If we wind back to January 2024, you might remember that the Season 1 finale of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters teased the imminent arrival of Kong and exciting adventures set in his Skull Island domain.
By the time it reached the end of its ten-episode run, the Apple TV+ show’s sophomore season kind of delivered on those promises. But you had to sit through a frankly unreasonable amount of screentime dedicated to people standing around in control rooms, arguing about the ethics of bigamy, and explaining the mechanics of time travel before you could enjoy the overdue creature-feature smackdown.
The finale did set the stage for a potentially breezier third season, however, with the main cast members finally reuniting (after a dizzying number of betrayals and cross-purposed plans) and getting cozy in a new basement office. From which they are primed for some fun Mulder and Scully-ing in the future!
There are a couple of absentees here, though. Most notably, Kentaro Randa (Ren Watabe) and Isabel Simmons (Amber Midthunder), who are still fully committed to their harebrained scheme of opening a portal to Axis Mundi so that they can exploit its unique temporal properties. Or something like that. It’s not entirely clear.
Anyway, the last ten minutes of the episode see Kurt Russell’s Colonel Leland Lafayette Shaw III hot on the trail of Kentaro and Isabel, presumably intent on putting a stop to this nonsense. His search leads him to an unspecified rainforest in Southeast Asia, where he meets up with some old acquaintances who (for a price) are willing to point him in the right direction of his quarry.
Yet these guides will only take him so far into the jungle and refuse to cross a seemingly arbitrary border. When Shaw asks what has the men spooked, one of them reveals that his arms are covered in severe burns and that something lurking deeper in the trees is responsible. Something that is very much alive.
With his companions too afraid to continue, Lee presses on alone and eventually lays eyes on this pyromaniac scourge that has everybody so worked up. Nesting atop an active volcano, he clocks the unmistakable silhouette of ancient Godzilla foe Rodan and vows: “I’ll see you soon.” Cut to credits!
If you’re a kaiju aficionado, it’s a very tantalizing set-up for what the third season of Monarch could have in store (that is, assuming Rodan gets more focus in this teased arc than Kong did in his).
To get you up to speed, we’ve done a thorough deep dive on the character’s cinematic lineage, covering everything from his origins in the Japanese Toho films, right through to his previous appearance in the Legendary MonsterVerse. In short, here is the rundown on Rodan.
Rodan: An OG Titan
In his coffee table book, Godzilla: The Official Guide to the King of the Monsters, Graham Skipper writes: “Decades before Marvel would concoct [their] cinematic universe, Toho was making their own MCU. A Monster Cinematic Universe.”
The Japanese studio was certainly ahead of the curve when it came to doing synergistic crossovers on the big screen, beating MCU’s Kevin Feige and co. to the punch by over 60 years. The gliding reptile Varan, the horned quadruped Baragon, and the benevolent lepidoptera Mothra (alongside her diminutive fairy emissaries) all had standalone films to begin with, but it wasn’t long before they were alternately forging alliances and/or kicking the crap out of each other in supersized mashups like Destroy All Monsters.
If we regard the latter flick as the Avengers: Endgame of Toho’s MCU, then 1954’s Godzilla would have to be its Iron Man. After all, much like Shellhead’s Hollywood debut, this Ishirō Honda classic established a winning formula for everything that followed, set up the most enduring character in its respective universe, and is still considered one of the best entries in the storied saga from which it hails.
Yet while he isn’t the progenitor of this kaiju dynasty, we mustn’t forget the vital part that Rodan also played in getting the shared universe off the ground. Pun not intended! Although Anguirus may have been the King of the Monsters’ first adversary in his own weight class (see 1955’s Godzilla Raids Again), Rodan was the first to actually head up a feature film.
Then the poor guy never got another starring role for the rest of his city-levelling career! Which kind of makes him the Incredible Hulk of this tortured MCU analogy if you think about it.
Rodan’s Big Break with His Solo Feature Debut (1956)
Anyway, what’s important is that you can single out 1956’s Rodan as the exact moment that the Godzilla series went from being a bunch of self-contained movies to a cross-fertilising mega-franchise. One with a continuity that persists beyond just those instalments in which Big G himself appears.
In terms of chronology, it’s the first non-Godzilla outing to be made part of the universe’s canon (even if that was only formalised in retrospect, when our favourite pteranodon gate-crashed Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster). Not to mention, it’s also the first one to be shot in color! So, it has real historical significance for fans.
The film’s story is maybe a little less pioneering, though. In fact, there’s a great deal of overlap between it and the original Gojira, with the biggest difference being that man’s ultimate sin against nature is not pinpointed as the dropping of the atom bomb here, but rather as an avaricious depletion of our planet’s resources.
The inciting incident occurs when a mining company — eager to strip every last ounce of ore they can from the Japanese mainland — digs too deep and inadvertently disturbs a hive of prehistoric bugs. Displeased by their rude awakening, these rhino-sized aphids, known as “Meganulons”, soon proceed to run amok in the neighbouring community, picking off blue-collar workers and cops alike.
To cut a long story short (this Meganulon subplot accounts for roughly half the film’s runtime), local authorities manage to drive the insects back into the caverns from whence they came. And it’s here that they discover an even worse danger that’s been slumbering beneath their feet this entire time.
You see, it transpires that the bugs were really just a food source for something much, much larger. Something that has been lying dormant under the Earth’s crust for millennia and is ready to unleash itself upon the modern world.
Our ensuing first look at Rodan illustrates the titular titan’s prodigious scale by showing it pecking away at creatures that, up until now, had been the primary threat of the movie; swallowing the colossal Meganulons whole as if they’re nought but bird feed. It’s a brilliant introduction to the kaiju and a terrifying “out of the frying pan, into the fire” crisis for our heroes. And the thing is, Rodan’s not even fully grown yet!
Once matured, the winged beast then heads to the surface to wreak havoc. Acting almost as a karmic force, Rodan repays humankind tenfold for all the damage we’ve inflicted on Mother Earth by laying waste to our greatest metropolises, making short work of our militaries, and reclaiming the skies from invasive fighter planes. It’s a glorious final act that has some of the best miniature work in the Toho library, with spectacle that feels remarkably tactile and convincing for the period.
Most of the devastation comes courtesy of the “Fire Demon’s” wind gust ability. This signature move sees it vigorously flapping its 270-meter wingspan (a palaeontologist in the movie hypothesises that the otherwise ordinary pteranodon may have reached such an unusual size due to radiation exposure) in order to create gales that flip tanks, derail trains, uproot buildings, and even topple skyscrapers. In addition to this, it can also fly at supersonic speeds, sending out concussive shockwaves in the process that obliterate structures and toss people around like ragdolls.
When a second Rodan emerges out of the blue and — together with its mate — reduces the city of Fukuoka to rubble, the Japanese authorities decide that enough is enough. Taking drastic action, they fire everything they’ve got at the base of a nearby volcano, in which the two monsters have nested. The hope is that this excessive bombardment will bury the abominations alive, but there are also concerns from the scientific community that it might have the unintended effect of triggering an eruption. Still, desperate times call for desperate measures and all that.
Alas, the government’s plan is a success insofar as both Rodans are eventually defeated. Spewing molten rock, clip one of the creature’s wings and bring it crashing to the ground, while the other — unwilling to go on living without its partner — divebombs into the lava stream so that they can welcome death together.
Kaijus Get Unserious in Silly Showa Sequels (1964 -1975)
As you can tell, it’s hardly a triumphant resolution. Sure, the monsters’ reign of terror is brought to an end, yet their demise is rendered tragic, and it comes at the cost of further desecrating the planet. In that respect, it heavily echoes the climax of Godzilla, in which the oxygen destroyer weapon helps humanity to tackle its immediate kaiju problem but extracts a terrible price in exchange: scarring the ocean, killing its creator, and leaving everyone reckoning with the dire consequences.
Generally speaking, Rodan is much closer in spirit to that original Godzilla than it is to the campier adventures that followed in the rest of the Showa era (spanning 1954 to 1975). It’s decidedly sober in tone, there’s a distinct focus on collateral damage, bloody injury detail is shown up close, and there is a surprising number of on-screen fatalities.
This serious portrayal of the character wouldn’t last long, however. Whereas Godzilla had a gradual arc over the years that saw him softening from a traumatic metaphor for nuclear annihilation to a victory-dancing goofball — who shakes hands with friendly robots and performs physics-defying glide kicks — Rodan basically had to make that unlikely transition in the space of a single film.
By the time we next see him in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964), he’s attending comical “monster summits” and participating in what can only be described as kaiju tennis (hitting a boulder back and forth in a protracted rally with Godzilla, all while an exasperated Mothra watches on). Even his visual design has been ameliorated to make him palatable to a younger audience, with him now boasting larger eyes, smoothed out features, and less angular proportions.
To be fair, the Rodan we see in Ghidorah is presumably meant to be an offspring of the original behemoth, and so that could account for the drastic changes in temperament and the more anthropomorphised personality. Still, it’s never made 100% clear if that’s supposed to be the case, or if the first one somehow survived being roasted alive back in ‘56.
Putting aside that question of provenance, this is definitely a more kid-friendly version of Rodan. While not an overt good guy, he is effectively on the side of humanity in Ghidorah, teaming up with Godzilla and Mothra to defend his turf from the eponymous alien. This “ambivalent status” (as described by author Ed Godziszewski) is something that the character would retain for most of his future escapades, as he regularly puts aside his beef with Godzilla to defend the planet from extraterrestrial nemeses.
Such is the case with 1965’s Invasion of Astro-Monster, which sees the holy trinity of Godzilla, Mothra, and Rodan banding together once more for a rematch against the humiliated Ghidorah. Rodan may be further along in his journey to the light side here, but he does at least get to reassume an antagonistic role for a brief stretch of the movie, when the villainous Xiliens use alien mind control to bend all of Earth’s monsters to their will.
Weirdly, that becomes something of a trend for the pteranodon going forward, as he is once again robbed of his agency in the iconic 1968 crossover extravaganza Destroy All Monsters. This time it’s not the Xiliens who are puppeteering him, but rather the amusingly attired Kilaaks. Intent on subjugating mankind, these nefarious spacemen in form-fitting onesies sic Rodan on Moscow, while simultaneously exploiting other kaiju to cause widespread chaos around the globe. Yet when a crew of human astronauts sabotages their base, the aliens lose control of all the earthling creatures who, you guessed it, then proceed to gang up on that pesky outsider King Ghidorah (after a while, it starts to feel like bullying).
Believe it or not, Destroy All Monsters was pitched as the grand finale of Toho’s MCU, which was experiencing diminishing box office returns at the time. Of course, as we now know, there was still some juice left in the tank, and the franchise would continue on for a little while longer.
Nevertheless, the film did mark Rodan’s valedictory appearance in the Showa era, with him last seen chilling out on the Monsterland archipelago, living in harmony with the rest of his kind. Technically, he did have a few guest spots in other Toho projects throughout the 1970s. However, these cameos were all cobbled together from archival footage that the studio liberally recycled in order to trick viewers into thinking they were getting new content (see Terror of Mechagodzilla for an egregious example of this).
Rodan Gets a Fiery Upgrade During the Heisei Era (1993)
It’d be a quarter of a century before Rodan returned to the silver screen in any meaningful capacity.
When the Showa era fizzled out in the mid ‘70s, Godzilla took a bit of a hiatus before undergoing what we’d now dub a “creative reset”. Ushering in the so-called Heisei series, 1984’s Return of Godzilla was an attempt to breathe fresh life into the property after a string of increasingly campy sequels.
Wiping the slate clean, it is positioned as a direct follow-up to the 1954 Gojira that disregards all other films in the continuity and sets us off on a brand-new timeline (similar to what David Gordon Green did with his Halloween trilogy). The ambitions for this reboot were to dial down the outlandish sci-fi elements, restore Godzilla’s prior menace and dignity, and go back to the more serious, politically charged tone of the Ishirō Honda flick that started it all.
To accomplish this, the Hiroshima metaphors were updated to reflect more contemporary anxieties about the Cold War (which was reheating under the Reagan administration). Meanwhile, the God of Destruction was made to be a legitimate threat again, and there was a sense of apocalyptic dread looming large over everything.
Aiming to create as much distance as possible between this edgier material and the cartoonish antics of yesteryear, the Heisei movies initially steered clear of using any of Godzilla’s existing rogue’s gallery. So, instead of wheeling out Gorosaurus, Gigan, or Megalon — all of whom had been turned into jokey mascots by this stage — the filmmakers tried to come up with original, scarier foes whose public image hadn’t yet been tainted by Showa silliness.
The first of these newcomers debuted in the criminally underrated Godzilla vs. Biollante, which saw a plant-human-dinosaur-clone hybrid evolving into progressively stranger forms over the course of 100 minutes of screentime. Unfortunately, audiences at the time didn’t take to this bizarre concept and craved something more familiar, leading to underwhelming reviews and lacklustre box office receipts.
In response, a panicked Toho promptly backpedalled on their decision not to use any of the old staples and capitulated to fans with the crowd-pleasing Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah in 1991 and Godzilla vs. Mothra in 1992. Leaving just one of the big three out of the equation.
Sure enough, Rodan was swiftly corralled out of retirement as well, making an overdue comeback in 1993’s Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II. As was the case for his Toho stablemates, the Heisei era represented an opportunity for the pteranodon to get back to his roots and reassert himself as a force to be reckoned with. Indeed, this incarnation of Rodan is far meaner and has levelled up considerably.
The backstory now is that he’s a relic specimen from prehistoric times that has been mutated by prolonged exposure to Soviet radioactive waste. We’re introduced to this Rodan 2.0 when a scientific expedition intrudes upon his territory and plunders an egg that he believes to be housing one of his kin (in a later revelation, it turns out that it’s actually a Godzilla spawn).
Its fraternal instincts kicking in, the creature challenges anything that comes between it and the egg over the course of the movie, whether that be humans, fellow titans, or massive Gundam robots. You could argue that it bites off more than it can chew here, because Rodan is eventually defeated and seemingly killed off for good by Godzilla.
Yet that’s when it reveals its newest and greatest power. Resurrecting like the phoenix of Greek myth, the flying reptile comes back swinging in the climax, metamorphosing into a never-before-seen “Fire Rodan” phase. Equipped with a nuclear ray and the power to transfer energy into other lifeforms, it’s the toughest version we’ve seen yet, and he even manages to save Big G’s skin in the denouement.
Despite totally kicking ass, Fire Rodan doesn’t quite make it to the end of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, and so, he’s sadly not utilised again for the rest of the Heisei era. But this time, he’d only be out of action for a mere decade.
The Titan’s Millennial Makeover (2004)
Commemorating 50 years of Toho special effects (or SPFX) pictures, 2004’s utterly batshit Godzilla: Final Wars is the cinematic equivalent of watching an overcaffeinated 8-year-old mash their favourite toys together for two hours. Only less coherent and without the nuance.
It’d be easier to break down the principles of quantum superposition than it would be to summarise the demented plot here, but the basic gist is that Final Wars is a standalone ensemble piece that brings together virtually all kaiju in existence. Possibly the most movie you’ll ever see in your life, it contains anything and everything that was considered awesome in the 2000s, often with the feeblest of narrative justifications.
You’ve got a bunch of X-Men wannabe super soldiers, Matrix-aping motorcycle chases, professional wrestler Don Fyre playing a katana-wielding hero ripped straight from a Street Fighter game, a sequence in which baby Godzilla drives a truck, flying drill machines and spaceship battles, a score inexplicably composed by Keith Emerson, and a passive-aggressive dig at Roland Emmerich’s disavowed “Zilla”. Hell, there’s even a Sum 41 needle drop!
As John LeMay writes in The Big Book of Japanese Giant Monster Movies: “The film tries to be too many things at once and, as a result, descends into total madness […] Some scenes literally come out of nowhere, to the extent that first-time viewers likely wondered if the theater reels got mixed up”.
And he’s right! It truly does feel like something plucked from the hyperactive imagination of a kid who’s consumed far too much sugar. Or perhaps an adult under the influence of another white granular stimulant.
Given how much is going on in Final Wars, it’s not surprising that its stacked roster ends up competing for screentime. In fact, some of the kaiju are afforded less than a minute before they’re roundly defeated. Rodan fares a little better than the likes of King Caesar and Manda in this respect, but he still only clocks roughly 65 seconds on camera.
Naturally, he doesn’t accomplish a great deal in that brief window. Under the command of (say it with us now) alien mind control, he gets to terrorise New York in an impressive early-film sequence, and later gets caught in the middle of a match of kaiju soccer. Trust us, there’s no missing context that will make sense of that last part. Other than that, though, he’s very much a background character here.
One thing that is cool about Final Wars is the technology it uses to portray Rodan. He’s primarily a guy in a suit for old time’s sake, but the movie does also give us our first-ever taste of the creature as a digital effect, courtesy of some dynamic flying shots. This flirtation with CGI nicely tees up the character’s next (completely computer-generated) appearance. But we’ll need to flash forward another 15 years to get to that one.
Rodan’s American Invasion (2019 – Present)
Parsing the Toho lore should give you a general impression of the kind of stuff the “Fire Demon” might get up to when he finally spreads his wings and migrates from the big screen to the small screen. Of course, the precedent he set in those Japanese films has only a limited bearing on how the character will be portrayed in Monarch Season 3. That’s because what we’re dealing with, in that streaming series, is a fundamentally different timeline, a fundamentally different continuity, and a fundamentally different version of the airborne kaiju.
Granted, there is bound to be some overlap between the Rodan of yore and the Rodan of the modern day, and it’s reasonable to assume that the Apple showrunners will make a few respectful nods towards his rich history. Nevertheless, for context that’s more directly relevant to the creature’s imminent arrival in Monarch, we’ll need to consider his stint in Legendary’s MonsterVerse instead. Which so far amounts to a supporting role in just one film.
That’s right, the American iteration of Rodan has only appeared in 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters to date, where he had to vie for attention with the other members of the big three and, regrettably, got shortchanged. Indeed, he’s saddled with a meager five minutes of screentime and barely has any impact on the plot.
Yet despite being given the least to work with, he ended up managing to steal the show with what’s commonly agreed to be the movie’s standout sequence. Surfacing from hibernation within an active volcano — like a classical titan — impassively wiping out a city that happens to be caught in his slipstream, and swatting fighter jets out of the sky with casual indifference, he makes one hell of an entrance. You just wish he got more to do after that!
Alas, his involvement in the story could hardly fill a paragraph on Wikipedia. In a nutshell, he’s awoken from slumber by Charles Dance’s eco-terrorist group, becomes Ghidorah’s sidekick for a while, and then pledges himself to Godzilla when his extraterrestrial master is usurped by the rightful King of the Monsters. You don’t even get a sense that he’s been doing much beforehand, as he’s apparently been sleeping in Outpost 56 (the fictional Isla de Mara volcano) for centuries.
Still, Director Michael Dougherty makes sure to imbue Rodan with due awe in the limited screentime he does get. Partial to folklore and legend, as evidenced by his work on Krampus and Trick ‘r Treat, the filmmaker likes to reverently frame the creatures in his movies. In the case of KoTM, he imagines the kaiju not as brainless smashing machines, but as majestic, godlike figures who have a primordial claim to the planet.
That goes double for his interpretation of Rodan, who Dougherty depicts as a true force of nature and a living embodiment of fire, ash, and brimstone. The beast radiates extreme temperatures to the point where Earth’s atmosphere nearly ignites in his presence, and is covered in thick geothermal armour that cannot be penetrated by the weapons of man. In the novelisation, it’s revealed that he also has the ability to trigger eruptions by simply being in close proximity to volcanoes, again, making him feel like some elemental deity.
A fire lord, if you will.
While Dougherty does give Rodan an almost mythological quality, he takes care to ground the kaiju in the real world as well, by taking some inspiration from the animal kingdom. Specifically, he lends him the recognisable characteristics of a bird of prey, with vulture-like talons, the folding wings of a Peregrine falcon, and the predatory instincts of a hawk.
Suffice it to say, it’s a very, very cool incarnation of a monster who, unfortunately, doesn’t get enough time to shine in the movie itself. Honestly, there’s not much else to latch onto in the lead-up to Monarch Season 3. We know his abilities, we know the scale of the destruction that he can visit upon the world, and we know that he looks totally badass. Other than that, MonsterVerse Rodan remains a bit of an enigma at the time of writing.
As we see by his switching allegiance at the end of King of the Monsters (when Godzilla is proven to be the true alpha), he’s not even got much in the way of a titan agenda. Godzilla exists to restore balance to nature, Mothra is an emissary of peace, and Ghidorah seems to enjoy wreaking cataclysmic destruction wherever he goes. Rodan, on the other hand, has a sort of “lawful neutral” morality that sees him literally bowing down to whoever demonstrates themselves to be the heaviest hitter.
Given this flexible alignment and vaguely defined backstory, there’s little telling what Rodan will be up to when he lands in Monarch next season. Although if his Toho track record is anything to go by, there’s a decent chance he’ll either find himself under the thumb of alien overlords or caught up in some confounding kaiju sporting event. We’d love to see what those know-it-all Monarch scientists would make of that!
