Let’s go back to 1998. Remember when director Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow”), as viral sensations Screen Junkies say, transformed “the most iconic movie monster of all time into a box-headed, chicken-leg, no-automatic-breath-having, Jay Leno-chinned, stupid-faced, flat-nosed, piece of  …”, you get the picture. Luckily, the latest “Godzilla” effectively leads this disaster movie franchise in a direction far less monstrous than the many terrible remakes that demolish so many theatres each summer.

Godzilla has a showdown in San Francisco in the latest installment of the classic monster movie. (photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

This is a new Godzilla –– an older one. He’s not your average, nuclear-mutated creature but a prehistoric force of nature placed on Earth to maintain order. Poetic yes, but this premise guides the great monster’s every whim in the most animalistic of ways. But all this information has been redacted, as the opening credit sequence makes clear, ever since the creature’s first recorded sightings in the 1940s and 1950s, around the time the creature first appeared on the big screen.

But one nuclear engineer, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston in a rather useless bit part), wants answers following a horrific accident at a power plant in Tokyo. To the dismay of his son, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, exchanging his “Kick-Ass” digs for getting his rump kicked by giant beast), pops can’t let it go. But something unknown forces Joe, now in the company of his son, to venture into what should be a radiation-rich abandoned plant, only to find a secret facility and something hibernating. It ain’t Godzilla. Something else is afoot. And it’s hungry.

Rarely will you find a film where humanity feels so utterly hopeless. Nothing the military or any scientist does affects the events until the very end. But throughout the film, bask in the glory of destruction as remnants of a pre-human age remind the world just how puny we are in the presence of the world’s many mysteries.

The 1998 “Godzilla” shamelessly poached most of its visual design and mannerisms for Godzilla and her velociraptor-like offspring from “Jurassic Park”. In 2014, Godzilla returns to its ambiguous gender, iconic fins, and memorable roar and fire-breathing ways. This is why CGI exists. It takes more cues from “Jurassic Park” in narrative spirit, saving the revealing of the full body until the film’s climactic showdown in San Francisco.

Come Godzilla’s grand entrance, the only appropriate response is to cheer. Believe me when I say you won’t be alone. And you’ll most likely do it several more times later on. This is what happens when a director honors 28 movies of history (let’s not count Emmerich’s contribution).

Bryan Cranston stars as Joe Brody, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson appears as his son, Ford, in the new film, “Godzilla”. (photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

The real success story here is filmmaker Gareth Edwards. In his previous and first feature film, “Monsters” — a compelling dystopian tale of survival in an alien-ridden world — Edwards made headlines for creating it on an incredibly low budget with minimal actors (he used people hanging around as extras when his small, seven-person crew began shooting) and developing the special effects in his bedroom with over-the-counter software. While minimalism was a necessity then, he employs it splendidly in a film with $160 million to throw around.

I wish I could speak highly about the performances, but there’s very little of worth in that area. The film mostly revolves around Taylor-Johnson as the son of an obsessed engineer and a soldier home on leave. He is present during most of the thrilling moments, but events also unfold from his wife Elle’s (Elizabeth Olsen) point of view in San Francisco, to anticlimactic avail. And then there’s Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Admiral William Stenz (David Strathairn) who both function normally as expository voices. They philosophize about Godzilla’s purpose in the world and the many potential ways to take the beast down.

Between “Godzilla” and “Pacific Rim”, the monster movie is back. “Godzilla”, however, functions very differently as an origin story. This isn’t just a disaster film; it’s about a creature with heart who is more than just a pretty awesome face.