If you weren’t already excited about the MonsterVerse being crafted by Legendary, then a new video clip might well be the encouragement you need – because it suggests that the studio is planning a whole new kind of marketing campaign to build interest. Shared on the Kong: Skull Island Twitter account and retweeted by Legendary, the snippet establishes a timeline of events as a document from Monarch.
For those who don’t know, Monarch is the secret scientific organization that was established in the 2014 film Godzilla. It was explained as having been formed in 1946 for the purpose of finding and studying Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms – or, MUTOs. The instalment of the MonsterVerse that followed – 2017’s Kong: Skull Island – had Monarch in a more central role, with its scientists joining Landsat and heading to Skull Island in 1973, to find Kong. The next chapter – 2019’s Godzilla: King Of The Monsters – centres Monarch once more, as cryptozoologists face the giant reptile, along with his iconic fellow MUTOs – Rodan, King Ghidorah, and Mothra.
So, with the highly conspiratorial Monarch clearly functioning as the framework for this film franchise as a whole, what better way to market it than with highly conspiratorial ‘leaks’ of ‘classified information’? Indeed, Monarch already has its own Twitter account, in addition to sharing content with the official movie Twitter accounts, and that of Legendary.
What does this ‘leaked’ video reveal, then? Well, it includes a number of highlighted years, spanning from 1943 to 2016. As the camera pans across the document – titled Agency Activity And Assessment: Case And Evidence Compilation And Correlation – it zooms in on just two specific incidents: the 1973 Mission: Skull (as depicted in Kong: Skull Island), and 1991: Isla De Mona.
1991: A covert Monarch team establishes a quarantine zone around a dormant volcano in Isle de Mona. #KongSkullIsland pic.twitter.com/7s2NRMc9My
— Kong: Skull Island (@kongskullisland) July 5, 2017
“A covert Monarch team established a quarantine zone around a dormant volcano in Isle de Mona, 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.”
As the camera moves through the timeline, however, detail of three other incidents can be glimpsed. The 1959 Siberian Mystery, in which aerial photographs of a Siberian location revealed a building bearing the Monarch logo; the 1995 Return To Skull Island, in which Houston Brooks and his son, Aaron return to find out what happened to Kong (which refers to the Legendary comic book, Skull Island: Birth Of Kong); and the 1999 Janjira Meltdown, which featured at the beginning of the 2014 film, Godzilla.
This is where the marketing campaign really comes into its own – establishing canon, with connections between stories and characters, through the overarching influence of Monarch. The question is, after 1973’s Mission: Skull, why the emphasis on Isla De Mona in 1991? Clearly it’s connected to the next instalment – Godzilla: King Of The Monsters – and almost certainly refers to the villainous creature Rodan, which is an irradiated Pteranodon that nests on volcanoes (as established in his debut feature, 1956’s Rodan).
The message is clear: we may have to wait until 2019 for the next instalment of this MonsterVerse, but not only can we enjoy Kong: Skull Island on DVD/Blu-ray in the meantime, but we can also enjoy poring over these marketing hints for plot revelations.
