Needs rewrite to line up with other era pages
The Monsterverse is an American multimedia franchise and a shared cinematic universe between the Godzilla, King Kong, and other monster series owned and created by Toho Co., Ltd. The franchise is produced by Legendary Pictures and co-produced and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures that began in 2014.
The Monsterverse takes place in an alternate Earth timeline inhabited by superspecies, giant monsters of various shapes, sizes, and forms; the largest of these life forms being the kaiju-like Titans that serve as the recurring protagonists of the series. Each of the films center around Monarch, a cryptozoological organization dedicated to studying the creatures, and their various encounters with the beasts.
Timeline
Pre-20th century
Following the Last Interglacial, the Ice Age began. Considerable glaciation occured, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, with ice sheets surging south across much of North America and Eurasia. This period was caused by the Titan Shimo. After thousands of years, Shimo disappeared from the surface and went into the Hollow Earth; with her disappearance, the Ice Age ended, leaving behind much of the modern world's characteristics. The Iwi retained the knowledge of Shimo on hieroglyphics.
King Ghidorah arrived on Earth sometime after the original Titanus Gojira-Titanus Kong conflict. Ancient peoples left very little written records of Ghidorah, as if deliberately trying to erase the alien Titan from memory. The three-headed dragon was responsible for massacres of both humans and Titans. He established himself as a rival to Godzilla, and after a titanic battle in Antarctica, Ghidorah was frozen solid in ice.
In the year 1100 BCE Dagon, a member of Godzilla's species, encountered and fought with MUTO Prime. After a brief fight, Dagon was beaten, and MUTO Prime then implanted two eggs into Dagon's stomach lining before disappearing. Dagon recovered and retreated into the ocean, but the parasitic eggs slowly gestated inside his body and drained him of his nuclear-rich blood, which led to Dagon's death in the Philippines.
The 20th century
Monarch was first founded in the late 1940s to investigate the appearance of MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms). In 1943, the USS Lawton was attacked 320 kilometers west of Pearl Harbor and sunk by the Titan known as the Ion Dragon. Bill Randa was the only survivor of the attack and, ever since, he has devoted his life as a researcher to Monarch, seeking to prove the existence of monsters.
In 1954, Monarch operatives Lee Shaw, Keiko Miura, and Randa brought evidence of Godzilla's active existence to General Puckett of the U.S. military, leading to the latter using an atomic bomb to lure Godzilla to Bikini Atoll, where they attempted to kill him using the Castle Bravo atomic bomb. Godzilla was presumed by the military and Monarch to be killed in the blast, although in actuality, Godzilla survived the blast with no lasting damage done. In 1955, he reappeared on Hateruma Island, where he was spotted by Keiko, Randa, Kosaku Suzuki, and Shaw.
In 1957, Shaw, Randa, and Keiko traveled to an island in southern Chile where they came into contact with a village venerating a mysterious Titan named Co-Cai. After Randa left, the village tried to kill Shaw and Keiko, who managed to escape after taking a photo of the Titan. Afterwards, Keiko and Shaw recognized their feelings for each other but decided to let it go due to Keiko's love for Randa.
In 1959, Shaw, Randa, and Keiko, during a hunt in the Kazakh countryside at an abandoned nuclear power plant, learned that the bedrock beneath the plant was hollow and dug deeper before discovering a nest of Endoswarmers. Keiko attempted to collect genetic material, but the Endoswarmers hatched, and the creatures dragged Keiko away to her apparent death.
In 1962, Shaw led a recon mission to Axis Mundi, codenamed "Operation Hourglass". Monarch activated the gamma radiation simulator to temporarily attract a Titan so that the rift would be stable enough for the recon team to enter. Shaw and his colleagues descended into Axis Mundi through the Vortex, but although they survived the landing, they were attacked and killed by the Ion Dragon, except for Shaw. Believing Shaw was dead, Randa became determined to both keep Monarch active and raise the son of his wife, Keiko. That same year, Bill discovered the relationship his wife and his friend had through a letter. After a while, he sent Hiroshi to live with his grandmother and became a cold man.
In 1973, just after the Vietnam War, Monarch headed an expedition to the mysterious Skull Island, an uncharted landmass inhabited by many large creatures that had drastically evolved outside of mankind's influence. Among the creatures living there was Kong, a large humanoid ape. Most of the Monarch team perished during the expedition, including Randa, and the remaining survivors assisted Kong in warding off several attacks by the Skullcrawlers, a species of reptilian super-predators and Kong's primary adversaries in maintaining the island's natural order.
After spending one week in Axis Mundi, the Ion Dragon went back to the surface, unknowingly bringing Lee Shaw with him. Shaw found himself in 1982, where he was discovered by Monarch agents. After meeting with an adult Hiroshi Randa, he realized he had been transported 20 years into the future, and that during his absence, his last friend, Bill Randa, had died nearly 10 years before his return. Shaw asked Hiroshi to carry on his family legacy, but a reluctant Hiroshi informed Shaw that he would instead be placed in permanent retirement under Monarch's supervision.
In 1993, a crew led by the Japanese man Hiro and his friend, Cap, tried traveling to Skull Island, before having their ship destroyed by the Kraken, leaving the group stranded on the island. At the same time, another team led by Irene travelled to the island to retrieve a girl named Annie that lived on a nearby island; this ended up with both teams being on Skull Island. In the meantime, Kong battled the Kraken and killed it. Sometimes later, Yuggoth emerged and started corrupting the Island's Creatures to serve him before engaging Kong in battle.
In 1995, Aaron Brooks, the son of two survivors of the Skull Island expedition, led a team of five on a secret mission to the island to see whether or not Kong was still alive and keeping control over the creatures there. Once the team was stranded, they encountered new MUTOs including the Death Jackals, the Sirenjaw, and the Swamp Locust. Led by members of the Iwi, the team learned about Kong's origins and how he became the last of his kind. After one year, Aaron met Kong and became the mission's sole survivor. He sent his recordings about the mission out to sea in a Monarch Kevlar bag.
In 1999, Dagon's skeleton was discovered following a mine collapse in the Philippines, along with the remains of the eggs laid inside his body. Ishiro Serizawa and Vivienne Graham were present, observing the creature's massive ribs and a hole blasted through the mountainside, leaving a trail of destruction that led to the Pacific Ocean.
The 21st century
Aaron's Kevlar bag was found in 2012 and obtained by his father, who learned of his son's fate.
Godzilla resurfaced in 2014 after Monarch unwittingly awakened a pair of parasitic insectoid Jinshin-Mushis. He pursued the creatures to San Francisco, where he slew them while military forces obliterated a nest where the MUTOs had been breeding. The incident exposed the existence of giant monsters to the world, and Godzilla returned to the ocean. A few months later, Godzilla returned and defeated the Prime stage Jinshin-Mushi before heading back out to sea with his dorsal plates broken. At the same time, Hiroshi Randa decided to search for potential entrances to the Hollow Earth. He abandoned his two families and set off on a worldwide expedition. After disappearing in Alaska, he was presumed dead, but his children, Cate Randa and Kentaro Randa, accompanied by an old Lee Shaw, found signs of life from their father. But after several days of searching, Shaw, Cate, and May Olowe-Hewitt found themselves in Kazakhstan, and fell into the same void where Keiko Randa had fallen decades before, and ended up in Axis Mundi.
By 2017, Apex Cybernetics had established a research station on Skull Island. Meanwhile, in Axis Mundi, Shaw, Cate, May, and Keiko, who was still alive, lured Godzilla, who fought the Ion Dragon to be able to return to the surface. The Plan worked, but Shaw was left behind. The day after returning to the surface, the trio reunited with Hiroshi and Kentaro, who had collaborated with APEX to bring them back, but Kong appeared and destroyed the base. The survivors were taken to Monarch Outpost 18, but Cate returned to the island and sent the pod used to return from Axis Mundi to retrieve Shaw. However, she inadvertently awakened Co-Cai, known to Monarch and Apex as Titan X.
In the days that followed, Co-Cai wandered on her migratory route through the Pacific until she returned to Santa Soledad, where, after a meeting with Cate, Apex tried to control her in vain, deviating her trajectory and killing Hiroshi. Cate discovered at that time with her grandmother Keiko that she had a connection with Titan X and discovered that Apex's attempt to control her had diverted her from her usual path. Co-Cai then went to Australia, where she laid an egg but was confronted by Godzilla, called by Shaw, allowing a team led by Isabel Simmons to steal her egg and bring her to Skull Island.
For the next few years, Monarch began making more proactive attempts to seek out other MUTOs to prevent another catastrophe like the one in San Francisco from happening again. In their efforts, the organization discovered the Titans, a pack of monsters comprising of Godzilla, Kong, Mothra, Rodan, Ghidorah, Behemoth, Methuselah, Mokele-Mbembe, Scylla, Abaddon, Bunyip, Baphomet, Leviathan, Na Kika, Tiamat, Sekhmet, Yamata No Orochi, Typhon, Quetzalcoatl, Amhuluk, and Camazotz.
Five years after the battle in San Francisco, a cadre of eco-terrorists led by the anarchist Alan Jonah unleashed Mothra, Ghidorah, and Rodan with the ORCA, the bioacoustics invention of Dr. Emma Russell, to control them and create worldwide terror. Ghidorah, who was considered a rival Alpha to Godzilla due to his immense strength and power, triggered the awakening of the other Titans around the world, threatening unfathomable levels of destruction and the possible extinction of mankind. To stop this, Emma's daughter, Madison, used the ORCA to lure Ghidorah into a fight with Godzilla in Boston, and in the same time stopped the Titans from attacking. With help from Mothra, who sacrificed herself, and Monarch, Godzilla destroyed Ghidorah and subsequently became the Alpha to the other Titans.
Two years later, as the world recovered from the apocalyptic catastrophe, Monarch once again returned to Skull Island, where they were attacked by the Spirit Tiger, the Death Jackals and the Mother Longlegs. Along the way Kong, who still roamed around Skull Island, discovered cave paintings behind some trees. Suddenly, Camazotz and his minions attacked Kong and Monarch out of nowhere; that is, until Kong defeated Camazotz with one final blow, sending the Giant Bat back to the Hollow Earth, leaving after Ghidorah's storm took over Skull Island.
At the same time, now consolidated as the true Alpha Titan since his victory over Ghidorah, Godzilla devoteed his time to preserving the natural balance between humans and Titans. He prevented Scylla from feeding on a nuclear missile and saved Behemoth and Na kika from Amhuluk and Titan traffickers. After reclaiming an old lair, which had been taken over in the past by a member of Kong's species and then by Tiamat, Godzilla decided to rest and sent most of the Titans back into hibernation.
Again at the same time, Tiamat discovered an underwater cave in Kvitøya in the Arctic Ocean from which a pink substance emanated. As she approached, she was attacked by the starfish-like monster Abzu. After finishing it off, she entered the cave to rest amid the pink substance, where she began to evolve. She also had a daughter named Lahamu.
Three years later, Godzilla suddenly began to act aggressively towards humans, seemingly without provocation, and attacked a facility in Pensacola developed by Apex Cybernetics. Madison Russell, having always defended Godzilla since he saved her life in 2019, was the only one to come to his defense, and went on a mission to find out what was wrong with her friend, Josh Valentine, and podcaster Bernie Hayes. Meanwhile, agents from Apex hired a Monarch sect led by operatives Nathan Lind and Ilene Andrews to seek out a radiation-based energy source in the Hollow Earth, an ecosystem located beneath Earth's surface and the alleged birthplace of the Titans. With help from Andrews' adopted daughter, Jia, who could communicate with Kong via sign language, they extracted Kong from Skull Island to have him lead them there. Once they arrived in the Hollow Earth, Apex revealed its true intentions: to use the power source in conjunction with DNA from one of Ghidorah's skulls to power Mechagodzilla, a powerful automaton designed to exterminate the Titans and ensure human dominance which was the cause of Godzilla's sudden hostility. Mechagodzilla became self-aware and hostile as a result of Ghidorah's implemented DNA, killing the CEO of Apex, Walter Simmons, and going on a rampage through Hong Kong. Godzilla and Kong, after concluding their own feud with each other, worked together to defeat the robot, all the while being helped from a distance by Madison, Josh and Bernie. After that, Godzilla returned to the sea, while Kong returned to the Hollow Earth to make it his new home.
However, not long after the events in Hong Kong Alan Jonah, who had survived, had his team, now known as the Hyenas, abduct Lahamu, Tiamat's progeny, and used a new ORCA-like device to lure Abaddon and Kong in a city on the coast of the U.S. with the intent of sampling their DNA, though they seemingly left the town not long after being summoned there. Tiamat, who by now had evolved, also came to save her daughter and returned with her to the ocean, while Jonah escaped again.
Three years later, Raymond Martin, a man who swore revenge on the Titans after losing his family in the San Francisco incident, built his own mecha and began hunting the Hollow Earth's fauna, capturing live speciments to test his robotic Titan and using a decoy that awakened Scylla, sending the latter into a feeding spree as she attacked nuclear power plants across the world. While Godzilla soon got busy tracking Scylla across the globe, Martin confronted Kong with his mecha, only for the ape to defeat him and allow young cubs from a slain Spineprowler to end the hunter's life.
Shortly afterwards, while Kong began developing a tooth infection after a hunting session and feeling hopelessness after failing in yet another attempt at finding another of his kind in the Hollow Earth, Godzilla's pursuit of Scylla led them both to Rome, where the former promptly dispatched the arachnid-like Titan and killed her before resting inside the Colosseum. After a crevice opened up, Monarch's Hollow Earth outpost was destroyed, prompting the organization to organize an expedition in order to investigate after treating Kong's tooth infection, with the latter soon finding another unexplored layer of the Hollow Earth and a group of apes, including a youngster named Suko that attacked him. Kong later demanded the little ape guide him to where they came from, gradually bonding after a fight against a serpentine creature, with their journey leading them to a place where a population of apes still lived, albeit in fear as their ruler enforced his power through tyranny, much to Kong's anger. On the surface, Godzilla awakened, became nervous, and began to prepare himself after sensing mysterious distress signals, absorbing nuclear energy in a French power plant before heading north, where he fought and killed Tiamat before taking her lair and starting to absorb the pink substance.
As Monarch investigated, they found an Iwi city called Malenka, which happened to have sent distress signals to Godzilla and discovered that the war between Godzilla and Kong's respective species was caused by the Skar King's ambition to conquer the surface world. After fighting the Skar King and getting his arm frost-bitten from a brief confrontation with the Ice Titan Shimo that his older opponent had enslaved, Kong got a gauntlet built from the remains of Mechagodzilla and headed back to the surface in hopes of getting Godzilla's help. Arriving in Egypt, the ape called out to the newly-evolved Titan King, who angrily rushed to his location, misinterpreting his call for help as a breach of their truce and nearly killing Kong until a revived Mothra intervened and finally managed to convince the King of the Monsters to cooperate with Kong.
Together, they arrived just in time to halt the Skar King and Shimo's progress, the ensuing fight allowing Kong to regain his axe until all four Titans fell through a portal that led them to Rio de Janeiro. Not long after the Skar King forced Shimo to cause a new Ice Age, Godzilla and Kong intervened once again, resulting in a somewhat evenly-matched fight until Suko emerged with Kong's axe and shattered the crystal shard, freeing Shimo from the Skar King's control and allowing her to gain revenge on the humiliated tyrant, who died at the hands of Kong. In the wake of the battle, Godzilla undid the climatic catastrophe the Ice Titan had unwillingly caused and returned to Rome in order to rest, while Kong returned with Shimo and Suko to the Hollow Earth, granting the ape tribe its freedom.
Sometime after the battle in Rio de Janeiro, Tiamat's remains were recovered by Monarch, who placed the Titan's head in Monarch outpost 237 in the Hollow Earth, inside a giant tube filled with liquid.
Films
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TV series
Video games
Printed media
Movie tie-in novelizations
Comics and graphic novels
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Art books
Other media
Monsters introduced
Films
Godzilla
Kong: Skull Island
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Godzilla vs. Kong
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
TV series
Skull Island
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
Video games
Godzilla x Kong: Titan Chasers
Kong: Survivor Instinct
Printed media
Kong: Skull Island - The Official Movie Novelization
Skull Island: The Birth of Kong
Godzilla: Aftershock
Godzilla: King of the Monsters - The Official Movie Novelization
Godzilla Dominion
Kingdom Kong
Kong and Me
Kong: Skull Island Cinematic Adventure
Godzilla x Kong: The Hunted
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire - The Official Movie Novelization
Monsterverse Declassified
Return to Skull Island
Escape from Skull Island
Scrapped and non-canon content
Godzilla
Godzilla: Awakening
Godzilla vs. Kong
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Gallery
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Trivia
General
- The Monsterverse is the first series of live action Godzilla films since the Heisei era in which all of the films take place in a single related continuity.
- It is also the third series to encompass a single continuity, when counting the TriStar series and its spin-offs.
- This is the first Godzilla franchise to depict Godzilla and other giant creatures as naturally evolved superspecies adapted to feed on radiation that are part of Earth's ecosystem and have existed since ancient times instead of beings that are the result of mutation due to radiation exposure or other forms of scientific misconducts and accidents.
- All of the films in the Monsterverse are set to be distributed by Warner Bros. (except in Japan), despite Legendary's current distribution partner being Universal Pictures. This is because Toho's deal with Legendary to grant them the Godzilla license was made exclusively with it and Warner Bros.
- This is the first American-produced Godzilla continuity that features other trademarked Toho monsters other than Godzilla and King Kong themselves, with Mothra, King Ghidorah, and Rodan appearing in Godzilla: King of the Monsters. This is also the first time all four monsters have starred in a film together since the Showa era film Destroy All Monsters.
- Mechagodzilla's existence was hinted at in the credits of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and it makes its debut in Godzilla vs. Kong; thereby, this completes Toho's "Big Five" roster for the Monsterverse.
- The "M"-shaped logo used for the Monsterverse looks nearly identical to the Monarch logo.
- The first two Godzilla films interestingly share the theme of Godzilla rising to face opposing Titans that threaten the planet and assert his dominance, with a fractured family being caught in the middle of the chaos and trying to survive and reunite.
- This is the first time in a long time that new monsters have appeared on-screen since the MUTOs, the Skull Island flora/fauna, the Skullcrawlers, Behemoth, Scylla, Methuselah, and the Warbats.
- Some of the cast in each film (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John C. Reilly, Corey Hawkins, Tom Hiddleston, Vera Farmiga, Anthony Ramos, Rebecca Hall, and Brian Tyree Henry) have also appeared in the "Marvel Cinematic Universe".
- Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell starred in the new Monsterverse series.
- Godzilla and Godzilla: King of the Monsters are the only films in the series not to feature actors who had already appeared in the MCU.
- Akira Takarada, who appeared in several of the Toho Godzilla films, had a cameo in Godzilla that was cut from the film, but the scene surfaced online 10 years later. The Monsterverse ended up being the last series of Godzilla films that Takarada appeared in before his death in 2022.
- Lance Reddick and Dan Stevens had previously starred together and worked with Adam Wingard in The Guest.
Godzilla
- The Monsterverse is the first series in which Godzilla does not deliberately destroy anything in the first film. While Godzilla was portrayed as a protagonist monster in the first film of the Millennium series, Godzilla 2000: Millennium, he was still depicted causing destruction and attacking humans, while the Godzilla in Legendary Pictures' Godzilla is never seen intentionally causing destruction or threatening human characters, though he does cause some destruction as a byproduct of his size and battles.
Kong: Skull Island
- Kong: Skull Island is the first live action film in which Kong is not killed at the end of it, and it is the only live action film in which Kong never leaves his island home.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
- In the audio commentary for King of the Monsters, Michael Dougherty reveals that he and Godzilla director Gareth Edwards are both fans of the 1975 film Jaws, which is why Edwards gave the protagonist family the surname "Brody" after the Brody family of that film, and Dougherty named his film's MacGuffin device after Quint's boat. Ironically, the original 1954 film Godzilla served as an inspiration for Steven Spielberg for Jaws.
Godzilla vs. Kong
- The Monsterverse is the first series to feature a battle between Godzilla and King Kong since the Showa era film King Kong vs. Godzilla.
- Godzilla vs. Kong marks the first film where King Kong faces off against a member of Godzilla's rogues gallery, in this case Mechagodzilla.
References
| Godzilla eras and series | |
|---|---|
| Continuity | |
| Japanese series | Showa era • Heisei era • Millennium series • Reiwa era • World of Godzilla |
| North American series | TriStar series • MonsterVerse |