sandra inside the inner workings of the plant as they fill with radioactive gas.

The story then jumps to 15 years later, and Ford receives a call informing him that his father has been arrested for trespassing in the fallout zone of Jiro. Joe raves about how the power plant meltdown was not an isolated incident, and convinces Ford to help him infiltrate the fallout zone once again and retrieve his work from before the meltdown. But what they end up finding is far bigger than anyone could have imagined.

The beginning of the film focuses on the human’s struggle against the titanic forces of nature, more so than on the enormous lizard the film is named after. As such the start of the film is choppy, starting slow as the stage is being set for the colossal beast’s entrance. But while the human acting was sub-par, the cinematography coupled with “Godzilla” in hyper-realistic CGI make-up for the less than Academy Award winning writing.
While “Godzilla” received a slow build up and reveal, such a technique was far more effective at capturing the audience’s attention rather than racing through the build-up and getting straight to the decimation of cities at the claws of the mighty beast. The film’s pace effectively kept the viewers at the edge of their seat, bursting at the seams with anticipation and excitement.

The final standoff of Godzilla in San Francisco is the highlight of the film; showcasing everything that computer engineering has to offer, all but blinding the audience with the atomic fire breath as the sound track perfectly accompanies the destruction of high-rises, the rumbles of humongous feet, and the unforgettable roar of the titan himself. All in all, the film is definitely worth seeing, almost matching the thrill of last year’s Kaiju movie “Pacific Rim” and is most definitely a huge improvement from the last “Godzilla.”