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I’m always on the lookout for a good monster movie, and Godzilla is one of the most legendary monsters in movie history, right? But he’s still not a sure thing. We all remember the Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich crap-fest from 1998, right? Well, thank goodness Monsters director Gareth Edwards takes the big lizard more seriously than they did.

And thank goodness Edwards knows how to stage action more gracefully than most of the other hack directors out there in Hollywood (cough, Michael Bay, cough). This new Godzilla takes its time to build a little character and suspense, which makes the thrills all the more spectacular when they happen. Does it take a little too long to unleash the monster mayhem? Maybe. But quit your wining and sit your ass down and wait for it, bitches. If you want whizz-bang bullshit, go see Transformers 4 later this summer. Edwards’ approach is more purposeful and methodical, sometimes reminding me of early Spielberg flicks like Jaws or Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Is there a downside? Oh, sure — but not that it dampens the entertainment factor too much. Lead actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass), while easy on the eyes, is kinda dull and lifeless, and I didn’t care much for the cloying wife and child characters. The movie also casts aside its strongest cast members, Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche, too early on. (I’d rather have seen Taylor-Johnson and Cranston’s characters carry the movie together, personally.)

But the upside is this: Godzilla is a good monster and you root for him. That’s actually how he was portrayed in most of the old Japanese films, and it really works here. The humans aren’t sure whether to blow him up or take Ken Watanabe’s character up on a theory that maybe Godzilla is an ancient weapon of nature meant to keep things ‘in balance’. In other words, when other monsters come out of hiding to destroy the world, Godzilla comes up from the depths of the Pacific to kick their asses. This time around he gets to whoop two spidery bad-asses that are trying to mate and lay their babies in San Francisco.

Edwards keeps the human characters at the forefront and the monsters in the (glorious) background. But you do come to feel for Godzilla after the horny creatures double-team him for a while. Kudos to Edwards’ team for an awesome Godzilla design and superior visual effects. And kudos to Edwards for his sure-handed direction. His approach to action and mass destruction is more thoughtful and elegant than we’re used to, and he also throws in a few eerie, poetic moments as well (wait for Taylor-Johnson and a bunch of other grunts to jump out of an airplane).

Godzilla is a good time. I’d really like to see him rip the shit out of some Transformers some day.

With Elizabeth Olsen, David Strathairn, and Sally Hawkins.