The Godzilla vs Kong novelization provides an explanation for a missing - but important - part of the story, which is how the humans captured Kong. In the movie, Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) agreed to Dr. Nathan Lind’s (Alexander Skarsgård) plan to let APEX and Monarch take Kong away from Skull Island. Afterward, Kong was shown to be unconscious aboard a massive battleship. King Kong was tranquilized in his first appearance in 1933 too, but this version of the ape is significantly bigger.
How the human characters got him into this state was never explained, but it provided the setup for one of the movie’s biggest action sequences. Sometime after waking up and finding himself in chains, Kong ended up in a heated showdown with the King of the Monsters himself, Godzilla. Shortly after losing and falling back into unconsciousness, the humans once again managed to safely transport Kong a second time, seemingly without fear of him waking up and attacking them. Once again, how they made it work wasn’t discussed on-screen.
The movie skips over this, but the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization actually dedicated a few pages to it. As one would imagine, capturing Kong from the monstrous Skull Island really was a major complication for the characters, more so than the movie suggested. In the book, Nathan was quite worried about how they were going to successfully capture him. He spoke to a Monarch scientist, who brought up the events of Kong: Skull Island where Kong was attacked by Samuel L. Jackson’s Packard. As explained by the scientist, Packard’s use of napalm rendered Kong unconscious. Apparently, that happened because the napalm “sucked up all the oxygen from the immediate atmosphere”. According to her, Kong needs a tremendous amount of oxygen because of the size of his lungs. Since Kong needs so much to function, knocking out such a large Titan isn’t actually impossible.
Rather than copy Packard by using napalm, Monarch figured out that it was possible to knock out and put Kong in a protective containment facility with a different method: inject him with an odorless chemical that would deprive him of oxygen. Years ago, they tried a few experiments with it until it worked. The scientist told Nathan that it was because of this idea that they were able to put Kong in a protective containment facility. Knowing that they had found success with this plan, they used it again to get him on the battleship. It was mentioned later on in the book that they had to do it one more time on the way to Antarctica to make sure he remained unconscious.
This particular portion of the book answered this question left from Godzilla vs. Kong. The humans possessing the capability to subdue Kong was key to the progression of the story and Kong’s discovery of the Hollow Earth entry point at Antarctica, but it was oddly glossed over in the film. Regardless, what it all points to is that the technology of humans has advanced to a point in the MonsterVerse where keeping Titans in check is an attainable goal.
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