The past day has seen a sudden fury of activity leading up to this Tuesday’s online release of the first GODZILLA trailer, cued up by the appearance of a viral marketing website called MUTOresearch.net. Upon arrival at this website, users gain access to a top security M.U.T.O. computer terminal and are subtly encouraged to hack the site to gain access to more classified documents: so far, the game has unlocked five (and counting) hidden video files that offer distorted glimpses of what are sure to be scenes from the official GODZILLA trailer. We’d provide the links to these hidden videos on YouTube, but that rather spoils the fun of unlocking them yourselves — but don’t worry, once you ‘LOGIN’ with the site using one of your social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter or Google+), you’ll have the first movie clip handed to you on your terminal screen.
From there, players should explore the commands provided but you don’t discover too much unless you… HACK… the commands to gain undetectable access on the M.U.T.O. server, which boasts an active security monitoring system that will often deny you access to secret files. LIST, DIR and OPEN will help you find file “assets” that you can unlock and view on the site. By the way, pay some attention to the site’s audio loop which features Geiger counter radiation ‘clicks’ and the thumping footsteps of Godzilla himself.
So far, four external movie-related websites have each released a photo related to infamous sinkholes around the globe, along with clues or pointers to the M.U.T.O. website:
- first the Chinese site Mtime posted an image of M.U.T.O. choppers hovering over the famous sinkhole in the Chongqing province, which also contained the viral site URL hidden in the image (try pasting in the URL at Google Translator to read an approximation of the article text).
- next the UK site Total Film posted an image of the notorious “Door to Hell” sinkhole in Turkmenistan, a pit discovered leaking flammable gasses that a Soviet gas company lit in 1971 hoping to burn off the noxious fumes — it’s been burning ever since to earn its fitting nickname.
- then Yahoo Cine Mexico continued the international scope of this implied monstrous danger that M.U.T.O. is investigating around the globe, showing a picture of more choppers hovering over the twin Sima Humboldt and Sima Martel sinkholes in Venezuela.
- most recently, IGN followed suit with an exclusive photo of Nevada’s “Devil’s Throat” sinkhole which reportedly only appeared within the last decade or so and is approximately 125′ deep already.
No, these don’t appear to be signs of any plot holes in GODZILLA — but the sinkholes appear to offer a clue to how the kaiju beast might emerge to threaten mankind in Edwards’ Toho-faithful reboot of the monster move franchise. If speculation is correct, the viral site’s M.U.T.O. organization appears to be an acronym for Monstrous Underground Terrestrial Organism, and typing in commands like SIMA, CHONGQING, DEVILS THROAT and DERWEZE will yield text replies from the M.U.T.O. server implying that some kind of creatures are being incubated and perhaps born from these sinkholes, especially the fiery chasm in Derweze. These sinkholes may well be the natural origin of GODZILLA as seen in the Warner Brothers/Legendary film due on May 16, 2014 in the U.S.
Meanwhile, try entering other commands related to the past GODZILLA franchise like GOJIRA, MONSTER X, TOKYO, RADIATION, FALLOUT and such to discover different server replies. We should expect the MUTOresearch.net site to continue delivering new video clips and other publicity materials for GODZILLA even after the official trailer’s debut on Tuesday 1pm ET/10am PT.
We’ll continue our GODZILLA coverage tomorrow when the trailer stomps onto the internet, so stay tuned!
FilmEdge.net Blog 