It’s been slightly over a week ago now since the magnificent debut trailer for Godzilla: King of the Monsters gave us our first glances at the latest renditions of the Big G’s old friends Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah. And while Warner Bros. are understandably holding back on the full-body images, shrouding these animals in darkness and mist in order to build up the anticipation, the clips apparently reveal just enough to spark the imaginations of theory-loving fans.
This latest bit of speculation concerns Mothra, the insectoid creature that first originated in the 1961 monster movie of the same name. In this Kaiju classic, the beast is worshipped by twin fairies known as the Shobijin (‘little beauties’), and it’s only once this tiny pair are kidnapped that Mothra leaves her native island to raise hell in Tokyo. While the idea of miniature fairies sounds a little too fanciful for the current MonsterVerse’s relatively gritty take on the genre, the theory posits that another pair of female characters will serve as the Shobijin’s slightly more grounded equivalents in next year’s Godzilla flick.
The characters we refer to are Dr. Emma Russell and her daughter Madison, played by Vera Farmiga and Millie Bobby Brown, respectively. Though these two new characters seem to differ in many ways from the mini-twins of Mothra, one common theme between the duos is their ability to speak with the beast. Whearas the Shobijin regularly served as translators for their winged goddess, Farmiga recently reported that Dr. Russell “has figured out a way to communicate with the creatures…using their bioacoustics on a sonar level.”
As for Madison, while we certainly can’t rule out the young character getting involved in her mother’s monster-whispering work, she has her own potentially telling moment in the trailer when she stretches her hand out to feel a still-larval Mothra, suggesting that the film may build up an emotional connection between the human and the big bug. Add to this the fact that both Emma and Madison are both going to be kidnapped by a mysterious organization in the upcoming film and you’re looking at a pretty solid case, if still a rather speculative one at this early stage in the proceedings.
We’ll see how far the parallels between the Russells and the Shobijin go when Godzilla: King of the Monsters arrives in theaters on May 31st, 2019.