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 their 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Foil: To Madison Russell, something which is slightly highlighted in the novelization. They're both cases of Like Father, Unlike Child with a polarizing personality difference in regards to their respective fathers, both of them were raised by their respective fathers in a way which worked for said father but not for their child and caused strain in their relationship (My Beloved Smother with a dash of Fantasy-Forbidding Father from Madison's father, Parental Neglect from Ren's father), and it leads to both of them respectively rebelling against their fathers' beliefs (Ren on a much more massive scale than Madison). They also both lost their mothers at a young age. It can be argued that Ren and Madison are both somewhat reckless in regards to their self-preservation: Madison tends to head towards danger when she sets her mind on helping and though she has succeeded in being a massive help, she's also twice almost been killed by a Titan and saved by sheer luck; while Ren is an Evil Genius who commits to a horrifically arrogant and Too Dumb to Live method of achieving his Evil Plan which (though he's slightly less reckless about it than his boss) ultimately leads Ren and his allies to their destruction. Where Ren and Madison differ is that Madison still has her father, whilst Ren implicitly went dark-side as a result of his father dying before they could reconcile; and Madison has a profound connection to the Titans but is highly compassionate when human lives are endangered, while Ren is a Muggle Power supremacist who callously and hypocritically puts thousands of innocent lives in Godzilla's warpath without a second thought. Essentially, Ren is a reflection of what Madison could have become due to her issues with her father in Godzilla vs. Kong.
- 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 , 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.
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- 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.
- In the novelization, this is Ren's opinion on Skullcrawlers:
- 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."
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- 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' memoriesnote .
- 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.
- 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 the above 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.
