Enlarge / Watch out! This version of Big G has a huge mouth that opens into three jaws and shoots LASERS. (credit: Toho Studios)

Like any respectable Godzilla movie, Shin Godzilla is divided between insane kaiju destruction that gets progressively more spectacular, and mundane human drama as Japan tries to protect its cities. The premise is that nobody has ever encountered a giant monster before, so the government is absolutely flummoxed when broiling hot steam starts erupting from the ocean off the coast. At first, the Prime Minister and his top officials dismiss it as some kind of natural disaster. Once an enormous tentacle (actually, the Big G’s tail) rises out of the water and starts waving around, however, Japan’s calcified bureaucracy begins to crack. Citizens are posting pictures of the monster on social media, and a young cabinet secretary named Rando Yaguchi (Hiroki Hasegawa) is the only politician who is willing to stand up for the truth. There’s a giant, unidentified biological organism on the prowl, and it’s about to come ashore.

When Godzilla finally does hit the shoreline, there’s a major shock in store for fans—the creature looks nothing like the terrifying toothface we have known. Instead it’s a bloated, wiggly, bug-eyed beast who can’t even walk upright. Sure, it’s big enough to leave a considerable trail of destruction and radioactivity in its wake. But it looks almost like a joke version of the Big G, made even more unfamiliar by the use of CGI enhancements. What doesn’t feel like a joke are all the scenes of coastal destruction and death as the nuclear-powered kaiju worms its way through the urban landscape. These are deliberate evocations of the Fukushima disaster, echoing a long tradition in Godzilla films of recreating nuclear horrors and other disasters that Japan has endured.