Characters / MonsterVerse - Apex Cybernetics

aka: Monster Verse Ren Serizawa

Main Character IndexKaijuGodzilla | King Ghidorah | King Kong | Mechagodzilla | Mothra | MUTO | Rodan | Skull Island Kaiju & Other Creatures
Humans Families (Russell Family) | Monarch (Dr. Ishirō Serizawa) | U.S. Government & Military | Skull Island Expeditions | Eco-Terrorists | Apex Cybernetics

^{Click here to see their pre-rebranding logo (spoilers)}

Appears In: Godzilla vs. Kong | Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

A multinational, wealthy and powerful corporation headed by Walter Simmons, whom are invested in technological advances including the harnessing of psionics. Having been active since at least the aftermath of G-Day, they are hiding a sinister corporate conspiracy concerning their interest in the Titans and Godzilla's 2024 rampage.

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In General

• Adaptational Mundanity: Similarly to the eco-terrorists in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), Apex Cybernetics seem like an adaptation of the Human Aliens of the old Toho movies as actual humans. Their hi-tech resources, their construction of Mechagodzilla, and their efforts to cage and/or control the Kaiju — breeding and enslaving Skullcrawlers as cannon fodder, and trying to turn Ghidorah's undead remains into a part of their anti-Godzilla superweapon similarly to how earlier incarnations of Ghidorah were the mere puppets of human aliens' invasions, even Bernie Hayes and Ren Serizawa's respective musings in the novelization that Apex might use the remaining Titans as their slaves — all bring the Toho human aliens to mind.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: To the Oxygen Destroyer.
• All for Nothing: Not only does their greatest creation turn against them despite the trillions of dollars they put into it and the efforts to charge it up, but it's wrecked by Godzilla and Kong working together, and Word of God states that had Godzilla not been worn out by fighting Kong, he might have ended winning against Mechagodzilla. To add salt to the wound, EMP using titans like the MUTO would have very easily taken down the Mecha. No matter the outcome, this would have crushed their belief that humanity - and more importantly, themselves - could unquestionably surpass the Kaiju.
• Ambition Is Evil: Though they justify their atrocities and attempted atrocities with the ideas that they're returning complete control of the world to mankind and are creating a more secure line of defence against Titan attacks, Walter Simmons' overall behavior, and also the gaping holes in their argument such as Madison points out, betray their true colors. Apex want to upstage the Titans' power just to prove that they can, they want to be hailed and glorified by the world as heroes, and it's also implied they want to overpower the Titans before any other organization can beat them to the prize and steal their glory. Apex don't care one whit for the millions of civilians whom they callously and knowingly put in Godzilla's warpath as part of their Engineered Heroics. It's furthermore implied in the novelization, and explicitly confirmed in the art book, that Apex intend to take over the world for themselves after usurping Godzilla.
• Bad People Abuse Animals:
  • A monster variation. They're breeding Skullcrawlers in captivity and then throwing them at Mechagodzilla as target practice. Using captive Titans in such a way as this is something Monarch would never even consider doing.
  • A straighter case is revealed in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which reveals that their Cybernetic Neural-Interface Unit project was secretly and brutally experimenting on chimpanzees with cybernetics, much to May/Corah's horror.
• Big Bad Wannabe: They wish to be the ones that annihilate Godzilla, Kong, and all other Kaiju to insure humanity becomes the dominant species on Earth, but their own technology backfires as related to Too Dumb to Live, they uplinked King Ghidorah's mind to Mechagodzilla and thus are killed off by their own creation. Maia Simmons and her own army of men on the other hand are swiftly eaten or crushed to death by Kong and Hellhawks.
• Canon Character All Along: They have a sneak appearance in the mid-2010s timeline of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. "Will the Real May Pleast Stand Up" reveals at the end that Applied Experimental Technologies, who featured prominently throughout the episode as a corrupt corporation that have been trying to get Monarch in their pockets since G-Day and that May was a Defector from Decadence to, was in fact a pre-rebranding Apex Cybernetics.
• Connected All Along:
  • A reveal later in the movie — that they have the skull of Ghidorah's leftover severed head from Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which they're using as part of Mechagodzilla's brain — indicates that Apex probably had offscreen interaction with Alan Jonah and his eco-terrorist paramilitary before the movie began. The novelization elaborates, stating that Walter Simmons purchased Ghidorah's remains from an international criminal who contacted him; one who's all but stated to be Jonah (an ironic interaction, given that Jonah and Apex's respective objectives and their respective worldviews on humans and Titans are very diametric).
  • It's revealed later in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters that they played a key role in one of the main characters' backstories when the corporation was still called Applied Experimental Technologies. They're the reason why May Olowe-Hewitt (real name Corah Mateo) abandoned her old life and changed her name, as she used to work for AET until she discovered their cruel experiments and wiped their database. And their executive, Brenda Holland, tries to get May back under their thumb in the present.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: As the chief human antagonists of Godzilla vs. Kong, Apex contrast Alan Jonah's eco-terrorist organization who filled that role in the previous movie. Jonah's group's goals were seeing the Titans reclaim the planet from humanity and restore the human-ravaged natural order, while Apex's goals are killing or enslaving all the Titans in order to prove humanity's technological superiority and make humans "the Apex species" on Earth. Jonah's group were an underground paramilitary terrorist force, whereas Apex are a highly-futuristic corporation who have a legitimate front and a moderate public image which helps shirk off suspicion.
• Corporate Conspiracy: Bernie describes Apex's mysterious Mechagodzilla project as this, and it's rather accurate. They're secretly building Mechagodzilla with Offscreen Villain Dark Matter so they can be the architects of human domination over all the Titans, and when their work provokes Godzilla into a rampage, Apex take advantage of the ensuing public bewilderment to make it seem like Godzilla has turned on mankind and Mechagodzilla is necessary to fight back against the Titans.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: They're looking to build a Humongous Mecha which can enable its human controllers to successfully fight on the same level as the Titans, and instead of selling it to Monarch or even the military for the trillions of dollars that such parties would be willing to pay for such a thing, Apex plan to use their creation in a gigantic and horrifically amoral Engineered Heroics scenario in order to kill Godzilla themselves and then rule the world, because the company is run by a delusional Corrupt Corporate Executive with a desire to usurp Godzilla as the apex lifeform.
• Devil in Plain Sight: When Godzilla attacks Pensacola, he only focuses his destruction on Apex Cybernetics' local facility (something which a national TV report observes), and he causes very few deaths for a Titan of his power before departing. And yet no-one in the world except for Team Godzilla thinks they should actually be subjecting Apex to scrutiny and work out why Godzilla targeted their factory, when the much wilder and less rational assumption that Godzilla has turned evil for no reason is on the table (bear in mind that previous movies made it clear that this Godzilla always has a reason for attacking). Worse yet, the fact it's obvious to anyone with half a brain cell that Godzilla had something against Apex's factory specifically doesn't stop Monarch from partnering up with Apex to try and take Godzilla down, by following a plan that Apex themselves set forth. In the novelization, one of Bernie's podcasts reveals that Apex have a consistent pattern of building their facilities in places already occupied by Monarch with a military presence, and yet no-one finds it suspicious that the corporation would need to do this. Really, humanity has no-one but themselves to blame for how much death and destruction in this movie could have been avoided but wasn't.
• Didn't Think This Through: They're incredibly arrogant, and inconsiderate of their own limitations if not outright blind to them; but according to Jared Krichevsky, Apex's Mecha is likely vulnerable to an EMP. Remember back in Godzilla (2014), when Hokmuto and Femuto's EMPs made military equipment including fighter jets spectacularly fizz out and fall like flies instantaneously? Now remember that one of the Titans Apex want to annihilate or enslave is Barb, a MUTO, plus there's a significant probability that there'll be even more bio-electrical Titans emerging in the future which Mechagodzilla could get pitted against. Yeah. Apex are as good at making snazzy tech as they are at humiliating themselves.
• Double Meaning: The company's name superficially refers to their knack for developing state-of-the-art cybernetics and leading groundbreaking technological advances, but the hidden second meaning is that it also refers to the company leaders' intentions to make humanity the sole unchallenged apex species of the Earth by using cybernetics to conquer the Titans (Alpha Titans in particular) and then rule the world themselves. See Walter Simmons' entry for another example.
• Dystopia Justifies the Means: It's implied in the movie that Apex, led by a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist who has a sociopathic and narcissistic pathology, want to create a world where they have corporate hegemony and they've been hailed as heroes for supposedly ending a city-destroying disaster that they, in actuality, deliberately engineered for this very purpose; where Godzilla has been murdered and the world celebrated; and where all the Titans are either extinct or in chains and where humans consider themselves the master lifeform on Earth (note: even without the first two, this last part isn't nearly as good or benevolent a thing in the MonsterVerse as it might be in most other Kaiju settings). The art book Godzilla vs. Kong: One Will Fall — The Art of the Ultimate Battle Royale explicitly confirms it and provides this quote:
  "Apex's goal in building Mechagodzilla is ostensibly to fight fire with fire, shutting down threats by using the only thing that can go toe to toe with a Titan. In the long term, however, Apex and its CEO Walter Simmons are looking to establish a new era of corporate dominance. 'Mechagodzilla would basically be the largest policeman ever created,' says writer Zach Shields. 'This giant apex predator would be under Apex control, so by proxy it would be either the world's policeman, or a bully.'"
• Engineered Heroics: In the wake of Godzilla's unexplained hostility, Apex claim to the world that they're going to put a permanent stop to him. It's ultimately revealed that Apex are directly and knowingly responsible for provoking Godzilla's attacks in the first place, because Godzilla can sense the part-Ghidorah Mecha they're building as a rival to his dominance whenever its signal activates, and Apex are taking advantage of Godzilla's reactions to turn a confused human race against him and to justify Mechagodzilla's construction as an anti-Godzilla weapon – basically, Apex are making it look like the chicken (an aggressor Godzilla) came before the egg (Mechagodzilla) when it's actually the other way round. What's worse, it's implied in the movie (and all but confirmed in the novelization) that Apex are intentionally ensuring Mechagodzilla's signal draws Godzilla to densely-populated urban areas including Hong Kong^note One of the most densely-populated cities on the planet, with a population numbering eight million so as to maximize the carnage and further make Godzilla look bad. The novelization also confirms that Apex genuinely didn't know until after Godzilla's first attack that the Mecha's signal was going to provoke Godzilla, but Simmons was nevertheless all too happy to exploit it.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Monarch. They're both organizations with futuristic hi-tech, bases and outposts on multiple continents, and an active interest in the Titans and the Hollow Earth. But whereas Monarch are mostly naturalists, are highly reverent of the Titans, care about human lives, and attempt to preserve the peace between man and Titan; Apex are modernist human hubris personified, they're solely committed to overpowering the Titans in the name of humanocentric pride, they don't give a damn how many civilians have to die in the crossfire for their Engineered Heroics, and they actively go looking to start a fight against Godzilla unprovoked. This is somewhat lampshaded as an In-Universe case in supplementary MonsterVerse materials; which state that Apex have been shadowing Monarch everywhere that the latter organization had a presence for years, and the sourcebook for Kong: Skull Island Cinematic Adventure makes Monarch and Apex out to be sister organizations ever since the events of Godzilla (2014).
  • Apex also function in Godzilla vs. Kong as a dark shadow to Kong and his ancestors. Like them, Apex stand out in a world of Titans for being builders that use intelligence, ingenuity and technology to gain an edge, and the movie ultimately proves that those wits alone aren't enough for either of them respectively to win against a god of nature like Godzilla. Kong and Apex both work towards dominating and ruling over the creatures around them (the other beasts of Skull Island for Kong, the Titans generally for Apex), they both ostensibly work towards protecting and defending the humans around them from such threats, and both are opposed to Godzilla for deep-rooted reasons. However, Kong duels and conquers other monsters to maintain the natural balance of his home and in self-defence, he genuinely protects and cares for the humans whom he considers under his charge, and at the end of the day he just wants to be left alone by everyone else including Godzilla; having no interest in fighting the latter except when attacked first, and otherwise being happy to leave him alone — Apex by contrast are hellbent on using rampant technology with unnatural implements to conquer the global Titans and endanger the natural balance purely for their own power and pride rather than leave well enough alone, they have no reservations about hurting and endangering millions among the very human race that they claim to be defending if it benefits them even slightly, and they're actively seeking out and starting a fight with Godzilla first because they seek to usurp his kingship, refusing to acknowledge or respect that Godzilla very recently saved their entire species from certain extinction by Ghidorah. Apex insisting past the point of reason on picking a fight with Godzilla after the latter saved humanity from King Ghidorah gets Apex destroyed by their own hubris, whereas Kong buries the hatchet with Godzilla and lives after the latter helped him to defeat Mechagodzilla.
• Evil, Inc.: Type 2. They're a hi-tech corporation invested in the fields of robotics, neurology and A.I., with facilities on U.S. and Chinese soil, and they're the vessel of a Corporate Conspiracy to build a Titan-killing Mecha (callously and knowingly putting millions of civilians in Godzilla's crossfire in the process) so the company can kill Godzilla and usurp him as the dominant force on Earth. Worse yet, they have the astonishing arrogance and stupidity to think they can use a human-hating Draconic Abomination's undead remains as the brain of their Mecha and just expect it to do what they say without any unexpected side-effects. When Apex's own actions instigate Godzilla's rampage, true to corporate form, Walter Simmons who's masterminding their Evil Plan takes advantage of it to make the public think Godzilla has made a Face–Heel Turn and that Apex will be humanity's savior instead of the ones entirely responsible for the mess in the first place.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: They used King Ghidorah's remains in Mechagodzilla, thinking they could use him as a telepathic controller for the robot. Turns out, Ghidorah's consciousness still exists in his remaining bone and nerve tissue, and the moment Mechagodzilla is powered up with an eldritch power source, whatever's left of Ghidorah's consciousness possesses it and turns on Apex. It's also hinted that whatever remained of Ghidorah's mind/s might've been active the entire time before the Hollow Earth energy source enabled it to turn Mechagodzilla into Ghidorah reincarnated; with the Ghidorah skull's Ghostly Wail when it's found by Team Godzilla in the movie, and with how Mechagodzilla or its parts are twice shown signaling Godzilla when Apex aren't doing anything and the parts are supposed to be inactive (implying that what remained of Ghidorah was deliberately signaling Godzilla to try and resume their clash for dominance).
• Evil Reactionary: Zig-Zagged. They're aggravated that humanity officially can't call themselves the top species on Earth anymore after the Titans' existence is revealed, and they want to re-establish humanity as the supreme force on Earth by killing and usurping the King of the Monsters, not giving a damn about how beneficial Godzilla's reign has been due to him making the other Titans rejuvenate the ecosphere and leave human population centers alone. That having been said, Walter Simmons does love waxing lyrical about going "forward" and about how overpowering the Titans is the next stage in mankind's development, with the novelization revealing Ren Serizawa shares these particular thoughts.
• False Flag Operation: It's revealed that they're secretly conducting one of these. After Godzilla attacks Pensacola seemingly unprovoked and destroys an Apex facility, Simmons takes advantage of the resulting shift in public opinion to declare Godzilla is a threat to humanity rather than a guardian, and that Apex are going to take him down for good. In actuality, Apex are the ones who provoked Godzilla to attack in the first place, and now they're planning to deliberately repeat the incident on a much larger scale by covertly luring an aggravated Godzilla to Hong Kong (putting eight million people in the line of fire), where they intend to fight and kill him using Mechagodzilla. By making it appear to the world that Godzilla has suddenly decided to terrorize humanity, Apex will be able to justify Mechagodzilla's creation and their plan to topple the Alpha Titans (which they started mainly out of obscene ambition married to a sense of pride based on a monstrously-warped take on humanism) as a necessity, with no-one realizing they were actually the ones behind Godzilla's new aggression.
• Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: Simmons and Ren's Muggle Power ultimately comes down to this. For all their delusions that Mechagodzilla is necessary for mankind's survival among the Titans, ultimately they just can't accept the idea that humanity isn't the sole dominant species on Earth; not because of casualties or survival, but because of pride. Unlike the eco-terrorists in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, who were provoked to action partly because of the government's folly, Apex's justifications are ultimately hollow: Titans like Godzilla and Kong are already fulfilling the defensive role that Mechagodzilla was built for, and the world would still be in a better place with humans and Titans at peace if Apex had never acted, but Apex just couldn't leave well enough alone.
• Final Solution: The pre-release early plot summary for the movie indicates Apex wholly intended to exterminate the other Titans around the world after killing Godzilla, like what The Government wanted to do in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (in which case, Apex have had an even bigger Ignored Epiphany response to the human-Titan coexistence in King of the Monsters). In the movie proper, it's unclear what Apex's plans for the other Titans were beyond using the perceived need for a better defence against the creatures as justification for building Mechagodzilla, although Simmons' remark that "there can only be one Alpha" heavily implies he intends to murder Kong after Godzilla just for being an Alpha. In the novelization; Bernie speculated in one of his earlier podcasts that Simmons wanted to control the Titans if possible and summarily wipe them out if he couldn't do that, and Ren himself is unsure whether the Titans will be eradicated outright or "repurposed for human ends" in enslavement.
• Futuristic Pyramid: The above-ground part of their main headquarters in Hong Kong looks like someone took the trope page's image, slightly recolored it and slapped it atop a mountain. Symbolically, this resemblance to an Ancient Egyptian sculpture is quite fitting for a Nebulous Evil Organization whom are characterized by and criticized for the same kind of arrogance that Percy Shelley's Ozymandias criticized the titular, long-gone Ancient Egyptian pharaoh for.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The novelization reveals they provided the military with parts that were used in the Oxygen Destroyer prototype's construction before it was launched in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), making Apex partly responsible for enabling Ghidorah's global takeover of the Titans which caused untold death and destruction on a global scale and almost led to the eradication of all complex life on Earth.
• Hate Sink: In contrast to most of the MonsterVerse's other human antagonists whom are given at least some sympathetic qualities or valid points, Apex are consistently portrayed as a morally-corrupt and despicable organization with entirely self-serving motivations. In Godzilla vs. Kong, they all but deliberately start a needless war against the very Alpha Titan whom saved humanity from King Ghidorah and the MUTOs, and they even more deliberately endanger millions of people in Hong Kong, just so that they can rule humanity and control the Titans for their own petty ambitions and out of chauvinistic pride. In Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, it's revealed that they were barbarically experimenting on primates with cybernetics to develop their psionic uplink technology, much to May Olowe-Hewitt's horror, and fear of the company's wrath is the main reason why May had to run away and change her identity in her backstory.
• The Horseshoe Effect: Their Muggle Power agenda to see humanity returned to the top of the food chain and all the Titans enslaved or killed makes them diametrically opposite to Alan Jonah and his Eco-Terrorists from King of the Monsters, but they do have a couple things in common: their actions risk causing the end of the world, and they don't care how many people have to die to get what they want.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: An In-Universe case in the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization. The novel reveals they were not only responsible for helping the military build the Oxygen Destroyer which ultimately enabled Ghidorah's Near-Villain Victory, but they likely had Sara Hayes murdered in a traffic accident to cover it up, yet Simmons' money and influence has ensured the company didn't face any form of justice. Roll around to the story's present day and Simmons, Ren, and likely a lot of the other bastards who were in on Apex's immoral conspiracy are killed by the monster they've brought to life; and although the company's fate after Mechagodzilla's death isn't revealed, it's more than likely they'll be put out of business for good once their conspiracy and crimes against humanity are exposed.
• Labcoat of Science and Medicine: During the attack on Apex's Pensacola factory, Bernie spots and follows several scientists in white labcoats whom are running to "Level 2" instead of the designated Titan shelters which the menial staff are headed to. Notably, whilst the scientists disappear afterward, the secret door they go through ultimately leads Bernie to the room where Mechagodzilla's optic is being stored, implying that these scientists were involved in Simmons and Ren's secret Mechagodzilla project.
• Lethally Stupid: They're so blinded by hubris, they legitimately thought that they'd have no problem using King Ghidorah's remains to control MechaGodzilla. As a result, instead of getting a Mecha that only causes as much damage and death as Apex want for their Engineered Heroics and their plan to upstage the Titans, Apex get a Mecha that threatens all of humanity and potentially all life on Earth like its past life did. The novelization furthermore reveals that Apex's experiments causing Godzilla's first attack on their Pensacola facility, which claims several lives and causes localized property damage, was a genuine accident on their part before they caught on and deliberately repeated the results.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: The novelization reveals that Apex indirectly helped the military try to kill the Titans by helping them build the Oxygen Destroyer before the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which Bernie regards as Apex capitalizing on the threat the Titans posed. The novel also reveals that Mechagodzilla's signal instigating Godzilla to attack Apex's Pensacola facility was a genuine accident on Apex's part, but afterwards, with the whole world misinterpreting Godzilla's attack and believing he's gone bad; Apex are all too happy to intentionally repeat the results in a more densely-populated city, so that Godzilla's name will be smeared even further before they set Mechagodzilla on him.
• Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair: Apex Cybernetics are pretty much human hubris personified. They believe they'll be able to make humanity the apex species of the planet and retake it from the Titans by creating their own Titan in Mechagodzilla, and their genuinely-groundbreaking technological advancements have inspired such overconfidence that they wholly believe they can safely control eldritch Black Boxes which they incorporate into their tech after gaining a surface understanding of them. In practice, Apex can barely get their creation running without relying on the aforementioned Black Boxes as shortcuts, and once they do, mixing a truly eldritch power source with an undead Draconic Abomination leads to the latter taking over the machine immediately and destroying Apex.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Their HEAVs mount pretty sizable racks of missiles that can damage Hollow Earth monsters as large as Warbats.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: They're not known to abuse their employees or innocent civilians directly (keyword) in the movie, but in the novelization, it's believed by Bernie that they arranged the car collision which killed his wife Sara, an Apex employee, because she stumbled on their secret contract to supply the military with a component for the Oxygen Destroyer before the events of King of the Monsters.
• Manipulative Bastard: Their plan relies on manipulating Dr. Lind into leading them to the Hollow Earth energy source, and taking advantage of Godzilla's Pensacola attack to paint Godzilla as a menace. The former is necessary to activate Mechagodzilla, and the latter is necessary to justify Mechagodzilla's creation and Apex's Muggle Power plans to the world. Apex actually succeed in both these goals at first, and are only undone by their own stupidity and arrogance in thinking that being "monkey see, monkey do" with materials straight out of a Cosmic Horror Story wasn't liable to backfire.
• Meaningful Name: A tech company that prides itself on leading technological advancement called Apex Cybernetics. Their name has two other, more sinister meanings underneath, analogous to the sinister Corporate Conspiracy they're hiding beneath their benevolent image: "Apex Cybernetics" also refers to the conspiracy's intent to make humanity the supreme species of the planet using their technological prowess, and it refers to their intention to create the new "apex" predator in the form of Godzilla's cybernetic successor. Considering what Walter Simmons is like, and the implications that Apex specifically want it to be themselves before anyone else who overpowers the Titans as the greatest force on Earth, the "Apex" in their name can also be read as the company's leaders wanting to become more powerful than any government or nation on the planet by eclipsing the Titans.
• Meaningful Rename: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters reveals that they used to be called Applied Experimental Technologies when their psionic uplink technology was still in its highly-experimental stages. In 2015, Walter Simmons rebranded the company to the above Meaningful Name to reflect their new agenda in the wake of G-Day and their desire for working ties with Monarch.
• The Mole: The novelization at one point mentions that Apex have several moles in Monarch.
• Muggle Power: Apex's Corporate Conspiracy is spearheaded by people who feel humanity should be prioritizing becoming the most unchallenged species on Earth over coexisting peacefully with the Titans, after the creatures' emergences (particularly King Ghidorah's reign of terror and the aftermath) knocked our view of ourselves as the supreme species down a peg. Apex want Option 1, mixed with at least some of Option 2 if not the full package: their Evil Plan is to first build an anti-Titan Mecha in Godzilla's image equipped with enough firepower to challenge and kill Titans on its own, then use it to kill Godzilla and replace him. Simmons' "there can only be one" remark heavily implies Apex would've afterwards gone on to murder Kong just for being an Alpha Titan using their Mecha.
• Murder by Inaction: They deliberately engineer the deaths of thousands in population centers via Godzilla's rampage, and plot to provoke him into killing millions more in Hong Kong before letting Mechagodzilla loose on him so Apex will be viewed as "saviors", all without a second thought.
• Nature vs. Technology: Apex are the Technology to Godzilla, Kong and most Titans' Nature — they're a remarkably hi-tech corporation whom are obsessed with rampant technological advancement in the name of dominating or subjugating nature (the Titans) to establish humanity as the supreme lifeform on Earth, embodying Ozymandian hubris and greed. Apex are secretly creating Mechagodzilla with the aim of killing and usurping Godzilla as the supreme Alpha Titan, uncaring that Godzilla is the chief reason why humanity hasn't already been destroyed, but using Ghidorah's undead skull and Green Rocks as the remote piloting brain and the fuel source respectively leads to the Mecha breaking free of Apex's control and turning against them, and it poses an active threat to all humans and Godzilla. Apex's rogue creation comes close to killing Godzilla (albeit only because the latter was only at half strength when fighting it), but it's ultimately overwhelmed and destroyed by Godzilla and Kong.
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: Bernie Hayes' frantic broadcasts prominently paint Apex as this, and it turns out he's quite right. Under CEO Walter Simmons' design, Apex are secretly building Mechagodzilla using Ghidorah's undead remains; aiming to kill and usurp Godzilla as the most powerful force on Earth out of humanism-based pride and ambition (despite how beneficial his presence has been to the world and despite him saving humanity from certain extinction), and having no moral objections to putting millions of people around the world in harm's way for the sake of their Engineered Heroics. Ironically, the novelization reveals that Simmons is a huge fan of Hayes' podcasts, one of the reasons he spares Team Godzilla after they infiltrate the Hong Kong facility.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Minor case in the novelization. The novel reveals that activating Mechagodzilla for the test run in Hong Kong diverted Godzilla from investigating the Vile Vortex in Antarctica which Kong had just gone through. Had it not been for this, Godzilla would've likely pursued Kong's trail through the Antarctica Vile Vortex, trashing the Monarch outpost surrounding the Vortex on the way and thus causing more casualties and property damage.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Godzilla vs. Kong art book One Will Fall – The Art of the Ultimate Battle Royale explicitly confirms the movie's implications that Apex's claims to be ensuring humanity's advancement and protecting us from future Titan attacks are nothing more than a thin excuse for their true motivations: to Take Over the World after they've overpowered the Alpha Titans.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: They have the resources to build a trans-Pacific underground tunnel system with futuristic car-pods linking their facilities on different continents, anti-gravity vehicles, and a 466-foot-tall Humongous Mecha that's armed to the teeth with missiles, rocket launchers, plasma punches, and an all-destroying laser beam, in complete secrecy. It’s explained in the novelization that, along with being a successful tech-company, more than half their income comes from the military-industrial complex.
• Powerful, but Incompetent:
  • Comparative to the guerrilla eco-terrorists from Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Apex have far more resources as a leading hi-tech corporation 20 Minutes into the Future, as well as a decent public image; yet unlike the eco-terrorists, whom were able to think on their feet against Monarch, deployed contingencies when Monarch came close to catching onto them, and technically achieved the best of their end-goals in a roundabout way; Apex place all their eggs in one basket, they have no in-case-of-emergency backups (at least not any that come into effect), and they're defeated entirely by their own hubris (without the heroes needing to do anything) when their arrogance leads them to unwittingly unleash the mirror opposite of what their agenda was all about upon Hong Kong.
  • Similarly, in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, The Men in Black whom AET sends to kidnap May in Algeria successfully smuggle her out of the country back to the United States in a snazzy private jet, but they don't make the barest effort to cover their tracks when kidnapping May out of a public women's restroom and leaving all her belongings behind in there, cluing May's friends in that someone has kidnapped her and that she didn't just abandon them.
• Pride: They have a particularly bad case of this even by the standards of their setting, which is made all the more prominent by the fact these guys surface as a threat after the events of King of the Monsters (which were overall a lesson in humility for most of the human race). Apex's technological prowess and incredible advancements have made them hubristically cocky; believing they're going to be the ones to overthrow Godzilla and outpower all the Titans on Earth by building Mechagodzilla in the Titan Top God's image, and assuming that everything will go according to plan even when they use Ghidorah's still-telepathically-active alien skull as the core of Mechagodzilla's brain and the Hollow Earth's element as a power source, without properly understanding how either one works. Combining these three things results in Ghidorah essentially becoming reborn within Mechagodzilla and slaughtering Apex using their own weapon, destroying their Muggle Power plan.
• Private Military Contractors: According to the Kong: Skull Island Cinematic Adventure sourcebook, Apex hire contractors and mercenaries among their staff stationed on Skull Island.
• Propaganda Machine: Unlike in the film, the novelization version of the commercial playing in their Pensacola headquarters has a bit more emphasis on painting the Titans as a threat needing to be conquered.
• Purple Is Powerful: Their Hong Kong headquarters where Mechagodzilla is hidden has red and blue lighting which creates an overall faux purple hue. Meanwhile, Simmons' control room and the room where Ghidorah's decapitated skull is stored and acting as the Mecha's neural system are respectively lit by purple light, emphasizing how Simmons thinks he's the one on top of everything and how Ghidorah's lingering consciousness is on top in actuality. Make no mistake, Apex might be in possession of a lot of power, but they're staggeringly incompetent and irresponsible with it.
• Remember the New Guy?: The Godzilla vs. Kong novelization and the Kong: Skull Island Cinematic Adventure guidebook both state that Apex have had a history with Monarch for years, the latter work in particular making Apex and Monarch out to be sister organizations since the masquerade-ending events of 2014: Apex have handled Titan-related infrastructure and technology whereas Monarch have handled defence, Apex have done contract work for Monarch (which is implied to have contributed to Monarch's radical advancement and new resources in-between Godzilla (2014) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)), and Apex have shadowed Monarch everywhere the latter organization built an outpost or ventured inbetween 2014 and 2024. Despite all the above, there is absolutely no reference to Apex existing in Godzilla: King of the Monsters nor its associated spin-offs (not even during the global Titan crisis with King Ghidorah), nor are Apex referenced in either of the Godzilla vs. Kong prequel graphic novels. The closest we got to a direct Apex reference in the pre-Godzilla vs. Kong MonsterVerse was early mentions of Ren Serizawa by name and relation only, in the Godzilla: King of the Monsters supplementary materials.
• Research, Inc.: They're highly successful in technology and neurology. They've developed maglev (magnetic levitation^note Described in the novelization) train technology for transporting their supplies across continents, the gravity inversion-surviving HEAVs, and Mechagodzilla plus the psionic uplink technology which pilots it (with a major organic Black Box).
• The Reveal: It's revealed that they were formerly known as Applied Experimental Technologies or AET before rebranding themselves.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: The novelization mentions that the military provide over half of Apex's funding and that the company avoided any legal punishment for their shared part in the Oxygen Destroyer's Epic Fail due to a combination of the government's desire to cover up their own blunder and Simmons' wide influence.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: This and Screw the Rules, I Have Connections! above are mentioned in the novelization as the reasons why they weren't brought to justice years before the events of Godzilla vs. Kong.
• Self-Disposing Villain: Apex are defeated by their own hubris, with the heroes not needing to do anything to stop Apex specifically from winning. Apex's plan was doomed from the moment they incorporated Ghidorah's skull as the core of Mechagodzilla's brain, which results in Ghidorah's subconsciousness taking over the Mecha and destroying Apex as soon as the Hollow Earth's energy source is added to the mix as a necessary fuel source. Essentially, Apex sabotaged themselves before the movie even started.
• Seven Deadly Sins:
  • Lust: Non-sexual. Apex want to Take Over the World via a practically insane methodology, and they specifically want to be loved and hailed by the world as heroes, using Engineered Heroics, which is fitting since their leader Walter Simmons is a narcissist. On a more individual basis; Maia Simmons is implied to be a "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl who craves approval from a father whose pathology would mean that he's only capable of giving her the most fragile love at best, and Ren Serizawa craves the attention of a neglectful father who is now dead and he craves revenge on an Animalistic Abomination who doesn't even know what its existence cost Ren.
  • Gluttony: They greedily threaten to, in Ilene Andrews' words, "strip [the Hollow Earth Green Rocks] for parts" so they can power Mechagodzilla (since the latter requires a truly insane amount of power to function for more than two minutes), without regards for the potential risks in disrupting such a little-understood part of the planet's core. Additionally, earlier drafts of the movie would have depicted Apex harvesting the life force of the Titans Mechagodzilla kills to be used as fuel.
  • Greed: They're already excessively wealthy, being worth at least billions of dollars (potentially even trillions depending on how they amassed the funds for Mechagodzilla's budget here), and they still want even more material gain via taking over the world.
  • Sloth: Unlike Preston Packard and Alan Jonah, Walter Simmons relegates all the dirty work to his underlings, and he spends most of his time sitting comfortably inside his corporate facilities while he watches his evil plan pan out — the novelization even notes that Simmons hasn't accomplished all that much himself as an individual, and he has a habit of taking the credit for the accomplishments of others. Furthermore, whilst Apex have developed some truly astounding and groundbreaking new technology, when it comes to their evil plan to usurp the Alpha Titans, they tend to use black boxes scavenged from the Titans themselves or the Hollow Earth in order to make it work instead of patiently developing a more reliable and understood means on their own; which can be justified by the novelization explaining that Apex would otherwise need to wait decades to realize their plan's success, and also by (A) Apex being not-so-well-intentioned extremists whom have convinced themselves that they're "solving" an urgent Titan problem in the world, and (B) Walter Simmons likely not having that long to live and see his dream come true since he's already in middle age.
  • Wrath: Apex want to kill or enslave all the Titans on Earth, even the outright good ones like Godzilla and (implicitly) Kong, with the murder and usurpation of Godzilla being the crux of their agenda; and they're perfectly willing to indirectly engineer the devastation of entire cities and the mass endangerment of millions of civilians for their own ends. In the novelization, Ren particularly wants to kill Godzilla out of rage that the Titan's mere existence indirectly robbed him of a relationship with his father.
  • Envy: They want to kill and usurp Godzilla so that they can assume his position as the reigning alpha over the other monsters and the dominant lifeform on Earth, feeling provoked by knowing that they aren't in Godzilla's shoes as the apex power of the planet. On an individual basis, the novelization also reveals that Ren is motivated by envy that Godzilla drew his father's attention away from him throughout his life and that he regards Godzilla as something of an Abel to his Cain.
  • Pride: The worst of the seven sins is also, fittingly, Apex's defining characteristic. In a setting filled with human arrogance causing catastrophic Titan problems, Apex are easily among the most prideful characters of all. They're extremely proud of human ingenuity and their own technological accomplishments, and even after the Titans have already trampled over humanity more than once as a result of mankind's less radical efforts to combat or control them going horribly wrong; Apex are convinced they're going to upstage and then enslave or destroy the Titans by implementing an even more radical and reckless scheme that involves reanimating Ghidorah's undead skull and connecting it to a Green Rocks-filled artificial Alpha Titan — and they're genuinely blindsided when the predictable happens.
• Start X to Stop X: How do they prove that they're out to defend humanity against Titan attacks and minimize the collateral? Why, by actively looking to start a fight with Godzilla (the one Titan besides Mothra who's interested in preserving the world at large as humanity knows it), disrupting five years of entirely-beneficial peace between man and Titan, and going out of their way to knowingly put millions of civilians unnecessarily in the crossfire as part of their False Flag Operation. Madison straight-up calls Simmons out on this.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: They have terrible security, with Team Godzilla having little trouble sneaking through their facilities. Of course, given their supreme hubris, this is completely in-character.
• Taught by Experience: Implied in the official novelization. It's heavily implied there that before Mechagodzilla was built, Apex first attempted to realize their ambitions to dominate the Titans by contributing to the Oxygen Destroyer's creation (and we all know how well that turned out). It appears the hard proof that only Titans can kill other Titans is the one lesson from the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters that Apex really internalized, leading them to attempt achieving their goals by creating their own artificial Titan instead.
• Theory Tunnel Vision: They carry the ideals that Godzilla is the main threat to the world, that mankind both can and needs to subjugate or destroy all Titans for the sake of our survival, and that our civilization's technological achievements make us the true apex of evolution; past the events of not just Godzilla (2014) but also Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), events which all but disproved all three of those views. It's implied that rather than admit nature is NOT within man's control after all and that Godzilla really is our civilization's best shot at survival, Apex have simply rationalized the events of 2019 as proof that humanity's safety is in even deeper shit than was initially thought.
• Too Dumb to Live: One of the biggest cases in the entire MonsterVerse.
  • Their idea of achieving their goals to reclaim the Earth from Titans and become glorified for it? It's to build an Ultimate Destroyer on par with the two toughest known living Titans on Earth, and use the undead skull of Ghidorah – an extraterrestrial Draconic Abomination whose Bizarre Alien Biology demonstrably violates the known laws of science even by the Titans' standards and a known Omnicidal Maniac who actively wants Titans to wipe the Earth clean of life – as the core component of the machine's brain! Because that couldn't possibly go wrong or have unforeseen consequences in any way, right? It's not like the Ghostly Wail of Ghidorah's roar that the wired-up skull is producing even before the Hollow Earth energy is synthesized is a possible red flag, is it? The trope name doesn't begin to cover it.
  • During Godzilla's Pensacola attack, two Apex guards who catch Bernie running up a restricted corridor immediately stop him to demand he show them his clearance credentials (this when Bernie was just about to go back the way he came). Bernie promptly lampshades the trope by calling the guards out on how they're putting that at the top of their immediate priorities while Godzilla himself is rampaging in the area — the guards don't take Bernie's point, and guess whose Breath Weapon turns the guards into collateral damage five. Seconds. Later.
• Tunnel Network: Apex's facilities are secretly linked up by trans-continental underground tunnels, which they use to clandestinely transport cargo on magnetic levitation trains, including Mechagodzilla's giant optic and the eggs of Skullcrawlers which Apex are illegally breeding. This network links Apex's Pensacola factory to their Hong Kong HQ, and it apparently also links up with other Apex facilities in other places like Roswell.
• Ungrateful Bastard: They don't give a damn that Godzilla is the chief reason why they along with the rest of humanity haven't already been wiped out by the MUTOs or especially by King Ghidorah, nor do they care that Godzilla will continue defending humanity as long as they're a part of the world's natural order. To them, Godzilla is nothing but a Boss Battle to be surpassed in order to prove Apex's human superiority.
• Unwitting Pawn: It's ambiguous to what degree, but at best they gave Ghidorah's dead spirit a happy accident when mixing the hydra's skull with the Hollow Earth energy caused a Soul Fragment to slip into Mechagodzilla; or at worst, Ghidorah was active, psychically corrupting an oblivious Ren, and waiting to receive its new body the entire time, while Apex blatantly ignored the red flags signifying the hydra's lingering sentience. In any case, Apex thought they were building a superweapon with which they could conquer the world in the name of making humanity "the apex species", when in reality they were unwittingly bringing back the most murderous and anti-human Titan of them all from the moment they decided that using Ghidorah's skull as an organic supercomputer was a good idea.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Early plot summaries for Godzilla vs. Kong indicate Apex's actions would've escalated into a straight-up indiscriminate genocide of every last Titan on Earth if he hadn't lost control of Mechagodzilla, and if Apex had succeeded in killing and replacing Godzilla. Simmons' comment that there can be only one Alpha when confronted by Madison on his crimes implies he also intended to murder Kong, along with any other Alpha Titans that he found, so that Mechagodzilla would be unchallenged after killing Godzilla. In the novelization, Bernie speculates that Simmons plans to exterminate any Titans his creation can't control, and enslave the rest.
• Viler New Villain: Compared to the eco-terrorists from Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Apex are also entirely willing to put millions of innocent people in mortal peril order to further their own ends, and they're also led by a dangerous and ultimately self-centered Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist. However, the eco-terrorists at least had a legitimate provocation with their pointers that the idiotic and/or misguided government and military were about to try exterminating the Titans (which would have likely spelled more trouble than it's worth for humanity in the bigger picture), and Monarch wasn't doing enough to stop that from happening; and the eco-terrorists are presented as having a point in the end about the benefits of Titans returning to the world. Apex on the other hand have taken virtually nothing away from the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (which proved that humans can coexist with Titans if they learn to respect nature more), starting an unprovoked and costly war with Godzilla for entirely impractical and petty ambition, and the film doesn't present them as having any legitimate points in their defensive arguments: they're just a chauvinist Evil Reactionary organization driven by pointless, overbloated pride and vile ambition, and the world would still be in a better place if they'd never acted.
• Villainous Legacy: Monarch continues to use their HEAVs for Hollow Earth travel after the Mechagodzilla project's fiasco. Godzilla x Kong: The Hunted reveals that Raymond Martin's organization have somehow obtained a HEAV, which enables Raymond to carry out his monster murder spree in the Hollow Earth. It's also hinted in The Hunted that Apex's technological achievements in creating and trying to pilot Mechagodzilla enabled Martin to create his own Humongous Mecha, the Titan Hunter, which is his main weapon and express means of posing a threat throughout the story.
• Villainous Rescue: Downplayed in they're not at the Mechagodzilla creation stage they are in Godzilla vs. Kong, but given that and their actions in the series as AET, the audience knows their assisting in rescuing Cate, May and Keiko can't be for noble reasons.
• Villainous Underdog: The enemy who they want to usurp is Godzilla. Without Mechagodzilla, Apex are just an Evil, Inc. of hubris-filled god-wannabes led by a Too Dumb to Live egotist.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Downplayed. On the surface, they're a legitimate company who are respectable enough to avoid suspicion from Monarch and the world, and they're successful in several fields. That being said, the novelization reveals they have a shady history and are regarded with misgivings by many people in Monarch due to the two organizations' past shared involvement part in creating the Oxygen Destroyer, which led to Ghidorah's apocalyptic Titan-rampage.
• We Have Become Complacent: Discussed in the novelization. Bernie thinks most of Apex's run-of-the-mill engineering staff are little more than unquestioning worker-bees who don't ask questions. While he might have a point, this guy also believes the government are covering up the existence of Santa's elves at the North Pole, so...
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The movie doesn't reveal what happens to Apex after Mechagodzilla's destruction, but it's likely that they'll be facing many lawsuits and a public investigation over their activities which could result in them being shut down once the extent of their crimes is exposed. With Walter Simmons and his associates dead and exposed, their names and legacy are now permanently disgraced.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: They seem to think they're in a Pacific Rim-style kaiju movie where the giant monsters are evil invaders stealing the world from humanity, and humanity must build human-piloted Humongous Mechas as a deterrent, with Apex viewing themselves as the resident Creature-Hunter Organization. However, Apex are completely ignorant of the events of previous movies (particularly Godzilla: King of the Monsters) which have proven that Godzilla is more or less on humanity's side and that the Titans can peacefully and beneficially coexist with humans; and Serizawa's speech about how "the arrogance of man is thinking nature is in our control and not the other way around" (and the evidence in the previous movies' events to back that up whenever the military presence tried neutralizing the Titans on their terms) is an aesop which flies completely over Apex's heads. Apex believe that possession of a Black Box more or less equates to complete mastery of it, unaware that they're actually just a bunch of high-caliber hubrists who are destined to shoot themselves in the foot. They also seem to be clueless about how in the previous MonsterVerse movies, the Titan Big Bads' awakenings were all caused by humans (a mining company, Packard and the eco-terrorists) not letting sleeping dogs lie, and Apex are now repeating the pattern. Though Apex view themselves as heroes saving the world, it cannot be overstated how transparently despicable their actions are to anyone who isn't deluded to hell and back: completely disregarding the millions of civilians they put in the crossfire unnecessarily, firing the first shot against Godzilla in the middle of a beneficial peace between him and mankind, and lying to the world about their criminal role in Godzilla's rampage for the sake of turning their campaign to murder Godzilla into a giant False Flag Operation.

Corporate Conspiracy

Walter Simmons

"These are dangerous times."

Portrayed By: Demián Bichir

Appeared In: Godzilla vs. Kong

The billionaire head of Apex Cybernetics, who controls and oversees their entire corporate conspiracy.

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• Abusive Dad: His treatment of Maia crosses into this in the novelization. Not only does Simmons make a routine out of constantly testing his daughter and heir Maia's wits to ensure that she still meets his standards, he also deliberately left her in the dark about several relevant details of the Hollow Earth expedition before sending her off to join them; an expedition which carries a serious risk of mortal harm for all human parties physically involved. And the darkest thing is, Maia suspects this was merely Simmons' idea of a joke.
• Adaptational Villainy: The movie novelization expands on Simmons' evil, confirming many nasty aspects of him that were only implied in the film. It's revealed that he saw Godzilla's rampage to be a good thing for him since it would justify his Mechagodzilla creation to the world and he does his best to maximize the carnage, not caring for the countless lives lost in process. He also all but casts away any ambiguity that he intends to Take Over the World outright after killing Godzilla. The novel reveals that he listens to Bernie's podcast to get new ideas, and he had Bernie's wife murdered for getting too close to the company's real agenda.
• Allegorical Character: Walter Simmons is essentially the personification of humanity's hubris made flesh. He aspires to own and control forces he has the barest understanding of and treats his fellow human beings like pawns despite several protagonists (and even a few villainous humans) being far wiser than he is.
• All for Nothing: Walter Simmons tried to create Mechagodzilla as the ultimate weapon against Godzilla and the other titans. He and his company committed so many crimes to make that goal a reality; however, as soon as he got a strong enough power source, he lost control of Mechagodzilla to Ghidorah's consciousness and ended up killed by his own creation. Adding insult to injury; after his death, Godzilla and Kong manage to defeat and destroy Mechagodzilla and thus making Walter Simmons's death in vain. One more insult is that after the battle, the evidence was shown to the world and exposing Walter Simmons and everyone in Apex for being behind everything. If Walter Simmons was alive, he would have been arrested for his crimes.
• Baddie Flattery: In the novelization, when Team Godzilla are captured he says to Bernie's face that he's a huge fan of his Mad Truth podcasts (which by the way are anti-Apex) and that his chemtrail theories gave him some new product ideas.
• Beard of Evil: He has a neat-trimmed goatee, and he's the movie's resident Big Bad Wannabe: a rich, egotistical Smug Snake, and one of the evilest characters the MonsterVerse has seen (particularly in the novelization's expansion).
• The Beautiful Elite: He's a famous, sophisticated corporate billionaire with a trendy fashion sense and a fetish for techno, played by Demián Bichir. Justified, since he's a textbook narcissist who happens to be mega-rich.
• Big Bad Wannabe: He presents himself as a Visionary Villain who will lead humanity into a bold new era, and while his company does successfully create a mecha that's at least as powerful and dangerous as Godzilla, as soon as Ghidorah's remains usurp control of Mechagodzilla, his own creation squashes him like a bug. Furthermore, both times Godzilla senses Mechagodzilla, it's when Apex aren't using it (the second time, it's even after Ren finishes a test run and Mechagodzilla has seemingly powered down), implying Ghidorah may have been pulling the strings from the beginning. Even worse, in the novelization, his own subordinate Ren is planning to kill him the moment he no longer needs him and can follow his own agenda, but Ghidorah's lingering subconsciousness outdoes Ren and Simmons both.
• Big "NO!": His last scream when Mechagodzilla swats him out of existence sounds like this.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When he approaches Dr. Lind for help entering the Hollow Earth, he presents himself as a charming, compassionate and somewhat eccentric man who believes in ideas that are Crazy Enough to Work and who is concerned about putting a stop to Godzilla's "unprovoked" rampage. When we next see him in his Hong Kong headquarters, privately observing Mechagodzilla's completion and Godzilla's arrival, we see what he really is: an egotistical, smug, and self-destructively reckless asshole who doesn't have a single drop of empathy for the people his plans put in mortal danger.
• Canon Character All Along: In the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters episode "Will the Real May Please Stand Up?", May passingly mentions that Brenda Holland has a superior called Walter in Applied Experimental Technologies with very deep pockets. The episode's ending confirms that this is the same Walter from Godzilla vs. Kong when Holland calls him Mr. Simmons, and the graphic on her computer reveals that AET is a pre-rebranding Apex Cybernetics.
• Caught Monologuing: Sort of. When a Ghidorah-hijacked Mechagodzilla begins to ambulate behind him, Simmons is too wrapped up in his Evil Gloating at Team Godzilla to notice anything is wrong (even as everyone in front of him is backing away) until the Mecha is right behind him. He turns around just in time to see his impending demise. Hilariously lampshaded by Hayes in the immediate aftermath:
  "It's unfair. I really wanted to hear the rest of that speech!"
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Alan Jonah from the previous film. Whereas Jonah was essentially an international ex-military guerrilla who was comparatively Obviously Evil, Simmons is a well-dressed but definitively amoral Corrupt Corporate Executive who can hide his true colors behind a charismatic façade. Whereas Jonah wants as much of the human race as possible dead and sees the Titans as a means to achieve that, Simmons uses defending humanity against future Titan attacks and elevating us back to the top of the food chain as an excuse for his selfish ambitions. Whereas Jonah was driven to villainy by decades of severe psychological trauma, Simmons is a narcissistic sociopath who has absolutely no tragic backstory nor redeeming qualities that we know of. Although Jonah and Simmons both have a loyal elite underling who looks up to them, Jonah genuinely cared about Asher to the point he was shaken by his death, whereas Simmons shows no signs of being fazed by the death of his daughter (if he's even made aware of it in the brief time window before he follows her to the grave). Furthermore, both Jonah and Packard were willing to get their hands dirty in pursuit of their goals, whereas Simmons prefers to relegate the dirty work to his underlings.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The super-modernist, Caucasian CEO (and founder according to the novelization) of a major tech company with facilities on multiple continents and a ton of Offscreen Villain Dark Matter. He's out to prove he can topple the gods (Godzilla in particular) just for the sakes of power, ambition and satisfying his own ego, and he doesn't think anything of hypocritically committing crimes against humanity just for the sake of some Engineered Heroics. He's also quick to act like a petulant child with his subordinate Ren when the latter is saying something he doesn't care to hear. To facilitate his plan, Simmons masterminds the construction of Mechagodzilla, a skyscraper-sized mech just as – if not more – dangerous than the monsters it's meant to kill, while showing a blatant failure to consider his actions' full effects by incorporating two eldritch Black Boxes — including an actively-malevolent Draconic Abomination's not-completely-dead neurological remains — into the Mecha. It's implied (especially in the novelization) that after killing and usurping Godzilla, Simmons intends to become the dystopian/cyberpunk "President of the world" variation of the CCE. The novelization further reveals that Simmons has previously used his money and connections to bail himself out of legal trouble, after the spectacular catastrophe caused by the Oxygen Destroyer his company helped the military to build.
• Crazy Enough to Work: Subverted big time for him. As if hooking Ghidorah's haunted skull up to a superpowerful mechanical Titan-slayer because Ghidorah's telepathic presence is still in the skull wasn't bad enough, Simmons pretty much invokes the Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway trope with Mechagodzilla when Godzilla is on Apex's doorstep^note Ren cautions Simmons against this in the movie, and the novelization explicitly spells out how Simmons' decision was unnecessary as Ren had a more pragmatic idea to make sure Godzilla couldn't pinpoint the Apex HQ and they could buy themselves more time to iron out the Mecha's kinks and then deploy it properly; because Simmons is actually that convinced that fortune always favors the bold and nothing less (that, and he's implicitly just that impatient to see his new toy in action). All of this gets Simmons killed by his own creation and ruins everything he was working towards.
• Detrimental Determination: He's been trying to find a way to kill Godzilla and achieve his dream of human supremacy since 2014, and he's more or less ignored how the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters proved that humans and Titans can coexist beneficially if humans stop trying to tamper and overrule nature. It's furthermore revealed in the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization that the military's Oxygen Destroyer (which went horribly wrong via directly almost enabling King Ghidorah to exterminate all multicellular life on Earth) was apparently a previous attempt by Apex to kill Godzilla, yet this catastrophe didn't stop Simmons. Come 2024 and Simmons, dead-set on turning the world against Godzilla and getting all the glory that successfully replacing the Alpha Titans would entail; doesn't think that essentially reanimating the aforementioned "living extinction event which threatens every non-microbial lifeform on this planet" Ghidorah's surviving neurology is not worth the risks. To say nothing of his plans to use a newly-discovered otherworldly energy source as a second Black Box on top of that. Simmons' last attempt to usurp Godzilla turns out to be one time too many, [[spoiler:as mixing Ghidorah's undead remains with the Hollow Earth energy and Apex's Titan-killing Mecha leads to a Ghidorah-possessed Mechagodzilla killing Simmons and destroying everything he's worked towards in less than an hour; nevermind the very real possibility that the rogue Mechagodzilla, if it had won, would have filled King Ghidorah's old shoes and finished what the three-headed dragon started.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Simmons acts as the main antagonist and apparent driver of the plot, but the moment Mechagodzilla is perfected, Ghidorah hijacks it and wastes no time killing him.
• Double Meaning: Implied. His comment to Ren that he intends to make humanity "the apex species", besides obviously referring to his Muggle Power agenda, can also be read as referring to Apex Cybernetics basically ruling all of humanity after killing Godzilla. The art book Godzilla vs. Kong: One Will Fall — The Art of the Ultimate Battle Royale confirms this.
• Evil Gloating: In the final minute of his life before receiving his just desserts, he goes into a long-winded, narcissistic speech about his motives in front of Team Godzilla. While he's talking, Mechagodzilla has gone rogue, and it kills him before he can finish.
• Evil Is Hammy: Dear God, is he ever! Once the mask of a well-meaning businessman comes off, Simmons loves hearing the sound of his own voice as he gloats about his perceived present and future triumphs. Watching his scenes out of context, one could be forgiven for thinking he was the Big Bad of a James Bond film rather than a movie about giant monster battles.
• Evil Old Folks: He's a man in late middle-age with silvery hair. Though he can seem on the surface like a charming, well-meaning businessman, this pleasant façade hides a very dangerous sociopath who is willing to commit crimes against humanity so he can upstage Godzilla for the sake of his own delusions of grandeur.
• Evil Wears Black: Downplayed. He's usually wearing at least one black garment such as a jacket or coat in nearly every scene.
• Fatal Flaw: Hubris. Walter views himself as a visionary who will lead humanity to retake their place as the apex species on Earth from the Titans, though in truth he's nothing but a Glory Hound out to satisfy his own ego. He's so blinded by hubris, he seems to be cognitively incapable of processing the mere idea his actions might seriously backfire on him and that he might lose control; rationalizing his more reckless or impulsive choices as necessary gambits, "fortune favors the bold" or Crazy Enough to Work. Thinking he could use Ghidorah's undead neurology as Mechagodzilla's neural network, and then throwing a second eldritch Black Box into the mix as a power source without first conducting even basic testing, bites him in the ass: instead of retaining complete control through it all as he expected, Simmons ends up falling victim to his own creation when it's hijacked by Ghidorah's subconsciousness with a lasting power source at its disposal, having unwittingly unleashed the opposite of what Apex were aiming for on the world with no way to get it back under control.
• Faux Affably Evil: When meeting with and manipulating Dr. Lind, he's quite charming and smooth-talking with a flare of bravado, belying his true colors as a selfish and empathy-devoid egotist. After his true colors are revealed; Simmons remains quite cheery while he's gleefully watching Godzilla cause havoc in Hong Kong, and he's almost chummy towards Team Godzilla whilst Evil Gloating about his perceived impending victory and casually brushing off all the harm he's caused.
• Flat Character: Unlike most of the MonsterVerse's other human antagonists, Walter Simmons has no hidden depths, no humanizing backstory to explain why he's the way that he is, and no redeeming qualities to speak of. He's just a mega-rich narcissistic sociopath, who shows up one day, aspiring to kill Godzilla and literally millions of other people for his own self-aggrandizement and for the sake of perpetuating his delusion of human superiority. All of this without a drop of shame or remorse, and what arguments Simmons does make to justify his actions all but fall flat on their face within the setting and narrative.
• Freudian Excuse: Notably averted in his case. Whereas Packard, Jonah, Emma and Ren all have fairly human reasons in their backstories for turning to villainy in the ways that they did, Simmons is given no such backstory, and he's shown to be a self-centered sociopath who's motivated to commit his heinous actions solely because of egomania and ambition. The novelization even slightly lampshades this when Mark Russell wonders if Simmons is acting out of grief at losing a loved one in a past Titan attack, a contrast to the explicit reality of the man.
• Glory Hound: He hopes to become a Fake Ultimate Hero through Apex's Engineered Heroics, having Mechagodzilla kill Godzilla after millions of civilians are killed in Hong Kong so the world will hail Simmons as a hero. In the novelization, this is something which sets Simmons apart from Ren: Ren shares Simmons' delusions of human advancement and serving a noble cause, but he doesn't really care if he's remembered for his achievements and holds contempt for Simmons' egotism. This isn't just limited to Simmons' plans with Mechagodzilla either: if Ren in the novel is to be believed, Simmons only really understands the business and visionary sides of his company and not the workings of his products, yet he takes credit for his chief engineers' achievements.
• Greater-Scope Villain: He doesn't appear at all in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, but his corporate conspiracy has a major impact on one of the main characters' arcs. His subordinate, Brenda Holland, was responsible for enticing May into working for Apex when it was still called AET and feeding her research into the secret company project to design Mechagodzilla's Brain/Computer Interface. Brenda continues to report to Simmons and work toward his conspiracy's benefit in the show's present, amid her apprehension of May and amid the Monarch-AET deal.
• Hate Sink: Don't let Simmons' charming demeanor fool you. He is nothing but an egotistical, idiotic Psychopathic Manchild who caused all the conflict in Godzilla vs Kong merely to satisfy his own pride, and he has none of the humanizing qualities which Packard, Jonah or his own underlings display. It's impossible not to feel satisfaction at seeing his own creation about to kill him while his smugness instantly vanishes.
• His Own Worst Enemy: The heroes fail to do anything to stop Apex, and ultimately, the only person who kills Walter Simmons and ruins everything he's worked towards is Walter Simmons. His pride, ego and immaturity lead to his own death twofold when he: (1) decided before the movie's start that it was somehow not a monstrously-dangerous idea to use Ghidorah's undead skull as the main part of his artificial Titan's brain, and when he (2) foregoes basic testing on the synthesized Hollow Earth element out of desire for instant gratification and a belief that fortune favors risk-takers, directly shooting down Ren's pragmatic cautioning. Both of which together lead to Ghidorah's subconsciousness possessing the empowered Mechagodzilla and killing Simmons, before it goes on a rampage which almost-surely burns Apex's name and its Muggle Power agenda to ashes. What's more, Simmons' actions against Godzilla with his secret project were entirely unnecessary and he ultimately acted solely out of a combination of wounded pride and a desire for acclaim and power. If he'd just left well enough alone after the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the world would still be enjoying an all-round beneficial peace between man and Titan, and Simmons would still be alive and could have profited off the Titans' existence through far more legitimate ventures.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Simmons is killed by his own Mecha, entirely as a result of using Ghidorah's skull as its brain and throwing the Hollow Earth element in as a power source, enabling Ghidorah's subconsciousness to reincarnate into the fully-powered Mechagodzilla, making Simmons and his company a Self-Disposing Villain. What's more, with numerous eyewitnesses seeing Mechagodzilla emerge from Apex's headquarters, his company's reputation will almost surely be utterly destroyed.
• It's All About Me: Big time. Though he justifies his actions by claiming Godzilla can't be trusted to protect humanity and that he's giving humanity a more efficient defence against Titan attacks, about 80% of his dialogue between his meeting with Team Godzilla and his death is him boasting about how this is no-one's accomplishment but his alone (not his company's, his, despite the novelization confirming he couldn't have done any of this without his underlings' contributions); and waxing quite lyrical about his creation. Showing how his core motivation for starting a war against Godzilla and trying to upstage all the Titans on Earth is to satisfy his own ego by being the one to break new ground and establish new frontiers before anyone else could beat him to it. Even making humanity "the apex species" of Earth again is just an extension of making himself the sole most praised and powerful lifeform on Earth.
• Karmic Death: After engineering Godzilla's attacks which put thousands of innocent people in the agitated Titan's warpath and wholly planning to put eight million people in Hong Kong in the crossfire between Godzilla and Mechagodzilla, Simmons himself becomes the first casualty of his own Mecha when a sentient Mechagodzilla goes on a rampage against Apex. What's more, this would never have happened if Simmons hadn't had the unfathomable stupidity and arrogance to think he could turn Ghidorah's remains into the Mecha's damned nervous system and just expect it to remain under his total control without any side-effects, being paid for his stupidity and narcissism just as much as he is for his crimes against millions of people. When Mechagodzilla moves to kill him, Simmons lives just long enough to realize what's about to happen, causing the smugness and hubris which so characterized him to drain right out of his face for that last moment.
• Knight Templar: He justifies his actions with the argument that he's returning total control of the planet to humanity and giving the world a more secure way to defend against Titan attacks, insisting that there's only room for one Alpha Titan species (despite all evidence to the contrary) and that he'll be damned if that species isn't humanity, on his terms. That being said, Simmons isn't fazed when Madison points out he's doing much more harm than good by provoking Godzilla and disrupting a completely-beneficial coexistence between humans and Titans, and he doesn't really try to hide how much of an egotistical Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist he really is.
• Lack of Empathy: He never shows any empathy for the people his actions have harmed, and for all his talk, his motives are completely self-centered and egotistical. If he was made aware of his daughter's death during the last hour of his life, he doesn't show any signs of being fazed.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: In contrast to the rugged, military human antagonists of the previous movies; Simmons, being a self-spoiled, narcissistic corporate billionaire, is always dressed head-to-toe in sharp, expensive-looking and tailored clothes.
• Misaimed Fandom: In-universe. In the novelization, he tells Bernie that he's a big fan of his conspiracy podcast, despite the fact that the podcast specifically attempts to shame and expose the shady activities of people exactly like him. This fact seems to be entirely lost on him, and he tells Bernie his podcast episodes on chemtrails gave him lots of ideas for future projects.
• Moral Sociopathy: He sees himself as a champion for mankind who is giving civilization a way to stand on our own two feet against the threat of Titans lashing out, despite his total Lack of Empathy and lack of remorse for the millions of people he endangers to make his plan happen, his choice to target Godzilla of all Titans for elimination first and foremost (and in a time of human-Titan peace no less), his narcissistic motivations, and other sociopathic traits. He dismisses Madison's beratement of him with a claim that the mere existence of any Alpha Titan is an "us or them" situation for humanity, and he calls the destruction Godzilla has caused which has given Simmons the chance to turn his plan into Engineered Heroics "providence" (much to Madison's disgust in the novelization); smiling smugly all the while.
• Narcissist: He definitely shows signs of narcissistic personality disorder. He loves hearing himself talk and lording his perceived victory over Team Godzilla, he knowingly places millions of other people in serious danger for his own benefit, he implicitly wants to be hailed by the world as a hero and glorified for his company's achievements, he doesn't exactly behave like a grown man when faced with criticism (if he doesn't just brush the criticism off entirely), and he's already a renowned and successful corporate billionaire but he still wants even more via taking credit for upstaging the Titans.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Instead of ensuring that Apex will win exactly as they planned and Simmons will have everything he's after, Simmons' reckless decisions only enable Ghidorah's subconsciousness to take control of the Mecha from its builders; at which point Simmons is killed by his own rogue creation, which in turn proceeds to go on a rampage - being witnessed emerging from an Apex-owned base - that will likely nuke Apex's reputation and ensure that everything Simmons was working towards gets buried in the dirt. His actions also end up uniting Godzilla and Kong.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Non-Action Big Bad Wannabe, anyway. Unlike Jonah and Packard before him, Simmons mostly has his underlings do the dirty work for him while he watches from on high in his pristine command center: he sends Maia to represent him on the Hollow Earth expedition and seize the energy source he needs if Team Kong falter in their objective, and he has Ren Serizawa do the work of piloting Mechagodzilla in order to realize Simmons' ambition of killing Godzilla. Instead, Simmons uses his tact for manipulation as a sociopathic Corrupt Corporate Executive to manipulate Nathan Lind into aiding him and to frame Godzilla as a menace, and he uses his billionaire resources to maintain and fund Apex's Corporate Conspiracy.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: In light of the calamity the Titans caused under King Ghidorah's control, Walter Simmons claims he's acting to find a way to create a more secure and human-controlled line of defence against future Titan attacks. Although his egotistical dialogue makes it clear that at heart he's purely motivated by validating his ego. As Madison points out, by all but actively firing the first shot which provoked Godzilla — the creature who was keeping the Titans from causing harm — and then knowingly continuing to provoke Godzilla into causing mass destruction as a False Flag Operation against him, Simmons is doing much more harm than good. The way Simmons casually and promptly just dismisses Madison's callout only proves her point. Simmons admitting he started work in 2014 on finding a way to put humanity on top also means he began work on a weapon of mass destruction well before King Ghidorah's rampage and before the world at large had any evidence to suspect there were other living Titans besides the savior of San Francisco in the world; further showing that a big motivator was less safety and more wounded pride at realizing there were things out there bigger than himself.
• Oh, Crap!: He has one in the very last seconds of his life, when he turns around and realizes Mechagodzilla has come online but is about to kill him – the smugness drains right out of his face and he can only muster an "Oh, shit".
• One-Steve Limit: He shares a first name with Walter R. Riccio, the main human antagonist of the graphic novel Skull Island: The Birth of Kong. Ironically, Riccio is the polar opposite of Simmons as a fanatical Psycho Supporter of Kong.
• Opportunistic Bastard: The novelization's expansion reveals that Simmons is this trope. Godzilla being driven to his first attack on Apex's Pensacola factory was a genuine accident on Apex's part, but once they realized what they'd done; Simmons was all too happy to take advantage and paint Godzilla as a monster that needs to be put down, before deliberately engineering a repeat of the incident in one of the most densely-populated cities in the world, so that everyone will assume Apex are saving mankind from Godzilla once they set Mechagodzilla on him. Simmons also has the self-centeredness as a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist and the extreme reckless streak befitting this trope.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Not by very long, but his daughter Maia dies shortly before him. It's unknown if he ever discovers this.
• Pride: He oozes this like a carcass oozes with maggots. Part of his motivation and how he justifies his crimes is a sense of humanism-based entitlement and wounded pride that mankind can't call themselves the dominant species on Earth anymore. He's fully convinced himself that he and his company, with their previous technological advancements, are absolutely going to be the ones who will upstage the Titans and prove humanity's superiority. Hooking Ghidorah's skull up to his 466-foot artificial Titan and then using an eldritch material which he knows just as little about as a power source, instead of fully realizing his vision with himself at the helm, leads to whatever's left of Ghidorah's consciousness gaining a new body and killing Simmons, reducing his entire Evil Plan to tatters.
• Profane Last Words: He gets out an "Oh shit" right before Mechagodzilla swipes him to his death.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He doesn't exactly act like a grown man when the mask is off, while he's overseeing the Mechagodzilla project into which he's poured his pride and dreams. He looks like a giddy child when the test run is about to start, he shouts like one too when Godzilla blasting Hong Kong with his Atomic Breath makes Simmons realize Maia has found the energy source. And when Ren protests to Simmons' impulsive, impractical decision to skip over basic testing and integrate the energy source into Mechagodzilla immediately, Simmons' entire demeanor screams of an eight-year-old who's eager to open his Christmas present and annoyed at an elder interrupting him. Underneath the superficial charm, he's basically an evil kid who sees the whole world and everything in it as his own personal playground, which makes the fact that the Ghidorah skull he's using came from the Psychopathic Manchild head quite poetic.
• Psychotic Smirk: He has a small, devious grin on his face when Mechagodzilla's test run is about to begin, just before Mechagodzilla, in all its frightening glory, is revealed to the audience and (unbeknownst to Simmons) to Team Godzilla.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Madison isn't impressed by his posturing that he's acting in humanity's best interests when Team Godzilla confronts him, responding so:
  "Godzilla had left us in peace! You provoked him into war!"
• Smug Smiler: He frequently has an arrogant, smug little smirk on his face when he's in the control hub overseeing Mechagodzilla.
• Smug Snake: Underneath that superficial charm is an egotistical sociopath who's brimming with hubris. Simmons sees himself as a visionary leading humanity into a bold new era, and whilst Apex are cunning enough to dupe Monarch and the world into helping their Engineered Heroics, Simmons believes that no matter how crazy or risky his ideas and actions are, they will always work out in his benefit with him remaining in complete control because they're crazy and risky. In reality, he's nothing but a delusional, power-hungry, entitled hubrist, and one of the most Too Dumb to Live characters in the entire MonsterVerse. His self-destructive recklessness and inability to process the notion his plans might backfire on him, causing him to unwittingly engineer his downfall all on his own, without any input from the heroes. He even lives just long enough to have an Oh, Crap! when Mechagodzilla turns on him. Simmons gets extra points towards this trope in the novelization, where Ren is revealed to be a Dragon with an Agenda who intended to dispose of Simmons as soon as their partnership served its usefulness. If not for Ghidorah's subconsciousness hijacking Mechagodzilla for itself, Ren would've apparently been in the perfect position to use the fully-charged Mecha to kill Simmons and then continue his own agenda, yet Simmons shows no signs of being aware of this let alone of having installed any counter-measures. The fancy glass of alcohol that Simmons carries in several scenes accentuates his Smug Snakey-ness.
• The Sociopath: He has many signs of a high-functioning sociopath. He's able to feign empathy to manipulate people but seems to completely lack it, he can present a charming, false affable persona, and he possesses a grandiose sense of self-worth and gigantic ego. He also has the inherent lack of impulse control, as he wilfully completely rushes through powering up Mechagodzilla the second he gets his hands on the Hollow Earth energy source, and he doesn't take being questioned well. He has a daughter whose capabilities he thinks highly of, but he doesn't think anything of sending her on a life-threatening mission with an incomplete briefing just to see if she's worthy to succeed him, and he shows no signs of being fazed by her death if he was ever made aware that she died. Notably his 'well-intentions' ultimately amount to inflating his ego rather than actually helping anyone.
• Take Over the World: In the novelization, he outright states "the world will bow to [him]" after he kills Godzilla in a case of Engineered Heroics.
• Too Clever by Half: He (or at least the people in his company who helped him form his plan) are cunning and deceptive enough to succeed in Apex's machinations to turn the world against Godzilla by driving him to act destructive in major population centers, and then get Monarch to guide Apex to the Hollow Earth energy readings they need to activate Mechagodzilla under the illusion that both organizations are trying to stop Godzilla's seemingly-unprovoked rampage. However, Simmons is completely incapable of heeding his own limitations, to the point where he apparently doesn't see anything remotely wrong with turning a malevolent, man-hating Draconic Abomination's still-partly-alive remains into his Mecha's control system, and he foregoes Pragmatic Villainy in favor of risking everything when he needlessly invokes the Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway trope for immediate gratification. Unlike Alan Jonah before him, Simmons and his company don't have anything in the way of a Plan B, emergency recourses or ways to salvage their agenda in the event that they lose control of the Titan-type forces they're meddling with. Their pride was just that overbloated. Furthermore, a big part of why Apex get as far as they do over the film and they aren't busted and shut down before the penultimate act is in the folly and stupidity of other humans generally: the world at large easily condemn Godzilla, almost everyone decides to focus on killing Godzilla first and asking absolutely critical questions later, and almost everyone who broaches Godzilla's rampage completely misses or just plain ignores the signs that Apex Cybernetics are a Devil in Plain Sight.
• Too Dumb to Live: Way too dumb, for all his posturing. He's so recklessly arrogant in his beliefs that any Black Box he utilizes can never turn on him and so convinced that the Crazy Enough to Work trope will always be in effect around him so long as he remains bold, he doesn't see anything blatantly risky about incorporating a malevolent, human-hating Draconic Abomination's not-entirely-dead neurology as his Ultimate Destroyer's brain; only seeing his own narcissistic vision coming true. This ultimately gets him killed once Mechagodzilla is empowered by the Hollow Earth energy, with the heroes not having to do anything to stop Simmons himself. Simmons also has no problem bullying Ren when he gets annoyed with the latter, even though Ren is the one he's putting in direct control of the 466-foot Mecha just outside Simmons' observation room, a machine which could flatten Simmons' room and squash him like a bug even if Ghidorah's subconsciousness didn't hijack it.
• Tough Love: Somewhat. The novelization reveals he's regularly setting up mind-games for his daughter on her assignments, such as keeping Maia in the dark about Kong's presence on Lind and Andrews' mission to the Hollow Earth, apparently to test her wits and ensure she's worthy to inherit his corporate empire.
• The Unfettered: A manipulative, ruthless narcissist who will do absolutely anything to get what he wants without moral restraint or remorse. Though Simmons believes he's establishing humanity as the dominant species, in truth he's motivated to satisfy his own ego before anyone else can rob him of the glory he feels he deserves: and to that end, he sacrifices and intentionally endangers millions of people without shame, he commits corporate conspiracy, and resorts to all kinds of other underhanded acts; to say nothing of how he hasn't taken away any lessons from the previous films' events that might contradict his objective in ten years. Simmons doesn't even seem to care much that he's sending his own daughter on a life-threatening mission that will further his agenda. He finally refuses to back down from his decision to infuse the Green Rocks into Mechagodzilla immediately in Hong Kong, which is what seals his fate and ruins his plans. The novelization says that Simmons knows his decisions are putting his own life at stake, yet he can't and won't back down.
• Unwitting Pawn: According to the novelization, Walter is this to Ren, as Ren's real reason for creating Mechagodzilla was to use it to become an artificial god and kill Godzilla for personal reasons, and he was likely going to kill Walter the moment he no longer needed him.
• Viler New Villain: Zig-Zagged:
  • Compared to Alan Jonah from the previous movie (also a selfish Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist), Simmons' motivations and provocation are considerably shallower, pettier, and less humanizing. Whereas Jonah is a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds whose backstory implies he used to care about making the world a better place, and Jonah genuinely cared about at least some of his troops (namely Asher, to the point of being shaken by the latter's death); Simmons is a narcissistic sociopath who has no known Freudian Excuse to speak of (something which the novelization briefly lampshades), he's putting millions of people in mortal peril solely so he can feed his own ego, and whilst he does have some pride in his daughter's (alleged) capabilities, he overall doesn't show signs of genuinely caring about her nor anyone else.
  • On the other hand; whereas Jonah actively sought the extinction of humanity and was fine with sacrificing potentially all life on Earth to achieve that end, Simmons at least wanted there to still be a world with humans and some form of civilization in it at the end of his plans.
• Villainous Valour: In the novelization, it's stated that despite Simmons' sheer overconfidence and lack of common sense, he knows that he's staking his own life with his secret project and his insistence on risking Godzilla destroying his HQ in Hong Kong, and he's at peace with that.
• Villainous Widow's Peak: He has a well-groomed widow's peak courtesy of being played by Demián Bichir, and he's one of the MonsterVerse's evilest and hammiest human antagonists.
• Wicked Cultured: He's living proof that trendy attire, fondness for a fancy glass of alcohol, suave demeanor, superficial charm, and being able to found and run a billion-dollar company do not make a human being with basic decency, nor a human being with the most basic common sense and survival instinct when deciding what he'll do with the not-entirely-dead remains of an omnicidal Draconic Abomination from space that he's gotten his hands on.
• Wise Old Folk Façade: When Simmons and Ren approach Dr. Lind for help accessing the Hollow Earth, Simmons presents himself as a caring, soft-spoken and grandfatherly man who just wants to help the world, and he appears to connect with Lind over their shared proclivity for crazy ideas. Once Simmons heads to Hong Kong to oversee Mechagodzilla's completion, he's revealed to be a manipulative, amoral Psychopathic Manchild who is just using the Hollow Earth expedition for his own ends and doesn't care what happens to them.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: On top of possessing all of Apex's general points (see the General folder), Simmons firmly believes he's James T. Kirk within a setting where the Crazy Enough to Work and Million to One Chance tropes are constantly in full effect around him so long as he keeps testing his luck with crazy ideas. In reality, Simmons exists in a Jurassic Park-style setting, where man using cutting-edge technology to mess with primordial and little-understood powers for the sakes of pride and ambition leads to man being devoured by the monster he created and erroneously thought he could control.

Maia Simmons

Portrayed By: Eiza González

Appeared In: Godzilla vs. Kong

An Apex Cybernetics executive who joins Team Kong's efforts to enter the Hollow Earth as a representative.

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• The Beautiful Elite: Like father, like daughter, although in her case it's a bit downplayed by her attitude. She's the heiress of a corporation worth billions, she's played by the stunningly-beautiful Eiza González, and she wears a couple trendy articles of clothing over the movie. Unlike her father, Maia is a haughty Rich Bitch who has the bare minimum in sophistication even before things start going to pot.
• Brainy Brunette: Very much averted. She has dark hair like most of Team Kong's actual smart people, yet despite Maia's ability to spout out every technical detail about Apex's HEAVs, she proves to be very harebrained when in a crisis: jumping on the idea to dump Kong into the ocean in order to end Godzilla's attack even though this would also irreparably derail their mission, and causing her own death by having her HEAV's pilot shoot at Kong in a pathetic attempt to avoid certain death.
• Daddy's Little Villain: She's the daughter of Walter Simmons, and she's in on her father's Evil Plan.
• Dehumanization: She doesn't have much respect or high regard or any fondness for Kong, preferring to derisively call him "the monkey".
• Dirty Coward: Downplayed. At the first sign of Titan-sized mortal danger, she panics to the point self-destructive stupidity, losing almost all practical forward-thinking cognitive function. During Godzilla's first attack, the moment Maia realizes that he's after Kong, she demands they dump Kong into the sea and let Godzilla have him – not only does this piss off Dr. Andrews, but Maia forgets amid her panic that without Kong to lead her to the Green Rocks' main outlet, her entire mission will be completely ruined there and then if they lose Kong. When Kong turns on Maia and the flesh-eating Hellhawks descend, Maia at least has enough nerve and loyalty to wait until the data transfer of the Green Rocks is complete before she turns tail; after that, she sprints straight for the nearest HEAV and is reduced to frantically screaming at the pilot to get her out of danger now, and her harebrained order that her HEAV shoot at Kong instead of simply flying around him to the escape route gets her embarrassingly killed.
• Evil Wears Black: Downplayed. Before donning the black-and-gold HEAV jumpsuit, she's always wearing a plain black top, often underneath a coat or jacket. She's also one of the bad guys, like her similarly black-clad father.
• Freudian Excuse: Implied. She was raised from birth by a corporate tycoon to think like him and does most of what she does to earn her father's approval. Considering said father is also a complete sociopath, it's not a surprise in hindsight that she ended up the way she did.
• Humble Pie: Subverted. After Godzilla's attack on the fleet impresses on her what kind of situation she's in (during which she went into a harebrained panic and suggested dumping Kong into the ocean), Maia appears to tone down her stuck-up attitude a little. Later, the moment Maia gets what she needs to complete her mission, she doesn't hesitate to betray Team Kong; arrogantly asserting that her father will get what he wants and that they can do whatever they want with the Hollow Earth's energy source now, and ultimately she causes her own death through sheer stupidity by establishing herself as a threat to Jia while Kong was standing right there.
• Informed Ability: Despite being described by her actress as "a very smart woman behind a company", it really doesn't come across. She's quick to demand in a panic that Monarch dump Kong into the ocean so Godzilla will stop attacking their fleet, forgetting how that would make it more difficult for her to reach the Hollow Earth's energy source, and then there's her infamous Too Dumb to Live. This might have something to do with the movie's storyline getting recut and changed in post-production, as Word of Saint Paul has it that Maia's role was very different in the original story.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: At first, she's a condescending and smug Rich Bitch who derides Kong as "the monkey". But she does show concern for Jia's wellbeing a couple of times, demonstrating a potential soft spot for children compared to adults, and her bad attitude seems to gradually mellow over the course of Team Kong's journey. Then she betrays the team in cold blood in the Hollow Earth, not batting an eye as her armed Apex escorts hold all of them (Jia included) at gunpoint, and leaving them all to die without hesitation when panicked.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: She's not nearly as steely as her father believes her to be, and it shows – of course, since she's also an obnoxious, stuck-up Rich Bitch, to say nothing of her villainous actions, her misfortunes are quite satisfying. After the bridge of the naval carrier is temporarily flooded, the camera focuses on a drenched Maia standing on her own, vomiting seawater. After the HEAVs cross the Vile Vortex's boundary into the Hollow Earth, Maia is the only one onboard Team Kong's HEAV who needs to make use of a barf bag due to the effects of the trippy ride; an occurrence which Nathan predicted precisely before they went in. To say nothing of the embarrassingly comical way that Maia causes her own death.
• Karmic Death: A matter of minutes after she betrays Team Kong and the Big K himself so she can power up Mechagodzilla (abandoning Team Kong to fend for themselves against the Hellhawks), Kong himself foils her escape and kills her. What's more, she treated Kong with Dehumanization throughout the movie, and if she hadn't ordered her HEAV's pilot to shoot at Kong in a senseless panic in an attempt to get him out of their escape route, he probably would've let her go. When Kong peers into her HEAV with one eye in irrefutable intelligence before he crushes it, it's like he's giving her the middle finger for her earlier behavior before she goes up in flames.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The Dark Feminine to Dr. Andrews' Light Feminine when they're working together on the Hollow Earth expedition. Compared to Andrews, Maia is played by the stunning Eiza González and always wears something that fits nicely around her form throughout her screentime, she's confident (at first), but she's also rude, aloof, and all she cares about is completing the mission her father gave her; betraying the rest of the team once they get in her way.
• Like Father, Like Son: She shares a lot of traits with her father, Walter: they're both arrogant, lack any respect for Titans (at least in her case she has no respect for Kong), and have a sense of self-entitlement. They are also both Too Dumb to Live; while Walter gets himself killed by Mechagodzilla thanks to his own hubris in thinking that he fully understands how to use it, Maia gets herself killed not long before when she threatens Team Kong right in front of Kong and not even bothering to capture Jia in case Kong tries to attack the HEAV she's in, and then, she has her bodyguards shoot at Kong to "get him out of the way", which angered Kong to the point he crushed her and everyone else inside her HEAV in a fiery inferno.
• My Nayme Is: Subtitles and credits spell her name as "Maia," not the slightly-more-common "Maya."
• Oh, Crap!: When Kong grabs her HEAV and looks right in at her (after she's shot at him and threatened Team Kong in front of him no less), Maia has a look on her face that screams, "Oh, fuck". Cue her Undignified Death.
• Pet the Dog: During Godzilla's attack on the fleet, she's the first one to run to Jia's aid when the girl and Dr. Andrews barely escape drowning.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": Her last words during her Undignified Death.
• Replacement Flat Character: She serves as one to Madison Russell. Although the two never meet, like Madison was in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), Maia is also the daughter of the human Big Bad Wannabe who is responsible for kicking off the film's Kaiju crisis, and she is secretly in on her parent's Evil Plan. But whereas Madison had the morals and personality traits to have a Heel Realization about her mother's actions and rebel against her, Maia remains unwaveringly loyal to her father's actions.
• Rich Bitch: She waves her father's company's technology in everyone's faces, belittles the rest of Team Kong for being comparatively primitive, and overall does not exude a friend-making attitude. Her attitude seems to mellow as the mission goes on, particularly after Godzilla's attack on the fleet gives her a wake-up call about what kind of situation she's in and how being amidst battling Titans isn't something she's cut out for handling, but she still betrays the team.
• Shooting Superman: Infamously so. In a thoughtless panic, she orders her HEAV's pilot to shoot at King Kong to get the latter out of their way while they're trying to flee.
• The Team Benefactor: She and her father are to Team Kong as Miranda and the Illusive Man are to the Normandy crew respectively: Walter is providing the expedition with the HEAVs necessary to access and even stand a chance at braving the Hollow Earth, but Maia represents Apex on the team whilst Walter doesn't physically join them in any capacity.
• Too Dumb to Live: She tends to lose common sense and give in to plain panic whenever she's in a life-threatening situation, but she has two counts of this trope in short order in the Hollow Earth. Her betraying Team Kong in front of Kong was not a good idea, nor was her ordering her pilot shoot at Kong in a panic to try and get him out of their HEAV's way.
• Undignified Death: Her death is about as funny as it is cathartic. After she pisses Kong off and after she orders her pilot to shoot at him, the retaliating Kong easily grabs her HEAV and glares in at her, causing her to proverbially shit her pants. She spends her last seconds crying out at her impending doom with a panicked Rapid-Fire "No!" before Kong crushes the HEAV in a casual, almost bored-looking manner and it explodes.
• Ungrateful Bitch: She and everyone else on the ship carrying Kong would have drowned when Godzilla capsized it if Kong hadn't flipped the ship back over. Despite that, she still belittles him, and she even orders her pilot to shoot at him to get him out of her way.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: Implied in the movie. She's part of the mission to the Hollow Earth on the behalf of her father (whom the movie shows is a manipulative sociopath), and she even betrays and threatens Team Kong so she can complete her mission that will enable Walter to realize his ambitions, summarizing her actions as "My father gets what he wants." In the novelization's expansion, however, Maia implies that she resents her father and is merely waiting until the day she'll inherit his corporate empire.

Ren Serizawa

Portrayed By: Shun Oguri

Appeared In: Godzilla vs. Kong

The son of the late Dr. Ishirō Serizawa, who works for Apex Cybernetics as Walter Simmons' chief technology officer.

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• Adaptation Expansion: The novelization of Godzilla vs. Kong greatly expands on his character, revealing that he used to be a "Well Done, Son" Guy who idolized his father and sought his approval and attention, only for Ishirō to completely neglect his family in favor of his work. Ishirō sacrificing himself to revitalize Godzilla robbed Ren of any chance for closure with his father, and he hates Godzilla with a burning passion for taking his father from him in more ways than one.
• Admiring the Abomination: Two counts in the novelization:
  • Inverted in regard to Godzilla. He passionately hates the Titan but also seems to admire or at least respect him, acknowledging it won't be easy to take Godzilla down.
  • By contrast, Ren is a Nightmare Fetishist for Skullcrawlers.
• Advertised Extra: Although movie trailers put significant emphasis on Ren and make him look like he'll be a plot-relevant supporting character, in the movie proper, his role is one that could've easily been regulated to an Elite Mook without any difference, to viewers' disappointment. The novelization does more to describe Ren's P.O.V. and his backstory, fleshing out his motivations for hating Godzilla and working with Apex.
• Alas, Poor Villain: In the novelization's take on Ren's death, as Ren's consciousness is being overwritten, the last thing Ren sees is an image of his father smiling at him before the last of Ren's mind dies. It showcases how at his core, Ren never really grew up and was still a love-starved child screaming for his father's attention, all the way to the end of his short, wasted life.
• Antagonistic Offspring: Although he doesn't appear (nor become a full-fledged villain according to the novel) until after his father's death, as the movie goes on it becomes clear that any initial similarities Ren has to his father in the early scenes are superficial — underneath his pretentions of wanting to help people better manage the Titans, Ren is the complete opposite of his father and opposes every value the late Dr. Serizawa stood for. Whereas Ishirō was a noble and humble naturalist who was critical of mankind's arrogance in their abilities, and who revered the Titans (Godzilla in particular) as forces of nature yet still passionately cared about human lives; Ren is an embittered and ruthless Evil Genius who believes humanity is destined to eclipse the Titans' power through technological advancement, he personally despises Godzilla and he hypocritically never once thinks anything of helping Apex to put millions of innocent people in Godzilla's warpath. The grin of pure relish on Ren's face when Mechagodzilla activates its Proton Scream under his control encapsulates perfectly how Ren basks in his creation's power and how his father's famous words about "the arrogance of man" mean nothing to him.
• Asian and Nerdy: He's the token Asian among the three core Apex conspirators, and he's the chief technology officer who was in charge of Mechagodzilla's construction and piloting, whereas Maia and Walter Simmons seem to specialize more in the business side of things. Ironically, the novelization states that Ren's exceptional tech knowledge is the result of having a parent who was barely ever there for him and whose attention he sought through academy rather than having a parent who actively pushed him to excel.
• Asshole Victim: Whereas Walter and Maia both brought their otherwise-avoidable deaths on themselves purely through their own faults, pushing their deaths solely into Karmic Death territory; Ren actually didn't want to pilot Apex's Unobtainium-infused Secret Weapon without first conducting basic testing, which might have prevented Ghidorah's takeover of Mechagodzilla and the power surge which killed Ren in the cockpit, but Simmons pressured Ren into activating it anyway. Since Ren is an Evil Genius who callously helped Apex to put millions of people in mortal peril for the sake of murdering Godzilla and destroying his late father's legacy, there aren't exactly many tears to be shed over him.
• Beard of Evil: Slightly downplayed. Unlike both of his benevolent forebears but much like his goatee-toting boss Simmons, Ren has a tidy moustache, and he is anything but a good guy.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In the novelization, he has delusions of godhood and enjoys wielding the full power of a Titan when he's linked to Mechagodzilla. As part of his alternate death in the novel, it's implied Ren gets his wish to be able to play God with his creation lastingly, but not in the way he envisioned: when Mechagodzilla starts gaining sentience, Ren's consciousness becomes trapped inside the Mecha and is overwritten by the new mind's formation, causing Ren to effectively cease existing as an individual and become nothing more than a lesser part of Mechagodzilla's new consciousness.
• Black Sheep: Ren does not share his father's or his grandfather's views on humanity or the Titans, breaking away from the previous two Serizawas' Heroic Lineage into full-blown villainy. Lacking several of his forebears' key traits (mindfulness of humanity's arrogance, compassion for others and admiration of Godzilla), Ren aligns himself with Apex's Corporate Conspiracy to kill Godzilla and overpower the Titans at any cost including but not limited to engineering horrific civilian casualties for the sake of a False Flag Operation. Whilst Ren does have more caution than Simmons about misusing the Hollow Earth energy source, he still doesn't think anything of turning Ghidorah's science-defying neurological remains into a Black Box for Mechagodzilla's brain. From all this and his visible power trip when piloting Mechagodzilla, it's clear that if Ren ever heard his father's words about how the forces of nature aren't humanity's toy, he didn't listen.
• Cain and Abel: Mentally discussed by Ren in the novelization. He frames himself as the Cain to Godzilla's Abel in his introductory scene, seeing the Titan as an older brother that his father neglected him to dote upon, and he vows to do whatever it takes to kill the Titan out of resentment and hatred.
• Child Supplants Parent: The novelization explicitly confirms that Ren sees killing Godzilla, the very Titan his father worshipped and gave his life to save, as his way of supplanting Ishirō.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: He functions as a counterpart to Emma Russell from Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Both are the resident Big Bad Wannabe's partner/right hand and are ever so slightly more sympathetic, they both caution said Big Bad Wannabes against going too far when messing with the Titan true Big Bad to no avail, and (as confirmed in Ren's case by the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization), they're both the Big Bad Wannabe's true tech expert who manages the Titan-aggravating technology which fuels the movie's plot. Emma and Ren both also hail from a normally-heroic family, and they have ultimately selfish motivations behind their Knight Templar actions rooted in grief and rage over losing a family-member (a son for Emma, a father for Ren), and they seek to avenge their losses while allowing millions of civilians to be sacrificed as collateral. However:
  • Their views and philosophies on humanity and the Titans, and the targets of their respective vendettas, are complete opposites. Emma is a nature-oriented scientist who is awed by the Titans and contemptuous of humanity, seeing the former as the true rulers of the Earth, and seeking to punish the latter for ruining their shared world and for causing the Titans' emergences which killed her son, via taking her pro-Titan attitude to its logical extreme. Ren on the other hand is a hi-tech technophilic engineer with a humanocentric outlook, who sees the Titans as nothing more than an animalistic obstacle to humanity's ongoing advancement that should be either eradicated like smallpox or should otherwise be corraled and repurposed for human ends, and he above all else wants to see Godzilla killed out of rage over the latter robbing him of a relationship with his father and having an indirect role in said father's death.
  • Emma is a mole in Monarch, whereas Ren is nakedly working for the movie's resident evil organization from the moment he first appears.
  • Emma still has her surviving other child Madison to humanize her, leading her to return to the heroes' side by default and make a Heroic Sacrifice, whereas Ren has no Morality Pet or Morality Chain whatsoever to redeem him with both his parents dead, and he dies ignominiously.
  • Additionally, whereas Emma stays true to her convictions and moral standards after she protests to the Big Bad Wannabe's madness, Ren obeys Simmons despite his own better judgment and he pays the price for it.
• Corrupted Character Copy: He's got an estranged father and he pilots a towering mech by synchronizing with it through techno-organic means. Said mech was reverse-engineered from the very monsters it was designed to destroy. Ren is basically Shinji Ikari if you replaced his emotional fragility with cold sadism.
• The Corruptible: The novelization hints that Ren's personality has been somewhat corrupted and/or his sanity frayed due to repeatedly linking his mind to Mechagodzilla through Ghidorah's undead skull. The novel also makes it clear that Ren's hatred of Godzilla and his fallacious view of his father as a man who didn't care about human life were all there long before he first made contact with the skull, and his decision to join Apex's Corporate Conspiracy was all his own. Essentially, if the psionic uplink did affect Ren's personality and mental state, the most it did was make Ren an even worse version of what he already was.
• Death Glare: In his introductory scene, he takes a moment before leaving to watch Godzilla's approach from afar, but whereas his father often looked upon Godzilla with reverent awe and admiration, Ren's face looks twisted in anger and pain. His feelings toward the Titan get explanation in the novelization.
• Deep Breath Reveals Tension: In the novel, he takes a breath just before Mechagodzilla's test run activates because he's realized that he's let himself get worked up thinking about his past.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: When Ghidorah's subconsciousness hijacks Mechagodzilla, the movie explicitly depicts Ren's connection to the Mecha being severed and Ren bouncing back into his body, looking around the cockpit in confusion moments before suffering a High-Voltage Death. In the novelization it's a bit different: Ren's mind becomes trapped inside Mechagodzilla; unable to move his original body nor control the Mecha as the latter begins ambulating on its own, before the Mecha's new independent mind essentially drowns and replaces Ren's. Based on the placement of a scene transition indicator before the novel goes from describing Ren's last thoughts to Mechagodzilla's first thoughts, it can be inferred that the remains of Ren's mind were integrated into the Mecha's personality as Ren died; in any case, whatever was left of Ren's soul inside his cybernetic abomination's consciousness presumably perished when the Mecha was destroyed less than an hour later.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: In the novelization, he's hidden the true extent of his negative feelings towards his father from associates, lovers and even from his mother his entire life, because he equates being pitied with being mocked.
• Doublethink: Apparent type in the novelization. Ren rejects the notion the Titans are gods and he believes they're nothing more than animals meant to be domesticated or cleared off by humanity, espousing the belief that individual humans of prominence come and go like Ozymandias whilst the human race continues to advance long after said individuals have been forgotten. At the same time, Ren fully believes his Evil Knockoff of a Titan is (A) a singular gateway to physical godhood for him and (B) glory for himself alone.
• The Dragon: To Walter Simmons. Ren and Simmons are frequently seen together or at least in the same building, and Ren is the pilot of Mechagodzilla who's expected by Simmons to use it to kill Godzilla. The novelization portrays Ren as a Dragon with an Agenda (see below).
• Dragon with an Agenda: The novelization reveals Ren has more personal motivations than Simmons does for wanting to kill Godzilla, even if he's onboard with Apex's Humanity Is Superior philosophy and their Muggle Power stance on the Titans. Ren is revealed to be contemptuous of Simmons for viewing Mechagodzilla's completion more as the validation of his own ego than the progression of human advancement, and he sees Simmons as a mere stepping stone; planning to get rid of him once their partnership is no longer necessary.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: He seems to inwardly go through this when he's piloting Mechagodzilla, if the ecstatic grin he flashes when he's using the Mecha's Proton Scream on Number 10 is any indication. The novelization further describes him experiencing something of a crash when the Mecha's power runs out and he returns to his body.
• Electronic Telepathy: He's the pilot of the "psionic uplink" which controls Mechagodzilla, operating it from the Brain/Computer Interface inside Ghidorah's skull, although he's placed in a trance while he controls Mechagodzilla's actions. Until the Brain-Computer Interface's Draconic Abomination subconsciousness hijacks the Mecha.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Somewhat in the novelization. He thinks it's obscenely callous that his father would advocate letting Titans fight other Titans, citing that the creatures' battles naturally cause collateral damage — oblivious to the fact he and Simmons are callously and needlessly engineering hundreds of avoidable collateral deaths for their own selfish goals, and that Ren's Mecha even if successful will just be more of the same in terms of collateral since it fights off Titans the same way Titans fight off each-other.
• Evil Counterpart: As described under Antagonistic Offspring, Ren is the complete opposite of his father Ishirō and everything the latter stood for. The novelization indicates Ishirō repeated his own father Eiji's parenting style when Ren was growing up (sacrificing time with his family so he could commit himself to his work for Monarch), and Ren's turn to villainy was a direct result of Ishirō's untimely death robbing Ren of the chance to reconcile with his father like Ishirō did with Eiji. Essentially, Ren is a reflection of what Ishirō might have become if Eiji had died before they reconciled.
• Evil Genius: Ren is Apex Cybernetics' chief technology officer and Walter Simmons' more quiet right-hand man (Dragon with an Agenda in the novelization). He uses his tech skills to lead the construction of Mechagodzilla, worse yet incorporating Ghidorah's skull as the Mecha's control mechanism (which is ultimately what dooms Apex). Despite his reckless use of Ghidorah's skull, Ren tries to caution his boss and talk sense into him at one point, although Simmons belittles him instead of listening.
• Evil Wears Black: Ren plays this straighter than his colleagues, wearing a pitch-black shirt or overcoat in all his scenes.
• Fate Worse than Death: In his Dies Differently in Adaptation, it's implied when Ren's consciousness is overwritten that it's essentially digested to fully form the Mecha's newborn personality alongside Ghidorah's consciousness remnants, with there being no POV transition-marker when Ren's perspective fluidly shifts into Mechagodzilla's first sentient thoughts.
• Foreshadowing: In the Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) novelization, it's mentioned that Ishirō passed what was essentially a Serizawa family heirloom on to Vivienne Graham instead of his son Ren, who was also mentioned in the novel. Besides being a testament to Graham and Dr. Serizawa's closeness, it seems to hint that Serizawa and Ren don't exactly see eye-to-eye and/or that Ren isn't quite like his father and grandfather.
• Freudian Excuse: The novelization goes into why Ren has become the way he is. He felt severely neglected when growing up due to his father sacrificing time with his family in favor of devoting himself to his Monarch work, barely acknowledging Ren when he was around. A major turning point in the rift between father and son was when Ren had to organize his own mother's funeral at age eighteen, while his father was away on field work until two days after the ceremony. What fully drove Ren over to the dark side was Ishirō's untimely death by Heroic Suicide when saving Godzilla (a creature Ren feels has been robbing him of his father his entire life), which permanently robbed Ren of any chance at reconciliation.
• Fusion Dance: Implied in the novelization, where Ren dies differently via Mind-Reformat Death when Mechagodzilla gains sentience from Ghidorah's remains. From the lack of a scene-transition marker between Ren's last thoughts and Mechagodzilla's first thoughts, and how the novel indicates it's only when Ren's mind is fully disintegrated that the Mecha's new mind is fully realized, it can be inferred that the remains of Ren's mind have been digested and assimilated to form a lesser part of Mechagodzilla's new personality alongside Ghidorah's subconsciousness and the A.I..
• Gadgeteer Genius: If his job as the chief technology officer of a corporation that prides itself on making revolutionary technological advancements is any indication, Ren is exceptionally gifted with technology, and it's implied he's the one who led the engineering side of Mechagodzilla's creation and the creation of the technology which harnesses the Ghidorah skull's telepathy.
• Ghost Memory: He appears to experience this for a moment in the novelization, when the psionic uplink malfunctions and its original bone component's consciousness remnants begin taking over the system:
  He felt a million years of rage rising in him, hatred that transcended time and space. He felt as if he was sinking into it, dissolving, as another mind full of terrible, alien thoughts began to take his place.
• A God Am I: The novelization reveals Ren very much enjoys quite literally playing god and feeling what it's like to have a Titan's power when he's piloting Mechagodzilla, to the point that he feels almost desperate to get the Mecha a lasting power source in the test run's aftermath. There even seem to be some subtle hints that Apex and Ren intend to make his artificial apotheosis permanent once Mechagodzilla gains a permanent power source.
• Godhood Seeker: Twofold. Ren is the pilot of Apex's artificial Titan who's expected to use it to kill Godzilla and usurp him as King of the Monsters. The novelization also shows that Ren very much enjoys wielding the physical power of a Titan when he's piloting Mechagodzilla via the psionic uplink, and he feels desperate to get the Mecha a lasting power source so he can uplink to it for longer, to a point comparable to substance addiction, even feeling it's what he's always meant to be (this might be a side effect of repeatedly using an experimental psionic uplink and/or directly linking his mind to a Ghidorah skull).
• Grand Theft Me: The novelization hints this happens to him when Ghidorah's subconsciousness hijacks Mechagodzilla, saying the following of Ren's perspective:^note "He felt the connection establish, felt his will begin to filter over to the other skull, the control mechanism of his Gojira, expanding all the while, filling it up, too. But it suddenly wasn't one way anymore. It was not just him entering the machine – something was also entering him, oscillating, a feedback loop between his own consciousness and the AI. He felt a million years of rage rising in him, hatred that transcended time and space.", and they Never Found the Body after the now-sentient Mecha breaks out of the Apex facility.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: In the film, it's never explained fully why Ren has joined Apex's Mechagodzilla plan and went against every single value his father stood for, but his Death Glare at Godzilla hints it's not just because he agrees with Apex's philosophy. The novelization provides a full explanation of Ren's motives.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: Inverted in the novelization. The description of the Skull Room scenes from Ren's perspective shows he has to rein himself in from insulting his boss more than once, generally holding Simmons in contempt as an egotistical "chattering baboon".
• High-Voltage Death: Once Ghidorah's consciousness takes control of Mechagodzilla, Ren gets fried by electricity within the skull cockpit.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: Subverted. He uses Ghidorah's telepathic skull as a Wetware CPU so he can personally pilot Mechagodzilla via psionic uplink, but the instant Apex upload the Hollow Earth energy formula as a power source, Ghidorah's lingering consciousness in the skull takes control from Ren and essentially reincarnates into Mechagodzilla, proceeding to turn on Apex.
• Humanity Is Superior: The novelization shows this is Ren's viewpoint.
  "The god-kings of Babylon and Egypt and Tenochtitlan had come and gone, as had countless conquerors and dictators. All were dust now. But the human race itself always moved on, growing in knowledge, in power, in mastery of its world, and someday soon, other worlds."
• Hypocrite: The novelization gives him a few cases of this:
  • Ren considers Godzilla a monster who's undeserving of his heroic reputation because of the thousands of collateral deaths that have occurred in his fights against other Titans, and he thinks it's appalling that his father would advocate "let[ting] them fight" because of the collateral damage the Titans' battles cause. Yet Ren himself never once spares a thought for the millions of innocent people he and Simmons are knowingly putting in Godzilla's warpath in Hong Kong, and he doesn't seem to comprehend that even if Apex's project had been a success, it would've caused just as much collateral as Godzilla since it's designed to fight off Titans the same way Titans fight each-other.
  • Ren dismisses the notion that the Titans are gods and insists they're nothing more than animals meant to be mastered, but he positively relishes in feeling like a god when he's in control of Mechagodzilla to the point of feeling he can only be "what he was meant to be" if he's able to use it indefinitely. This is hypocritical to his transcribed Humanity Is Superior attitude above.
  • While Ren thinks derisively of Simmons' egotism because Ren doesn't particularly care if his name is remembered for his contributions to human advancement, again, he seems to be oblivious to the fact he's incredibly arrogant himself: he has the hubris to think he's a mental god trapped in a mortal's body when he's linked to Mechagodzilla, and that's not even going into what he as Apex's chief technology officer did with Ghidorah's skull.
• Ignored Expert: A villainous case. He argues that using the Hollow Earth energy-formula for Mechagodzilla without testing it is a bad idea, but Walter dismisses him. He's very right, as the moment the formula is incorporated into the Mecha, Ghidorah's consciousness remnants in the skull hijack it and take control.
• Immortality Through Memory: Played With. In the novelization, Ren flat out doesn't care if he's forgotten by future generations or is never credited for his achievements, but he does take solace in believing that his achievements and their ripple effects will live on far down the line.
• Inferred Survival: In the novelization, it's hinted that the Ghidorah skull's consciousness is filtering into Ren's body whilst his mind is overwritten by Mechagodzilla forming its own mind. When Madison briefly returns to the trashed Skull Room later, the novel simply states, "She found no sign of the pilot."
• It's All About Me: The novelization shows that while he's not narcissistic like Simmons, Ren is just as selfish. He's willing to build Mechagodzilla, murder Godzilla (the very creature his father willingly gave his life to save, and an animal that has no idea of how simply existing affected Ren's relationship with his father) and aid Apex in callously putting millions of innocent people in Godzilla's warpath; all because he has daddy issues. Even before Ren snapped due to his father's death; when he's recalling how he used to hope he and his father would reconcile, his retroactive thoughts paint Ishirō as the only one at fault for their strained relationship, even though Ren already had a dim view of Godzilla and the Titans as far back as 2014, indicating it never occurred to Ren that his father might not be the only one who needed enlightenment. Though disgusted by Simmons' narcissism, Ren seems to think more about killing Godzilla for taking his father away from him and about fulfilling his craving to have Mechagodzilla's power at his fingertips than about any long-term plans he might have for "human advancement" afterwards.
• It's Personal: The novelization reveals Ren wants to kill Godzilla because he feels the Titan has been robbing him of a relationship with his father all his life, in more ways than one: first by causing Dr. Ishirō Serizawa, in his zeal and passion, to neglect Ren and his mother while committing himself to studying Godzilla, secondly by Serizawa's Heroic Suicide to revive Godzilla permanently crushing Ren's hopes that he and his father could reconcile one day.
• Karmic Death:
  • He had the arrogance and stupidity to turn an omnicidal Draconic Abomination's still-telepathic remains into the core of an artificial Titan's control system without any regard for how it could potentially backfire, all so he could usurp the Old Gods; and he doesn't show any signs of caring about the millions of innocent people he and Simmons are knowingly putting in danger. Ren reaps what he sows when Ghidorah reincarnates into Mechagodzilla, promptly making Ren one of the first two casualties of the resulting disaster. What's more, Ren ironically dies before he gets to square off against Godzilla with the Mecha at all, almost as if the fates are telling him how small and unworthy of the God Incarnate's passing notice he really is.
  • There's another angle to Ren's death. He's gone against every value his father ever stood for (knowingly in the novelization), and his death is appropriately the opposite of how Ishirō died. Dr. Serizawa died willingly and nobly sacrificing himself to help Godzilla and save the world, and he's remembered with reverence and high regard by Monarch (and also by Godzilla himself in Godzilla: Dominion and the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization). Ren on the other hand dies unwittingly restoring Godzilla's Evil Counterpart to life while selfishly trying to elevate himself to godhood, meeting a humiliatingly unceremonious death when an electrical surge to Ghidorah's skull kills him amidst the havoc of Mechagodzilla's awakening; almost as if the monster is disposing of a pawn that has outlived its use. You wanted to be everything that your father wasn't, Ren, you got to die as everything your father wasn't.
• Knight Templar: Word of Saint Paul says Ren believes he's "protect[ing] the Earth", despite the heinous crimes Apex commit and their leader's "well intentions" being only skin-deep. The novelization shows Ren is deluded enough, like Simmons, to think he's siding with humanity against all monsters whilst Apex callously engineer thousands of casualties by Godzilla left and right; and he hypocritically believes his crusade to kill Godzilla is justified by all the collateral deaths of Godzilla's previous battles.
• Lack of Empathy: In the novelization; Ren's thoughts show that he's just as apathetic to the millions of civilians whom Apex are deliberately endangering as Simmons is, never once morally thinking anything of his monstrous hypocrisy in helping Simmons to engineer thousands to millions of needless casualties. Even Ren's desire to call off the devastation of Hong Kong is based purely on Pragmatic Villainy rather than any empathy for the innocent people getting hurt. This shows that for all of Ren's delusions about protecting humanity and about Godzilla being a mass-murdering monster; to quote Dean Wichester, the only real difference between Godzilla's monster foes and Ren is the size of Ren's ego.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: He may look and sound like his father at first glance, but beyond that the only common trait they share is a genius-level intellect. It becomes clear as the movie goes on that Ren and his father could not be more different. Ishiro had an interest in nature and valued life, while Ren prefers technology and gleefully commits murder. Ishiro understands that humanity should adapt to the Titan's presence rather than control them, while Ren tried to dominate them by manufacturing an alpha Titan. Ishiro died an honorable death trying to heal Godzilla, Ren's death was barely a footnote in Mechagodzilla's ascension. Overall, Ren has absolutely none of his late father's humility, wisdom or compassion whilst practicing almost all the crimes, philosophies and fallacies which his father abhorred most. The novelization explains this is partly down to Ishirō repeating Eiji's distant and questionable parenting style on Ren, and it backfired horribly in Ren's case.
• Mind Rape: In his Dies Differently in Adaptation in the novelization, Ren's consciousness is essentially devoured/assimilated by Mechagodzilla's newborn consciousness, and Ren gets to watch his own thoughts and memories flashing momentarily in his field of vision before disappearing forever as his identity is disintegrated.
• Mind-Reformat Death: This is the nature of the novelization version of his death: instead of being electrocuted, Ren's consciousness gets trapped in Mechagodzilla as Ghidorah's subconsciousness takes over the AI, rapidly overwriting Ren's mind until he's gone. Notably, the moment Ren's mind is fully destroyed is the same moment when Mechagodzilla's new mind has become fully realized.
• Misplaced Retribution: The novelization of Godzilla vs. Kong reveals he wants to kill Godzilla because he considers the Titan responsible for depriving him of his father's love and attention his entire life, right up to Serizawa's Heroic Sacrifice. It doesn't matter to Ren that Godzilla, as an animal, had no conscious influence on what Serizawa did with his life because of his existence, let alone how Serizawa's life choices affected the latter's family.
• More than Mind Control: Subtly implied in the novelization. It's strongly hinted in one scene that Ren's repeated usage of the part-Ghidorah experimental psionic uplink has been impacting his mental state while Ren (being the arrogant god-wannabe he is) thinks he's been gaining further insights into his mind. Ren notably thinks while sitting inside the Ghidorah skull that using the interface has been turning him into "the man he['s] meant to be", and after the Mecha loses power during a test run, he feels an almost drug-like compulsion to see Mechagodzilla fully empowered because he feels that "Only then could he be what he was meant to be". This seems to imply that Ghidorah's skull was subtly pushing Ren towards unwittingly giving Mechagodzilla greater power.
• My Skull Runneth Over: Jared Krichevsky, the concept artist who worked on Mechagodzilla, implied (semi-jokingly) that Ren's High-Voltage Death was a result of the fully-charged Mechagodzilla being too much for his brain to take on its own once the skull's subconsciousness took over the system for itself instead of continuing to act as Ren's cerebral crutch.
• Never Found the Body: In the novelization, this is the last mention of Ren after his alternate death scene:
  "But when she tried to return to the control room inside of Ghidorah's skull, she found that it had also been annihilated when Mechagodzilla killed Simmons. She found no sign of the pilot."
• Nightmare Fetishist:
  • In the novelization, this is Ren's opinion on Skullcrawlers:
    "He loved Skullcrawlers. They were so extreme; it was literally impossible for them to eat enough to sate their hunger. […] He admired their purity, and he absolutely had no compunction about killing them."
  • The novelization also mentions that Ren's reaction when Simmons first showed Ghidorah's skull to him was "love at first sight", and he only grew more seduced with it as he studied and experimented with it.
• Oh, Crap!: When his psionic uplink to the fully-charged Mechagodzilla is severed, he looks around the cockpit in seeming confusion and panic as the system audibly malfunctions. In the novelization, he tries in vain to take the psionic helmet off his real body as his consciousness is trapped inside Mechagodzilla — no longer under his control — before his mind is obliterated by that of Ghidorah.
• Only Sane by Comparison: He's still a villain, and he's just as arrogant and stupid as the rest of Apex when it came to them using Ghidorah's skull as a psionic Black Box for controlling Mechagodzilla without regard for how it might backfire. But when it comes to using the Hollow Earth energy as another Black Box, Ren is the only Apex operative in the control room who protests to Simmons' order to integrate the energy into Mechagodzilla without conducting basic testing, saying they have no idea how it'll affect the Mecha's system.
• Pragmatic Villainy: In the novelization, his thoughts when Godzilla is in Hong Kong reveal that Ren would much rather postpone the fully-charged Mechagodzilla's activation, turn off all the systems, and wait for Godzilla to leave the densely-populated city without a fight or otherwise draw Godzilla away from the city by remotely broadcasting a relay signal at another location. Not because Ren has suddenly grown a conscience for the eight million people he and Simmons are putting in the crossfire, but simply because Ren recognizes that activating Mechagodzilla now while Godzilla is so close to their HQ would mean they likely wouldn't have enough time to get the Mecha outside before Godzilla senses its activation, and kills them all by destroying their HQ whilst trying to get to the Mecha; and also because Ren wants more time to iron out any bugs that he thinks the Mecha's new power source could cause without proper testing.
• Pride: The novelization shows he's no less filled with hubris than Walter Simmons. He believes humanity is the supreme force on Earth due to our ongoing technological and intellectual development, and that the Titans are nothing more than a new kind of rival animal to be either cleared off or domesticated. Though he's not as reckless as Simmons when it comes to the Hollow Earth energy source, Ren thinks just as little as his boss does of turning Ghidorah's remains into the main component of Mechagodzilla's neural network, ignoring the red flags that such a thing is likely to backfire. His beliefs about humanity are disproven and his obscenely reckless tampering with Ghidorah's remains comes back to bite him, when Ghidorah's subconsciousness takes control of Mechagodzilla for itself; turning the very thing Ren regarded as humanity's greatest tool against us, and showing how little control and understanding Apex had and what a true Titan of Ghidorah's caliber is really capable of.
• Psychopathic Manchild: It's subdued, but Ren shows shades of this in the novelization; regarding the psionic uplink as "not only his invention, but also his new favorite toy", and overall exhibiting a notably childlike glee in his thoughts throughout the test run where he savagely butchers a Skullcrawler, on top of his father issues which he's allowed to define the rest of his life. The novel version of Ren's death further shows this childish side of Ren when he sees his father's face in his dying thoughts. Overall, Ren at his heart is implied to be a child who never truly grew up and is still screaming for his father's attention.
• Revenge Myopia: A variation. The novelization reveals Ren wants to kill Godzilla using Mechagodzilla as revenge for Godzilla robbing him of a relationship with his father, not least when Dr. Serizawa's Heroic Suicide while reviving Godzilla robbed Ren of any chance for closure with the man. It doesn't matter at all to Ren that his father willingly sacrificed himself, or that King Ghidorah would have likely killed literally everyone and everything on Earth if his father hadn't acted, or that Godzilla didn't in any way force Serizawa to sacrifice himself or even consciously draw him away from his son. All that matters to Ren is his own pain and Godzilla's role in it.
• The Right of a Superior Species: In the novelization, Ren believes humanity is superior to all other life on Earth, due to how far our ingenuity and ability to learn about the world around us has taken us from the days when we were just monkeys beset by predators and competition. Ren's view on the Titans, as transcribed below, is no deviation from this:
  "The only question was whether they would be driven into extinction or repurposed for human ends. They were not gods; they were not worthy of worship — or of sacrifice. They were animals to be mastered, nothing more."
• Sadist: He seems to enjoy having a god's power over another creature's life and death when he's using Mechagodzilla to kill a Skullcrawler, flashing a grin of delight.
• Sanity Slippage: Downplayed, but the novelization hints that Ren's usage of the psionic uplink – the one he made with Ghidorah's haunted skull – has been having unexpected side-effects on his psyche, making him feel as dependent as he does on seeing Mechagodzilla completed.
• Slasher Smile: He grins in delight when he, while piloting Mechagodzilla, savagely kills a Skullcrawler, like a child opening their Christmas presents.
• Smug Snake: The novelization confirms he's not much better than his boss in this regard. Ren thinks he's going to successfully kill Godzilla and dominate the other Titans where the Oxygen Destroyer and Godzilla's previous Titan enemies have failed; yet whilst a Ghidorah-possessed Mechagodzilla does severely beat Godzilla and would have most likely killed him if Kong hadn't intervened, Word of God and the novelization itself have suggested the Mecha only did so well because Godzilla was already heavily weakened at the start of their fight due to his earlier actions and that Godzilla would have theoretically fared far better, though still on the losing side and could even have probably beaten the Mecha on his own if he was at full strength. Ren also believes he lives in a world where the Humanity Is Superior trope is in effect – despite all evidence to the contrary, such as how ill-equipped Monarch's hi-tech for containing the Titans proved to be when Ghidorah awakened them. Although Ren is more cautious than Simmons when it comes to using an untested and eldritch Black Box (the Hollow Earth energy), once Ren has had some time to fiddle around and figure out how such a Black Box works on a surface level, he thinks that's enough for him to be able to control it with complete confidence – to the point that Ren doesn't think it might still be an apocalyptically bad idea to turn the still-telepathic remains of a demonstrably science-defying Draconic Abomination into the damned brain of an Alpha Titan-killing Mecha. Ghidorah, or at least its Soul Fragment, shows Ren just how insanely moronic it was to think this wouldn't backfire once the Hollow Earth energy is used to fully power Mechagodzilla.
• Soul Fragment: It's hinted this happens in the novelization when Mechagodzilla becomes sentient. Here, Ren's mind is trapped inside the Mecha and overwritten as the Ghidorah-derived mind forms, and here it seems that Mechagodzilla's fixation on killing Godzilla actually comes from Ren being digested in its personality formation rather than coming from the Ghidorah remnants' memories^note The novelization states Mechagodzilla has no awareness of its past life as Ghidorah when its consciousness is newborn.
• The Starscream: The novelization reveals Ren intends to become this or at the very least is seriously contemplating it, as he considers Simmons a mere stepping stone in his own agenda and intends to dispose of him once their partnership has served its use.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Ren isn't the first son of a major Monarch figure who has a falling out with his father due to thinking humanity should be more actively trying to contain or destroy the Titans. Houston Brooks' son Aaron felt similarly about Kong and the creatures of Skull Island in the Kong: Skull Island spin-off The Birth of Kong. Unlike Aaron, Ren does not learn how wrong he was and come around to his father's view.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: In the novelization, he has a lot of inward disdain for Simmons, seeing him as nothing more than a stepping stone in his own plans, and having to mentally restrain himself from talking back to the "chattering baboon" of a man. Simmons to a lesser extent is quite quick to lose his temper and hiss at Ren to "Get in the goddamned chair" when the latter protests to him impulsively wanting the Hollow Earth energy uploaded to Mechagodzilla immediately.
• Unseen No More: Ren was first mentioned on the Monarch Sciences website promoting the release of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) (in Ishirō's profile which lists his next of kin), and also in the Godzilla: King of the Monsters novelization where Serizawa thinks of him. Ren finally appears in the flesh as a character in the next movie.
• The Usurper: In the novelization, he patterns himself as one to Godzilla, planning to kill him using Mechagodzilla and rule the Titans as an artificial God. Unfortunately, Ghidorah's conciousness has other ideas…
• Too Dumb to Live: Whilst he's rightfully wary of integrating the Hollow Earth energy into Mechagodzilla without any testing, he's as brainlessly arrogant as the rest of Apex when it comes to using Ghidorah's skull as the Black Box core of a control system for their armed-to-the-teeth Humongous Mecha – in fact, given Ren's job, he most likely oversaw the skull's conversion into a Mecha-controlling supercomputer. Bear in mind, this is the same Ghidorah whose biology is so alien that it can in Dr. Stanton's words "violate everything we know about the natural order" to a degree beyond even the terrestrial Titans' standards, and who proved to the whole world when alive that he actively hates all humanity and wants the eradication of all multicellular life on Earth. The grin of glee on Ren's face when piloting Mechagodzilla shows he's too enamored with the power he can now wield to even think about the risks surrounding the not-completely-dead Draconic Abomination bone he's using to achieve it, and it leads to his death once the skull's Soul Fragment takes over the system.
• Ungrateful Bastard: This could arguably apply to all of Apex, but in the novelization; Ren in particular mentally puts emphasis on the fact Godzilla has caused thousands of collateral deaths as the reason why he's a monster that should be killed, not giving a damn about the fact Godzilla is the chief reason why Ren and literally everyone else on Earth weren't all killed by King Ghidorah.
• Unknown Rival: He in particular can be considered this to Godzilla: he wants to use Mechagodzilla to kill the King of the Monsters, but he never gets the chance to face off against Godzilla before his death, and Godzilla for his part likely has no idea that Ren even exists let alone of his relation to the human who saved Godzilla in his darkest hour.
• Viler New Villain: Leaving aside Apex Cybernetics' general points (see the General folder); about the one other thing that stops Ren's predecessor Emma Russell from matching him in terms of vileness is that Ren completely lacks the Heel Realization that Emma had about her own evil agenda, and he dies unrepentant.
• Villain Has a Point: Downplayed; Ren's beliefs regarding his father, humanity and the Titans are largely delusional and fictitious, but he does have a right to be angry with his father for neglecting him and never making any real effort to bond with him. After all, any child would be upset if their parent neglected them, no matter the reason.
• Villainous Rescue: While piloting Mechagodzilla in a test run, he unintentionally rescues Madison from becoming Skullcrawler-chow – with the Skullcrawler's speed and proximity to Madison in the instant the Ren-controlled Mechagodzilla grabbed it, if it hadn't been for him, Madison would've certainly met her doom there and then. Interestingly, Ren never notices that he pulled this rescue even afterwards.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: The novelization reveals that for years, he studied hard and developed his technical skills, all in the hope his barely-present father would notice him. This evidently didn't last past Serizawa's death, after which Ren chose to embrace his polar opposition to his father.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The novelization reveals that Ren became as screwed up and evil as he is due to receiving a lifetime of Parental Neglect from his father – including but not limited to being forced to organize his own mother's funeral single-handedly, when he was just eighteen, with his father not being there for him at all until two days after the funeral had taken place. The straw that broke the camel's back was when Dr. Serizawa died saving the very creature that Ren felt was the reason his father had been neglecting him all his life, and this furthermore forever dashed Ren's hopes that he and his father would one day reconcile.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Besides Apex's general points (see their folder), the novelization provides some introspective of Ren's thoughts: he believes he lives in a world where the Humanity Is Superior trope is in effect, and technological advancement can enable the human race to overcome and accomplish anything including the eradication or enslavement of the Titans. Overall, he has a very modernist worldview. The reality of Ren's fictional setting is lost on him: he actually lives in a world with a strong Green Aesop which the Titans are directly tied to (and not necessarily in the "Kaiju are bad" way), and humans trying to control or overrule nature (especially in radical and over-the-top ways such as what Apex are doing) brings assured negative consequences to mankind.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The novelization heavily implies he intends to dispose of Walter Simmons the moment he's achieved what he wants, but Ren dies before he can get that far. Speaking of Ren's death; in the movie proper, with how the Ghidorah skull drawing in a power surge which fries Ren plays out just as a fully-empowered Mechagodzilla awakens with a Ghidorah-derived mind possessing it, it almost seems like Ren is on the receiving end of this trope from the skull.
• You Killed My Father: It's hinted in the movie, and explicitly confirmed by the novelization, that Ren wishes to kill Godzilla because he blames the Titan for being indirectly responsible for the death of his father.

(*Spoiler Character*)

Brenda Holland

Portrayed By: Dominique Tipper

Appeared In: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

A high-ranking executive of the Apex Cybernetics precursor, Applied Experimental Technologies (or AET), who directly supervises their Seattle-based office and is involved in May Olowe-Hewitt (Corah Mateo's) past.

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• Ambiguously Gay: She took Coral on a dinner date before employing her to AET, and there are some definite undertones to her and Coral/May's interactions. In the present, they act like mutually used and betrayed lovers when they see each-other again. It's easy to hear Brenda talk about everything she intended to give Coral/May if the latter hadn't betrayed her, and just have the words "I can show you the world" pop into one's head.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: While she initially plays the role of Benevolent Boss to get Corah Mateo to sign on, once Corah discovers the unethical experiments Applied Experimental Technologies are carrying out, the mask of niceness comes off and Brenda coldly informs her that all of Corah's work belongs to the company to use as they see fit. She later has Corah—now going by May Olowe-Hewitt—kidnapped and threatens her friends and family in order to get her to agree to work for the company again.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • In "Will the Real May Please Stand Up?", her abduction of May/Corah forces Deputy Director Verdugo to cut a lucrative deal with her to bail the former out of her trouble with AET/Apex for good.
  • In "Beyond Logic", Kentaro, Hiroshi and Tim have apparently cut a deal with her to help rescue Cate, May, Keiko and Shaw from Axis Mundi, which might have enabled Apex to build their research facility on Skull Island and which has implicitly led to at least Tim owing her his allegiance.
• Evil Brit: She has a Hollywood English accent, and she's a ruthless, cold-hearted corrupt corporate executive who's in on Walter Simmons' corporate conspiracy and the amoral measures that it entails. She constantly sounds like she's talking down to whoever's in front of her almost every time she opens her mouth, even when she's pretending to be nice.
• Oblivious to Their Own Description: She calls May/Corah "prideful". Coming from a member of Walter Simmons' inner circle, that is profoundly rich.
• Purple Is Powerful: In the present in "Will the Real May Please Stand Up?", she wears a bright-purple suit, fitting her company's color motif.
• Slimeball: A Rare Female Example. She's a corrupt corporate executive, who sounds like she's talking down at you even when she's pretending to be your friend, she's smug, and she spends her entire debut attempting to manipulate others to her company's benefit.
• Visionary Villain: She's a true believer in the company's ideology, who sees their project to create a neurally-controlled Titan-sized machine of their own as the future of humanity and the march of progress, and she believes it's worth any sacrifice that her company deems fit.

Other Employees

Bernie Hayes

See here.

Sara Hayes (*Unmarked Spoilers*)

Appeared In: Godzilla vs. Kong

Bernie's late wife, who died some time ago.

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• Death by Origin Story: The novelization reveals her death is what turned Bernie into a conspiracy theorist and above all led to him investigating and seeking to expose Apex. She was killed in a car accident that was heavily implied to have been an arranged hit by Apex after she stumbled across some sensitive material.
• Defector from Decadence: Played With. Originally a blue-collar worker in Apex Cybernetics who was apparently fascinated by the Titans, she quit her job out of horror when she discovered that Apex (and apparently also a branch of Monarch) were clandestinely helping the U.S. military to build a Titan-killing Fantastic Nuke.
• The Lost Lenore: Bernie is a widower who still holds onto the flask that Sara left him. The novelization reveals it was Sara's death which started him on the path of investigating Apex and aiming to expose their true corruption, as he believes Sara's death by car collision was a deliberate hit by Apex after she came close to discovering their dirty secrets.
• Precious Photo: Bernie keeps a photo of the two of them (which has "LOVE" scrawled directly above it in colorful font to boot). He shows it to Josh and Madison when he joins up with them.
• She Knows Too Much: Bernie believes that the car collision which killed Sara was arranged by Apex, because she discovered the company was involved in the Oxygen Destroyer's construction.
• Workaholic: According to Bernie, she worked a lot, too much, before she learned about the Oxygen Destroyer.
• The Xenophile: Bernie notes that she appears to have been fascinated by the Titans after Godzilla and the MUTOs' emergence in 2014, bringing them up in conversation every once in a while from then on.

Coral Mateo

See May Olowe-Hewitt here.

The Defector (*Spoilers*)

Tim

See here.

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