(Spoiler Alerts Abound) After losing his mother 15 years earlier, a U.S. Army bomb disposal expert (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) travels to Japan to visit his father (Cranston), who supervised a Japanese power plant that was damaged due to mysterious seismic activity. Believing the activity to be caused by something more than an earthquake, the former supervisor explores a quarantined area with his son to see just what it is the military is really hiding—a massive creature with the capability of destroying an entire city. But the creature wasn’t the only one of its kind, and another scientist (Watanabe) believes that the human race may have an unlikely defender in its corner . . .

Films are the fulfillment of a thought experiment. A plot is nothing more than then extension of philosophy to character and action. Using Superman as an example, the storytellers started out with “What if a man could fly?” and moved on to “You’ll believe a man can fly.” So, with the world’s favorite hypothetical lizard, Godzilla, we would expect that a post-Nolan monster movie would present characters rife with pathos and troubling consequences as they try to navigate the devastation of their souls and the destruction that has befallen their beloved city. This is, so we’re told, the “Age of Verisimilitude,” and weren’t we all promised smarter stories? Wasn’t that the unspoken agreement between the viewers who forked over hard-earned cash and the filmmakers who promised to get it right this time in adapting our favorite characters and stories?

Sadly, no. The assumption is that we’re getting a good film because we’re getting a better film. When you compare the late ’90s Godzilla with its 2014 counterpart, this is a fair argument. But that’s a logical fallacy, and you can improve on a concept while still leaving it mediocre. And that’s what we have here: A mediocre improvement that attacks a straw-man argument. Making Godzilla a champion for humanity actually isn’t a bad concept. The notion that biological organisms can have a negative impact (parasitism) versus having a relationship that benefits two parties (mutualism) fits within both nature and narrative. But we’re dealing with a massive reptile, and such a relationship deserves an explanation.

Why is Godzilla so benevolent? Why does he avoid flipping boats and hurting people with the same care as another human being? I am fully willing to buy this, so long as you set it up properly. Maybe if faux-scientist Watanabe actually had some basis onto which he could hinge his hypothesis of “Godzilla will save us,” I would buy that. Is there a lost tablet somewhere, for instance, that tells the epic of Godzilla saving humanity?

But Godzilla isn’t the only one suffering from a lack of purpose in the film. Everyone is just assumed to be doing their part, and for some reason Cranston was the only one intercepting the seismic echolocation activity between Japan and the U.S. How does that work, especially when you have an organization like the mysteriously named MONARCH monitoring such data? Is that all he was capable of contributing?

And what about Johnston? Thank God he’s a bomb-disabler who conveniently was relegated to the-guy-who-discovered-something-was-wrong-before-anyone-else status. Or maybe it wasn’t convenient, considering HE PULLED THE OXYGEN MASK OFF HIS FATHER, WHO WAS LIFE-FLIGHTED.

But I guess I can forgive all of that. I guess I can forgive the at-times boring nature of the film too, so long as we get some really great action that we haven’t seen before. No? We don’t get to see buildings destroyed in unique ways? We only get to see Godzilla and the Mutos for a limited amount of time? What was the point of this film again?

Oh, yeah, to make money.

Originally I told friends that the film was so cheesy and convenient that I thought it was a gas station burrito. But after realizing the film was cheap, had no real meat, and upset me hours later, I think Taco Bell might make the better comparison.

Hey Godzilla, Live Más.