[a] The film stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, and Bryan Cranston.

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.

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 deduces Godzilla was only listening as 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.

Additional roles include: Carson Bolde as Sam Brody; Richard T. Jones as Captain Russell Hampton; Victor Rasuk as Sergeant Tre Morales; Patrick Sabongui as Master Sergeant Marcus Waltz, USAF; Jared Keeso as Jump Master; Al Sapienza as Huddleston, the head of security at the Janjira MUTO facility; Brian Markinson as Whalen, a scientist at the Janjira MUTO facility; Catherine Lough Haggquist as PO #1 Martinez; Jake Cunanan as Akio; Warren Takeuchi as Akio's father; Yuki Morita as Akio's mother; Ken Yamamura as Takashi, Joe's associate at the Janjira facility; Hiro Kanagawa as Hayato, a technician at the Janjira facility; Garry Chalk as Stan Walsh; and Christian Tessier as a technician.

"[48] Edwards decided on a restrained approach similar to when films were fueled by a "sense of anticipation" and relied on "high suspense", citing Alien, Jaws, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind as influences.

[50][51] Edwards additionally stated, "I grew up watching Spielberg movies, what they did so well — as well as having epic, fantastic spectacle — they made the characters feel real and human.

[56] Real life events such as the 2004 Indian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster served as heavy influences on the realism behind the film's destruction scenes and man vs. nature themes.

[62] In 2005, American Peter Anderson was added to the project as the cinematographer, visual effects supervisor, and co-producer by an independent producer Kenji Okuhira who represented Banno.

[76] At the 3D Summit conference held in September 2010 at Universal Studios, producer Brian Rogers confirmed a targeted release date for 2012, and that the reboot would be a live-action project featuring a fully CGI Godzilla battling two other monsters rather than simply the military as seen in Emmerich's 1998 film.

[77] In October 2010, Latino Review reported that Legendary had merged the spec script for Pacific Rim with their Godzilla reboot and offered Guillermo del Toro to direct it.

In an interview with Canada's Entertainment Tonight, he compared Edwards' approach similar to Steven Spielberg's style in Jaws where the film does not immediately show the beast but rather build up to its appearance while still delivering an eerie and terrifying off-screen presence.

The film has a title montage set in 1954, and then moves forward to 1999 and deals with a mysterious disaster at a fictional Japanese nuclear power plant named Janjira.

[111] According to special effect chief Jim Rygiel, the mechanics of Godzilla's fighting style is based on the study of animals, primarily bears and Komodo dragons.

The pair tested the roar on a back lot at Warner Bros., using a tour speaker array for The Rolling Stones, and estimated that it could be heard 3 miles (4.83 km) away.

[118] In an interview with The Verge, Edwards commented that it took over a year to design the MUTO creatures because the crew wanted to create something new and different for contemporary audiences.

[136][137] Yoshimitsu Banno, Alex Garcia, Kenji Okuhira, and Patricia Whitcher were formally named as executive producers and Legendary announced the addition of Ken Watanabe to the cast.

Filming also used the stages of Burnaby's Canadian Motion Picture Park (CMPP), where crews built a San Francisco Chinatown street, a giant sinkhole set used for the Philippine mine, and the MUTO nest and a 400-foot (120 m) section of the Golden Gate Bridge.

[165][166] The film features György Ligeti's Requiem (also used in 2001: A Space Odyssey), Dusty Springfield's 1969 recording of "Breakfast in Bed", and Elvis Presley's "(You're the) Devil in Disguise".

[171] Further, visitors to the Legendary Pictures booth at the convention could view an animation of the new Godzilla breathing radioactive fire superimposed over their image captured via a webcam.

Toho launched a website of its own, godzilla.jp, with a simple arcade game of Godzilla stomping on Tokyo and using his radioactive breath, as well as appearances from King Ghidorah and Mothra.

[185] It revealed more scenes of destruction by Godzilla in San Francisco and Las Vegas, brief glimpses of other creatures, and a conspiracy plot intertwined with the atomic blast tests in the Pacific Ocean in 1954.

According to Legendary CEO Thomas Tull, it developed a news software program named "Eddington", which, based on a massive database, was able to determine demographic trends among sub-groups of core filmgoers.

[190] In June 2013, Variety reported that Warner Bros. Consumer Products and Legendary Entertainment had assembled a large team of partners to make licensed merchandise to be released in conjunction with the film.

In the United States, the film was given a PG-13 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for "intense sequences of destruction, mayhem and creature violence.

The website's consensus reads: "With just enough human drama to anchor the sweeping spectacle of giant monsters smashing everything in sight, Gareth Edwards' Godzilla satisfyingly restores the franchise's fire-breathing glory.

[239] Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice stated "Godzilla is one of those generic, omnipresent blockbusters that's undone by the very spectacle it strives to dazzle us with: Everything is so gargantuan, so momentous, that nothing has any weight.

"[244] Matt Zoller Seitz awarded the film three and a half stars out of four and observed how "it's less interested in a giant monster's rampage than in what it might feel like to be a tiny human watching it close up, or far away, or on TV.

It is not about Godzilla or the beasts he fights, it's a combination epic horror film and parable of nature in revolt, filled with odd ellipses and surprising but appropriate storytelling choices, such as an early monster duel that plays out mainly on CNN.

He accuses the film of "whitewashing" the source material to "negate the monster's politics for American consumption" and reconstructs images of real life disasters - such as Fukushima, the Indian Ocean tsunami, Katrina, 9/11 - solely for the purpose of technical prowess instead of relevant commentary.