Finally a modern Godzilla that's worth watching!

Rating: 8/10 (18 May 2014)

I had some serious misgivings about this going in, but I was determined not to read any negative reviews and make up my own mind and I can say that this recent outing on the legendary Japanese monster was unbelievable.
Remember all those early 50's pacific nuclear "tests" we were told about? Well it turns out they they were actually attempts to try and destroy Godzilla, but in fact all we did was make him stronger as he fed off the radiation.
Fast forward to the late 90's and we have an American family living in Japan. The father played by Bryan Cranston works at a nuclear power plant and identifies regular sound waves and, in realising that they are not earthquakes, tries to shut the reactor down as they become stronger and potentially damaging. All too late however as the reactor is breached resulting in the death of his wife who also works there. The facility ends up being destroyed by something unseen and the whole coastal city is evacuated and declared a quarantine zone.
Turns out that the quarantine zone is no such thing and they have re-built the facility to perform tests on a giant cocoon that was found previously in the Philippines. The cocoon hatches and a large monster called a MUTO - Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism, emerges. After destroying the facility and killing Bryan Cranston, among many others, it flies off. Too me this looked like an updated version of Rodan from the old Godzilla movies.
A second and much larger MUTO that was "contained" in the nuclear waste dump deep in the Yucca Mountains wakes up, breaks free of the mountain and devastates downtown Las Vegas. It is believed that the 2 MUTO's will link up by way of echo-location and that the larger one is a female, making the other a winged male. So the race is on to try and stop these monsters before they get together and reproduce.
It is assumed by some that Godzilla is actually meant to restore balance on the Earth and a Japanese scientist pleads with the military to let Godzilla and the MUTO's just fight it out. The movie audience was wishing the exact same thing. After the military fails to do what it thinks it can, just like every other Godzilla movie, (except the awful 1998 version), and after flattening San Francisco for their battle ground, Godzilla reigns supreme once again and is regarded "King of Monsters" in the newspapers. It's too bad that he uses his death ray only twice.
This movie for me was a welcome addition to the long running Godzilla franchise. After the 1998 movie threatened to kill off such a legendary monster with bad acting, bad effects, bad dialogue and a Godzilla that didn't even look like Godzilla, this was a blast of pure energy that only a proper Godzilla can produce. The only thing that ruined it for me is the one constant that all disaster movies want to have and that is a soppy human element that tries to make the audience feel something for the characters. I'm sorry but this just doesn't work and I wish they'd stop doing it as no one really cares. In Godzilla, all you want to see is monsters fighting, and buildings being reduced to rubble, not constant flashbacks to how the rest of the family was coping. This is however a great monster flick and one that will be worth seeing multiple times.