Cate travels to Japan to find some answers about her father and discovers a shocking secret. Meanwhile, Keiko, Lee and Billy team up to uncover a story about the Titans. 

The cold opening begins with grainy film, seemingly shot from helicopters. We’re hovering over mountains islands and then we see King Kong. The place is Skull Island 1973.

This would be from the past as presented in the 2017 “Kong: Skull Island.” The incel for the ages Kong is the last of his species and he is the last of the species. His job is to protect humanity by fighting other Titans.

Bill Randa (John Goodman): Hey Buddy, I don’t know if this will get to you. I hope so. Actually, I don’t because it’ll probably mean I’m dead, which you may not feel too busted up about. Sorry, I got to keep this short. You may never forgive me for what I took from you, and I can’t go back in time and fix all the mistakes that I made. But maybe I can leave something for the future: a legacy. You’ll realize it was all worth it. 

Running through a bamboo forest with a movie camera instead of a gun, he reaches the shore. We soon see that he’s being pursued, not by Kong, but by an eight-legged arachnid. Let’s call it spiderella. At the edge of a cliff, there’s the unfriendly waves of the Pacific Ocean. He no longer has the movie camera in his arms, but he does have a backpack. He throws it into the ocean as Spiderella approaches. Suddenly the “ground” between him and Spiderella moves. It is a giant crab (also an arachnid). Crabilla and Spiderella battle with Bill dodging blows and legs until the awesome arachnids falls into the waves.

We see that the parcel which Bill tossed into the waves says: “Property of Randa W.J. PI #2109062242” and has the double triangle Monarch logo.

Kong: Skull Island 

Two World War II fighter pilots–one from the US and one from Japan, are engaged in a dogfight in the South Pacific when the aerial battle becomes an oversized ape fight. Kong appears and Hank Marlow (Will Brittain) and Gunpei Ikari (Miyavi) ditch their planes and parachute down on to Skull Island.

In 1973, Bill Randa (John Goodman), a senior official in the Monarch agency leads a research expedition to Skull Island with a US Army unit commanded by Lt. Colonel Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson)  and British Special Air Service Captain James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston). Among their crew is photographer Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) and geologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins).

Brooks has a Hollow Earth theory which he means to prove by detonating seismic explosives. This results in Kong attacking. The group separates with Conrad’s team heading to reach the planned extraction point and Packard with Bill searching for Packard’s second-in-command, US Army major and helicopter pilot Jack Chapman (Toby Kebbell).

Conrad’s group meet the island natives, the Iwi, and the older Marlow. Marlow explains that he and Ikari became friends, but Ikari was killed by reptilian predators, Skullcrawlers, Bill gets killed by a Skullcrawler.

Packard is intent on killing Kong, but gets killed by Kong. Kong battles the Skullcrawler and Conrad’s group helps Kong defeat it. Conrad, Weaver and Marlow leave the island. Conrad and Weaver are recruited by Monarch.

Back to “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,”  2013, in the Sea of Japan, Japanese fisherman are bringing aboard a catch in a net that includes Bill Randa’s parcel.

Switching to a large jet, we see Cate (Anna Sawai) on a WTA commercial airplane looking over some documents, most of which is in Japanese, but luckily there are parts in English which tell you the “mansion apartment” (マンションアパート）is a wooden structure with a steel frame and reinforced concrete. It is located at 9-18, 8-chōme, Shinjuki in Tokyo. (2) LDK, DK, K, ワンルーム。It was built in March 1987.

You might think that this is normal until the landing. People must remain seated as people in white hazmat suits blow something over the passengers to decontaminate them. The person sitting next to Cate tells her, “It’s all about giving us the illusion of safety, like spraying us for parasites would help prevent another monster attack.”

Cate flashes back to the past when she’s in the rain reaching her arm out to a soldier who is masked and armed. As the passengers disembark, you can see them walking over Godzilla warming pained in yellow and green on the surface of the airport floor. There are for a Godzilla Evacuation Route. Cate has another Godzilla-related flashback where she’s in a vehicle.

At customs, she’s asked, “What is the purpose of your visit to Japan?”

“My father died recently and I’m settling his affairs,” she tells the woman. “So business, I guess. Family business.” She places her finger on the glass plate and a photo is taken of her. The date is 1 April 2015. She can stay until 3 July 2015 (or 90 days) as a temporary visitor with a US passport.

Cate gets a cab. This is Tokyo 2015, a post Godzilla attack world. As the car goes under an overpass, she notes there is artillery. The cab driver tells her, “The government is pending lots of money: missiles, drones.” He also tells her that “Monster prep is big business now.”

Cate replies, “People always find a way to profit off someone else’s tragedy.”

The cab driver also tells her it is all profit and really no tragedy. “San Francisco was a hoax. They did it with CGI.”

Address is for Hermitage Heights Shinjuku. Her mother calls, scolding her for not calling, even two hours after she arrived. Off her cellphone, Cate turns the key and enters. The genkan has shoes, some of which obviously belong to a woman. Looking through the spacious apartment (particularly by Tokyo standards), she sees photos of her father, Hiroshi Randa (Takehiro Hira) with a woman, Emiko Randa (Qyoko Kudo)  and a boy.  There’s also a photo of her father next two white chrysanthemums. White chrysanthemums symbolize death.

Then she meets the young man, Kentaro Randa (Ren Watanabe)  and the woman, Emiko Randa,  from the photographs as the woman, startled by a stranger appearing in her apartment drops what’s she’s holding. Cate found the lease and the keys for the apartment in her father’s desk, but now she’s found he had another family .

Put that on simmer as the action changes to another country in the past: Kazakhstan 1959. Kazakhstan is a real place, the ninth largest country by land area and the largest landlocked country. Located in Central Asia, it was formerly part of the Soviet republic, bordering Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. It does border the Caspian Sea. The official languages are Kazakh and Russian. It resides in both Europe and Asia (intercontinental). The population is 69% Muslim and about 17% Christian.

In a junky vehicle, we meet the young cryptozoologist Bill Randa (Anders Holm) who is driving, his wife Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto) and their third-wheel, Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell). Then there’s the awkward conversation about radioactivity and his or inability to have them. Bill says, “DOn’t make things awkward and tell us it’s ’cause you never met the right woman.”

Lee replies, “I gotta give it to you guys. You make it look easy: raising a great kids, being able to keep Monarch together. That’s no small feat.” Lee Shaw’s job is to keep Keiko and her hubby Bill alive.

Keiko replies, “What we’ve done, we’ve done together.”

The Geiger counter reads 7,000 milligrams.  They stop near a wooded area that has a chainlink fence and a warning in what I guess is Russian. Putting on masks, they follow the Geiger counter.

A young boy leaps out with a rifle. Keiko speaks Russian and gets him to put his gun down. He tells her the contamination is a hoax, a fairytale, to keep people away. The government burned a hole in the ground to hell.

Back in Tokyo 2015, Cate sits down and talks in English to Kentaro who translates for his mother. She asks Hiroshi, “Aren’t you even curious who he was cheating on first?”

Emiko pleads, “Please help me understand.”

Back in Kazakhstan 1959, the threesome venture into an industrial complex in ruins. The Geiger counter has small spikes which then disappear. They decide to set off charges, near dilapidated buildings. What could go wrong?

There are chambers deep in the bedrock and something inside there. Some of the buildings are compromised and even the ground beneath them cracks.

Back in Tokyo 2015, Cate is walking down the street and briefly speaks to her mother on her cellphone when she loses the connection as a public warning sounds. Kentaro leads her to the Godzilla designated shelter.

“It’s probably just a drill,” Kentaro tells Cate.

Cate reveals that her father wasn’t with her when Godzilla hit San Francisco. Flashing back, she was in a bus on that rainy day. She saw Godzilla pass by as she got out of the school bus’ back door and helped a few others out before the bus fell down into a trench.

Back in Kazakhstan, our trio decide to enter a crumbling industrial structure. Below them they see a strange glow. It’s a new type of MUTO, in an embryonic stage. Bill insists that they go down to research these embryos. Keiko goes down to get samples of genetic material. Lee, the only sensible guy there, tries to stop them.

Back in Tokyo, the drill gets an all clear and everything goes back to the new normal. Kentaro takes Cate down to their father’s office. Kentaro thought his father made software for satellites. We learn that Kentaro is an artist. Cate discovers a safe. She tries Kentaro’s birthday which is July 7. His mother’s is August 17. The code is Kentaro’s birth month, Cate’s day, Kentaro’s mother’s birth month and Cate’s mother’s day.

July 7 should spark something in Japanese people’s minds. That’s Tanabata (七夕), the date of the star-crossed lovers festival. According to legend the Weaver Maid (Orihime 織姫😉 and her beloved Cow Herder (Hikoboshi 彦星).  The two fell in love, but then neglected their duties. As a result, they were separated by the Milky Way (Amanogawa 天の川) and can only meet on one day, the seventh day of the seventh month.

What’s in the safe? The parcel that the old Bill Randa sent into the sea.

Flashing back to San Francisco, we see Cate in the rain  and we now see that the soldiers she was reaching out to have the logo of Monarch.

Kentaro doesn’t know what to do with the parcel and the film in it, but he does know someone who can help them: his old girlfriend, May Olowe-Hewitt (Kiersey Clemons).  Kentaro apparently needed space and then ghosted her. What is she now? Tech support?

Do I feel there’s any chemistry between Clemons’ May and Watabe’s Kentaro? No. May finds that the files are encrypted but that was from 40 years ago. Running the tapes, however, sets off an alarm picked up by Collins in data culling.  Walking through powder blue corridors, she goes to Tim (Joe Tippett) and shows the system alert that was triggered by the Monarch recognition code that caused it to ping Monarch. Collins explains, “They ran a small sample through the decrypt and then immediately took it down when they saw the software worked.”

What Monarch has doesn’t reveal the address (IP address), but just a general area: Tokyo. Collins asks Tim if she should inform Verdugo, but Tim wants to take care of it. “After G-Day, Verdugo said she wanted to see everything.” Tim insists he can handle it. Tim calls someone and asks, “How’s your Japanese.”

In Tokyo, they find Monarch documents, a photo of something like Bigfoot and mysterious maps. Suddenly, we learn that Cate speaks Japanese, something she had hidden from Kentaro. We learn that in San Francisco, Hiroshi wasn’t with Cate.

Now in San Francisco, 2014, G-Day + 5, we see Cate wandering among the ruins. Overhead, a helicopter flies. Cate tries to use her cellphone, but it doesn’t work. Yet she is able to receive a call from Hiroshi and tells him she and her mother are at a camp. She reunites with her father in front of the Red Cross tent. And speaking Japanese, the “secret language” that she and her father use, she updates him on her mother and her. “We’ve got a tent on the other side of the camp.” Hiroshi can’t stay, but he gives Cate passes out of the city. “There’s a bus heading east out of the zone at 10 p.m. tonight.” The bus heads to Reno where “there’s a hotel and a car reserved in your name.” Hiroshi has something he must do and can’t join them. That makes Cate angry, but Hiroshi tells Cate: “You are strong. You’ll be okay.” In English, Hiroshi says he’s sorry and to tell Cate’s mother he loves her.

Back in Tokyo, Cate relates, “About a week after that, we got a call from the state police in Fairbanks, Alaska saying the bush plane he was on disappeared in a storm. They never found the wreckage.”

Kentaro says, “He wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t a monster. He had some reason for doing what he did. The answers have to be here.”

Cate tells Kentaro: “Good luck. I hope you find it, but nothing can justify what he did to my mother and me.”

Back to the files being decrypted, Cate sees a black and white photo that she recognizes as Keiko, her grandmother. Kentaro says, “She died when he [Hiroshi] was little” but Cate wonders, “Why is she in these files?”

From the land of the clueless, May wonders, “What is she standing in?” It’s a footprint.

From there, we go back to Kazakhstan and Keiko lowering herself into the pit with the insectoid eggs. Billy stays near the railing that both Lee and Keiko, on separate ropes, anchor their ropes to. Keiko notes that the translucent eggs show movement inside and “There seems to be multiple types of appendages.” Lee finds that the ground is unstable. And as the ground shakes and cracks, the insectoids break out and Lee and Keiko climb the ropes, but the insectoids, the Endoswarmers, pile up and help each other reach up the rope that Keiko is on. Lee reaches out his arm, but Keiko is swarmed and falls as Lee watches from his rope and Billy watches from the rail.

 

Creatures featured:

Godzilla

Spiderella for me but Gojipedia identifies it as Mother Longlegs. 

Crabilla or, according to Gojipedia, Mantleclas.

Endoswarmers