Rick Stanton

Dr. Rick Stanton is a scientist character who first appeared in the 2019 MonsterVerse film, Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

Stanton began his career as a communications engineer before joining Landsat as a satellite mapping technician in the 1980's. While working for Landsat, he overheard company rumors about a covert expedition to the uncharted Skull Island in 1973, and reached out to one of the supposed project leads, Houston Brooks. The two quickly became friends, and Brooks introduced Stanton to his colleague Ishiro Serizawa. With both Brooks and Serizawa believing him a good fit for the organization, Stanton was recruited into Monarch, where he remains to this day. Stanton oversaw Monarch's satellite tracking system before being assigned to the underwater surveillance base Castle Bravo. As a Crypto-Sonographer for Monarch, Stanton's job is to tune into the sounds given off by the Titans around the world and use them to predict behaviors and movements and issue early warnings to the organization. Stanton records all of these sounds and catalogs them in Monarch's Titan audio forensics database dubbed "the Ark." Stanton is described as brilliant but high-strung, and his dedication to his work gives him little time for his personal life. Stanton has been divorced three times, and is effectively married to his work.

History
With a Master of Science degree in Mathematics from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Audio and Communication Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Rick Stanton's career started as a communications engineer for SETI. Then in the 1980s, he worked as a satellite mapping technician for Landsat. Company whispers of a covered-up mission to Skull Island in 1973 piqued his interest so Rick reached out to Dr. Houston Brooks, one of the rumored leads on the project, and they became close friends. Shortly after Brooks introduced Stanton to Dr. Serizawa, Rick was offered a position at Monarch and later activated on May 24, 1989.

Initially, Dr. Stanton supervised the satellite tracking system for the Monarch Sciences network. Then he was offered a field assignment on Monarch’s underwater surveillance team at Castle Bravo and, being a longtime supporter of Brooks' Hollow Earth theory, Stanton lept at the chance to be close to the vast, unexplored ecosystem hidden within the Earth. Now as Monarch's leading early warning specialist, Dr. Stanton is in charge of managing a global network of sensor arrays and analyzing the sounds made by Titans to predict their behaviors, recording everything, and cataloging Monarch's extensive Titan audio forensics database dubbed "the Ark".

Godzilla: King of the Monsters
In Castle Bravo, Stanton and the rest of Monarch are informed on the ringleader of Emma Russell and her daughter Madison’s abduction: a former British colonel turned eco-terrorist named Alan Jonah. Stanton believes that Jonah and his group plans to sell Titan DNA in the black market for militaristic and pharmaceutical purposes. He also knows that Mothra will eventually undergo a metamorphosis from a larva into something more powerful.

Not long after the conference, Castle Bravo is shaken by Godzilla’s suddenly erratic behavior until he swims away. Stanton projects Godzilla’s path to Outpost 32 in Antarctica.

Stanton joins the team in rescuing Emma and Madison, but things get complicated when Emma unleashes Monster Zero from the ice as Godzilla arrives to fight it. Several Monarch agents, including Vivienne Graham, are killed in the chaos.

The day after Monster Zero’s awakening, Emma contacts Monarch about her plan to use the ORCA to free all of the Titans. Stanton argues that humans will be overrun as Emma explains their benefits. As the USS Argo flies to Isla de Mara, Emma uses the ORCA to awaken Rodan as Monster Zero approaches the island. Mark Russell gives the idea to lure Rodan away from the population and towards Monster Zero. The plan works as Monster Zero dispatches Rodan before Godzilla ambushes him and decapitates one of his heads. The U.S. military then fires the Oxygen Destroyer to finish off the Titans Monster Zero emerges from the ocean as Stanton tries to read Godzilla’s vitals. When the line flattens, Stanton sadly concludes that Godzilla is dead.

On Isla de Mara, Monster Zero regenerates his missing head and awakens all of the slumbering Titans. This makes Stanton comment on how Monster Zero violates the laws of the natural world. Ilene Chen supports the idea when she discovers that Monster Zero is an alien and is also called "Ghidorah". Stanton believes that Ghidorah intends to have the Titans reshape the planet into a suitable habitat.

When the team regroups at Castle Bravo, a fully-matured Mothra arrives and reveals that Godzilla is still alive deep beneath the ocean. Stanton, Chen, Mark, and Ishiro Serizawa ventures into the depths on the USS Scorpion. When they realize that they have entered the Hollow Earth, Stanton is overjoyed that his theory is confirmed. They then view a sunken city engraved with murals of the Titans on their structures when they find Godzilla resting and healing near a radioactive area. Because the submarine’s launching mechanism is damaged, Serizawa decides to sacrifice himself by activating the nuclear warhead manually. Stanton bids his colleague farewell as he and the others return to the surface.

When Stanton, Chen, and Mark return to the Argo, they discover that Emma combines Godzilla’s bioacoustics with that of humans for the ORCA’s frequency. They trace the signal to Fenway Park, Boston, as Godzilla and Mothra battles Ghidorah and Rodan. Stanton warns the others that Godzilla’s radiation level is becoming too hazardous and that they have little time to find both the ORCA and Madison before all of Boston is destroyed. As Emma sacrifices herself by luring Ghidorah away, Stanton and his colleagues aid the wounded as Godzilla uses his thermonuclear pulses to destroy Ghidorah. Stanton is relieved that Godzilla is on the humans’ side for the moment as the other Titans gather around to bow to their new Alpha.