Godzilla’s MonsterVerse Lair Has a Surprising Callback to the Showa Period
JB Augustine
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The Hollow Earth was revealed as Godzilla’s home in King of the Monsters but it has a greater implication for the MonsterVerse than you first realize.
It’s also the seat of Man’s earliest civilization and hosts wreckage of other long-gone ones that came into contact with the big guy on the wrong day, as anyone who saw the movie knows, though there’s more to it beyond even that.
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A ScreenRant article by Nicholas Raymond goes over it and KOTM director Mike Dougherty explained the history well. Earth’s forgotten people worshipped Gojira – or his species – as a god, seeing he was the protector of humanity and the planet.
As he and Raymond note, the caves and temple of the Hollow Earth are based on Japanese ruins that may or may not be natural.
On the ocean floor, 10,000-year-old “structures” are theorized to be evidence of an undiscovered people.
That the ruins are off Japan is appropriate since they created the property and always had the best relationship with him box office-wise.
Things started out that way between humanity and the Titans in the MonsterVerse too, apparently; but what caused it all to fall apart?
Raymond thinks it was humans going to war and trying to control the monsters getting out of hand. “Humans did try to get along with Titans, but their greed and lust for power ruined their symbiotic relationship with the Titans,” he writes.
And he continues, “The fighting between them could be what caused the city’s eventual destruction, since it has been said that the war created a number of geological catastrophes.”
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He adds Godzilla still calls his hole in the ground home so his memories of the place must be good.
If men warred against beast, specifically the crowned King of them all, that doesn’t make sense.
It could be the war wasn’t total or was really between factions – as when Monarch joined the fight against Ghidorah once they revived their champion.
Godzilla and the ancient race of Hollow Earth dwellers may have faced a Titan backed by another group. Who? This is where it gets interesting and the thinking caps go on.
KOTM is often thought of as a modern take on a Showa-era kaiju fest and the Hollow Earth is perfect for one of Godzilla’s more forgettable contenders from that period.
It also plays right into the setup for a bygone secret civilization beneath the surface unseen for several years – in a reference dangled right in front of G-Fans’ noses we all missed.
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I’m talking about the groovy underground world of Seatopia and its “god,” a tunneling trump card and weapon of mass destruction named Megalon.
Both made their one and only appearance in Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973) – otherwise known as the one with Jet Jaguar.
Seatopians, furious over nuclear testing and encroachment into the depths by those above unleashed Megalon to do damage.
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With an MO like that and history long and deep canonically, it’s easy to see Seatopia acting like the League of Shadows in the MonsterVerse – thinning the herd of humanity with a cleansing flame or catastrophe when they think people are getting too uppity.
They may have done that with the ancient civilizations of Earth because they were weaponizing Titans and tampering with an undisclosed technology.
More to the point, the Seatopians are conceivably still down there in the bowels of the planet biding their time until their next move.
When, or if, they emerge in the MonsterVerse, it could spell doom for the entire unsuspecting world. At the very least we know the door is open for them to do so.
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