We're still a year and a half out from the release of director Michael Dougherty's sequel to the 2014 American GODZILLA film, but that's not stopping Warner Bros. and Legendary from offering a tease of what the next chapter in their MonsterVerse (which also includes KONG: SKULL ISLAND, on DVD/Blu next Tuesday) will have to offer.
A series of videos have arrived online that show a timeline of Monarch, the monster hunting scientific organization that ties all of these MonsterVerse movies together. The timeline goes all the way back to 1915 and the splitting of the atom. It's the dawn of the atomic age, and this event leads to the awakening of ancient superspecies. Monarch was founded in 1946, and the timeline covers World War II era encounters with Godzilla and the establishing of a Monarch facility in Siberia, as well as the 1973 mission seen in KONG: SKULL ISLAND.
Also on the timeline are hints at the monsters Godzilla will be fighting in GODZILLA 2 (which may or may not be called GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS). We already know that he'll be joined by his famous Toho co-stars King Ghidorah, Rodan, and Mothra in the film, and entries on the timeline set all three of them up.
The video embedded below sets up two of those monsters. First it focuses in on an entry from 1991:
1991 – ISLA DE MONA –
The covert MONARCH team establishes a quarantine zone around the island's dormant volcano, under the guise of 'environmental research'. Over the coming years what began as a small scientific outpost will expand to become a full containment facility around the mouth of the volcano.
That is believed to be the set-up for Rodan, a monster known for emerging from volcanoes. The video then moves down the timeline to a 2016 entry:
2016 – MONSTER ZERO –
When MONARCH discover an extraordinary superspecies sealed beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, Dr. Vivienne Graham leads the effort to build a covert containment and research facility around the dormant creature. Her classified field notes contain a mysterious footnote: "The devil has three heads."
The "Monster Zero" title and the reference to the creature having three heads leaves no doubt that this entry is about King Ghidorah.
It's worth noting that there are several more events in the timeline between 1991 and 2016, and not just things that were covered in GODZILLA '14.
For example, there's the Mothra tease:
2009 – TEMPLE OF THE MOTH –
Mythographic studies of Chinese temples leads MONARCH to the high-altitude jungles of the Unnan Province. Dr. Emma Russell and her team follow a mysterious bio-acoustic signature to a previously undiscovered megalithic temple, within which lies a gigantic cocoon. A quickening heartbeat is detected inside.
A 1952 entry about "the beating wings of a giant creature" stirring up "huge clouds of air-polluting smoke" in London is also intriguing.
According to the timeline, there was another mission to Skull Island in 1995. A member of the expedition sends out a message in a bottle that is discovered in 2012 and reveals "dramatic new information about Kong's origins and his role on the island."
This is very interesting stuff, setting up things that will play into not only the next Godzilla movie but also director Adam Wingard's GODZILLA VS. KONG, which is scheduled for a May 22, 2020 release. But before we get there, we'll have Dougherty's GODZILLA sequel to watch on March 22, 2019.