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Dr. Mark Russell

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/markrussell.jpg
"You are out of your goddamn mind!"
"No, this time we join the fight."

Portrayed By: Kyle Chandler

Appears In: Godzilla: Aftershock | Godzilla: King of the Monsters | Godzilla vs. Kong

Emma’s ex-husband, Andrew and Madison’s father, Monarch's former senior anthrozoologist, and co-inventor of the ORCA device.


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    A-F 
  • Adaptational Dumbass: The Godzilla vs. Kong novelization gives him a couple of instances.
    • The novel outright confirms several aspects of Mark's parenting style since gaining custody of Madison which are somewhat lacking, all of which were only implied in the finished film. His treatment of Madison like she's Just a Kid and like she's far stupider and more helpless than she is is not something that solely started with Godzilla's attack causing Mark to doubt the latter; it's a result of Mark wilfully forgetting that Madison performed some of the gutsiest acts of heroism in the previous movie, in favor of lying to himself that she's a fragile, naïve and obedient offspring despite the evidence to the contrary. The novel shows that Mark wants to mend his relationship with Madison after being absent for years, yet he's oblivious to the fact that treating a teenager like Madison in such a way as this is completely counter-productive to those aims and is likely to drive her away. It's furthermore confirmed that Mark enrolling Madison in a public school without thinking this course through has made Madison a social pariah in her new educational setting (which one of the most challenging social settings that a kid will ever face in their upbringing no less), yet Mark obstinately refuses to listen to Madison's complaints that defy his own wishes.
    • Downplayed when Mark and Director Guillerman have a moment of what can only be described as incompetent sheer idiocy which isn't present in the finished film. After Mechagodzilla emerges, Guillerman asks whether they should be rooting for the Mecha or Godzilla, and Mark replies that he doesn't know. Although Mark clearly realizes in his thoughts later on that he's been unconsciously rooting for Godzilla from the battle's start; considering what the MonsterVerse incarnation of Godzilla is normally like, his crucial role in defending the world and considering all else that Mark should know at this point - Mechagodzilla's emergence has confirmed his earlier suspicions that Apex are responsible for provoking Godzilla's rampage in its entirety and Mark just watched the Mecha deliberately raze half of Hong Kong for no reason beyond Ghidorah-like sadism (in contrast to how Godzilla never attacks without provocation) – it's quite jarring to think that anyone in Mark's position would need to take even a fraction of the time he did to come to the blatantly obvious answer to Guillerman's contextually-ridiculous question.
  • Addled Addict: It's implied that a big part of why his and Emma's marriage fell apart after Andrew's death is that he turned to drinking to cope, and apparently the state this drove him into wasn't exactly something for him to look back on proudly.
  • Admiring the Abomination: During the early part of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, for all his ranting and raving against the Titans, he seemingly can't help being entranced when he sees Godzilla up close during the Castle Bravo stand-off, long before he finds it in himself to let go of his grudge against the Titan. In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, Mark can't help being immediately fascinated despite his horror when he first witnesses Mechagodzilla's emergence.
  • Advertised Extra: The Godzilla vs. Kong trailers placed a lot of emphasis on his first scene, but in the film proper that's one of the only scenes featuring him as he's Demoted to Extra.
  • Aesop Amnesia: His character development between Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Godzilla vs. Kong seems to have reversed, as after Godzilla attacks Pensacola, he refuses to investigate any possible reasons and immediately assumes without evidence that Godzilla has turned against humanity. At least in the movie — the novelization has Monarch conducting an investigation of their own after all.
  • Aggressive Categorism: The establishing type. Saying that all the Titans which consist of various super-species are nothing but malevolent monsters because one of them accidentally killed his son seems like a stretch, especially for an animal behavior expert.
  • Alcoholic Parent: In the aftermath of Andrew's death, he turned to drinking as a way of coping for a time, and he expresses profuse shame that Madison had to see him like that.
  • Anti-Hero Substitute: He's suspiciously similar to Joe Brody, the deceased Decoy Protagonist of Godzilla (2014): both are angsty men whose lives fell apart amidst the emotional fallout of losing a loved one when a city was destroyed by Titans years before the movie's main time frame, both of them have taken on jobs considerably less glamorous than their previous ones at the movie's start, and both of them are experts on the Titans whom are ahead of the curve while Monarch are still scrambling in the dark, and this makes Monarch turn to Joe/Mark as invaluable assets. Both men also became estranged from the rest of their family including their kids due to focusing on their own grief after the loss. However, Mark is shown to be more of an asshole than Joe was: unlike Joe who merely wanted answers to why his wife died; Mark holds a psychologically-debilitating, one-sided Animal Nemesis grudge against Godzilla for being involved in Andrew's death and for not being dead like the MUTOs. Mark is a lot more prone to misdirected outbursts and at first Mark treats his old colleagues like crap even while they're trying to help him find his kidnapped family. Plus Mark can't even claim he did something productive with his grief during the years he was neglecting his family like Joe did.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: The Godzilla vs. Kong novelization states he's still unconvinced that Ghidorah was really an alien as the legends Dr. Chen pieced together indicated, despite DNA analysis lending further evidence to back this up. Whilst it's true that it was never explicitly confirmed Ghidorah is an alien... This guy apparently finds the concept of an extraterrestrial Titan to be somehow even less believable than the fact he lives in a world where giant prehistoric monsters exist, including a giant bird who literally has magma for blood and sleeps comfortably inside active volcanoes.
  • Armor-Piercing Response: When he rightfully gives Emma a dressing-down for going mad over their son's death and refusing to admit there are things she can't control even if she has to create a global cataclysm to prove it, Emma fires back by calling Mark out on running away from his problems since Andrew died. This renders Mark silent for a moment, since he knows that him refusing to face up to their son's death in a healthy manner is what broke the remaining Russells apart and left Mark living alone in a cabin with the wolves. Then Mark fires back an APR of his own at Emma.
  • The Atoner: He realizes how misguided his hatred of Godzilla was after the Oxygen Destroyer almost kills Godzilla and the far worse Ghidorah starts controlling the Titans to annihilate the Earth with a rapid mass extinction. From that point on it's he who comes up with the plan to revitalize Godzilla with nukes, and who later insists the humans join the King in the battle against Ghidorah.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Mark spends most of the early part of King of the Monsters repeatedly advocating that Godzilla be killed due to his continuing rage over his son's death. Thanks to the military and the Oxygen Destroyer, he seemingly gets his wish — and soon discovers that life without Godzilla, with Ghidorah taking his place as the Titans' Alpha and directing them to actively attack humanity and destroy the world's ecosphere, is a far, far worse alternative.
  • Berserk Button: In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, people talking about the Titans is pretty much this for him (encountering them in person, not so much) – he's usually quite rational in that movie when reflecting on some of his own mistakes with his family, when analyzing the Titans' behavior patterns, or when he's in the midst of battling Titans and any ill-advised movement is a matter of life and death for anyone in the line of fire; but when Mark hears Monarch or Emma talking about the Titans too much for his liking or when Serizawa entertains the notion that the Titans aren't Always Chaotic Evil, reason goes right out the window and he goes full blowhard mode.
  • Blank Stare: Played for Laughs in the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, when Mark responds this way to one reporter asking him if Godzilla's attacking because he hates artificial beaches.
  • Brainy Brunette: Downplayed in Godzilla: King of the Monsters – he's genuinely good at predicting the Titans' behavior to the point and is often further ahead of the curve than Monarch are on this front. He's also smart enough to understand the risks behind Monarch recreating the ORCA for use on Titans, and moreso to understand that Emma is playing with fire on a global scale with her plan to use the ORCA to awaken all the Titans. However, unlike most of the other geniuses brunette or otherwise in the movie, Mark's forward-thinking and his opinion on the Titans are limited by his anger over his son's death and his blowhard personality.
  • Break the Haughty:
  • Calling the Old Man Out: Madison doesn't hesitate to give him a What the Hell, Hero? in Godzilla vs. Kong for just jumping to a conclusion that Godzilla's made a Face–Heel Turn before he's even found any evidence. In the novelization, this isn't the only time Madison calls Mark out, as it's confirmed in the novel that Mark's inept parenting style laden with Psychological Projection is making half of Madison's life miserable.
  • The Cameo: He has a one-scene appearance in the Godzilla: Aftershock prequel graphic novel, expressing concerns to Atherton about Emma's wellbeing.
  • Character Development: He starts the movie as a Titan-hater to, by the end, understanding that many of the Titans can be reasoned with in some way and starts letting go of his hatred.
  • Commander Contrarian:
    • Downplayed and sometimes inverted in Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Mark vehemently disagrees with Monarch's approach to handling the Titans (specifically the "not killing them all ASAP" part) due to his personal grudge and cynicism, in contrast to Monarch's sound minds and xenophilia, and Mark takes more than one opportunity to make his opinion clear to the Monarch top brass's faces. But when he's thinking somewhat more clearly, it's Mark who often takes the lead in working out why the Titans are behaving the ways they are and what the most productive course of action would be.
    • Played Straight in Godzilla vs. Kong, however. One of Mark's select scenes in the finished movie consists of him irrationally dismissing Madison's logical advice about the reasons for Godzilla's rampage completely out of hand and Easily Condemning Godzilla, based on no higher cognitive function than his unprofessionally-rampant emotions. The movie's novelization furthermore reveals that Mark is skeptical about King Ghidorah being an alien despite DNA analysis lending it even further credibility, and Mark also pre-judges the Hollow Earth expedition to be nothing but a useless boondoggle off the bat.
  • The Complainer Is Always Wrong: His argument that rebuilding the ORCA could end up doing the exact opposite of preventing another Titan attack on a city proves very, very true in the film, but he's initially brushed off by the Monarch brass, partly because it's clear to all that his judgment on the Titans is highly colored by his personal bias concerning his son's death.
  • Condescending Compassion: Father or not; Mark gives the teenager who single-handedly escaped eco-terrorists, drew King Ghidorah to Boston, and had the balls to scream in all three of Ghidorah's faces when about to die a good deal of this trope in Godzilla vs. Kong, especially in the novelization – in fact, Mark's entire parenting style in the book can be summed up as this trope. Mark expresses pity to Madison's face that she went through the traumatic experiences she did during the previous movie's events, and he insists that him enrolling her in a public school is her getting an opportunity to rest now that the war against Ghidorah is behind them; yet he doesn't make any real effort to communicate with Madison as an equal or to understand her own wants or her problems (most of which he is the cause of). When Madison tries to make him aware how anxious and miserable she is at the school he threw her into after she'd spent her preceding education being homeschooled, Mark just pulls rank on Madison and says the decision is his instead of hers. This attitude is ironically doing more harm than good to Mark's efforts to reconnect with Madison, as Madison can see the way he's treating her for what it is: he's wilfully forgotten that Madison proved her mettle in no uncertain terms, so that he can pretend she's the naïve, ordinary, obedient girl whom Mark would much rather have over the genuine article, and he would rather let her stagnate cowering at home to fuel his selfish fantasy rather than face his fears of losing her.
  • Curse Cut Short / Last-Second Word Swap:
    "It's reacting to Big Bird's cries. That means he's coming for a food or a fight or a f-" [glances at Ilene Chen standing in direct earshot] "…something more intimate."
  • Cutting the Knot: How Mark deals with a stuck cargo door on the Argo.
  • The Cynic: In King of the Monsters, he's very jaded and bitter after his son's death, insisting that the Titans are nothing but a danger to all mankind so long as they're alive. In Godzilla vs. Kong, even after Mark has gotten over his grudge against Godzilla, he's ridiculously quick to jump to the conclusion that Godzilla has made a Face–Heel Turn after his first attack, without any evidence – the novelization also shows that Mark still believed after the events of King of the Monsters that Titans showing activity could only ever be an omen for bad news.
  • Cynicism Catalyst: He turned into The Cynic after Andrew's death at the destruction of San Francisco; hating all Titans for his son's death, quitting Monarch due to their reverence of the Titans and refusal to try straight-up killing them, and divorcing Emma and retreating to the mountains in Colorado. He takes something of a level in kindness over the course of the film.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Mark has several moments, like when Dr. Chen claims that Emma wouldn't want the Titans destroyed even to save her own life, and Mark (hypocritically) snarks that it wouldn't be the first time Emma prioritized something ahead of her own well-being or her family. Later, when Stanton queries what he's asking to see Godzilla's normal movement patterns for, Mark snarks without missing a beat that it's because he wants to open a boat tour.
  • Demoted to Extra: In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, he's one of the primary human characters. In the final cut of Godzilla vs. Kong, he makes only sporadic appearances throughout with no real contribution to the plot, while Madison takes up more of the protagonist role in his place.
  • Determinator: Zig-Zagged. He initially all but turned his back on Madison and ran away to the mountains for five years after Andrew's death. But once he learns Madison and Emma have been kidnapped by Jonah, Mark joins Monarch in their rescue mission solely so he can get Madison and Emma back safe. After Emma is revealed to be Evil All Along (causing Mark to subtly stop thinking about getting her back), and even when it looks like King Ghidorah's world-ending victory is secured, Mark never stops trying to get back to his daughter. In Godzilla vs. Kong, Mark, who has since become a helicoptering and patronizing parent to his child-veteran daughter, goes out of his way to cut Madison out of the investigation into Godzilla's attacks, trying to keep her at home and away from Titan business so he won't have to fret for her safety. In the aftermath of Mechagodzilla's death, it's clear in Mark's final scene that finding Madison safe and sound after he's discovered she got herself involved in the Titan crisis because of his attitude is the first thing on Mark's mind.
  • Detrimental Determination: In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, Mark is extremely pig-headed in his assertions that Madison is somehow just a normal, ineffectual little girl who can't be trusted to know her own thoughts and feelings or to provide any valuable insights. He's shown to repeatedly hand-wave Madison's complaints about her being miserable in the public school he's forced her to attend and it's implied that this has been going on between them for some time. Mark not only ignores everything Madison thinks about Godzilla's Pensacola attack out of hand (even when she's making far more sense compared to Mark's ridiculous and emotional assumptions), Mark also resorts to helicoptering methods to try and keep Madison away from the investigation into Godzilla's attacks. What really makes this determination detrimental is that Mark makes it clear in the novel that he's acting this way partly because he doesn't want to lose Madison the way he's already lost the rest of their immediate family one-by-one, and implicitly also partly as a way of compensating for the years he was absent from Madison's life (swinging from one parental extreme to the other). Unfortunately, he's too bullheaded and too self-focused on his own feelings while ignoring everyone else's to realize that this kind of parenting, directed at a blatant rebellious spirit like his daughter, will surely push Madison to do the opposite of what he wants and could potentially even emotionally push her away from him all over again instead of mending the rift between them. It takes the realization that his last refusal to listen to Madison in the wake of Godzilla's attack has led to Madison sneaking out and heading into the very danger that Mark tried to shield her from for Mark to even take a single clue and admit to himself that he was wrong to treat her so patronizingly.
  • Didn't Think This Through: In the wake of King Ghidorah's global takeover of the other Titans, and Monarch establishing that nothing can stop him with Godzilla apparently gone, Mark intends to depart Monarch's company to look for Madison before the world ends. This in spite of how Madison and the eco-terrorists could be holed up literally anywhere in the entire world and Mark hasn't got the first idea where to start looking (as Sam Coleman points out), not to mention that Mark's efforts will likely be further hampered by the fact that the world is currently ending, and nevermind the question of how he'll avoid getting shot by Jonah's goons if he does find them without Monarch's military aid. Fortunately, Mothra's timely arrival prevents Mark from going through with this.
  • Drowning My Sorrows: How he initially coped with his son's death offscreen, much to his shame.
  • Dumbass Has a Point: He has a couple in the novelization of Godzilla vs. Kong:
    • He's mostly just being obscenely awful at his job when he dismisses Madison's rational pointers about Godzilla's Pensacola attack, but he's not entirely wrong about Mad Truth being full of garbage, even if he's blunt and condescending to Madison when he tells her as much. The podcast's host is a blatant hardcore conspiracy theorist who promotes that kind of mindset to the podcast's listeners (hell, the novelization reveals that Bernie suspects the government are covering up the existence of Santa's elves); even if Mark isn't so much as trying to understand that Madison already knows most of Mad Truth is bogus, and he treats Madison like she's way dumber than she is, and he doesn't himself have any better ideas for working out why Godzilla is acting so aggressive.
    • Despite his Condescending Compassion in regards to throwing Madison in high school after she's been homeschooled for most of her life, Madison's own surprise at how unprepared she was for high school and how hard it is to make any non-adult friends proves Mark's point that her social skills are underdeveloped and rusty; even if Mark's solution to the problem is causing Madison to suffer for the problem more than it fixes it. Furthermore, Madison making one high school friend in Josh was ultimately indispensable to preventing Mechagodzilla from winning the Final Battle, as if Josh wasn't at Apex's HQ with Madison to short out the computer, then Mechagodzilla would have most likely killed Kong, then Godzilla, and then it would have been unstoppable.
  • Elite School Means Elite Brain: Mark is an expert zoologist with a keen intuition when it comes to understanding the Titans, plus his Monarch Sciences bio says that he went to the University of California, which is widely ranked as one of the best universities in the world.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: He's willing to kill without hesitation when he sees his ex-wife and daughter in mortal danger, but when one of his own loved ones commits a betrayal that he doesn't see coming (namely, Emma revealing that she was willingly going along with the eco-terrorists' plot all along and her gaslighting Madison into staying by the terrorists' side), the look on Mark's face is one of complete confusion and heartbreak. Afterwards, for a moment, Mark can barely speak when confirming what happened to the Monarch top brass. Godzilla vs. Kong furthermore makes it clear that Mark is still haunted by this betrayal with his irrational easy condemnation of Godzilla and his lack of trust or faith in Madison.
  • Excessive Mourning: Slightly downplayed. He's had half a decade to finish mourning and pull himself back together since Andrew died, but he acts as if it's barely been half a month since the loss. Continuing to wallow in self-pity and old grief, Mark has become estranged from his daughter and his (now ex-)wife, he's nursing a nasty hatred of the Titans (Godzilla in particular) because he blames them for his son being a collateral of Godzilla's fight to stop the MUTOs, and he's remained at the Colorado mountains as his way of running and hiding from anything that reminds him of Andrew's death. He also frequently uses his grief and anger as a Hot-Blooded excuse to obnoxiously lash out at his former Monarch colleagues because they won't kill the Titans just to satiate Mark's anger against the creatures; even when said ex-colleagues are presently doing nothing else but try to help Mark's sorry ass with locating his missing family. Over the course of the movie, with some help from Serizawa and by finding that Vengeance Feels Empty, Mark learns to let go of his grudge against Godzilla.
  • Fantastic Racism: Not unlike much of humanity at the start of Godzilla: King of the Monsters; Mark has been nursing a raging bias against all the Titans following the 2014 rampage, because his son was a casualty of the San Francisco battle. He can't get through the briefing on Alan Jonah and his family's kidnapping without losing his temper and flat-out ranting at Monarch that they should kill all the Titans (especially Godzilla) as a way to neutralize the threat the ORCA can pose in the wrong hands. When Mark does pull his head out of his ass however (such as when he's seeing Titans in person), he shows that despite his bias he's well-aware of the power discrepancy between man and Titan, becoming the voice of reason during Monarch's standoff with Godzilla. In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, though Mark no longer hates the Titans, he still thinks them being awake spells nothing but bad news for the world and that it's better if they stay asleep.
    "Look, I want him dead more than anyone, but unless this is a fight that you KNOW that you can win, for God's sake stand down!"
  • Fantasy-Forbidding Father: It's hinted in Godzilla vs. Kong that he's become one to Madison since Emma's death left him with custody of her; chiding her for trying to contribute to the investigation into Godzilla's attack instead of being in school (note that Madison was originally homeschooled in Monarch but is now attending a public school), openly disapproving of her listening to Mad Truth as he (somewhat understandably mind you) thinks it's nothing but garbage, and going out of his way to dismiss everything she has to say and cut her out of the investigation no matter how insightful she is. The novelization outright confirms Mark is this trope – he all but says to Madison that he wishes she'd never grown into a Wise Beyond Her Years young woman, instead of being proud of her, and he's going above and beyond to try and make her live as normal a life as possible while urging her to stop taking an interest in Titans and Monarch business; partly because he's scared of losing her to a Titan the same way he's already lost Andrew and Emma one-by-one, and implicitly because he's also projecting his own desire for a normal life onto his daughter while ignoring the notion that her own opinions and feelings might run counter to his own.
  • Fatal Flaw:
    • He tends to run away from his problems to a point which overrides all concern for both his and his loved ones' wellbeing. He turned into a drunk wreck in the aftermath of Andrew's death, then estranged himself from his surviving family while running away to the mountains, all in an effort to escape anything that reminded him of his son's death or the Titans. Emma calls him out on this with an Armor-Piercing Response.
    • Hot-Bloodedness has been firmly established as this as of Godzilla vs. Kong. Mark's temper and emotions chronically cloud his judgment, unpleasantly color his behavior towards others, and make him jump to conclusions in both movies. Even after letting go of his grudge against Godzilla in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, he still hasn't learned his lesson about this Flaw come the next movie.
    • Another major flaw of his which persists across both his appearances (if the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization's portrayal of him is canon) is that he often gets his head stuck in the past to the point that focusing on the present or future becomes virtually secondary. Before the start of King of the Monsters, he's spent half a decade letting his otherwise-legitimate grief fester into something ugly and destroy his marriage; and when he learns Emma recreated the ORCA, he at first wastes time bemoaning the fact it never should've been recreated instead of doing something to amend the situation in the present. It's hinted in Godzilla vs. Kong and more explicitly shown in the novelization that Mark has a strained relationship with Madison after re-entering her life; not because of his long absence before King of the Monsters, but because he's trying to make up for the years he was absent by fallaciously swinging from one parental extreme to the other.
  • Foil:
    • To Emma Russell, his own ex-wife. They both had a lifelong environmental interest (ecology for Emma, wildlife for Mark), and they even take the same path of working on the ORCA in the hopes humans and Titans can coexist, but they went on polarized routes after their son's deaths. They both at points in the film display an appreciation for the Titans' beauty, but Mark became a Tragic Bigot with a hatred for all Titans because of Andrew's death, while Emma became simultaneously pro-Titan and misanthropic — interestingly, in relation to this, Mark outright hates Godzilla most of all, while Emma doesn't hate him but actively releases Godzilla's Arch-Enemy, Ghidorah. Mark initially responded to Andrew's death with alcoholism, while Emma entered workaholism. They also both don't want to lose Madison the same way they lost their other child, and they respectively drop concern for everything else when she's in mortal danger — Mark left Madison and Emma, yet regrets not being there for them when the film's main plot kicks off, whereas Emma retains custody of Madison but manipulates her.
    • Also to Dr. Serizawa, and this gets lampshaded in the novelization. Both of them are Monarch or ex-Monarch scientists with a keen fascination and empathy for the Titans, and both of them firmly recognize that humans shouldn't try to subjugate nature because they're most likely to get anything but the desired result (and both of them learned this due to some kind of tragedy — for Serizawa it was his father's experience in the Hiroshima bombing and/or the Janjira containment breach, for Mark it was a tragic incident where the prototype ORCA caused whales to beach themselves to death). The difference between them is that Mark let himself become consumed by his own grief and allowed it to fester after Andrew's death, whereas Serizawa deliberately avoids falling into the same trap as Mark when he's grief-stricken by the death of Vivienne Graham. Adding irony to the contrast is that Godzilla killing Andrew was completely unintentional, whereas Ghidorah deliberately murdered Dr. Graham in an act of malice.
    • And to Alan Jonah, 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.

    G-N 
  • Good Is Not Nice: In King of the Monsters, he's a real asshole towards his ex-colleagues even while they're only trying to help him saving his family, because of his biases about the Titans. And even after he lets go of his grudge against Godzilla, he's still as impulsive, condescending (towards Madison) and rash as he's ever been, in Godzilla vs. Kong. But he genuinely loves his family, and he twice notably goes out of his way to help people in dire need in King of the Monsters – in the first instance reluctantly sacrificing a slim chance of getting Emma and Madison back of his own accord to do so – and he's rejoined Monarch in Godzilla vs. Kong.
  • Grief-Induced Split: After Andrew's death, him and Emma coped in separate ways, and soon after Mark left both Emma and Madison behind altogether. Emma deeply resents Mark for this, and it's implied during King of the Monsters that Mark comes to regret it.
  • Hair-Contrast Duo: Subverted between him and Emma. At first, it looks like the two of them will be a straight case with Mark as the dark-haired one being the "bad": he's a lot more cynical, testy, solitary and moody than Emma is but also a lot more pessimistically cautious (especially when it comes to the Titans), and he transparently wallows in his unprocessed grief over Andrew's death whilst criticizing Emma and Monarch's recreation with the ORCA and management of the Titans. However, then we find out that Emma is much, much more amoral and unstable than Mark is.
  • Handshake Refusal: Towards Coleman when he first meets the stuttery guy.
  • Head Desk: In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, he knocks his head thrice against the kitchen table after he spectacularly fails to sit through a breakfast with Madison without an argument starting between them.
  • Held Gaze: He has a few in King of the Monsters:
    • Mark twice gazes unblinkingly in a trance-like state when he's close enough to Godzilla to see the proverbial whites of his eyes, to which Godzilla responds by calming down. The second time Mark sees Godzilla's gaze, he has an epiphany about the secret recipe behind the ORCA's alpha bio-acoustics, and it's implicitly also in the same moment that Mark and Godzilla make their peace (the novelization outright confirms this is the moment that Mark fully changes his opinion on the Titan). Mark's Monarch Sciences bio and the novelization note that Mark tends to feel innately connected and synced to animals when he sees them up close, and the novel even shows him briefly staring off a wild wolf and then breaking eye contact to avoid seeming challenging; all of which push Mark's Held Gazes into the Supernatural type.
    • During the Mexican standoff with Jonah, Mark and Emma are looking directly at each-other when Emma is about to blow the ice encasing Ghidorah. Mark looks almost like a confused, wounded puppy in this moment, reflecting not only his first reaction to Emma's betrayal but also how Mark has been feeling at his core ever since Andrew died.
  • His Story Repeats Itself: In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, most if not all of Mark's issues stem from his firsthand experience of the destruction of San Francisco including Andrew's death there, leading him to hate the Titans and to turn his back on his remaining family and Monarch in an effort to block out what happened. At the movie's end, after Mark has come to regret abandoning his family and has made peace with Godzilla, he faces the same kind of event again when Boston is destroyed by Godzilla and King Ghidorah's Final Battle around him as he searches for Madison before she can become another Andrew, and when Emma is killed amid the destruction. Subverted by Godzilla vs. Kong, which implies that Mark has become overprotective and patronizing towards Madison after this second incident and that he didn't really internalize as much as he could have, which the novelization outright confirms.
  • Holier Than Thou: The non-religious type – in the first half of King of the Monsters, he can be easily described as the definition of sanctimonious, his demeanor whenever he chastises his Monarch ex-colleagues about how they're handling the Titans being definitively high-and-mighty. Notably, he has the gall to talk as if he has the moral high-ground over everyone he's talking to or about during two of his Hypocrite moments described below. Mark is also very condescending to Madison when he brushes her off in Godzilla vs. Kong, and in the novelization, he has a habit of talking like he knows what's best for Madison better than she does when he's stifling her. All of that being said, he's not immune to recognizing he's wrong when he experiences the negative results of his folly.
  • Horrible Judge of Character: He indulges in this in Godzilla vs. Kong, even more so in its novelization due to taking a level in dumbass. He easily condemns Godzilla's rampage, even though he should know better than most that Godzilla only ever acts aggressive when something is provoking him, and he makes completely irrational and nonsensical excuses for his jump to this conclusion. It's also hinted in the movie version, and outright confirmed in the novelization, that Mark has convinced himself that the now 17-year-old Madison is just a normal and defenceless kid who doesn't know what she's saying; and he's so pig-headed and obsessed with holding up this illusion, he actually thinks that him helicoptering Madison and using authority as her father to browbeat her instead of providing a listening or understanding ear towards her will somehow get a headstrong teenager with a serious rebellious streak like her to do what she's told instead of the complete opposite.
  • Hot-Blooded: From his rash hatred of Godzilla and all Titans over the death of his son (which he's furthermore failed to let go of despite his implied efforts after five years of mourning and solitude), his Take This Job and Shove It in the initial aftermath of Andrew's death, and his tendency to pull a Leeroy Jenkins, it's clear that he's no poster-boy for The Stoic or for impulse control. Despite getting over his grudge against Godzilla, this personality trait overall hasn't gone away at all by the time of Godzilla vs. Kong, marking it as a Fatal Flaw.
  • Hypocrite:
    • On an Osprey with Graham, Coleman and Serizawa, he angrily responds to Serizawa's suggestion that some of the Titans are benevolent by firmly saying, "Don't kid yourself." Even though he is kidding himself with his pre-judgment of every last Titan species as nothing more than destructive monsters, which is based purely on his subjective personal grief at what two Titan species caused him to lose. Furthermore, Mark says this after studying wolves in the wild, who are frequently a misunderstood species in real life, and the fact he's a professional zoologist makes him holding such a passionate five-year grudge against a giant animal (something which people in his profession should know better than to do) all the more reprehensible.
    • During a tirade, he straight-up scorns the fact Emma tends to put something (in her case the Monarch work she delved into after Andrew's death) before her own wellbeing and before her family. He's one to talk, having put the bottom of a bottle before his own wellbeing (albeit after trying and failing to piece the family back together) followed by running away from his problems to let them fester; all at a time when his still-living family needed him to be strong more than ever before.
    • In Godzilla vs. Kong, he asks (more like commands) that Madison blindly trust in him and put faith in him, without giving her either of those things in return. This is even more prominent in the novelization than it is in the movie's final cut.
  • Hypocrite Has a Point: Whilst he has no moral highground on which to stand when he speaks critically of Emma not putting her family and her mental wellbeing first, he's proven absolutely right that Emma putting her workaholism first is a bad idea for her, just not in the way that Mark assumed: it turns out that rather than risking creating a global Titan catastrophe accidentally, Emma as a direct result of delving into trying to understand the Titans and refusing to process her grief in a healthier way is engineering such a catastrophe deliberately – all in all, she is much more dangerous than Mark.
  • Ignored Expert: In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, he tries to get Monarch to start evacuating people before Godzilla's first attack when he realizes the Titan is likely going to make landfall at a population center, but his urgings are downplayed because of Godzilla's positive reputation at the time.
  • Ineffectual Loner: He's retreated to a mountain cabin to try and work through his grief in solitude, distancing himself from his daughter and ex-wife in the process. He's a competent expert zoologist, but he's not much of a team player when Monarch recruit him to look for the ORCA and his kidnapped family, and he's obnoxiously condescending towards his ex-colleagues due to his personal hatred for the Titans they revere, although he still garners sympathy for his loss from Drs. Graham and Serizawa.
  • Insufferable Genius: He's an asshole who seems to think his own feelings are at the center of the universe, and he goes off on a couple tirades at Monarch and uses them as a focus for his anger before he gets better. But he's a competent animal behavior expert who proves to be invaluable during the events of King of the Monsters, working out what's going on with the Titans and working out where the human antagonists are going to strike next, whilst the rest of Monarch are still a step or two behind him.
  • It's All About Me:
    • Throughout King of the Monsters, he's more concerned about getting his ex-wife (until the Evil All Along twist) and daughter back, while Monarch are more concerned about the global threat Ghidorah poses. Whilst Mark genuinely has suffered a horrible tragedy with his son's death before the start of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), he talks as if he's the only one in the world who lost someone, even though the news report in the opening makes it clear that he's one of thousands who went through the same loss and share his feelings on Titans. The notion that other people might be suffering just as much as Mark if not more doesn't seem to cross his mind.
    • Mark hasn't grown past this at all in Godzilla vs. Kong. At least part of his reasoning for jumping to a conclusion that Godzilla has made a Face–Heel Turn is implied to basically be, "Someone betrayed me in the past, and the fact I'm not over it is all the evidence I need to assume it's happening again here with an unrelated creature I know" and he doesn't hesitate to use the stress from dealing with the crisis to guilt-trip Madison into not burdening him with fear for her safety by getting involved. It's also implied in the movie and confirmed in the novelization that Mark has become a helicoptering, over-authoritative Fantasy-Forbidding Father to Madison, partly because he's projecting his own longing for a normal life onto his daughter while hand-waving all her blatant indications that what she wants isn't what he wants. Mark's poor parenting is also partly a counter-productive attempt to keep Madison from going into danger, but even so, the means he's using to achieve the end, coupled with how he put running away from his problems ahead of being strong for Emma and Madison following Andrew's death; show that Mark mainly only considers how his family affect his own feelings of love, guilt or fear, whilst hand-waving or ignoring the impact that his behavior towards them is having on their feelings.
  • I've Never Seen Anything Like This Before: In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, this is the experienced zoologist and Monarch operative's internal response to hearing Mechagodzilla's roar for the first time.
  • I Will Find You: Mark sets out to save his kidnapped ex-wife and daughter.
  • Jerkass: He's very self-pitying and Holier Than Thou when he's at anything less than his best or isn't reeling from recently being proven wrong and he's extremely rude, abrasive and prone to Misdirected Outbursts when he's feeling pissy. Whilst the loss of his son amidst Godzilla and the MUTOs' battle is indeed a horrible trauma, he's spent the following five years continuing to destructively wallow in his grief while practically using it as an excuse to treat all the people he still has like little more than shit: estranging himself from Emma and Madison when they needed him the most and being an asshole to his Monarch ex-colleagues (whilst said colleagues are actively attempting to rescue his wife and daughter no less). Even after Mark has made peace with Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Kong shows that he hasn't changed for the better by much; remaining as egocentric, high-and-mighty and Hot-Blooded as he was at the start of Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Whilst Mark's fear of losing Madison to a Titan crisis is understandable (especially when considering he's already lost his other child and his ex-wife to the same kind of thing one-by-one), his resultant domineering and overbearing parenting style is misguided at best, infuriating at worst; and his treatment of his seventeen-year-old daughter like she's Just a Kid is highly condescending when considering Madison's impressive acts of heroism in King of the Monsters (it's even worse in the novelization, where Mark all but admits that he wants Madison to regress out of being Wise Beyond Her Years and turn back into an ordinary kid he can coddle and better control). Mark acts like the world revolves around his feelings specifically even though he's far from the only human in-universe who lost loved ones in 2014 (as explicitly mentioned in the opening of King of the Monsters); and the causes of his strained relationship with Madison in Godzilla vs. Kong show that he tends to only factor in how his family affect his own feelings such as his guilt or fear, while disregarding or hand-waving the impact his present behavior is having on their feelings.
  • Jerkass Has a Point:
    • While his attitude towards the Titans clashes with the film's message of cohabitation, he isn't wrong about the capacity for destruction which exists among even the benign Titans. And while he's not exactly pleased about it, the film's first scene shows he's entirely correct that if the ORCA doesn't already know which frequency to use on a specific Titan, then using the wrong frequency based on guesswork can do the exact opposite of pacify a gigantic, walking, breathing natural disaster.
    • In the novelization, one of Mark's reasons for being pissy that Monarch are trying to keep the Titans alive in containment is because he believes Monarch's spectacular failure to prevent the male MUTO breaking free at Janjira is proof that Monarch's containment protocols won't do any good if any of the contained Titans awaken and decide they want to stretch their limbs. Once Ghidorah awakens all the contained Titans and commands them to attack, the ease and speed with which the creatures destroy the containment outposts around their resting sites proves Mark's point.
    • When Mark sarcastically calls out Dr. Chen and the rest of Monarch for not being prepared for the Titans around the world awakening after Ghidorah's emergence; even if he's wrong to think that all the Titans should be killed, Mark is entirely right that the dormant Titans emerging was only a matter of "when" rather than "if" note , and Monarch haven't done anything adequate to prepare for that 'when' whilst maintaining a short-term and rapidly-failing status quo was on their table.
  • Jerkass Realization:
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite all his faults and jerkassery, he very much loves his family (particularly Madison), and he regrets not being there for Emma and Madison (to a fault in Godzilla vs. Kong). He doesn't hesitate to attempt rescuing Emma and Madison from being held hostage during a gunfight, and his only concern after Emma's true colors are revealed and whilst Ghidorah is wreaking the literal end of the world is getting his daughter back. Mark also, to his credit, goes back to save the G-Team from certain death in Antarctica, rather than seize a slim chance to catch up to a departing Emma, Madison and Jonah. Mark isn't afraid to admit he was wrong, as demonstrated when he realizes that Godzilla is the last hope to save the planet from Ghidorah, and he notably tones down his abrasiveness towards his Monarch ex-colleagues after he finds that seemingly getting his wish to see Godzilla killed almost enabled King Ghidorah to destroy the entire world.
  • Knight in Sour Armor: In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Mark is a bitter, egocentric cynic whom is still profoundly troubled by his son's death, but he's vehemently disgusted by the eco-terrorists' plan to put billions of people in mortal danger. Whilst Mark is mainly only on the heroes' side so he can rescue his family rather than out of any commitment to protecting the world at large, he does forego pursuing the eco-terrorists (whom have Emma and Madison) in favor of going back to save the G-Team from almost certain death, despite his great reluctance to let the eco-terrorists get away with his family. In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, Mark just as cynical as ever before about nearly everything, including the Titans, but he's also now rejoined Monarch to help them keep the peace between man and Titan overall (instead of continuing to wallow at his cabin), and it's implied that Mark has done so more because it's the right thing to do than because he has any desire to see a live Titan again.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: Downplayed in King of the Monsters. One glimpse of Emma and Madison over a video feed at Outpost 32 makes him immediately depart from the Monarch top brass's safe distance location, grab a gun off a dead body, charge into the eco-terrorist-occupied outpost, and hold Jonah and his team at gunpoint. Downplayed in the sense that it's hinted Asher would have managed to shoot Mark dead as soon as the standoff started if Mark's distraction hadn't given Foster an opening to shoot Ash first, which in turn put Mark and Jonah on a more equal footing while Jonah's remaining gunmen in the background were occupied covering him and Emma from Ash's shooter.
  • The Load: Averted in Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Mark at first spends his screentime from the moment Monarch approach him being insufferably rude and snarky, and what rational pointers he does make are initially brushed off by Monarch as the ravings of a bitter, grief-filled man who isn't thinking straight (and in Monarch's defence, Mark only made either of these pointers when in the midst of one of his tempers). In the novelization, Barnes is explicitly puzzled over why Mark has been brought onboard at all given his initial behavior. Not only is Mark proven right about Jonah's decoy, but he handles himself very well for a non-military during his Leeroy Jenkins in Antarctica; killing one of Jonah's men and saving Colonel Foster's life, plus his actions indirectly make the heroes aware of Emma's betrayal. And Mark only continues making himself useful to the team for the rest of the movie despite his initial attitude. Come Godzilla vs. Kong, however...
  • Loner-Turned-Friend: Somewhat downplayed. At the start of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Mark has shut himself away from everyone and nearly everything after Andrew's death, only to get recruited by Monarch's top brass including his former colleagues. At first, he's an obnoxious blowhard who makes his opinionated and biased view on Monarch's ways of managing the Titans clear (yet he somehow attracts Sam Coleman's desire for friendship), but he mellows and he seemingly gets off his high horse as the movie goes on. In Godzilla vs. Kong, the Monarch executives Mark previously worked with are completely absent from both the film and novelized versions of the story as Mark investigates Godzilla's attacks with Guillerman, save for a mention in the novel that Mark wouldn't mind having their help.
  • Long Last Look: The person variation. After he's said goodbye to Serizawa, him, Stanton and Chen continue solemnly watching Serizawa's sub as it sinks into the water.
  • Misdirected Outburst: In King of the Monsters, his rage over his son's death is directed at the Titans (Godzilla in particular), but instead of lashing out at them, Mark lashes out at his Monarch ex-colleagues and friends when he sees them again. He's annoyed at them because they won't exterminate all of the Titans despite knowing how powerful they are, and it doesn't matter to Mark that they are being nothing but patient and thoughtful towards him nor that these are the people whom are currently working to find his kidnapped ex-wife and daughter; he makes a point of criticizing or snarking at them near-chronically, until his discovery that vengeance feels empty gets him off his high horse for the rest of the movie.
  • Misplaced Retribution:
    • Blames Godzilla for the death of his son Andrew in the incidents of Godzilla (2014), even though the MUTOs were to blame for the destruction of San Francisco and Godzilla was actually the one who stopped them. It's implied that it was indeed Godzilla specifically rather than the MUTOs who actually caused Andrew's death in all the havoc, but it was nevertheless a genuinely non-malicious accident on Godzilla's part; a fact which becomes poetic once the genuinely-malicious Ghidorah, who deliberately kills people for fun, shows up. Notably, whilst Mark does admit as the movie goes on that he needs to let his grudge against Godzilla go for everybody's sake, he never actually admits that he was wrong to pin the blame for Andrew's death on Godzilla to begin with.
    • The King of the Monsters novelization also states that while Mark never said it, he blames Emma on some level for Andrew's death because she's the one who took the job that led to the family relocating to San Francisco.
  • Mountain Man: Downplayed. Mark has been living far away from civilization in the Colorado mountains, based in a solitary cabin since he left Emma and Madison, but he still dresses like a relatively normal man and he still does wildlife photography and research to eke out a modern living from funders.
  • Moving Beyond Bereavement: In the five years since San Francisco's destruction, he's been unable to let go of his grief over Andrew's death: he's divorced Emma, become estranged from Emma and Madison, run off to the Colorado mountains to avoid anything that reminds him of his problemsnote , and he's nursing a biased grudge against Godzilla and the other Titans over his loss. He learns over the course of the movie to let go of his grief and spite, gradually accepting that Godzilla didn't deliberately kill Andrew and that he's humanity's best and only shot at survival.
  • Murder Is the Best Solution:
    • He can't make it through the Monarch briefing on Alan Jonah without launching into a tirade, saying Monarch should just kill every last Titan to render the eco-terrorists' plans with the ORCA moot; to the visible exasperation of the Monarch brass, some of whom look like they've heard this from Mark before. Mark in the heat of his anger completely ignores the logistical problems of how Monarch would kill all the Titans – how difficult it is to kill the creatures with anything at humanity's disposal, the likelihood that attempts to kill them would only wake them up and aggravate them, the high probability that an extermination would miss a few unaccounted-for Titans, the also-high probability that disrupting the global ecosphere by eradicating the Titans would have devastating long-term detriments for humanity – and how logically and practically, such a plan if pulled off would overall most likely be more trouble than it's worth. The novelization explicitly lampshades this, with Mark later wondering if Monarch could have prevented King Ghidorah's rise by killing him in his sleep while he was frozen, only to begrudgingly concede after considering the logistics that Ghidorah's awakening likely was inevitable and that the eco-terrorists only sped up his revival.
    • Mark says that the military launching the Oxygen Destroyer at Godzilla and Ghidorah isn't a bad idea. He ends up eating those words when the weapon's usage causes absolutely everything to go From Bad to Worse on an apocalyptic scale.
  • My Beloved Smother: He's hinted to be a male example after Emma's death left him with custody of Madison and also left him scared of losing his last child. Throughout his argument with Madison, Mark treats her like she's stupid, naïve and incapable, despite the fact she committed acts of heroism that most adults wouldn't have the stomach for in the previous movie. He also cuts her out of the investigation into Godzilla's rampage because he doesn't want to be worrying about her safety. It's revealed in the novelization to be even worse than what the movie shows: before Godzilla has started attacking, the way Mark runs the household is him expecting Madison to follow his word as law without any fair argument; he refuses to internalize anything Madison has to say that he doesn't want to hear; doesn't give Madison any of the trust, faith or respect that he expects her to give him, and barely even communicates clearly to her on Titan-related matters. Furthermore, Mark in the novel tries to have his sister shadow Madison at the house while he's away to make sure that she can't sneak out after he's barred her from Monarch's investigation. Mark all but admits to Madison that he wishes she would stop being Wise Beyond Her Years and regress back into being the helpless little girl he remembers her as from ten years ago, so that HE can assuage his own feelings of guilt about not being there for her; as if the five years of her maturing before the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters never happened. Worse yet, the novelization also shows toward the end that Mark does know deep down what Madison is capable of, but he wilfully ignores it for the sake of living in his self-centered delusions.
  • My Greatest Failure: For him it's not being there for Madison in the intervening years after Andrew's death, when she needed him most and he let her down. He expresses a lot of regret for this after she ends up in the eco-terrorists' hands in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, feeling it never would have happened somehow if he'd been there. Unfortunately, it's also what motivates Mark to be a patronizing and helicoptering parent to Madison in the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization.
  • My Greatest Second Chance: In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, one of Mark's biggest regrets, if not his single biggest, is letting Madison down and not being there for her after he abandoned his family, and he expressly says he's determined to make sure that it doesn't happen again with his fixation on tracking her down over the rest of the movie. Deconstructed in Godzilla vs. Kong, which reveals that Mark has misinterpreted the aesop that was to be learned from this mistake after Emma's death left him with sole custody of Madison: his way of making up for being absent from Madison's life during the tail end of her childhood is by helicoptering her and treating her like she's still the little girl he left behind, all whilst refusing to listen or communicate both ways with her when her wants and arguments conflict with his own.
  • Nature Lover: Since he was a child, Mark has had a strong love of nature. He also prefers fieldwork and being close to animals instead of being in an office. He ends up being a more cynical than idealist version of this trope, as he effectively isolates himself at a cabin in the woods and commits himself to wildlife photography before the film's events, specifically to escape his own problems.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In Godzilla vs. Kong, him and Monarch could've caught on to Apex's Evil Plan sooner, maybe even prevented them from seizing the Hollow Earth energy source needed to empower Mechagodzilla, if Mark had actually given Madison some of the credit she was due and listened to her pointers (pointers which consisted of basic common sense that most of humanity was lacking throughout this movie). Because Mark underestimates Madison's intelligence and patronizingly dismisses her out of hand, Monarch end up being Apex's Unwitting Pawns all the way through to Mechagodzilla's empowerment, and it isn't until Mechagodzilla is completed and gets hijacked by Ghidorah's lingering consciousness (earlier in the novelization) that Monarch catch on to Apex's machinations, resulting in hundreds if not thousands of casualties and mass property damage in Hong Kong before Mechagodzilla is put down.
  • Nice, Mean, and In-Between: He's the Inbetween amongst the three Russells who survived the San Francisco battle. He's a lot more compassionate and moral than his ex-wife Emma, and he's completely disgusted by her plan to cause millions of deaths; but he's a lot more self-centered, spiteful, sanctimonious and prone to misdirected outbursts than their daughter Madison is.
  • No Sympathy for Grudgeholders: Downplayed in King of the Monsters. Though Drs. Graham and Serizawa both seem to be sympathetic to Mark's grief-fueled anger, they both show that they have their limits. During Mark's tirade in the briefing room scene, Graham rolls her eyes in disgust. At the movie's midpoint, Serizawa doesn't hesitate to give Mark a gentle but scathing calling-out when Godzilla is seemingly killed and the price is the far more malevolent Ghidorah getting to reign unopposed.

    O-T 
  • Oblivious to His Own Description: In King of the Monsters, he acts high and mighty when he's criticizing Monarch for "kid[ding] themselves" and when indirectly criticizing Emma for not putting herself or her family first. Both these accusations are things which he in his own way has done and is STILL doing to himself: he's kidding himself with his biased judgment that all the Titans are purely destructive monsters and deserve to die because of his grief over son's death, and he put alcoholism and running away from his problems before his own well-being and his family needing him to be strong more than ever before.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, when Emma picks up the detonator and the eco-terrorists are about to blow Ghidorah free of the glacier, Mark can only glance slowly towards the vast glacial wall that holds the three-headed monster in silent horror.
    • In Godzilla vs. Kong, he has a very understandable one when Mechagodzilla arrives in Hong Kong and begins leveling the city, confirming that Madison was right, and Godzilla was trying to stop another malevolent Titan.
      "What in God's name is that?"
  • Outliving One's Offspring: His elder child Andrew was a casualty of Godzilla and the MUTOs' battle in 2014. In King of the Monsters, this was ultimately what caused Mark and Emma to divorce and caused Mark to all but turn his back on his remaining family, and it's also the source of Mark's hatred for Godzilla and his wish for all the Titans to be killed off in that movie.
  • Papa Wolf: The moment he sees his ex-wife and daughter being held hostage during a gun battle, he leaves the other scientists behind, grabs a pistol, and attempts to rescue them himself. Throughout King of the Monsters, after Emma's betrayal is revealed, finding Madison and getting her back is ultimately what Mark is first and foremost concerned about. Somewhat deconstructed in the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, where his parenting style since coming back into Madison's life consists of trying to brow-beat and shelter the most brass-balled teenager in the MonsterVerse into cowering at home from the monsters for the rest of her life, something which Madison briefly calls him out on.
  • Parents as People: He's arguably become this after re-entering Madison's life and after lightening up over the course of King of the Monsters. Whilst Mark does love Madison, he's evidently overbearing and very condescending towards her in Godzilla vs. Kong; treating her like she's Just a Kid despite her highly-commendable acts of heroism and cunning during the previous movie, and wanting her to stay out of the investigation into Godzilla's rampage so that he won't have to worry about her life. In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, Mark's treatment of Madison crosses into My Beloved Smother territory.
  • Perma-Stubble: He's a bitter and cynical man due to the death of Andrew, and he has a 5 o' clock shadow in both his film appearances.
  • Psychological Projection: Oh, he definitely has a knack for this.
    • In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, he thinks Monarch are deluding themselves with their assertions that humans can coexist with Titans, ignoring that he is deluding himself by asserting in this setting that all the Titans including Godzilla are monsters that should be wiped out; assertions that are based in Mark's rage over his son's death more than the objectivity of the sheer destruction that a Titan is capable of. In the same movie, Mark criticizes Emma putting her commitment to her work and the Titans ahead of her own well-being and her family's welfare, which is exactly what Mark has been doing with his own rage, drinking problem and inability to confront his unresolved grief ever since Andrew died.
    • In the novelization of Godzilla vs. Kong, it's implied that part of the reason why Mark has become a Fantasy-Forbidding Father to Madison, and why he's irrationally acting like he knows what Madison wants better than Madison does whilst being wilfully ignorant of the problems he's causing her, is because Mark is projecting his own desires for a normal life (which he can't have since he rejoined Monarch) onto his daughter.
  • Really Moves Around: The Godzilla vs. Kong novelization mentions he and Madison moved four or five times per year and went all over the globe after he rejoined Monarch.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: Zig-Zagged in Godzilla vs. Kong, where he's rejoined Monarch and apparently become a "director". Although he's no longer vengeful over his son's death, he's still as Hot-Blooded and judgmental as ever. He dismisses everything Madison has to say to him about a possible lead on why Godzilla's rampaging because he wants her to stay out of the whole thing out of fear for her life, even though her pointers (regardless of where she obtained the evidence) only amount to common sense. The novelization also shows that Mark is a very far cry from a reasonable authority figure in Madison's home life. All of that being said, Mark is sensible enough to know that Monarch should prioritize getting citizens out of Godzilla's way over trying to engage him, and the novel shows that he's quick to suspect Apex and (reluctantly) admit to himself that Madison might've been right as the evidence against Apex racks up.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
    • He both hands one to Emma and gets an Armor-Piercing Response in turn.
    • It's so short it's barely a speech, but when Godzilla is seemingly killed, Serizawa perfectly sums up the folly of Mark's grudge against Godzilla in light of what's happening in just seven words, and it seems to give Mark a Jerkass Realization based on his subsequent change in behavior.
      "Looks like you got your wish, Mark."
    • Barnes comments that if he had parents like Mark and Emma, he'd run away from home.
    • Madison briefly gives him a well-deserved one after he tries to guilt-trip her into obeying his wishes of her, in the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization:
      "You're blackmailing me. With your fear. I'm supposed to cower at home for the rest of my life because you're afraid something might happen to me?"
  • Revenge Before Reason: Averted. He's initially hellbent in his belief that every monster on the planet should be killed, Godzilla in particular, but he's at least sane enough to recognize a situation in which taking Godzilla head-on is tantamount to suicide, and orders everyone to lower their weapons to show Godzilla they're not posing a threat. In the novelization, Mark finds himself begrudgingly rooting for Godzilla in Antarctica and at Isla de Mara, and he's doubtful when he declares the military launching the Oxygen Destroyer at Godzilla and Ghidorah is "not the worst idea" because he realizes that killing Godzilla is tantamount to killing humanity's best defence against any other Titans that might pose a threat. Mark eventually comes to accept that while Godzilla did cause his son's death, he's also the best chance at saving the planet from Ghidorah, and so Monarch and the military must help him however they can in the final battle.
  • Revenge Myopia: For the first half of King of the Monsters, Mark doesn't care that Godzilla is a gigantic animal who didn't in any way deliberately cause Andrew's death, he just wants Godzilla dead out of rage. This is made all the more egregious by the fact Mark is a professional zoologist and should therefore know better than most people not to attach such feelings to an animal.
  • Rightly Self-Righteous: Zig-Zagged. Mostly, he's just plain self-righteous, but in King of the Monsters he does have a couple moments where he's in the right while acting in such a way. As high-horsed and pointlessly rude as he is about it, Mark is right when sarcastically calling out Dr. Chen and the rest of Monarch for pretending that the Titans' awakening was anything other than inevitable and for not focusing on making any adequate preparations for when it came to fruition. Mark is also very right to call Emma out on all but losing her mind after Andrew's death in such a horrific way, for putting their only surviving child's life in mortal danger, and for planning to kill billions of people by proxy whilst taking the fate of the world into her own hands.
  • Robbing the Dead: When he runs into the eco-terrorist occupied Outpost 32 on his own looking to save Emma and Madison, he picks up a dead operative's handgun for use against the eco-terrorists.
  • Secretly Selfish: He overall shows multiple signs of thinking more about his own feelings than about those of his loved ones or his son's memory. In the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, after he tries to guilt-trip Madison into obeying him in an attempt to keep her away from Titan-related danger, she calls out his oppressive and authoritarian conduct as a parent. Mark is convincing himself that he's keeping Madison safe by ordering her around and helicoptering her with his sister's help, and that her being mad at him for it is a worthwhile price; but Madison points out that he's really putting his own fear of losing his surviving daughter ahead of any consideration for her emotional needs or her own feelings, and he'd rather feel sorry for himself than consider the possibility that his shoddy parenting methods are going to either stifle his highly-capable daughter's growth and potential or just push her away from him all over again. Worse yet, it takes finding out that his authoritarianism and patronizing of Madison only pushed her to strike out on her own for Mark to even take Madison's point seriously.
  • Self-Serving Memory:
    • Implied in Godzilla: King of the Monsters. He rants about how Godzilla is responsible for his son's death in the San Francisco battle, whilst never making any mention of the MUTOs who actually instigated the destruction before Godzilla stopped them. (Notably, even when he admits that he needs to let his grudge against Godzilla go, he never actually admits that he was wrong to blame Godzilla to start with.) The implication is that Mark was so desperate to have something living to hate over Andrew's death, that he projected all of his rage and blame at the Titan who ended the disaster instead of taking comfort in knowing that the MUTOs which really started the destruction were also dead by dawn.
    • Played Straight in the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, where Madison mentally observes that Mark seems to have wilfully forgotten all about how she committed some of the greatest acts of heroism out of the entire cast during the previous movie, in favor of viewing her as what he wishes she was and ignoring what she's clearly proven herself to be in reality.
  • Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: In King of the Monsters, he's the Manly Man to Sam Coleman's Sensitive Guy. He's a physically-fit wildlife photographer and former zoologist who has been living in the Colorado mountains (unlike the skinnier, more indoorsy Coleman), and compared to Coleman, Mark is cynical, bad-tempered, impulsive, outspoken and emotionally self-focused.
  • Shared Family Quirks: With his daughter Madison. See her folder for details.
  • Shut Up, Hannibal!: He's completely unimpressed by Emma Russell's explanation of why they're working with Jonah to awaken all the Titans. The moment Emma deconstructs Serizawa's inaction and failure to do anything to stop The Government, Mark furiously rebuffs Emma, calling them out for putting Madison, their own child, in mortal danger, for thinking they alone have the right to decide the fate of the world for everyone else, for overestimating their ability to control the Titans, and above all for responding in such an insane way to Andrew's death.
  • Speaks Fluent Animal: When he was a kid, Mark swore he could talk with his pet German Shepherd and understand what it was saying. Being a respected expert in many fields focused on animals, Mark understands how they live and communicate. The novelization further explores Mark's sense of connection to animals and their bio-acoustics, with the wolves and Godzilla.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
    • Mark's backstory of being defined by the loss of a loved one, failing to get over it years later, going into isolation, and having a strained relationship with his living family makes him suspiciously similar to Joe Brody from Godzilla (2014). They're also both angry at Monarch: Joe because they're lying to him and the world about what killed his wife, Mark because they won't kill the Titans he blames for his son's death.
    • And to Preston Packard in Kong: Skull Island. They both have a judgment-clouding vendetta against the protagonist Titan of the movie which either human respectively debuts in (Kong for Packard and Godzilla for Mark), and it's based around said Titan killing people close to Packard and Mark while the Titan was doing what was necessary to defend its territory's balance. Both men also clash with other members of the main human cast who have a more reasonable if not outright pro-Titan disposition towards the object of Packard/Mark's vendetta, and both men are capable of feats of courage. However, whereas Packard ends up completely consumed by his vendetta after going beyond all reason to fulfil it, and causes his own death; Mark, even at his worst, has enough sense to defuse a suicidal direct confrontation with Godzilla, and he learns to let go of his hatred with time. Whereas Packard ultimately manipulates and exploits his men's genuine loyalty to his own ends, Mark passionately cares about his family first and foremost (although the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization shows even Mark isn't above emotionally manipulating Madison out of selfish desires when he feels desperate).
    • Mark is also similar to Haruo Sakaki from the 2017-2019 AniGoji trilogy. Mark too is Hot-Blooded and wants to see Godzilla killed because Godzilla caused the death of his family-member (Mark's son instead of his parents like with Haruo), and Godzilla vs. Kong also demonstrates Mark is slow to grow past his Fatal Flaws like Haruo proved to be across the trilogy's latter two movies. However, Mark isn't nearly as reckless and inconsiderate of other people's lives as Haruo was in the pursuit of revenge; and Mark, despite nursing a hatred of Godzilla, was fine with personally leaving him and the Titans alone so he could stew in his own grief, in contrast to how Haruo seeks out a fight with Godzilla.
  • Take This Job and Shove It: After his family's loss during Godzilla's fight against the MUTOs in San Francisco, Mark quit Monarch.
  • There Are No Coincidences: This overall appears to be his mindset in King of the Monsters; believing Godzilla's unusual activity at Castle Bravo is linked to the ORCA, piecing together that Rodan's awakening is what has caused Ghidorah's sudden change in direction, and realizing how Emma created the ORCA's Alpha frequency after appearing to briefly synchronize himself, a human, with Godzilla (a.k.a. the Alpha frequency's two bio-acoustic components). Regardless of how well-founded or rational Mark's assumptions are, he tends to be right.
  • Took a Level in Dumbass: In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, he could be insufferable, but he genuinely knew his stuff when it came to predicting Titans' behavior and knowing when they were helpless to stop a Titan. Five years later in Godzilla vs. Kong, he's nothing more than an ineffectual moron who obstinately refutes Madison's arguments about finding out why Godzilla's attacking (which unwittingly fuels the success of Apex's plot, leading to thousands of deaths that could have been avoided if he'd been more reasonable), predicated purely on his own projection of past trauma which is completely unrelated to actual events and newfound lack of common sense. Even in the novelization's expansion, Mark is constantly one step behind everybody else during his Guillerman's independent investigation into the crisis; and he’s not only refused to acknowledge his daughter as anything more than a helpless invalid who needs to be sheltered after her Damsel out of Distress actions in the previous movie, he's actually stupid enough to think that helicoptering Madison and bossing her around is going to accomplish anything except for pushing her to do exactly what he's trying to avoid.
  • Took a Level in Kindness: He starts King of the Monsters as a hot-headed, self-pitying jackass who wants Godzilla dead and who lashes out at nearly everyone around him, but he cools his jets and dials back the attitude as the movie progresses, becoming notably more respectful in short time after Godzilla's apparent death leaves him finding Vengeance Feels Empty. He seems to further dial down his Fantastic Racism against the Titans after witnessing archaeological evidence indicating that ancient humans once lived in harmony with the Titans.
  • Tragic Bigot: The battle between Godzilla and the MUTOs caused his family unit to collapse in the face of his son's death, and he has been unable to let go of that pain since; blaming the Titans and saying they should all be wiped out.
    Jackson Barnes: Dude hates Titans.
    Sam Coleman: Yeah, well you would too if you were him.

    U-Y 
  • Underestimating Badassery: In Godzilla vs. Kong, he treats Madison like she's Just a Kid who doesn't have a clue what she's talking about, even though Madison's advice only amounts to common sense (something which the rest of the human race including Mark are currently lacking) and ignoring how Madison's impressive acts of heroism in the previous movie have proven that she is not some naïve schoolgirl. The novelization reveals this is Mark's fallacious attempt to keep Madison on a leash and out of danger, and Mark inwardly knows that she's more capable of taking care of herself than he gives her credit for, even if he's very reluctant to admit it. However, even after Mark in the novel realizes that Madison was probably right and that she snuck out to pursue her own investigation into Godzilla's rampage, he's still convinced Madison can't cross continents in her own search for answers — apparently, he forgot or just wilfully ignored that his daughter is the same girl who spontaneously disrupted Ghidorah's global Titan control and drew the three-headed monster to Boston.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: During the first act of King of the Monsters, Mark acts snarky, sarcastic and rude towards The Team whilst throwing his misdirected outbursts around at them, and he at one point emphatically accuses them of not caring about his kidnapped ex-wife and daughter. These are the people whom are currently trying to find Mark's kidnapped family for him, yet he can't be bothered to show them a decent modicum of gratitude or even respect during the search – not a very decent or even smart thing to do, considering that this team's actions and motivation could be the entire difference between Mark getting his loved ones back safely or never seeing them alive again.
  • Vengeance Feels Empty: When Godzilla is seemingly killed by the Oxygen Destroyer, Mark visibly isn't satisfied that he's apparently gotten his wish to see the Titan he blames for Andrew's death killed, especially once Serizawa rightfully calls Mark out in front of the Monarch brass. The fact that Godzilla's seeming death has left Ghidorah free to reign over and slaughter the planet practically unopposed likely didn't do anything to make Mark feel better.
  • What Is Going On?: In King of the Monsters, he approaches Dr. Chen and asks her what's happening when Castle Bravo begins trembling prompting her to inform him succinctly that an abnormally-erratic Godzilla is approaching them.
  • Why Couldn't You Be Different?: Godzilla vs. Kong drops some notable hints that he's become a Fantasy-Forbidding Father to Madison, whilst the movie's novelization outright confirms that Mark wishes Madison was an ordinary girl who would obey him and whom he can coddle, instead of the brave, heroic and rebellious young woman that she is. Worse, Mark has convinced himself to the point of Self-Serving Memory that Madison really is the kind of daughter that he wishes she was, and that all he has to do is make her live the kind of life he considers ideal (even if he has to shove it down her throat and ignore all her feelings); and it takes Madison sneaking out and heading towards mortal danger in response to listen to her for Mark to even begin to admit that he was wrong at all.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: In King of the Monsters, Mark when working with Monarch initially seems to think he's the Only Sane Man among a bunch of reckless negative-type zombie advocates, based on the way he holds himself when chiding Monarch. Even if he's not completely wrong about the dangers of meddling with the Titans, he's actually the center of a Vengeance Feels Empty and forgiveness character arc in a story with a Green Aesop, and the zombie advocates he criticizes are actually a case of Good Is Not Dumb.
  • The Xenophile: Despite his rage towards all Titans and particularly Godzilla for his son's death, he's still capable of admiring them seemingly without conscious input even before he gets over his issues, and his zoology expertise enables him to predict their behavior quite well during King of the Monsters. It's heavily implied that on a subconscious level, Mark knows that he's in the wrong to hate the Titans over his son's death, but he's too Hot-Blooded to admit it.
  • You're Insane!: Says as much to his ex-wife when he hears the full extent of their plans, her justifications for them, and the fact that she got their remaining child involved and put her in harm's way.
  • You Remind Me of X: A downplayed but clear case occurs in Godzilla vs. Kong, when Mark justifies his feeble and irrational assertion that Godzilla has turned against humanity for no reason by stating that "creatures, like people, can change"; clearly projecting his trauma from Emma's unexpected and staggering betrayal five years prior onto Godzilla. Furthermore, in the novelization, Madison inwardly suspects that the reason he's so unwilling to trust her or show any faith in her is because he transferred all his trust issues with Emma onto Madison after Emma died.

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