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Dr. Houston Brooks is a character created by Legendary Pictures who made his first appearance in the 2017 MonsterVerse film, Kong: Skull Island.
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Profile
Appearance
Personality
During Kong: Skull Island, he seems to behave in a typical, reckless, and aggressive manner, having no problems using seismic charges to map out Skull Island and pointing a shotgun at a group of Iwi natives when surrounded.
Years later, following Mission: Skull, and sometime either before or after becoming a father, Brooks' personality has (as stated by his son in a flashback in Skull Island: The Birth of Kong) become similar to that of his Monarch co-worker, Dr. Serizawa, primarily in his adamant insistence that "nature strikes its own balance."
Relationships
History
Houston was an Ivy League student who wrote a thesis paper on the Hollow Earth theory being a fact instead of a long-discredited falsehood, and that subterranean pockets remain undiscovered all over the world. The academic community dismissed Brooks' theory but it caught the attention of senior Monarch operative William Randa, who proceeded to recruit Houston into the agency.
Kong: Skull Island
In 1973 as the Vietnam War dies down, Houston and Randa are able to convince Senator Willis to provide funding for an expedition to the newly-discovered Skull Island alongside Landsat with a military escort led by the Sky Devils helicopter squadron leader, Colonel Preston Packard. Brooks and Randa travel to Saigon, Vietnam, and coerce former British SAS captain James Conrad into joining the mission as a tracker. During the mission briefing on the ship, the Athena, using the cover of a geological survey, Houston explains the plan to use explosives to map the island's surface and writes off Conrad's voiced concern with the method.
On the following day, the group breaks through the storm surrounding Skull Island. The soldiers on the helicopters drop the seismic charges and Houston is able to prove his Hollow Earth theory with the data provided.
In a post-credits scene, Brooks and San Lin tell Conrad and Mason Weaver they've been recruited to Monarch, and inform them that Kong isn't the only monster king in the world.
Between Kong: Skull Island and Skull Island: The Birth of Kong
After the expedition, Brooks would go on to marry Lin and father one son named Aaron. Sometime around the year 1995, Aaron joins Monarch but soon comes to a heated disagreement with his father over the latter's decision to leave Skull Island under Kong's supervision. Brooks tells Aaron that friends of his died there believing the island should be kept a secret, and he isn't going to let his son ruin all the hard work he and Monarch did in doing so. In the 1980s, Houston is approached by Landsat technician Rick Stanton, after Stanton grew curious concerning company whispers of the covered-up Skull Island mission. They become close friends and soon Houston introduces Rick to Ishiro Serizawa. Shortly after, Rick is offered a position at Monarch and he accepts.
Skull Island: The Birth of Kong
On July 9, 2012, Brooks is retiring from Monarch after 40 years of service when his colleague Singh gives him a "retirement present" of sorts: A military-grade recorder that was in the possession of his son Aaron when the latter disappeared during a mission to Antarctica over 17 years ago.
Upon correctly guessing the password to the recorder to be "Gjallarhorn" due to the fact that he would constantly read Norse mythology to Aaron during his childhood, and thus it became a shared password between them, Brooks learns from Aaron's recordings that, much to his dismay, his son didn't go to Antarctica to investigate a MUTO fossil. Instead, Aaron defied his father and mounted an off-the-books mission to Skull Island. Over the course of a year, the mission resulted in the loss of the entire crew, leaving Aaron the sole survivor stranded on the island. However, the mission did help shed light on not only how Skull Island has evolved since Houston last "visited" it, but also Kong himself, revealing how he became the last of his kind and his protective instincts toward humans.
During his retirement party the next day, Houston, elated for his son's survival and the knowledge that Aaron is waiting for him, reveals his plan to travel "somewhere tropical."
Godzilla: Aftershock
Two years later and several months after Godzilla returned and defeated the MUTOs in the Battle of San Francisco, Houston, apparently having returned to operations at Monarch, pays his colleague Dr. Emma Russell a visit in the Philippines as she plans to head out to the Azores to deal with the MUTO Prime. Houston understands what Emma is up to, noting how she shares the same look his son Aaron did before he disappeared. He tells Emma that she is pushing herself too hard as Aaron did, and empathizes with her about losing a son. Emma tells Houston that he found his son but Houston replies that Aaron paid a very heavy price for going too hard “for the greater good”, and he doesn't want to see the same thing happen to Emma. She insists that nothing will happen to her and snaps at Houston when he mentions her daughter Madison. When the situation defuses, Emma tells Houston to just wish her luck, and he relents.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
After reconsidering his retirement, Brooks goes back to working for Monarch. In the Yunnan Province in China, he is at a camp near Mothra's location after she escaped Alan Jonah's raid on the Outpost 61 containment facility. Brooks meets Dr. Ling Chen, recognizing her from having previously known her mother, and together they walk the trail toward the waterfall housing Mothra's cocoon. He asks Dr. Ling about Mothra and she tells him that legends call Mothra a protector and guardian angel who embodies life. Having watched the video of Mothra's interaction with Emma and Madison, Dr. Ling believes the legend to be true. Looking at the cocoon, Brooks says that he hopes she's right.[2]
Sometime later, Brooks, a science team, and a squadron of soldiers go to Outpost 61. The dead scientists' bodies have been removed and the techs confirm his suspicions about the security and containment being sabotaged, possibly with Emma's help. A few hours later, Brooks is called back to the waterfall. He learns a Titan named Rodan had been released, the other Titans are escaping, and contact with all the containment sites have been lost. Seeing Monster Zero atop a volcano on a monitor, Brooks realizes the Titans are responding to the three-headed dragon's call to reshape the planet. Then he and Dr. Ling bear witness as Mothra hatches from her cocoon and takes flight, with Brooks noticing a look of reverence toward Mothra in Dr. Ling's eyes similar to the Iwi people's attitude toward Kong.[3]
List of appearances
Films
- Kong: Skull Island (First appearance)
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Comics
Novels
- Kong: Skull Island - The Official Movie Novelization
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters - The Official Movie Novelization
References
- ↑ Keyes, Greg. Godzilla: King of the Monsters - The Official Movie Novelization. Titan Books. p. 70. ISBN: 9781789090925.
- ↑ Keyes, Greg. Godzilla: King of the Monsters - The Official Movie Novelization. Titan Books. p. 71-73. ISBN: 9781789090925.
- ↑ Keyes, Greg. Godzilla: King of the Monsters - The Official Movie Novelization. Titan Books. p. 183-187. ISBN: 9781789090925.
