MUTO

"M.U.T.O.: Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism. It is, however, no longer terrestrial; it is airborne."

- Admiral Stenz about the M.U.T.O.s (Godzilla)

The M.U.T.O.s ムートー (Mūtō) are parasitic created by Legendary Pictures that appear in the 2014 Godzilla film, Godzilla.

Development
The M.U.T.O.s are known to have been developed from Rokmutul and Pterodactyl, two early monsters from the development of Godzilla. In the Comic-Con 2012 teaser trailer for the film, an unnamed, tardigrade-like, multi-legged monster was created to confirm that Godzilla would be fighting another monster in ' Godzilla.

According to witnesses of the Godzilla trailer shown in Comic-Con 2013, the M.U.T.O. originally were spider-like creatures with long, thin limbs and scythes. This changed in the actual movie.

One of the original screenplays of Godzilla had the male M.U.T.O. emerge from its chrysalis in Hokkaido, Japan, instead of the fictional city of Janjira. The female M.U.T.O. still appeared in Nevada, however.

The M.U.T.O.s went through several dozen concepts before Legendary settled on their final designs. Some concepts had the male M.U.T.O. with four wings, and others had him with only six total appendages (including wings).

Name
The M.U.T.O.'s name is an acronym for "Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism." According to Godzilla: Awakening, this is a designation Monarch gives to all giant monsters as a sort of placeholder name. In this comic, both Godzilla and Shinomura were known as M.U.T.O.s before being given their own individual names.

In one of the original screenplays for Godzilla, the M.U.T.O.s were called "Hokmuto" and "Femuto," which were short for "Hokkaido M.U.T.O." and "Female M.U.T.O.," respectively.

Appearance
The M.U.T.O.'s bodies are grayish-black. They have orangey red, narrowly shaped eyes. The shape of their head is reminiscent of Gyaos, and they have triangular jaws, with the male M.U.T.O. having two 'mandibles' in his chin while the female only has one.

The female M.U.T.O. has two pairs of forelimbs and a smaller pair on its chest, and is much bigger than the male M.U.T.O., being just smaller than Godzilla. The male M.U.T.O. is nearly identical in appearance, except that one of the two forelimb pairs has been modified into his wings. The design possesses long, and slender hind limbs being digitigrade in appearance, with flat, broad feet. The forelimbs all end in a pseudo claw form, being curved like a sickle.

Roar
The roar first appeared as an MP3 file hidden in the official Godzilla site. The roar can be heard when the official site loads up, though it is faint due to Godzilla's roar being much louder than the M.U.T.O.s' roar.

The M.U.T.O.s have very unique roars, many of which are deep and blaring with occasional crackles and snapping noises. At a few points, the M.U.T.O.s make trumpet-like cries and groans similar to creaking doors or Geiger counters. The male and female vocalizations are slightly different; the male emits higher-pitched calls and shrieks, while the female's roars are deeper.

Personality
As individuals, the M.U.T.O.s aren't given much character construction. Being prehistoric parasites, their sole goals revolve around consuming radiation and reproduction.

The male, being the first member to be encountered, is described as young, growing, looking for food before meeting with the female, so he consumes radiation to gain strength. When he encounters Godzilla for the first time, he reacts with hostility and becomes defensive, attacking him whenever an opportunity becomes available and evading when possible.

The female, once the male had matured enough, awakened from her dormancy and traversed through Las Vegas and other environments to meet with the male, who brought with him a nuclear warhead as a sign of courtship for their eggs to feed upon. She seemed to exhibit pain when laying her eggs in the M.U.T.O. nest in San Francisco, and became hostile and defensive when Godzilla appeared and fought with him alongside the male M.U.T.O. to defend their nest.

As a team, they are powerful and able to best Godzilla with their combined strength. If nothing had distracted them from fighting Godzilla in San Francisco, they may have killed him.

When they noticed their nest had been destroyed, the female exhibited a sense of loss over the demise of her eggs and then anger, but how much of this sense of loss is debatable, as she became angry and looked at Ford Brody, possibly marking him as the one responsible, but was unable to take action when Godzilla used his atomic breath on her, knocking her out.

The male attacked Godzilla just before he could attack the female again, showing a protectiveness for her, even willing to risk his own life for her until she recovered.

Origins
The M.U.T.O. are ancient parasites that come from the same era and ecosystem as Godzilla. Much like him, the M.U.T.O. feed off of radiation. However, unlike the surviving Godzilla, who adapted to live at the bottom of the ocean and feed off the planet's natural radiation, the M.U.T.O. are actively drawn to sources of man-made radiation such as nuclear warheads and energy plants.

Godzilla
The M.U.T.O.s were discovered in the Philippines in 1999 after a mining operation drilled into a cave containing two pods containing the M.U.T.O.s, one of which had already hatched. The newly hatched male M.U.T.O, who had hatched after being disturbed by the cave collapsing, burrowed his way to the Janjira nuclear power plant in Japan, where he caused the plant to collapse from underneath, killing Sandra Brody and several other workers, and causing the entire area to be evacuated because of radiation leaking from the plant. Despite the destruction of the plant, the M.U.T.O. attached himself to the reactor and entered a cocoon-like state, absorbing all the radiation from the surrounding area. The second pod containing the female M.U.T.O was taken by the Americans to the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository in Nevada.

For the next 15 years, the organization Monarch maintained a research base in the ruins of the Janjira plant, where they observed and studied the M.U.T.O. while it fed on the reactor. As the reactor was depleted and the M.U.T.O. matured, it began giving off electromagnetic pulses which interfered with Monarch's equipment. Ishiro Serizawa, who was in charge of the operation, regretfully gave the order to kill the M.U.T.O. before it could destroy their base. The cocoon was destroyed with electrical currents released from cables surrounding it. A group of armed operatives approached the remains of the cocoon to confirm the M.U.T.O. was destroyed, but the creature was still alive and attacked them. The M.U.T.O. laid waste to the power plant once again before sprouting his wings and taking off. The United States Navy, under the command of Admiral William Stenz, began to pursue the M.U.T.O. as it crossed the Pacific Ocean. Eventually, the male M.U.T.O. arrived in Hawaii, where it had dragged a Russian nuclear sub ashore and was feeding on its torpedoes. A group of soldiers were sent to investigate, but were attacked by the M.U.T.O. Fighter jets were sent in to try and stop the creature, but the M.U.T.O. released an EMP, causing the jets to fall out of the sky and crash. The M.U.T.O. proceeded to terrorize the Honolulu airport, but was confronted by Godzilla, who had come ashore to hunt it. The two monsters briefly battled until the M.U.T.O. retreated back over the ocean, with Godzilla in pursuit.

Meanwhile, Serizawa and his assistant Vivienne Graham concluded that the male M.U.T.O. was using echolocation to signal to the female M.U.T.O. that he was mature and ready to mate. Serizawa worried that the spore containing the female was not actually dormant, and the military sent a team to the waste depository to investigate. When the soldiers arrived, the facility was destroyed and the female M.U.T.O. had already broken out. The female M.U.T.O. terrorized the city of Las Vegas and began to head west to California. The military formed a plan to lure both M.U.T.O.s and Godzilla out to sea with a nuclear warhead, then detonate it in an attempt to kill all three. Two warheads were tranported via a train, but the female M.U.T.O. intercepted it in the California wilderness, killing all the personnel except for Ford Brody and eating one of the warheads. The other warhead was recovered and airlifted to San Francisco Bay, where it was armed, but it was stolen by the male M.U.T.O., who presented it to the female in downtown San Francisco.

After acquiring the warhead, the female M.U.T.O. created a nest and attached her eggs to the warhead, nourishing them with the radiation. The male meanwhile attempted to distract Godzilla, who had broken through the Golden Gate Bridge and come ashore. Eventually, Godzilla reached the nest and took on both M.U.T.O.s at once, while an extraction team led by Ford Brody arrived to recover the armed warhead. The bomb was removed from the nest, and Ford ignited a gas explosion to destroy the M.U.T.O.s' eggs. The explosion attracted the attention of the M.U.T.O.s, who had overpowered Godzilla, and they went to investigate. The female M.U.T.O. was stricken with grief after seeing her young killed, but became enraged when she saw Ford, the man responsible. Before the M.U.T.O. could kill Ford, Godzilla emerged from behind her and pummeled her mercilessly with his atomic breath. The male M.U.T.O. attacked Godzilla from behind, allowing the female to pursue Ford and his team as they attempted to take the bomb out to sea. When the male M.U.T.O. attempted to strike Godzilla from behind once again, Godzilla anticipated it and smacked the M.U.T.O. with his tail, impaling him on a building and killing him.

Ford's team arrived at the docks with the bomb, but were all slaughtered by the female M.U.T.O., leaving Ford the only one left. Ford grabbed the bomb and placed it on a boat. Unable to defuse it, he started the boat in an attempt to take it out over the bay before it could detonate. However, the female M.U.T.O.'s EMP field disabled the boat, leaving her face-to-face with Ford. Ford drew his pistol and aimed it at the M.U.T.O., but knew he stood no chance and closed his eyes as she prepared to kill him. Suddenly, the female M.U.T.O. was pulled back by Godzilla, who pried open her jaws and fired his atomic breath down her throat, severing her head from her body and killing her.

Durability
Both M.U.T.O.s were durable enough to take barrages of both small and large arms fire without any damage.

Echolocation
Both M.U.T.O.s can use echolocation to communicate, find a source of radiation, and locate each other.

Electromagnetic Pulse
The male M.U.T.O. is able to unleash electromagnetic pulses from his claws, which can disable electric apparatuses in a five-mile-wide radius. The female can instead surround herself with an EMP field, labeled the "Sphere of Influence" by the news, which performs the same function. There doesn't appear to be any limit to how often either M.U.T.O. can use their EMP abilities. In the official novelization, it is explained the EMP ability evolved as a defense mechanism, used to prevent Godzilla's species from using their atomic breath. This purpose is never alluded to in the film, but in an earlier screenplay, it is explicitly mentioned that Godzilla cannot use his atomic breath whenever he is near the female M.U.T.O.

Flight
The male M.U.T.O. has wings which he can use to fly, but his top speed is undetermined.

Physical strength
Both the male and female M.U.T.O.s possess immense physical strength. The male M.U.T.O. was strong enough to dredge up a Russian attack submarine from the depths of the ocean and pull it dozens of miles inland on the island of Hawaii; the fact that he could perform such a feat, and later attack a ship in San Francisco Bay to collect a nuclear warhead, implies that he posses some swimming capabilities. The female was able to claw herself out of Mount Yucca, as well as being able to destroy buildings with ease. She was also able toss Godzilla himself around a few times, despite his own immense size and weight.

Reproduction
The female M.U.T.O. has the ability to reproduce sexually. She lays hundreds of eggs near radioactive objects so that when her offspring hatch, they can immediately feed off the radiation. As parasites, the females of the M.U.T.O. parasitic species lays their eggs inside the radioactive carcasses of the larger Godzilla species in order to reproduce.

Godzilla: Smash3
M.U.T.O. appears in Godzilla: Smash3 as an enemy that Godzilla fights against.

Trivia

 * The M.U.T.O.s' role in Legendary pictures' Godzilla mirrors that of the Gryphon from the scrapped 1994 American Godzilla film.
 * The M.U.T.O.s are the first American-made to be specifically created for a Godzilla film, not counting the Gryphon from the unmade 1994 American Godzilla film, and the TriStar Godzilla from the 1998 American film.
 * The M.U.T.O.s are Godzilla's first completely original opponent since Titanosaurus in Terror of Mechagodzilla. Every other enemy Godzilla has fought since then are either enemies he has fought before, clones of him, or are derived from or based on an existing monster.
 * In Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, in Saw Gerrera's cave, paintings of the M.U.T.O.s can be spotted. Both Godzilla 2014 and Rogue one were directed by Gareth Edwards, leading to the cameo.
 * The M.U.T.O.s are number 10 on WatchMojo.com's Top 10 Godzilla Villains.

In other languages

 * Russian: ГННУС (Гигантское Неопознанное Наземное Уникальное Существо)

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