Monarch

Monarch is a multinational secret scientific organization created by Legendary Pictures that first appeared in the 2014 Godzilla film, Godzilla.

History

Godzilla

Monarch was founded in 1954, following the USS Nautilus' discovery of Godzilla. Working with the United States military, it participated in the hydrogen bomb attack against the monster in Bikini Atoll the same year and subsequent coverup. Since Godzilla's death could not be confirmed, the organization spent the following decades searching for him and studying the data it had already collected

In 1999, Ishiro Serizawa and his assistant Vivienne Graham were sent by Monarch to the Philippines to investigate the cave-in of a mine. There, they discovered the skeleton of another member of Godzilla's species that died long ago and two parasitic spores, one of which had hatched. The creature that hatched from the spore arrived at the nuclear power plant in Janjira, where it attached itself to the reactor to feed. Monarch quickly quarantined the city of Janjira in order to study the creature, codenamed M.U.T.O.. In 2014, the M.U.T.O. burst free from its cocoon and destroyed Monarch's facilities and flew away. Serizawa and Graham then assisted the U.S. military in tracking and studying the M.U.T.O. and Godzilla once he emerged to hunt it.

Kong: Skull Island

William Randa, working as a covert agent of Monarch, was responsible for organizing the 1973 expedition to Skull Island. Other employees of the organization who accompanied him were biologist Lin San and seismologist Houston Brooks.

Notable Members

• Ishiro Serizawa
• Vivienne Graham
• Ishiro Serizawa's father
• Shaw
• General Douglas MacArthur
• Doctor Zamalek
• William Randa
• Lin San
• Houston Brooks

Appearances

• Godzilla (2014)
• Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Comics

Godzilla: Awakening

Monarch was formed in secrecy in 1946 as a joint coalition between several governments in order to hunt and study massive unidentified terrestrial organisms. The first such creature Monarch studied was Shinomura, a deadly hive-minded radioactive creature composed of many smaller composite lifeforms. One of Monarch's operatives, Serizawa, also was intrigued by eyewitness accounts of a "giant lizard that walked like a man" that seemed to be chasing Shinomura throughout the islands. Serizawa called this creature "Gojira," after Pacific Island legends describing him. In 1954, Monarch cooperated with the United States military to lure Godzilla and Shinomura to Bikini Atoll, where both were thought to be killed by the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb "test." Decades later, in 1981, Serizawa told his son Ishiro about his experiences and belief that Godzilla was still alive somewhere. After Ishiro's father died, he was approached by Shaw, a representative of Monarch, who offered him the opportunity to join and continue his father's work. Ishiro Serizawa readily agreed and became part of Monarch.

Gallery

Main article: Monarch/Gallery.

Trivia

• According to Godzilla: Awakening, Monarch was the first mixed Japanese-American government unit created since World War II.
• Godzilla: Awakening and Godzilla present contradictory histories of Monarch, including the year it was founded.
• In Godzilla: Awakening, General Douglas MacArthur briefs the founding members of Monarch in 1946 and gives the order to target Godzilla and Shinomura with a hydrogen bomb in 1954. In real life, MacArthur was relieved of his command by President Harry S. Truman in 1951. This suggests that MacArthur was either never fired in the world of the comic or retained in secret to oversee Monarch.
• References to Monarch in the script of Kong: Skull Island, establishing a previously-unannounced connection to Godzilla, played a major role in the film's move from Universal to Warner Brothers.

References

This is a list of references for Monarch. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: ^[1]