Whether it's a Sequel or Prequel Main Character depends on where the later-released instalment fits on the MonsterVerse's chronological timeline relative to its predecessor.
Kong: Skull Island
A couple relative to Godzilla (2014).- King Kong to Godzilla. Although Kong and Godzilla are similar in the fact that they're gigantic, destructive beasts that nonetheless possess a modicum of intelligence, and both act as counterbalances to far worse threats, they are still quite different from each-other. Where Godzilla, although not actively destructive, doesn't really care about the well-being of humans, Kong is explicitly the defender of Skull Island's human natives and he exhibits a significant instinct to protect human life. Conversely, whilst Godzilla is usually apathetic to humans even when they're attacking him, Kong is much more deliberate when he slaughters the military envoy and kills Maia Simmons for attacking him. Although both Godzilla and Kong are described as being the last of their respective species, Godzilla is a millions-of-years-old sea beast with the personality of a Grumpy Old Man to match; meanwhile, Kong is a teenager to young adult by his species' standards, and has presumably been active ever since he was born. Godzilla may not necessarily intend to fight his opponents to the death, and may choose to let them live if they back down and submit to his authority, while Kong always fights his opponents with lethal intent, going for the killing blow as quickly as possible. Kong is also willing to make use of tools and resources in his surroundings such as improvised weapons to give him the edge in a fight, which is something Godzilla almost never does in his fights. Finally, Godzilla is a semi-aquatic reptile and Kong is a strictly land-dwelling primate.
- Former-Captain James Conrad to Lieutenant Ford Brody. Both are specialist military soldiers with a grim backstory involving death and loss, who unexpectedly find themselves up against kaiju and later learn to support one of the franchise's chief benevolent Alpha Titans. Whereas Ford is in active military service, and he's relatively well-adjusted and semi-idealistic despite his past, Conrad left the armed forces years ago and went freelance due to a traumatic Cynicism Catalyst — specifically, the novelization specifies that Conrad failed to save a kidnapped high-profile 7-year-old girl on a rescue mission and lost half his team, a dark contrast to Ford Brody successfully saving a little boy named Akio in the previous film and to Ford remaining headstrong despite being the sole survivor of at least two military operations. Ford has a wife and child who he's been happy with for years at the 2014 movie's start, and he's fighting to get back to them throughout the movie, whereas Conrad apparently has no-one waiting for him but he appears to be growing close to Weaver over the course of Kong: Skull Island. Ford has a troubled relationship with his father, and he lost his mother to a Titan incident in his backstory, whereas Conrad apparently had a good relationship with his Disappeared Dad whom he lost to a mundane war.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
- Mark Russell to James Conrad from Kong: Skull Island. Both men had a Cynicism Catalyst before their respective debut movies' starts, both spend their personal character arcs in their debuts gradually overcoming this past and finding an appreciation for the world again via the benevolent Titans, and both men recognize the beauty in dangerous things in nature like Skull Island and Titans; although Conrad admits the latter upfront, whereas Mark emotionally tries to deny it for much of his movie. Conrad's cynicism comes from losing an unrelated girl and half his team on a rescue mission to a sniper abroad, which caused him to lose faith in his government and country; whereas Mark's cynicism comes from losing his son and watching an entire city being devastated by a Titan incident, which caused Mark to become unconvinced that humans and Titans could cohabit the Earth and furthermore caused him to personally hate and blame Godzilla for his son's death. Conrad is an ex-military man gone freelance, and he has no familiarity with Monarch or the monsters in the world until during the movie's events, whereas Mark is an ex-Monarch zoologist and scientist. Conrad, though snarky and cynical at times, was almost unfailingly soft-spoken and clearly lived by the belief that cool heads should prevail; Mark on the other hand is much ruder, louder and more sardonic, and oftentimes he's Hot-Blooded and acts impulsively. Conrad is implied to be a love interest to Weaver as they get to know each-other over the course of Kong: Skull Island, whereas Mark is a divorcee from his ex-wife Emma since before the start of Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
- And Emma Russell to Mason Weaver. Both are passionate, headstrong, cunning, determined, nature-loving and anti-authority women, whom are firmly opposed to some form of man-made conflict in the world and consider themselves duty-bound to undermine it; both women form a deep admiration for some of the Titans, and both women have deep-rooted emotional issues involving their families underneath the mask. However, Weaver is an anti-Vietnam War photographer and an all-round decent, heroic and philanthropic person who believes that harmony and peace can be achieved without violence, and she befriends most of the Sky Devils, Conrad and the Iwi — Emma on the other hand is a high-profile Monarch scientist turned misanthrope, who resorts to betraying and endangering all her colleagues, her own ex-husband, and billions of people around the world so long as they aren't her daughter via radical eco-terrorism, which alienates everyone from her; and she does this because she believes that the Titans need to be released to cull humanity and reverse the man-made damage to the environment before the government has the chance to try killing the Titans off. Weaver has unresolved daddy issues stemming from a controlling father, while one of Emma's true motivations for setting Titans loose to devastate the world is her unresolved grief and rage over her son's death. Mason's upbringing made her understand that humanity should try to coexist with nature instead of trying to dominate it — Emma, in a darker twist, similarly believed that the preservation of nature was essential to mankind's survival, but she was happy for the Titans to devastate and dominate humanity to that end, and she failed to realize that she herself was no exception to the rule "mankind does not control the laws of nature" in her efforts to manipulate the Titans. Mason is Street Smart, whereas Emma ends up dancing to the far more evil Alan Jonah's tune and is blindsided by King Ghidorah causing her plan to fall apart. As mentioned above, Weaver is an Implied Love Interest in her movie whereas Emma is a bitter divorcee in hers.
Godzilla vs. Kong
The core three members of Team Kong who serve as protagonists of Kong's plotline contrast the Russell family who served as protagonists of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019):- Jia to Madison. They're both children in a three-person family unit (surrogate at most for Jia instead of her literal family as with Madison), primarily living with a mother figure at the start. Both have a profound connection to a benevolent Alpha Titan (Mothra and then Godzilla for Madison, Kong for Jia), and both end up being pawns of their debuts' main human antagonists via their mother figures respectively. They've both lost loved ones as collateral of a Titan incident before their first movie's start, but whereas Madison only lost her brother and became estranged from her father, Jia lost her entire family and her home due to Camazotz' actions. Madison is the daughter of elite Monarch scientists and has inherited some of their scientific acumen; whereas Jia is of a tribal background among the Iwi but was taken in by a Monarch scientist, and she's primarily spiritual. Madison has travelled the world, whereas the world outside of Skull Island is still very new to Jia, as shown by her thoughts in the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization. Madison spends most of Godzilla: King of the Monsters separated from one or both of her family unit's parent figures, whereas Jia spends most of Godzilla vs. Kong in near-consistent close contact with hers.
- Dr. Ilene Andrews to Emma. Both are respected and renowned Monarch scientists who specialize in bridging human-Titan communication, and they're characterized by their respective movies as maternal figures. Emma specialized in using an artificial device to communicate with the Titans generally in their own bio-acoustic language, whereas Andrews is invested in using sign language to communicate with Kong specifically. Both characters work with their native movies' human antagonists to combat a perceived threat to the world, but Emma works with Alan Jonah and his eco-terrorists to champion the Titans reclaiming the world from humanity, and she’s knowingly committing evil actions to that end; whereas Andrews is working with Apex Cybernetics in part because she believes they're checking a rampaging Alpha Titan that threatens human lives, and she's an unwitting pawn who has no idea of Apex's evil humanocentric plans to endanger millions and activate Mechagodzilla. Whereas Emma is driven by grief over the loss of her son to a Titan disaster and is protective of her remaining daughter, Andrews is driven by protectiveness of both Kong and the female ward that she adopted after said ward lost her own family to a Titan disaster. Whereas Emma ultimately champions Godzilla after mistakenly championing Ghidorah, Andrews primarily champions Kong after mistakenly championing Mechagodzilla's creation.
- Dr. Nathan Lind to Mark. They’re both ex-Monarch scientific Scrap Heap Heroes whom quit and went into isolation with a mundane job before the main story's start (wildlife photography for Mark, university lecturing for Nathan), because they both suffered the premature death of a family-member which still haunts them for most of the story until they confront and make peace with the same thing which caused the casualty. However, Mark was extremely rude, snide, hard-headed, hot-headed and aggressive but he was also prominently brave, whereas Nathan is mild-mannered, cordial and depressed but also an anxious Cowardly Lion. Whereas Mark specializes in understanding the Titans' behavior and had an intrinsic connection to Godzilla, Nathan specializes in understanding the physics of the Hollow Earth and he has little to no intrinsic understanding of Kong. Mark was cynical and believed to the point of pessimism that the Titans should be left alone as much as possible out of fear of human meddling backfiring: Nathan however is idealistic-minded and slightly radical about breaching the Titans' point of origin, yet he tends to be blinded by these traits to warning signs and missing steps when he pursues a goal.
Skull Island (2023)
- Annie to Jia from Godzilla vs. Kong. Both are island girls unfamiliar with the modern world who have spent most of their lives so far on an Isle of Giant Horrors, and both of them have a fierce and mutual protective friendship with an intelligent, benevolent monster. But Jia is a pre-teenaged, tribal born native of Skull Island who grew up among the Iwi, bonded with Kong, and understands Kong more intimately than the rest of her debut movie's cast; whereas Annie is a teenaged, lost wild child originally from the civilized world who's been living on another monster island for most of her life, meaning she's just as unfamiliar with Kong as the rest of the castaways (and she in fact antagonizes Kong to violence against her in the season finale), and she's instead bonded intimately with Dog and had no-one else throughout her life on Annie's Island. Jia is almost completely non-combative, only supporting and communicating with Kong rather than getting herself involved in any actual fighting of any kind (which would be impractical for her anyway given her younger age), whereas Annie is a vicious fighter who works in tandem with Dog when he's around, holds her own well without him. Whereas Jia starts and spends the movie under the guardianship of an unrelated woman from the civilized world who took her in after both her parents died, Annie is (unbeknownst to her) pursued by her actual Missing Mom from the civilized world who wants to take her back, which Annie actively resists.
- Charlie to Madison Russell from Godzilla vs. Kong. Both are among the teenaged main leads of their respective works, but whereas Madison was closely affiliated with Monarch by parentage and was privy to top expert information on the Titans including Godzilla; Charlie and his father just work for an unaffiliated cryptozoologist group, and Charlie is blindsided by the existence of Skull Island and Titans whilst remaining in the dark about Kong's true nature. Whereas Madison put on a steely front around her companions and is sure of herself, Charlie is openly vexed and nervy around his and he often struggles without others. Whereas Madison felt naturally drawn to Monarch- and Titan-related work and had an Obsessively Normal father trying to obstruct her from that, Charlie's relationship with his own father is the complete inverse: Charlie wants a normal life, while his eccentric father wants him to take up the cryptid-hunting mantle.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
- Cate Randa to Ford Brody from Godzilla (2014). Both characters have suffered the apparent loss of a parent before the start of their native story's main time frame, both learn shocking truths about their fathers in relation to the Titans, and both characters' driving goals are seeking out the family members they've been separated from (wife and child for Ford, father for Cate). But whereas Ford was an overall well-adjusted, veteran male soldier, Cate is a female civilian grappling with PTSD which causes panic attacks. Although both are primarily motivated by their families, Ford is overall idealistic and is happy to serve his country and the whole of civilization in the process of getting back to his family, whereas Cate is cynical and just wants Monarch and the Titans to leave her alone. Whereas Ford is forced apart from his beloved wife and child at the start of his story, Cate at the start of hers is forced towards relatives she never knew she had. Ford is in a happy and loving marriage, and he has healthy relationships with all of his family except for his father; whereas Cate before G-Day was cheating on her girlfriend, and after G-Day she has strained or terse relationships with all of her known relatives, even if her father is the one who (on justifiable grounds) gets it the worst.
