Mass destruction in first Godzilla trailer

It's harsh... it's gritty... it's got all the hysteria that you might expect to see if an actual massive monster pitched up from nowhere and started tearing up a city like it was made of so much Lego.

The first trailer for Brit director Gareth Edwards' 'Godzilla' has arrived.

And it looks pretty stunning.

[What have we learned from the Godzilla trailer]

A giant leap from the roundly-hated version from Roland Emmerich in 1998, Edwards' take stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson as special ops type Lieutenant Ford, alongside Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Ken Watanabe, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins and David Strathairn.

Produced by Legendary Pictures, it's clearly going for realism over fantasy – in much the same way that one of its other little-known indie pictures 'Man of Steel' did when it went down the route of 'how would people react if this sort of thing actually happened?'.

[Director and cast discuss Godzilla reboot]

Astonishingly, Edwards, who up until now had only directed the applauded indie sci-fi 'Monsters' - and on a budget of $500,000 (£304,000) - has been gifted $160 million (£97.3 million) to make this movie.

But despite the enormous stakes, it feels like he's got a steady hand.

This could be big. Very big...

It's due out on May 16, 2014.