With the year’s release of the newest ‘Monsterverse’ featureGodzilla vs King Kong a massively budgeted remake of the decidedly campy 1962 film of the same name I have decided to revisit the earlier films in the series starting with 2014 American Godzilla.

The original Toho production from 1954 Godzilla is a defining piece of cinema the created the Kaiju film genre where people in suits and with miniature models created scenes of destruction and titian battles between impossibly large creatures. However, the first film Gojira in japan was a serious commentary on nuclear weapons and the terrible price of war and following in tone but not theme Godzilla 2014 was produced with an eye towards dramatic storytelling over campy kids’ entertainment.

While the trailers heavy feature Bryan Cranston, and every movie can use more Bryan Cranston, Godzilla 2014 starts Aaron-Taylor Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen whose lives, along with millions of others, are disrupted when a secret the government of the world explodes into view, that the world was once populated by Massive Unknown Terrestrial Organisms or MUTOs and that the Pacific Atomic Tests of the 50’s had been an attempt to kill one of these monstrous beasts, Godzilla. Now, following at ‘accident’ a Japanese nuclear powerplant 15 years earlier a pair of MUTOs are leaving a wake of destruction as they hunt for radioactive material to feed upon and mate, nest, and threaten humanity with a world repopulated with MUTOs.

Directed by Gareth Edwards with a screenplay by Max Borenstein Godzilla 2014 had little pretension to a deep philosophical theme or any meaningful emotional arc for its central characters but rather focuses, rightly so in my opinion, of the special effect spectacle of mighty Kaiju monsters combating humanity and each other through Japan, Hawaii, and San Francisco. It is movie built for fun. Where it is better to switch off any real-world science, nuclear and biological, and release your inner child that revels in excitement of action on inhuman scales. Taylor-Johnson and Olsen have little to do as emotional characters but we don’t watch a film like this for Kaiju version of Ordinary People.

If you enjoy massive monsters, grand destruction, and fantastic concept then Godzilla 2014 may be for you.