Alan Jonah
"Long live the King."
"Listen, while you were sitting comfortably in some laboratory, we've been fighting for decades in one dirty war after another. I've seen human nature firsthand, and I'm here to tell you that it doesn't get any better. It just gets worse. So, I'm sorry that Monster Zero isn't exactly what we were expecting. But we opened Pandora's Box and there's no closing it now."
Portrayed By: Charles Dance
Appeared In: Godzilla: Aftershock | Godzilla: King of the Monsters
A former British Army colonel and MI-6 agent turned fanatical anarchist, who leads an international eco-terrorist paramilitary group consisting of highly-skilled mercenaries dealing in Titan DNA trafficking. Deeply troubled and severely disillusioned with mankind by his experiences during his military service, Jonah looks to the Titans including Ghidorah as a means to achieve his ends.
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- Actor Allusion: Wistfully remarks, "Long live the king…" when watching the newly-christened King Ghidorah usurp a seemingly-killed Godzilla and dominate the Titans of the world. Cute.
- Adaptational Villainy: Downplayed. The novelization sees Jonah perform several particularly nasty actions which are absent from the movie. He threatens Madison's life twice when she and/or Emma are really pissing him off, and he initially goes more out of his way to ensure Emma doesn't try to stop King Ghidorah's rampage when it becomes apparent the three-headed monster is a lot more dangerous than they thought: casually ordering one of his minions to slit Madison's throat if Emma goes anywhere near the ORCA without permission. In the novel, Jonah also makes a brief rant when arguing with Emma which explicitly casts away any doubt the movie left that Jonah at his heart is truly motivated by nothing better than punishing the rest of his species for the pain and trauma they've caused him, and that he believes against all logic that he's going to be a lucky survivor of Ghidorah's apocalypse.
- Adaptational Mundanity: Jonah and his paramilitary seem like an adaptation of the Xiliens and other Human Aliens from the original Toho movies as a human organization. Like the Toho aliens, Jonah and his goons attempt to remotely control the Kaiju (including King Ghidorah) using technology so they can use them for terrorist goals on a global scale, and Jonah's group are chiefly responsible for instigating Ghidorah's invasion in the present day. Hell, some viewers even think Jonah might be an actual alien in disguise
. Unlike the Toho aliens however, true to the MonsterVerse's Aesop change from nuclear weapons allegory to presenting the monsters as embodiments of nature, Jonah and his group's attempt to use Titans as their weapons backfires spectacularly, and they're outright usurped by King Ghidorah as the true threat to Earth at the movie's midway point (not that Jonah minds). - All Your Base Are Belong to Us: He successfully and swiftly conquers both Monarch Outposts 61 and 32, slaughtering the security personnel, so he can free the Alpha Titans housed at either outpost and can kidnap (pick up) the Russells. It's implied that Emma's inside help went a long way to aid Jonah's success at infiltrating these outposts. He also utilizes a disused Monarch bunker as his and his people's safe haven to wait out the apocalypse.
- At Least I Admit It: Downplayed. Whilst he still insists he's saving the planet even when his refusal to do anything about King Ghidorah proves otherwise, he's under no illusions that his plan was going to be anything less than brutal and bloody and was going to require those involved to make horribly ruthless decisions in order to stick to it. He calls out Emma and Madison, chiding the former for not having the guts to firmly decide between her plan and her family and also for feeding Madison nothing but wide-eyed idealism, which has made Madison completely ill-prepared for their plan, which has in turn left them hauling a twelve-year-old liability around the world.
- Backstory: Jonah used to be a colonel in the British Army colonel and a MI6 secret agent. He soon became disillusioned by governments and humanity in general because of all the wars, death, and destruction people bring about so he defected and went rogue. Since then, Jonah has been connected to armed mercenary groups engaged in sociopolitical intrigue as he sought to "level the global playing field" with stolen weapons technology. In 2005, Jonah came to Monarch's attention when he and several mercenary accomplices were caught trying to breach the walls of a subterranean MUTO dig site, and Jonah was locked up in a Pakistani prison.
- Bald of Evil: Downplayed. He has a bald spot courtesy of being played by Charles Dance, and he's an incredibly despicable human.
- Benevolent Boss: He treats his henchmen quite well. The novelization reveals he is quite fond of his Mook Lieutenant Asher, to the point that he's visibly shaken when Asher is killed.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Jonah and Emma Russell are initially working together to reawaken the Titans: Emma is the brains who provides and operates the necessary technology, whilst Jonah provides the necessary resources and military tactics to pull off their plan and stay one step ahead of Monarch. However, the pair's teamwork is quite strained. Emma opts out after Ghidorah begins to cause more destruction than intended and after she realizes Jonah is fine with this, leaving Jonah as the sole human antagonist from then on (and even so, he doesn't do anything further for the rest of the movie until the post-credits scene).
- Big Bad Ensemble: He's one of the primary antagonists of King of the Monsters alongside Emma Russell and Ghidorah. At first, Jonah and Emma work together under the belief they both want the same thing, and they release Ghidorah under the assumption they can control him with the ORCA. However, Ghidorah goes off on his own to fulfil his own plans (which are later revealed to be far worse than the eco-terrorists'), and he all but removes Jonah and Emma as a threat about halfway through the movie when he takes control of all the Titans and initiates a global apocalypse. Jonah and Emma's duumvirate falls apart when the latter has a Heel Realization and sets out to stop Ghidorah, whilst Jonah is perfectly fine with Ghidorah destroying the Earth and killing humanity.
- Big Bad Wannabe: He and Emma Russell ultimately become this thanks to Ghidorah. Jonah proves to be one of the most intelligent and capable antagonists of the MonsterVerse, constantly keeping himself and his group one step ahead of Monarch's efforts to track them, but as soon as Ghidorah spontaneously takes control of the other Titans, the three-headed hydra completely eclipses Jonah and his goons, to the point that Jonah all but stops mattering as a threat until Ghidorah is defeated. Not that Jonah particularly minds this.
- The Cameo: He's entirely absent from the Godzilla vs. Kong film, with no explanation of how Ghidorah's skull made its way from his possession into Apex Cybernetics' possession. But in the movie's novelization, a prologue scene depicts a globally-wanted unnamed man who's heavily implied to be Jonah meeting with Walter Simmons after having contacted him on the dark web; offering Simmons the skull of San/Kevin's severed head plus a second Ghidorah skull of unknown origin, in exchange for heavy payment.
- Colonel Badass: A villainous, older form. Jonah is a former Special Forces colonel, whom supplementary material states has decades of combat experience in the worst combat arenas of the world, and he's one of the more clever and competent MonsterVerse humans, especially on the villainous side. Jonah has managed to recruit an entire organization consisting of dozens of armed mercenaries to help him to achieve his goals. He also cares enough about his Mook Lieutenant Asher to be genuinely shaken by his death (the novelization reveals losing Ash outright drives Jonah past the Despair Event Horizon), and he at least cares enough about himself and his other troops to prioritize keeping them hidden when he chooses to let King Ghidorah destroy the Earth (he even expresses a desire to avoid Monarch finding them as the reason why he doesn't let Emma try to stop Ghidorah).
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Compared to Preston Packard of Kong: Skull Island. They're both veteran military men who've been driven insane by their war experiences, both have shades of A Father to His Men, both their descents into villainy are further fueled by the loss of their men (specifically Asher for Jonah), and both are ultimately a selfish Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist. But whereas Packard uses the protection of mankind as an excuse for his single-minded vendetta against Kong whilst seeing the other kaiju as additional targets to destroy, and he has no higher plan than killing Kong; Jonah is instead a Misanthrope Supreme who wants as much of the human race dead as possible and is a pro-Titan Eco-Terrorist to that end, and he's more interested in the bigger picture (as he perceives it) of releasing Titans around the world to cleanse the planet.
- The Corrupter: He displays shades of this towards Emma. Although he apparently wasn't behind Emma's Face–Heel Turn in and of itself (if his words to her about her coming to him when he's trying to all but gaslight her can be believed), it's Jonah who eggs Emma on to do particularly bad things whenever Emma shows any signs of hesitating, and he directly counters Madison's efforts to talk Emma down. Jonah pushes Emma to wake Ghidorah up despite Emma's own ex-husband and beloved colleagues being placed in mortal danger, and when it looks like Emma is on the verge of having a Heel Realization before King Ghidorah's takeover, Jonah instantly intervenes to get Emma back on-track with their plan.
- Crazy-Prepared: When he's not playing Xanatos Speed Chess or being Taught by Experience, he's planning ahead – these traits almost-constantly keep him one step ahead of the heroes, marking him as one of the MonsterVerse's more competent and independently-dangerous human antagonists by far. Monarch's G-Team have seen through his Yunnan decoy and caught up with him in Antarctica before he's finished freeing Monster Zero? He fluidly gives his men an order to keep them busy before said team launches a devastating ambush on the G-Team, clearly showing that Jonah was prepared for this possibility.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: He and his Mooks bomb and shoot through the security team at Outpost 61 with ease.
- At Outpost 32, they ambush the G-Team and defeat them with minimal effort.
- Dangerous Deserter: His official profile◊ describes him as defected and gone rogue. Considering what he and his underground paramilitary accomplish in King of the Monsters, coupled with Jonah's history of slipping out of custody and remaining in hiding over the years, his categorization as a "Class 1 eco-terror threat" is well-earned.
- Deadpan Snarker: To wit.Asher: [Upon seeing Ghidorah trapped in the ice.] Mother of God…
Jonah: She had nothing to do with this. - Demoted to Dragon: When his attempts to control Ghidorah fail, he decides to help Ghidorah continue his rampage as his main human supporter, since his actions still benefited Jonah in some ways.
- Despair Event Horizon: In the novelization, both Madison and Emma observe that the last bit of humanity Jonah had left in him is extinguished after Asher's death.
- Detrimental Determination: His entire motivation is the eradication of as much of humanity as possible, full stop, and he does everything he can to make sure Emma continues helping him to awaken the Titans to that end. When Ghidorah becomes the new King of the Monsters, whilst Emma realizes that Ghidorah is creating an extinction event instead of healing the world, Jonah remains committed to letting Ghidorah and the other Titans rampage (even if it's under Ghidorah's power instead of Jonah's). Whilst Jonah's prioritization of the extinction of humanity above the welfare of Earth's ecosphere is down to the fact he's a proven Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist, he doesn't seem to care – or, in the novelization, he honestly doesn't believe – that he and his men will invariably die if Ghidorah's continued rampage wipes out humanity and renders the Earth inhospitable to life as we know it. And The Stinger of the movie strongly hints that after Godzilla has ended Ghidorah's reign and brought about an ecologically-beneficial cohabitation, Jonah still isn't satisfied with so many humans still in the world.
- Dragon-in-Chief: To Emma Russell. Though they were technically in a Big Bad Duumvirate and the plan was Emma's, Jonah is the one who always eggs Emma on to make the evil choice, and it's him who the mercenaries at the pair's disposal answer to. When Emma has a Heel Realization, it becomes clear without a shadow of a doubt that Jonah is the one who's in charge of their whole operation's staff.
- Eco-Terrorist: The most extreme form. An international criminal who heads a paramilitary organization and is labeled a Class 1 eco-terror threat, Jonah regards humanity as the single most monstrous threat to the world. He's under the impression that reawakening the Titans will set things right in the world since humans have mistreated and damaged the planet, and he and his partner feel pressured to act before The Government can take over Monarch and attempt to indiscriminately exterminate the creatures.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The film implies that he has a soft spot for his Number Two, Asher, which is confirmed by the novelization; the novel adds that Asher was Jonah's last connection to humanity, and after his death, Jonah can barely be called a human being anymore. That same novelization also mentions that Jonah had a daughter, and her being murdered while he was away on duty was the turning point of his descent into darkness.
- Evil Brit: Former British soldier and spy turned omnicidal eco-terrorist, and one of the nastier pieces of work in the MonsterVerse; played by none other than Charles Dance.
- Evil Counterpart: To Dr. Ishirō Serizawa. Both are elderly men, leaders of their own respective Titan-hunting and environmentalist organizations, critical of the human race for our faults, and both view the Titans as the rightful true rulers of the Earth. But Serizawa believes in non-interventionism and "letting them fight", whereas Jonah believes it's up to people like him to make the Titans do what he believes they should do; Serizawa believes nature always has a way of balancing itself, whereas Jonah outright says "evolution isn't always right" in the novelization. Serizawa is truly hopeful that humans and Titans can coexist on the planet peacefully, whereas Jonah doesn't really care about coexistence (if he ever even genuinely believed in it) so much as seeing the Titans decimate the human race at any cost – Jonah even seems to have refused to accept that Titans can live peacefully with the human race Jonah so hates after Serizawa is proven right. Whereas Serizawa says he admires all forms of life, and refuses to put his concerns about the Titans first if it means sacrificing millions of people's lives; Jonah will happily sacrifice millions of people in the pursuit of his goals, and he's consumed by sheer hatred of humanity to the point that he foregoes any intention of preserving the planet's biodiversity so long as he can see the Titans permanently usurp and destroy mankind, not caring that King Ghidorah will ironically create an even worse extinction event than the one Jonah and his goons set out to prevent. Jonah and Serizawa both champion an Alpha Titan: whereas Serizawa reveres Godzilla as the embodiment of natural balance and the rightful King of the Monsters; Jonah releases Ghidorah as part of his plan, and he subsequently goes out of his way to justify letting King Ghidorah do what it wants due to the three-headed hydra's capacity and intent to completely wipe out the human race, even coming back to Ghidorah after the latter's death when he salvages the monster's severed head. Interestingly, both Serizawa and Jonah have a Number Two (Graham and Asher) who they're particularly close to and who is killed right in front of them in Antarctica; but whereas Serizawa shoulders on despite his grief for the sake of averting certain disaster, Jonah (as revealed in the novelization) only acts like he's moving forward, whilst in actuality losing Ash has destroyed his last solid link to humanity.
- Eviler than Thou:
- Mixed in with At Least I Admit It. While Emma is horrified by the realization King Ghidorah is going to outright create an extinction event instead of the population cull and the human-Titan coexistence Emma wanted, Jonah dismisses her horror and views her goal of humanity's salvation as naive.
- In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization's prologue, when the man implied to be Jonah meets with Walter Simmons, the two start off on equal footing, then the meeting ends with Simmons all but begging the man to stay after learning what he's selling. Contextually, the scene seems to hint that even Apex Cybernetics' misuse of Ghidorah's telepathic remains (which resulted in Mechagodzilla destroying them, devastating Hong Kong and almost becoming the new reigning Alpha) was pretty much what Jonah expected to happen following this transaction.
- Evil Versus Oblivion: Notably defied. Emma tries to reason with Jonah that they have to try and stop King Ghidorah once it becomes apparent to Emma how dangerous Ghidorah is, noting that Ghidorah's continued reign of terror will likely kill the world to a far worse extent than anything humanity could accomplish instead of bringing the destructive renewal that Jonah's partner Emma herself sought. However, Jonah doesn't care as long as humanity suffers the Titans' wrath, and worse yet he goes out of his way (particularly in the novelization) to try and stop Emma from interfering herself. Him and his mercs are the only humans in the movie who don't come to Godzilla and Mothra's side against the existential threat at all.
- Evil Wears Black: Downplayed and played basically. He always wears dark colors when he can. In King of the Monsters, he wears a pitch-black top after escaping Antarctica, contrasting his more genuinely well-intentioned partner's light clothes to show that Jonah is far less genuine in their "well intentions" and to show how black-hearted and irredeemable he is (especially after his last link to humanity dies in Antarctica).
- Fatal Flaw: Just about the only thing that keeps Jonah from attaining Magnificent Bastard candidacy is his genocidal misanthropy overriding his intelligence, awareness and survival chances. While Jonah is correct in his deduction that King Ghidorah's global chaos will bring the world far closer to Jonah's end-goals of wiping humanity off the board than the eco-terrorists' initial plan for a population cull ever could have; not only does Jonah seem to not quite realize that Ghidorah will also cause far more destruction to the planet than mankind ever could have, but it's also implied in the movie (and outright confirmed in the novelization) that Jonah genuinely fails to consider that he and his men will also surely die sooner or later if Ghidorah is allowed to finish purging the planet of life, no matter how well the eco-terrorists hide themselves away. (This is egregious because avoiding being killed by the rampant Titans or captured by Monarch are among the reasons why Jonah insists on hiding themselves.)
- Faux Affably Evil: In Godzilla Aftershock, he politely "suggests" Emma come with him while he's pointing a gun at her and her comrades, and when he's being arrested, he bids Emma safe travels with a look on his face that's anything but reassuring. Likewise, in the King of the Monsters novelization, Jonah slides a drink towards Emma and politely tells her to enjoy it immediately after he's just cowed her by revealing he'll have her daughter's throat slit if she puts a toe out of line.
- Foil: Besides being an Evil Counterpart to Serizawa (see above), he's a Foil to Emma Russell and Mark Russell respectively.
- Emma Russell: aside from their shared goals and misanthropy, both their respective Starts Of Darkness were triggered by losing a child, and both have a cold exterior. However, Emma doesn't want Ghidorah to destroy the world, and makes a Heel–Face Turn when she realizes she really screwed up by releasing him, whereas Jonah proves he's fine with letting Ghidorah destroy everything if it'll eradicate humanity. The novelization indicates Asher was Jonah's redeeming quality analogous to how Madison proves to be Emma's, and also indicates Jonah became Beyond Redemption after Asher's death, in contrast to how Emma successfully saves her daughter after making a Heel–Face Turn.
- Mark Russell, although their only interactions are very brief: they both tragically lost a child, and it ultimately led to them irrationally hating the group/species responsible to the point of wishing said group were all wiped out (Titans for Mark, humanity for Jonah). It also led to them quitting their respective professions in the initial aftermath (Monarch for Mark, the British Army and MI6 for Jonah). They're both sensible enough despite their grievances as to interact non-violently with the group they hate when it's advisable. Mark only becomes part of Monarch again because he's recruited, whereas Jonah took the initiative himself. However, Mark throws his rash hatred out in the open for everyone to see, whereas Jonah thinly masks his true colors as a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist. At the start of the film, Mark's heart is doused in fire while Jonah's is encased in ice.
- Freudian Excuse: He became the deranged Misanthrope Supreme he now is as a result of decades of witnessing the worst of humanity in war after war during his military career, and (according to the King of the Monsters novelization) the horrific murder of his daughter while he was away at war.
- From Camouflage to Criminal: He's a former MI6 agent who has decades of military service under his belt, and since he snapped and went rogue in his backstory, he's become one of the most cunning, elusive and competent human antagonists in the MonsterVerse. He makes use of militant tactics and limited resources to consistently run circles around Monarch (whom have a far greater wealth of resources and military personnel than him), and to massacre dozens of Monarch's staff; thinking on his feet when he needs to, such as during his failed attempt to hijack a plane on Guam where he creates chaos to avoid being recaptured. This stands in contrast to how the resource-rich, corporate Apex Cybernetics put all their eggs in one basket and consequently find both themselves and their entire motivation nuked the very moment the first thing goes wrong. It says a lot about how dangerous Jonah is that he's the only human antagonist in the MonsterVerse who's a recurring threat despite having limited resources, and it takes nothing short of an extinction-wreaking Draconic Abomination to eclipse him as a threat. Another aspect of this trope Jonah has is that he's extremely cold-blooded and ruthless in the systematic mass murders he commits in pursuit of his goals, and he's severely messed up by his military experiences (which fuels his misanthropic motivations).
- Frontline General: He's a former British Army colonel who makes it clear that he saw a lot of first-hand action during his career; and as the leader of an eco-terrorist paramilitary, he readily accompanies his troops on every raid that they conduct directly on a Monarch outpost, often wielding a gun and doing some of the killing himself. That being said, it's subtly hinted that Jonah prefers to pragmatically minimize his own chances of being killed in action — notice how he's always at the rear of his paramilitary assault force during both their raids, and that he prefers to have a planned ambush keep Monarch's G-Team occupied in Antarctica whilst he keeps himself close to Emma and Madison so he can use them as a human shield.
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: A metaphorical case. The camera-work and positioning portrays him as Emma's Bad Angel to Madison's Good Angel when he's arguing that Emma dismiss Madison's conscientious pleas and go through with the Evil Plan — he's even positioned on Emma's left opposite Madison. He at one point turns on Madison instead of Emma during the argument, deriding Madison for believing their Utopia Justifies the Means plan was going to be clean and painless. The Bad Angel wins out.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The Godzilla vs. Kong novelization reveals that Apex got the Ghidorah skull(s) from a highly-wanted international criminal who's all but stated to be Jonah, after he sold the skull(s) to Walter Simmons. This makes Jonah indirectly responsible for the film's entire plot.
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- Held Gaze: Antagonistic type.
- He holds Emma's gaze when she points a gun at him, looking completely unthreatened, in contrast to Emma's terrified gaze as she's fearing for her daughter's life. After Emma vows during the staredown that she won't lose her daughter, Jonah visibly assesses her for a moment before backing down.
- In the novelization version of Jonah and Madison's standoff over awakening Rodan, Jonah responds to Madison giving him a succinct verbal middle finger by making direct eye contact whilst threateningly gesturing toward his gun holster, unnerving Madison for the moment.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, it's unclear why he sold the Ghidorah skulls to Walter Simmons, considering that Simmons' Muggle Power agenda is anathema to Jonah's goals. He may have simply wanted the money and nihilistically rejected whatever consequences ensued from giving his product to a man with long-term goals diametric to his own. He may have figured that the Titans' environmental impact would cancel out any consequence Simmons might inflict, or he may have known that Apex would bring about their own destruction and many human deaths while trying to control Ghidorah, fitting with Jonah's goals.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: After years in the service of his country, seeing humanity at its worst, and believing that human nature is only getting progressively worse, he feels he has seen the monster humanity can become through their destructive tendencies. He quotes this almost word-for-word in the novelization.
- Hypocrite:
- "Man does not control the laws of nature. And neither do you." Pretty rich coming from a guy who's spent the entire movie up until King Ghidorah takes over trying to manipulate nature to do what he thinks it should do. One gets the impression he's changed his tune solely because Ghidorah (which Jonah doesn't know is not a part of nature) is making the Titans ravage humanity like Jonah wanted without any need for further interference on Jonah's end.
- When Emma wants to go looking for her daughter, Alan coldly tells her that the mission is more important than one life. Then she pulls a gun on him… and he decides to let her go rather than risk HIS life. Played with in practice; he seems more vaguely amused by Emma's defiance than anything, and makes clear he's happy for her to leave as his group don't need her anymore.
- Icy Blue Eyes: Comes with being an icy character who's played by Charles Dance.
- I Have Your Wife: Subverted. Besides kidnapping Emma Russell to seemingly be his Reluctant Mad Scientist, Jonah also kidnaps Madison at the same time Mark observes in the novelization that the logical assumption for why Jonah took Madison too is to use her as leverage to make Emma comply. In reality, Jonah and his group took Madison because both she and Emma were already in on the eco-terrorists' agenda.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Downplayed. He's such a good shot that in Godzilla: Aftershock, he's able to shoot a lantern clean out of Atherton's hand from at least a meter away when he ambushes Atherton, Emma and Tarkan.
- Insane Troll Logic: He turns to this when justifying allowing King Ghidorah to destroy the world in the face of Emma's warnings, showing his true colors. He declares that humanity is so irredeemable and despicable that anything is worth allowing the Titans to throw us off the top of the food chain permanently, even if that means letting the creatures under Ghidorah's command engineer an even worse extinction event than the manmade one Jonah and Emma originally claimed they wanted to prevent.
- It's All About Me: He shows signs of this when he responds to Emma's warnings that King Ghidorah is destroying the world's biosphere instead of healing it by first and foremost going off on a brief rant about the things he's seen human beings do (showing how his hatred for mankind based on his own experiences outweighs any actual concern he has for the Earth's ecological welfare), and by only caring about keeping himself and his organization hunkered down amidst Ghidorah's apocalypse whilst letting the Titans do as they will with the outside world. In the novelization, he has a moment when outright threatening Emma which makes it explicitly clear that for all of Jonah's big talk about serving the greater good, he's really just a selfish, evil old man who wants humanity destroyed so that he won't have to look at them anymore."The things I've done. The things I've seen… Humanity is a disease and the fewer of them there are the better it is for me."
- Jerkass Has a Point: Before Rodan's awakening, Jonah vocally derides Madison for blindly falling for Emma Russell's 'grand utopia' pitch and failing to piece together that unleashing gigantic prehistoric monsters on the world via terrorism was going to involve hard choices and a lot of blood. He also rightfully calls out Emma for pulling her own daughter into their eco-terrorist plan and then feeding her nothing but the sugar-coated version of their agenda, which has left Madison only half-indoctrinated and completely ill-prepared for the horrors that the plan entails participating in.Emma: Leave her [Madison] out of this!Jonah: Why? You're the one who pulled her into it!
- Karma Houdini: At the end of King of the Monsters, he's escaped being killed or arrested and he's gotten his hands on Ghidorah's severed head. Nothing of his fate or whereabouts is mentioned in the Godzilla vs. Kong movie, but the official novelization states that Monarch believe he's still at large.
- Knight Templar: He's disgusted and disappointed with humans and their nature, and will make any sacrifices or extreme decisions (and boy, are they extreme) to restore what he sees as the righteous natural order.
- Lack of Empathy: The guy does not have any second thought about letting billions of people die as a consequence of releasing the Titans to "save the Earth". Even when it's clear that King Ghidorah has no intention of saving the planet but rather wants to create an extinction event that'll ostensibly xenoform the world to his liking, Jonah just shrugs it off and says that maybe it's time for the Titans to take the Earth for their own. Aside from the soldiers under his command, he doesn't give a crap about the rest of humanity at all. Jonah gets extra points in the novelization, where he reveals the turning point of his descent into darkness was the trauma of his young daughter being murdered, shortly before he directly and casually threatens the life of Emma's daughter to keep the latter in line.
- Madden Into Misanthropy: Lost his faith in humanity altogether after decades of witnessing the horror and desolation of war.
- Misanthrope Supreme: Seeing the very worst of humanity again and again in war after war drove him to become an extreme misanthrope, who now knows nothing but hatred and disgust for his species, and wholly believes that humanity only keeps getting progressively worse with every passing decade and deserves to be wiped out. Ultimately, despite using eco-terrorism as a justification for his actions, Jonah's true motivations are to watch as much of humanity as possible burn – to the point that he's fully willing to let Ghidorah cause even worse destruction to the world than mankind would have so long as human beings are wiped away.
- Morality Pet: The only two people he ever cared for were his Mook Lieutenant Asher and his daughter.
- Downplayed with Ash. Jonah cries out his name when Ash is killed in front of him. The novelization's expansion portrays Jonah showing a genuine softer side around Asher, although it doesn't make Jonah any less disillusioned and misanthropic, and Jonah is actually hinted to be a corruptive mentor figure to Ash.
- Played Straight with Jonah's late daughter Lindy. The novelization reveals Jonah was already highly jaded towards humanity by the time Lindy died, but her presence in his life prevented him from going over the edge and acting out on his disillusionment.
- The Most Wanted: His Monarch Sciences bio and Godzilla: Aftershock say his global activity have gotten him labeled as a "Class 1 eco-terror threat", with an intel sheet of arm's length. If the man who deals with Walter Simmons in the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization is indeed Jonah, then he's wanted by Interpol and at least twenty governments following his crimes against humanity and other atrocities which directly led to King Ghidorah's reign of terror in Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
- Nerves of Steel: He isn't visibly fazed at all when Emma pulls a gun on him.
- No Range Like Point-Blank Range: During the assault on Outpost 61, Jonah walks straight up to a Monarch scientist until there's no more than two or three feet between them, then he lifts his gun and pops a cap in the scientist's head.
- Not So Similar: In the novelization, Madison mentally compares Jonah to her parents, noting that Mark and Emma also reacted badly to losing a child and did reprehensible things (especially Emma), but Emma at least wants to try and fix what she's done whereas Jonah is too far gone.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Jonah justifies his misanthropic crusade by saying he's restoring the natural order which mankind's civilization is destroying, because humanity at large won't sort out the problems they're knowingly creating by themselves. Once it becomes apparent how destructive Ghidorah really is, Jonah begins to show that what he really wants is removing humanity from the equation altogether, and he's completely willing to let Ghidorah wreak much more havoc on nature than humans ever have if it'll spell the rapid erasure of the human race; proving that Jonah's true motivations are less genuine concern for the preservation of Earth's biodiversity and more all-consuming hatred for humans.
- Obviously Evil: Comparative to the likes of Preston Packard and Walter Simmons, who seem quite ordinary if not outright charming at first glance and can use this to manipulate others; Jonah has a militant/guerrilla-looking wardrobe, and his gruff demeanor says nothing short of "cold-blooded killer".
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. He has the same surname as his Mook Lieutenant, Asher. However, there is no indication that the two are related and the novelization flat-out states that they're not.
- Outliving One's Offspring: According to the novelization, his turn to villainy was triggered when his daughter was kidnapped and murdered while he was off fighting in a war.
- Pet the Dog:
- Despite having little reason to do so, when in an elevator next to a frightened Madison, he attempts to calm her down by passing a hand over his face and making a friendly smile. She flips him the bird in response. He seems more amused by this than anything.
- Played With near the end. He lets Emma go to rescue Madison and take one of his Humvees with her, albeit only after a brief standoff where Emma holds a gun to his face. It's hinted his decision to let her go might be a sign that he still has a shred of empathy left in him for a parent not wanting to outlive their child again (having gone through that himself in his backstory), although it's ultimately ambiguous.
- Psycho for Hire: It's implied he was one during the events of Godzilla Aftershock. He's a trafficker of Titans' DNA, and Tarkan believes Jonah's re-emergence at Guam was a demonstration for his paymasters.
- Put Them All Out of My Misery: Type 4. He despises mankind so much for the things he's seen people are capable of, he's become obsessed with killing off as much of humanity as possible; even saying outright in the novelization that the less people there are in the world the better it makes him feel. Unlike Emma, he prioritizes the extinction of humanity above all else, and he doesn't really care if King Ghidorah wreaks even more destruction on the planet than humans have.
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- Restart the World: He's been obsessed with leveling the global socio-political-militant playing field for years, and he considers awakening the Titans with full knowledge of the initial collateral that will occur to be giving the planet "a clean slate" to start over free of mankind's corruption such as Jonah witnessed during his military service. Jonah is so disgusted with humanity that he's fine with Ghidorah leading the Titans toward erasing everything (humanity and nature) so long as the world human beings have made for themselves, which he's seen the ugly underbelly of, is all gone.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: He invokes this when criticizing Emma Russell for letting Madison think their eco-terrorism plot to release all the Titans wasn't going to involve effectively murdering millions of innocents by proxy.
- Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: He doesn't hesitate to berate Madison for believing that the eco-terrorists' plan to awaken the Titans in order to stop humanity destroying their own world was going to involve anything less than hard choices and horrible bloodshed. He also notably mocks Madison for believing humans and Titans can live together (even though the movie's ending demonstrates they can), an early indicator that Jonah doesn't really have any of Emma's interest in making the world become a better place for both man and monster. The novelization confirms Jonah used to believe during his British Army days that he was making the world a better place before his experiences turned him into the misanthropic shell he is now."Madison, tell me, what exactly did mummy sell you on? Some grand utopia? Man and monster living together in blissful harmony?"
- Slasher Smile: In the novelization, he forms a small, devious smile twice, which only fails to qualify as Psychotic Smirk because the other characters take notice. First when he sees Mothra after raiding her temple, then again at the end when he sees Ghidorah's severed head. A fisherman even compares it to "The Devil's Grin".
- Sleep Deprivation: In the King of the Monsters novelization, Jonah has been awake for a less-than-enviable forty-eight hours when his mercenaries are working to thaw Ghidorah out.
- Slouch of Villainy: He's slouching in his chair when he's dressed in prison-orange overalls and being interrogated in Guam in Godzilla: Aftershock. It's clear from this Jonah has done this routine many times throughout his decades of military and paramilitary experience.
- Smug Snake: He crosses into this territory in the novelization's expansion. Jonah is already presented in both versions of the story as icy and condescending to his partner-in-crime Emma and towards Madison (underestimating the latter is a major reason why he loses the ORCA and why Ghidorah doesn't win the Final Battle), and he assumes once King Ghidorah completely overshadows him that Ghidorah will still technically achieve the same end-goals that Jonah really wants. But in the novel, Jonah also makes it clear that he's genuinely deluded himself into believing him and his mercenaries will not only weather out King Ghidorah's global apocalypse from within their bunker, but also that they'll "live like kings" afterwards (a notion which Madison calls out the sheer absurdity of, given how Ghidorah's actions are clearly rendering the Earth inhospitable to all life as we know it). This dispels any notion that the film version left that Jonah was willing to risk dying amid Ghidorah's apocalypse with the rest of humanity in order to secure his misanthropic endgame, and proves just how unstable and delusional Jonah was at this point.
- Stalker without a Crush: Before kidnapping Emma and Madison, Jonah previously followed Emma around the world to labs she had in Cairo and Tokyo and attempted to raid them.
- The Stoic: Jonah is always shown to be calm and collected despite whatever chaos happens around him. The only time he shows a genuine burst of emotion is when Asher is killed right in front of him, briefly screaming his name.
- Sunk Cost Fallacy: When Emma points out to him that King Ghidorah is destroying the planet's biosphere instead of healing it as was their original goal, Jonah brushes it off because he's happy so long as it makes humanity suffer and so long as they aren't the ruling species anymore, not caring that Ghidorah's actions defeat their original goal of preventing the destruction of the planet's ecosphere.
- Taught by Experience: Jonah at first achieves his plans to release all the Titans on humanity by physically invading and slaughtering the Monarch outposts, setting the Titans loose, and moving on, but after Monarch catch up to him at the Antarctica outpost earlier than he was expecting and his right hand Asher dies in the conflict, Jonah foregoes sending anyone to the next outpost. Instead, Jonah retreats to his and his mercs' hidden refuge, and from there he hacks the next outpost's systems and awakens Rodan remotely, all whilst bouncing his broadcast signal off of various satellites so that Monarch can't pinpoint his location.
- Theory Tunnel Vision: He sticks to his absolute view that Humans Are the Real Monsters and that the Titans deserve the world more than we ever will, even when it becomes increasingly clear that some of the Titans he and Emma have awakened might actually be even worse for the world than we are (a certain three-headed Titan in particular). When Emma tells Jonah that King Ghidorah's reign of terror will do the complete opposite of regenerating the world if it continues, Jonah still insists that the Titans deserve the world more, even though it's looking increasingly likely that Ghidorah will be the only one of the Titans to remain alive once he's finished turning the planet into a hellhole. Jonah furthermore brushes off Emma's efforts to convince him that they can still do something to try and stop Ghidorah sterilizing the planet, because the human race that Jonah so hates will be among the species wiped out. Jonah gets extra points in the novelization version, where he's genuinely convinced that he and his men will somehow weather out Ghidorah's global apocalypse and then "live like kings". His last appearance in The Stinger, collecting San/Kevin's severed head, heavily implies that he's refused to accept the Hope Sprouts Eternal ending where humans and Titans have proven they can coexist together.
- Two First Names: Alan and Jonah. Some viewers have even gotten it mixed up which one is his first name, and which is the last name.
- Viler New Villain: Preston Packard from the previous MonsterVerse movie, as Ax-Crazy as he was, had no bigger endgame than killing Kong, and the only people he directly put in danger for his goals were the rest of the humans on Skull Island while being ignorant to the greater-scope ramifications of his actions. Jonah however wants to set over a dozen Titans loose on locations around the world, and he's actually counting on the Titans to kill as many billions of people as possible. Worse yet, Jonah is willing to stand back and let King Ghidorah completely wipe out humanity along with most if not all life on Earth, just so that Jonah's hatred of the human race at large will finally be satiated.
- Villain Ball: He allows Madison continued free reign of his base unsupervised, even after its made clear that she isn't all for massacring people in the name of the "greater good". What's more, at one point, Jonah and his men all take a break at the same time and leave the ORCA – the device which has enabled Jonah to accomplish as much as he has with the Titans, a tool which, as Jonah earlier pointed out, could put himself and everyone in their base at risk by attracting Monarch's or one of the globally-rampant Titans' attention, and a tool which Jonah at this point actively doesn't want Emma getting unsupervised access to – unattended in an insecure room. Combined, these two Villain Balls enable Madison to steal the ORCA and be long gone from the base before anyone notices what's happened. The latter Villain Ball is somewhat amended in the novelization, where Jonah does leave one particularly-imposing Mook to guard the ORCA.
- Villains Out Shopping: Downplayed in a deleted scene, where Jonah and his Mooks are watching Madison training in kickboxing the way you'd probably watch a small show in the village square if you lived without TV or wi-fi and didn't have much better to do.
- War Is Hell: He wholeheartedly agrees, as that was what made him go rogue and start seeking a way to bring back the Titans.
- We Can Rule Together: Has something like this in the novelization. In the film, Jonah is presented as nihilistic and believes humans need to be wiped out, so while he is misguided, he at least genuinely believes in his cause and seems willing to die for it. In the novel, he has a moment of telling Emma that they can live like kings in the aftermath, showing him to be considerably pettier despite his mission.
- When He Smiles: The novelization explicitly says that when Jonah smiles around Asher, it's a very genuine smile, unlike the cold smirks he usually gives.
- Wicked Cultured: Downplayed in the novelization, where he comments upon seeing a twenty-five-year-old Laphroaig that someone had good taste. This is also slightly hinted at in the film, when he's seen by Madison retrieving a bottle alongside a few of his mercenaries in their bunker.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: His sheer evil and all-consuming misanthropy is a result of having fought in the world's worst combat arenas over and over for decades, repeatedly witnessing first-hand how low humanity can really sink. And the novelization furthermore reveals that the tipping point was when Jonah's daughter was gruesomely murdered and her body was found stuffed in a storm drain, while he was away from home on duty.
- Would Hurt a Child: Clearer in the novelization. He threatens Madison after she tells him off for patronizing her, putting his hand on his gun and warning her to be careful what she wishes for. Later, to cement Emma into behaving after the latter has had her Heel Realization, Jonah orders one of his men to slit Madison's throat if Emma goes anywhere near the ORCA without permission.
- Xanatos Gambit: Downplayed. When Emma realizes King Ghidorah is going to outright destroy the world (the whole of humanity included) instead of healing it in any way, Jonah couldn't care less about trying any further to manipulate Ghidorah, since his primary motivation is the eradication of as much of mankind as possible, and Ghidorah will still achieve that end even if it wreaks much more destruction on the world's ecosphere than humans ever have. The movie implies that Jonah was well-aware from the get-go that there was a significant possibility that the Titans wouldn't do what the eco-terrorists expected them to and their plan could end up doing even more harm than good to nature (unlike Emma who never seriously considered that possibility), but Jonah was okay with this because either way, the Titans will cause millions if not billions of people to die.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: Part of what sets Jonah apart from other human villains and makes him so dangerous, is that he doesn't place all his eggs in one basket and is highly adaptable. On top of being Crazy-Prepared, Jonah thinks and moves very effectively when on his toes. In Godzilla: Aftershock, he attempts to get off the island where he was being detained by quietly hijacking Emma's jet with a gun, and when Tarkan arrives and pulls his own gun on Jonah, the latter escapes being re-captured by tackling the gun-wielding Tarkan without getting hurt, and firing his gun in the air outside the jet to create disorientation whilst he flees; and it's later revealed that Jonah still found another way off the island without being recaptured. In King of the Monsters, Jonah is shocked when Ghidorah takes control of the other Titans and commands them to attack the planet spontaneously, but he quickly decides that he's fine with this since his goals of the Titans taking control of the planet and causing massive loss of human life are still achieved; instead prioritizing keeping himself and his mercs safe in their bunker from the apocalypse for as long as possible.
