Godzilla is a 2014 monster film directed by Gareth Edwards. Produced by Legendary Pictures and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, it is a reboot of Toho's Godzilla franchise and its 30th film, and serves as the first entry in Legendary's Monsterverse franchise. The film stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, and Bryan Cranston. In the film, an American soldier attempts to return to his family while caught in the crossfire of an ancient rivalry between Godzilla and two parasitic monsters known as MUTOs. An early iteration of the project began in 2004 under executive producer Yoshimitsu Banno as a short IMAX 3D film, but was transferred to Legendary in 2009 to be redeveloped as a full-length feature. The film was announced in March 2010 and Edwards was announced as the director in January 2011. Principal photography began in March 2013 in the United States and Canada and ended in July 2013. Godzilla was theatrically released on May 16, 2014. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the direction, visual effects, music, cinematography, respect to the source material, and Cranston's performance, but criticized the script, characters, and Godzilla's insufficient screen time. The film was a box office success, grossing $529.1 million worldwide against a production budget of $160 million. The film's success prompted Toho to produce a reboot of their own and released Shin Godzilla in 2016; Toho has since produced several follow-ups. Likewise, Legendary proceeded with sequels of their own, culminating in a shared cinematic franchise. A sequel, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, was released on May 31, 2019.
Plot In 1954, Godzilla, a prehistoric alpha predator, is lured to Bikini Atoll in an attempt to kill him with a nuclear weapon. In 1999, Monarch scientists Ishiro Serizawa and Vivienne Graham investigate the skeleton of a monster similar to Godzilla in a cavern unearthed by a collapsed uranium mine in the Philippines. They find two giant spores, one dormant and one hatched, along with a trail leading to the sea. In Japan, the Janjira Nuclear Power Plant experiences unusual seismic activity. Supervisor Joe Brody sends his wife Sandra to lead a team of technicians into the reactor. A tremor breaches the reactor, forcing Joe to close the reactor door before Sandra and her team can escape while the plant collapses. In 2014, Joe and Sandra's son Ford, a U.S. Navy EOD officer, returns from a tour of duty to his wife Elle, and son Sam in San Francisco. He departs for Japan after Joe is detained for trespassing in Janjira's quarantine zone. Joe is determined to find out the cause of the meltdown and persuades Ford to accompany him to retrieve vital data from their old home. They learn that the zone is uncontaminated and retrieve the data, but are discovered and taken to a facility in the plant's ruins. The facility harbors a massive chrysalis that has been feeding off the plant's reactors for fifteen years and emitting intense electromagnetic pulses over time. A giant winged insect-like creature emerges from the chrysalis and escapes, destroying the facility. Joe is severely injured and later dies. The incident is reported publicly as an earthquake. Serizawa and Graham join a U.S. Navy task force led by Admiral William Stenz to search for the creature, dubbed a "MUTO" (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism). Serizawa and Graham reveal to Ford that a 1954 deep-sea expedition awakened Godzilla. Nuclear tests in the 1950s were attempts to kill him; when this did not work, Project Monarch was established to secretly study Godzilla and similar monsters. They explain that the MUTO caused the Janjira meltdown. Ford reveals that Joe had monitored echolocation signals indicating that the MUTO was communicating with something, presumably Godzilla. The MUTO attacks a Russian submarine and drops it in O'ahu to eat its nuclear material. Godzilla arrives, causing a tsunami in Honolulu, and briefly engages the MUTO in battle until it flees. Serizawa deduces that Godzilla was only listening and that the MUTO was communicating with something else, prompting the military to investigate the other spore stored in the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. A second, bigger, wingless MUTO has emerged and attacks Las Vegas. The scientists deduce that the first MUTO is a male and the second is a female, their signals being a mating call. Over the scientists' objections, Stenz approves a plan of using nuclear warheads to lure all three monsters out into the open ocean and destroy them. Returning to the U.S., Ford joins the team delivering the warheads by train, but the female MUTO intercepts them and devours most of the warheads. The remaining warhead is airlifted with Ford to San Francisco (where the monsters are converging) and activated after Godzilla appears at the Golden Gate Bridge. The male MUTO snatches the warhead and takes it to the female, who forms a nest around it in the Chinatown area. While Godzilla and the MUTOs battle, Ford and a strike team enter the city via HALO jump to find and disarm the warhead before it detonates. Unable to access the timer, the team gets the warhead onto a boat for disposal at sea while Ford destroys the nest. Godzilla defeats the MUTOs and collapses from exhaustion. Ford gets the boat out to the open sea, is rescued before the warhead explodes, and reunites with his family at an emergency shelter the following morning. Godzilla reawakens and returns to the sea while the media dubs him the "King of the Monsters".
Cast
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