In 2016, the Japan Coast Guard investigates an abandoned yacht in Tokyo Bay. The boat is soon destroyed, and the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line is flooded with blood. After a viral video surfaces, Rando Yaguchi believes the incident was caused by a living creature, a view that is later supported as news reports reveal a tail emerging from the ocean. The creature then moves inland, crawling through the Kamata district and the Shinagawa area of Tokyo, leaving a deadly path through a disorganized and chaotic evacuation. It quickly evolves into a bipedal form, but overheats and returns to the sea.
The government officials turn their attention to military strategy and civilian safety; Yaguchi is put in charge of a task force researching the creature. With rising radiation readings along its trail, the team concludes that the entity is energized by nuclear fission. The United States sends a special envoy, Kayoko Ann Patterson, who reveals that Goro Maki, a disgraced anti-nuclear zoologist, studied mutations caused by radioactive contamination and predicted the creature’s appearance. Maki had been dismissed by both American and Japanese scientific circles, and the U.S. later prevented him from publishing his conclusions. The abandoned yacht in Tokyo Bay belonged to Maki, who left his research notes, encoded in a cryptic code, on the boat before disappearing. The creature—named Godzilla after Maki’s research—reappears in its fourth form, twice its original size, making landfall near Kamakura. The Japan Self-Defense Forces mobilize but fail to stop Godzilla as it breaches defenses and presses toward Tokyo. The U.S. intervenes with a massively destructive airstrike plan, triggering evacuations of civilians and high-ranking government personnel. Godzilla is wounded with a bunker-buster warhead but responds with devastating atomic rays from its mouth and dorsal plates, destroying a helicopter carrying the prime minister and several top officials and incinerating large swaths of Tokyo. Depleted of energy, Godzilla retreats into hibernation.
Yaguchi’s team discovers that Godzilla’s plates and blood function as a cooling system, and they theorize that a coagulating agent could freeze the creature. Analyzing tissue samples reveals that Godzilla is an ever-evolving being capable of asexual reproduction. The United Nations notifies Japan that thermonuclear weapons will be used if Godzilla cannot be subdued within a few days, prompting evacuations across multiple prefectures. Reluctant to witness Japan endure another nuclear catastrophe, Patterson leverages her political connections to buy time for Yaguchi’s team, while the interim government struggles to maintain faith in the plan.
The team deciphers Goro Maki’s encoded notes using origami and then secures the means to execute a deep-freeze plan with international support. Just hours before a planned nuclear strike, Japan triggers the deep-freeze protocol. Godzilla is provoked into expending its atomic breath and energy against Predator and Reaper drones. Unmanned trains loaded with explosives race toward Godzilla’s feet, while tankers carrying a coagulating agent are guided to inject into the creature’s mouth. The operation succeeds in freezing Godzilla solid, though at great cost.
In the aftermath, scientists determine that Godzilla’s isotope has a half-life of twenty days, allowing Tokyo to be rebuilt with time. The international community agrees to cancel the nuclear option on the condition that, should Godzilla reawaken, an immediate thermonuclear strike will be carried out. On Godzilla’s tail, humanoid creatures appear, frozen in the process of emerging.
