Shin Godzilla
(2016 film)

One morning, the Japan Coast Guard comes aboard an abandoned yacht called the Glory-Maru in Tokyo Bay. The craft's owner is nowhere to be found, and all that remains on the boat are a few folders, a piece of origami and a pair of shoes. Suddenly, the boat begins to shake as a huge cloud of steam erupts from the bay. A leak opens in the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line, causing a strange red fluid to pour in. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Rando Yaguchi learns of the disaster and discusses it with his colleague, Yusuke Shimura. Shimura informs him that a meeting will be held to discuss the ongoing disaster, and that the Prime Minister will be arriving shortly. When the meeting begins, government officials determine that the cause of the incident in the bay was likely either an earthquake or an underwater volcanic eruption, despite no previous tectonic or volcanic activity being recorded in the area. Yaguchi, after monitoring videos of the incident filmed by eyewitnesses, proposes that some sort of giant creature is behind it. The other officials do not take Yaguchi seriously and dismiss his claims, then call for an all-Cabinet meeting. During the meeting, Cabinet officials discuss measures that will be taken to address the disaster, until they are told to turn on the television and look at the news. After turning on the TV, they witness footage of a colossal tail rising from the bay, confirming Yaguchi's earlier proposal. The Prime Minister immediately arranges a meeting with university biologists to determine what kind of creature the tail belongs to, while Yaguchi takes matters into his own hands and has Shimura call his college friend Hiromi Ogashira, a low-ranking official from the Ministry of the Environment, to provide a more concise analysis of the monster. When the Prime Minister reconvenes with the rest of the government officials, Ogashira explains that the creature appears to have both gills and fin-like legs, meaning it could come on land. Other officials tell the Prime Minister that the creature's legs would collapse under its weight if it came ashore. The Prime Minister decides to hold a press conference to calm the public, then dons a blue emergency uniform and leaves.

Meanwhile, the creature exits the bay and begins swimming up a river into Tokyo, destroying boats and bridges as it swims. At the press conference, the Prime Minister assures the press that there is no risk of the monster coming ashore, only to be informed by an aide that the creature has surfaced. The monster, walking clumsily on its two hind legs, comes ashore in Kamata in the Ota Ward, smashing cars and destroying buildings as it waddles through the street. The Prime Minister reconvenes with the other officials, and is urged to make a decision to allow the Self-Defense Forces to attack the creature. The Prime Minister states that such an action is unprecedented, and he is not keen on mobilizing the country for war. But as the monster continues rampaging through Kamata and approaching Shinagawa, the Prime Minister reluctantly gives the order to mobilize attack helicopters against it. Helicopters are launched from Chiba and fly to Shinagawa to engage the monster. Suddenly, the creature stops moving and falls flat onto the ground. Then, it begins to evolve, sprouting tiny arms and standing upright on its hind legs before emitting a deafening roar. The monster continues walking through Shinagawa, and is confronted by the helicopters. The order is given to fire, and the pilots begin aiming their weapons at the creature. However, they are told to hold their fire at the last second, as civilians are still present in the area. When asked if the helicopters can fire, the Prime Minister orders the operation to be aborted. The monster's dorsal fins begin glowing red and giving off steam, and it roars loudly before dropping back to a horizontal stance and running back into the ocean.

Later, numerous officials including Yaguchi visit the ruins of an area destroyed by the monster. They lament the devastation before one minister and his aides leave to go meet the press. Yaguchi remains behind and prays silently before slowly walking away. At the Prime Minister's residence, Yaguchi assembles a team of low-level bureaucrats and government outcasts to determine a way to combat the monster if it ever comes ashore again. Initially, the team ponders how the creature is able to sustain itself given its huge size, to which Ogashira postulates that it derives its energy from nuclear fission. Following some analysis of the monster's path of destruction, it is discovered that it leaves radiation in its wake, confirming Ogashira's hypothesis. A special envoy from the President of the United States, Japanese-American Kayoco Anne Patterson, arranges a meeting with Yaguchi and offers an arrangement to help both governments. She states that if Yaguchi can provide her with information on a missing biologist named Goro Maki, she has been authorized by her government to give him more information about the creature. Yaguchi's sources eventually uncover information about Maki, a disgraced Japanese professor who was employed by the American Department of Energy after being exiled from Japan. Maki's yacht, the Glory-Maru was found abandoned in Tokyo Bay right before the incident in the Aqua Line, with Maki apparently having committed suicide. Yaguchi presents the information to Kayoco, who in return provides him with a file from Maki's notes about the monster, which he named "Godzilla," meaning "incarnation of God" on Maki's home of Odo Island. Yaguchi brings the new information to his team for them to analyze. They learn that Maki was studying nuclear waste dumped into the Pacific Ocean by the United States about 60 years ago. Godzilla was apparently the result of an ancient sea creature becoming surrounded by this nuclear waste and rapidly adapting to withstand it. The team eventually concludes that the reason Godzilla returned to the ocean was because the nuclear fission in his body produces a tremendous amount of heat, and he needed water to keep his body temperature under control. They then determine that Godzilla must possess a blood cooling system as well, and that theoretically they could force it to perform a reactor scram to stay alive by injecting it with a blood coagulant and freezing it. Yaguchi tells the various team members to prepare an operation to freeze Godzilla, tentatively titled the "Yaguchi Plan."

Godzilla suddenly surfaces at Kamakura, south of Tokyo, now grown nearly twice as large. Godzilla begins to walk onto land and approach Tokyo again. The Prime Minister is urged to mobilize the Self-Defense Forces again, and finally gives the order. Several Type 10 Tanks are lined up next to the Tama River to form a secondary line of defense, while multiple AH-64 Apache helicopters are launched to attack Godzilla first. As Godzilla nears Tokyo, the choppers fly in front of him. The Prime Minister finally gives the order to fire, and the choppers fire their autocannons at Godzilla. The bullets simply bounce off of Godzilla's face, and the monster does not even seem to notice and keeps walking. The choppers fire 30mm chain gun rounds at Godzilla, but they fail to injure him as well. The pilots ask for permission to fire rockets at Godzilla, but the Prime Minister is hesitant. The Minister of Defense, Reiko Hanamori, tells the Prime Minister that he has no choice, and he decides to grant permission. The choppers fire their rockets at Godzilla, and they too fail to faze him. As Godzilla continues to approach the river, the tanks are ordered to open fire on Godzilla and aim for his head and legs. Self-propelled howitzers open fire on Godzilla as well, but they too are unable to halt him. Fighter jets fly overhead and drop bombs onto Godzilla, seemingly causing him to turn around. The JSDF and government believe the bombs are working, and order the planes to drop more bombs and finish Godzilla. The bombs hit Godzilla and create a huge cloud of smoke. Suddenly, a bridge is flung out of the smoke cloud and crushes several tanks. Godzilla walks out of the smoke cloud completely unharmed and continues approaching Tokyo.

As night falls, Godzilla is getting closer and closer to the heart of Tokyo. The Prime Minister is informed that the American military has sent B-2 stealth bombers armed with Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs to attack Godzilla. With the Prime Minister's residence laying in Godzilla's path, he is urged to evacuate along with his highest-ranking Cabinet officials. The Prime Minister is reluctant to evacuate, but Yaguchi tells him that he is too important to risk his life and needs to escape now. Yaguchi tells the other officials that he and the lower-ranking bureaucrats will escape in cars, then leaves. While the Prime Minister and his Cabinet are being loaded into helicopters on the roof, Yaguchi and his colleagues find themselves caught in a huge traffic jam. Realizing that the American bombing strike will take place soon, Yaguchi decides to exit the car and warn the civilians. After Yaguchi exits the car, he hears thundering footsteps and looks over the nearby buildings to see Godzilla walking past. Yaguchi and the civilians run into the subway tunnels, while the B-2 bombers fly overhead and drop their MOP bombs onto Godzilla. Several bombs strike the top of Godzilla's back, blasting off some of his dorsal plates and drawing a large amount of blood. Godzilla roars out in pain and looks down at the ground. His dorsal plates begin to emit a purple glow, which spreads across the rest of his body. Godzilla unhinges his jaw and his lower jaw splits in half, revealing a purple glow coming from his throat. Godzilla begins spewing a black smoke from his mouth onto the streets below, which spreads across all of Tokyo. The black smoke coming from Godzilla's mouth then ignites into a gout of flame, which produces a gigantic fireball that blows up huge sections of the city. The fire condenses even further into a thin purple laser, which Godzilla aims up into the air, causing it to completely destroy one of the bombers. As Kayoco evacuates the city with the American ambassador in a car, she overhears that one of the bombers was destroyed. The ambassador exclaims that it is impossible, while Kayoco simply remarks that Godzilla is truly a god incarnate. The other bombers circle back and prepare to attack Godzilla again, dropping more MOPs onto his back. Godzilla closes his mouth and stops firing his atomic breath, then suddenly unleashes several purple beams from in between his dorsal plates. These beams shoot up into the sky, destroying the bombs and the bombers. Godzilla opens his mouth again and fires his atomic breath, slicing several skyscrapers in half and blowing up the helicopter holding the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. Godzilla allows the beam to turn back into fire, setting the ruins of Tokyo ablaze before it is extinguished altogether. Godzilla continues walking through the city before stopping near a train station, where his body ceases glowing and he seemingly freezes in place.

The next morning, Tokyo is in ruins and the government is in shambles, with the Prime Minister and the next several in line to succeed him all dead. Yaguchi emerges from the subway tunnels and is escorted to a building where some remaining bureaucrats are. After hearing about the death of the Cabinet, Yaguchi loses his temper and screams at the others not to go to pieces now and instead make due with those who have survived. Yaguchi calms down and apologizes, then decides to get his team back together to resume work on the Yaguchi Plan. Meanwhile, the Japanese Parliament convenes and names Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Yusuke Satomi as the interim Prime Minister. Yaguchi meets with the remaining members of his team and expresses his condolences for all who were lost, but expresses the increased importance of their work now. The team immediately resumes working on the Yaguchi Plan and studying Godzilla and potential ways to defeat him. A reconnaissance team in the ruins of Tokyo has discovered one of Godzilla's severed dorsal plates and that it is seemingly regenerating on its own and could potentially become a functioning organism. At this rate, one member of Yaguchi's team suggests that Godzilla could propagate all over the world, or even evolve wings for intercontinental flight. Unfortunately for Yaguchi's team, they are unable to synthesize a coagulant that can affect Godzilla, and are unable to interpret molecular diagrams of Godzilla found with Maki's notes. Yaguchi meets with Kayoco again, and learns from her that the American government, fearing that Godzilla could spread around the world and possibly land on the west coast of the U.S., has decided to launch a nuclear strike against Godzilla while he is dormant in Tokyo. Japan will have two weeks to evacuate Tokyo and the surrounding areas, after which the strike will be delivered, one day before Godzilla is expected to resume activity. Kayoco reveals that her grandmother lived through the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and she is unwilling to see another nuclear bomb dropped on the country of her ancestors. Yaguchi meets with Akasaka, telling him to do something to delay or prevent the nuclear strike. Akasaka says that the United Nations security council has approved the strike and that other nations will assist Japan in rebuilding the city after the strike. Yaguchi tells Akasaka that his team is making progress with their plan to freeze Godzilla, but Akasaka insists that a nuclear strike is the only way to certainly destroy Godzilla.

Luckily, Yaguchi's team has a breakthrough with their work. They discover that when folding the molecular blueprints of Godzilla, they can visualize how his cells metabolize radiation. They determine that Godzilla's cells can metabolize radiation in the presence of water and oxygen. The team concludes that they can inhibit the activity of Godzilla's cellular membranes, allowing the coagulant to take effect. The plan is immediately fast-tracked, while Yaguchi gets approval from Prime Minister Satomi to enact it. Yaguchi meets with the Chief of Staff, Masao Zaizen, and discusses final preparations for the plan. When Zaizen asks what the plan will be formally called, Yaguchi decides on the name Operation Yashiori, after the sake that was used to defeat Yamata no Orochi in Japanese mythology. Meanwhile, Kayoco meets with the American ambassador, who questions her support of Yaguchi's plan. He warns Kayoco that she is putting both the political reputation of her family and her future political career in jeopardy, but she simply responds that Japan is banking on the strategy succeeding. The ambassador shakes Kayoco's hand and wishes her good luck as she leaves to go help Yaguchi with Operation Yashiori. Kayoco meets with Yaguchi and offers him the support of several U.S. drones for the operation. Yaguchi says the drones won't come back in one piece, and Kayoco simply jokes that she will bill the Japanese government later. Yaguchi's colleagues manage to get France to convince the U.N. Security Council to delay the nuclear strike, buying time for Operation Yashiori to take place. With all preparations completed, Yaguchi addresses all of the men and women taking place in Operation Yashiori. He warns them of the dangers involved, but promises them that the future of Japan is in their hands.

Yaguchi and several others stand on top of a skyscraper overlooking Godzilla, and give the order to initiate Operation Yashiori. Trains loaded with explosives are rammed into Godzilla's legs, causing him to awaken. The American drones fly overhead and launch rockets at Godzilla, prompting him to fire his atomic breath. As the drones are destroyed wave by wave, Godzilla's atomic energy wanes. Suddenly, the purple glow runs up to the tip of Godzilla's tail and an atomic beam is fired from its tip. Godzilla fires his atomic breath, back beams and tail beam until his atomic energy is depleted. At that moment, skyscrapers surrounding Godzilla are blown up by explosives, causing them to topple onto him and pin him to the ground. With Godzilla immobilized, several trucks drive up to his head and extend tubes into his mouth. The trucks begin pumping the coagulant into Godzilla's mouth. Godzilla begins to stir and fires an atomic beam from his mouth, obliterating all of the trucks. Godzilla rises back to his feet and begins approaching the train tracks again. Several more unmanned E231 and E233 series trains are sent ramming into Godzilla, snaking up his body and exploding. The explosions knock Godzilla back to the ground, where a second team of trucks arrives and pumps the remainder of the coagulant into his mouth. Godzilla bites down on the tubes and rises back to his feet. His dorsal plates begin glowing purple again, and he emits a deafening roar before he instantly freezes solid. Temperature readings show that Godzilla's core temperature has been reduced to -196 degrees Celsius, making the operation a success. Everyone across Japan breathes a sigh of relief, with Akasaka remarking that Yaguchi had only two hours to spare.

In the aftermath of Operation Yashiori, Yaguchi meets with Kayoco on a rooftop with the frozen Godzilla visible in the distance. Yaguchi states his intention to help rebuild the Japanese government correctly and help his country learn to coexist with Godzilla. Kayoco remarks that Yaguchi will make a good Japanese counterpart for her when she becomes President of the United States one day, to which he replies that she must mean her Japanese puppet. Kayoco mentions that when Godzilla resumes moving, the American government will resume the countdown to the nuclear strike. If anything, Yaguchi has just delayed the inevitable. Yaguchi expresses hope that he will be able to prevent that scenario once again. After Kayoco walks away, Yaguchi looks back at Godzilla, saying that things are still far from settled.

As Godzilla stands frozen in the ruins of Tokyo, several smaller skeletal humanoids with Godzilla's teeth and dorsal plates can be seen emerging from the tip of his tail.

US Release