IN Steven Spielberg’s box-office behemoth Jurassic Park, geneticists arrogantly believe they can tame Mother Nature with cutting-edge science. And Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster provides the guiding light for director Gareth Edwards’s bombastic resurrection of cinema’s iconic reptile.

Edwards’s film has the titular 355-feet tall creature boasting familiar dorsal fins, lumbering gait and fiery radioactive breath coming to life when a mine in the Philippine jungle collapses, exposing the remains of two seemingly fossilised and highly-radioactive creatures. One of the monsters hatches and runs amok and despite the best efforts of Dr Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and his colleague Dr Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins), its mate also escapes confinement.

US Navy Admiral William Stenz (David Strathairn) co-ordinates the response and sends his men into battle including Lieutenant Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor- Johnson), whose parents (Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche) worked at the Janjira nuclear plant, where one creature began its rampage. Godzilla is a technically accomplished hunk of large-scale monster-mashing. You can see every cent of the rumoured $160m budget and the director makes good use of the 3D format by reflecting carnage in mirrors and glass. Taylor-Johnson is a bland all- American hero and heavyweights Cranston and Binoche don’t have sufficient screen time to deliver the wallop we crave.

Ken Watanabe – or Obi-Wan Watanabe as he should be renamed – is reduced to philosophising about our failings (“The arrogance of man is thinking nature is in our control, and not the other way round”) and sounding the bell on a final round showdown between Godzilla and his adversaries. “Let them fight,” he growls. And fight they do, reducing the Pacific coast to rubble.