GODZILLA (Rated PG-13)

The fire-breathing monster Godzilla is so legendary that I am hard-pressed to think of his equal. Few would doubt that Godzilla represents the gold standard for dinosaur-like monsters that terrorize the planet.

We’ve now come a long way from the original 1954 Japanese film “Godzilla” in which a man in a suit stomps through Toyko. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet achieved enough distance from the abomination that was Roland Emmerich’s horrible 1998 reboot of the venerable franchise.

For all its faults, Gareth Edwards’ “Godzilla” restores some spectacle to the legendary monster, but the
lingering disappointment is that this time around Godzilla, consigned mainly to battling gigantic mutant creatures, feels more like a supporting player than the rightful center of attention.

Even worse, aside from opening scenes of grainy footage suggesting Godzilla’s emergence during the dawn of the nuclear age, Godzilla fails to appear at all until roughly one hour into the movie, even though he’s the titular character and thus deserves top billing because he is, after all, the most recognizable monster.

The new, yet not thoroughly improved, “Godzilla” spends an inordinate amount of time on the back story of a nuclear engineer (Bryan Cranston) obsessed about the cover-up of the 1999 radiation disaster at Janjira Nuclear Power Plant near Tokyo.

On that fateful day, Cranston’s Joe Brody and his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche), also a scientist at the plant, had been at work when tremors, dismissed as an earthquake by others, caused untold damage and unleashed a terrible force.

Acting as a whistleblower, Joe Brody was the only one to sound the alarm during the tragedy in which his wife died, and thereafter, he was relegated to spending the next 15 years being consumed by an almost delusional, fearful passion to uncover the truth.

Meanwhile, in the present day, the Brodys’ son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), now a U.S. Naval officer specializing in disarming bombs, has been reunited after a tour of duty with his wife and young son in San Francisco.

Called away to help his troubled father in Japan, Ford is reluctantly drawn into a quest to infiltrate the still-quarantined village where his family once lived before the 1999 nuclear tragedy. While searching for clues in the rubble, they are quickly arrested by the authorities.

Needless to say, the paranoid old man was right, and soon enough, a freakishly humongous insect-like creature breaks out of the abandoned nuclear plant and begins a rampage that hits the shores of Waikiki like a tsunami.

In fact, the first actual dazzling special effects extravaganza is a tidal wave that rips through the Hilton Hawaiian Village, flooding everything and causing massive destruction, including the wipeout of a beachside luau.

There’s a parallel story of a pair of scientists from a secretive government organization drawn to a remote mine in a Philippine jungle that has collapsed, revealing beneath it the fossilized, highly radioactive remains of something very big and very old.

On the scene is Ken Watanabe’s Dr. Serizawa, a Japanese scientist who has devoted his life to the search for Godzilla and hopes to find evidence of the mythical creature’s existence. His partner is Dr. Graham (Sally Hawkins, and their life’s work is to find what they call the “Alpha Predator.”

Of course, you already know that Godzilla will find you, not the other way around. Yet, Godzilla is preoccupied with going after the escaped mutant to stop it cold before it ends up mating with its female partner, currently confined to storage at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.

San Francisco, a picturesque city with plenty of great landmarks, seemed ripe for destruction. It proves fun for the audience, because Los Angeles and New York have already been trashed a million times and we need new scenery.

Besides, San Francisco has a reputation for being a romantic destination, and what could prove more inviting for two monstrously ugly creatures for a date night that ends up in consummation?

Godzilla, variously described as an amphibious reptilian dinosaur-like creature or an enormous prehistoric sea monster, has been either mankind’s adversary or even on occasion reluctant ally.

In this newest “Godzilla,” the distinctive monster battles the two mutants to the death, hence saving humanity and in the process “restoring balance” to the universe.

In the process of saving the human race, Godzilla’s smackdown of his foes results in a spectacle of mass destruction, with skyscrapers and bridges collapsing in a heap of rubble.

To be sure, the effects of “Godzilla” are dazzling, but we’ve seen much the same in a dozen other recent movies that rely heavily on obliteration of structures and automobiles. Yes, it’s still fun because, after all, this is Godzilla and not giant metallic robots.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.