The American reboot gave us the character's long wait for Godzilla to barf down a Cloverfield's throat. The Japanese response is a rush for Japanese-led international cooperation to barf down Godzilla's throat before America-pushed International overreach can condescendingly nuke it's little bro.

I knew there'd be meetings, but I purposefully avoided digging too much before I saw the movie and had no idea just how many of those meetings there would be. This was fine. I didn't anticipate boredom and was carried along on the tide of its mix of procedure and surprising, dry humor. As little Godzilla as there was I had a big, dumb grin on my big dumb face every time that big dumb lizard was on screen. He emerges all doofy and googleyed from an impressionistic smear of river blood, the dodgy CG's awkward, halting evolutions doing a surprising job of capturing the charm of some of the more busted main-in-suit incarnations. This is a god both terrifying in context and obviously silly if you don't want to play ball. I wanted to play ball, but there's something about the need for buy-in that makes it feel special at first sight?

There were moments-like when he finally belches out his nuclear breath before going full laser show-that it struck the perfect note of cornball poignance to recall some of the heights of the series, for me.

This movie has a character describe Godzilla as "like an ascetic living on mist" OK.

A perfect organism surpassing man.