Trailer: GODZILLA; destroying $#!t for your entertainment this summer

I think my most anticipated "summer movie" is now GODZILLA, which is surprising given how the last remake of this Japanese pop-icon was Roland Emmerich's poorly-received 1998 effort. (The one that decided to make the eponymous monster resemble a reptilian Bruce Forsyth.) Japanese studio Toho even chose to officially designate the monster in Emmerich's blockbuster as Zilla, not Godzilla. Ow, burned.

It's been 16-years since Emmerich's film about a giant foot trampling things, so the latest Godzilla's in the hands of a little-known English director called Gareth Edwards, who made Monsters six years ago. I didn't like his low-budget debut that much, truth be told, but this looks like a gargantuan improvement...

The first teaser for Godzilla 2014 was evocative and very cool, but this full-length trailer seals the deal. I can't imagine anything beating Godzilla this summer in terms of gob-smacking spectacle. They've really nailed the scope a film about a skyscraper-sized lizard-beast needs, with huge apocalyptic disaster zones depicted on-screen. It makes Cloverfield look like a quaint skirmish.

I'm also relieved there appears to be lots of daylight scenes in the film. Even in today's digital utopia, CGI monsters tend to dominate night-time sequences (going way back to that T-Rex attack in Jurassic Park). Darkness means you can better hide F/X problems and trick the audience a little easier. Last year's Pacific Rim certainly fell foul of this gripe, with most of the robot-monster battles taking place at night and in the rain (as did most of Emmerich's Godzilla, actually).

I'm not sure how important the human characters of a Godzilla movie are going to be, but they've assembled a cool line-up that includes Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston as scientist Joe Brody, Kick-Ass's Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Juliette Binoche (in the Jean Reno role?), Elizabeth Olsen (um, the Olsen twin's other sister), Inception's Ken Watanabe, and Happy-Go-Lucky's Sally Hawkins.

Those actors certainly put 'mid-thirties Ferris Bueller' and 'the bloke who does Mo's voice on The Simpsons' into the shade, doesn't it? I just hope the human characters are given decent material to work with, because a few hours watching Godzilla trash the Land of the Free would get tedious.

It would. No, really.

GODZILLA premieres 16 May in US and UK cinemas.