reptar on ice
'Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters' Reviews: It's Legit, Epic And Worth Your Time
The 2014 "Godzilla" reboot was a success. It made money and spawned more sequels and prequels — which also made money. You could say we're witnessing the golden age of Godzilla, with both America and Japan producing a variety of good movies, and now TV shows, about the king of all monsters.
"Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" is a direct follow up to "Godzilla vs. Kong" and "Kong: Skull Island." It stars Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Mari Yamamoto, Anders Holm, John Goodman, Joe Tippett, Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell. It premieres on November 17, 2023 on Apple TV+.
The premise
The show takes on two different threads: One's in the past, charting the origins of the organization through the eyes of young Army officer Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell) and a younger version of "Kong: Skull Island" character William Randa (John Goodman in a strange, face-replaced cameo at the start of the series, then Anders Holm in a jarringly dramatic role).
The other takes place not long after Godzilla's first appearance in San Francisco (seen in Gareth Edwards's gargantuan 2014 "Godzilla" reboot), centering around a young woman named Cate (Anna Sawai) traveling to Tokyo to tie up loose ends from her eccentric father, now thought dead. But along the way, she discovers a sibling she never knew she had (Ren Watabe's Kentaro) and clues about her family's mysterious connection to Monarch. To help them solve their father's many mysteries, they'll have to turn to an ex-pat hacker (Kiersey Clemons) and a secretive old man named, you guessed it, Lee Shaw (Wyatt's pop, Kurt).
This show is obsessed over playing and stretching time
Showrunner Chris Black, who developed the series along with celebrated comics writer Matt Fraction, uses "Monarch's" non-linear structure to create an interesting sense of negative temporal space. The opening episode gives us the beginning of the 2010s storyline but the climax of its 1950s counterpart, then filling in the backstories of both groups of characters over the course of the season. Characters are developed both forward and backward, which gives the audience new information to digest while also whetting the appetite for whatever pieces of the puzzle are still missing. These missing pieces are personified in Hiroshi (Takehiro Hira), the link between the two storylines who exists only in fuzzy memories and half-redacted documents. Though Hiroshi's work has global implications, the heart of our story is on Cate and Kentaro's desire to learn more about the man himself, the father who, it turns out, neither of them really knew.
This makes a world of difference to this section of the Monsterverse. Set primarily in the present — but with glimpses into the past, allowing Kurt Russell and his own son Wyatt to play the same swaggering character — "Monarch" is chock full of set details that indicate an uncomfortable new status for mankind. Most prominent are the Godzilla contingency plan instructions and signs spread throughout Japan, urging people to, in the case of a monster attack, gather in locations like bunkers to weather the event. And to see people actually experience this and engage with the proper traumas that city-wide destruction would leave means that "Monarch's" scenes of human interaction aren't just filler on the way to the next screeching radioactive beast.
Two Russells are better than one
The two Russells are predictably great, though it takes a bit for Wyatt to liven up. By the time both versions of Shaw are introduced, it's clear that they're having some fun with the role — and it's even more clear that Kurt is just kind of playing a regular Kurt Russell character while Wyatt is having to work a little harder to play Kurt Russell as a young and uptight military man (which is not a regular Kurt Russell character these days).
All of the actors are great, but there is something special about seeing father and son, Kurt and Wyatt Russell, play the same character at different ages. Both do a great job at offering the same attitude and mannerisms, making it clear he is the same person. The same can be said for Anders Holm and John Goodman, who both play William Randa.
Kurt Russell is perhaps the best thing about the entire show. The actor is so breezy, so charming, that he lights up the screen whenever he appears. His son does well too, but it's the older Russell who holds our attention. There's a moment where he bursts out laughing after nearly dying in a plane crash that has more life and energy than almost any other big action set piece the show throws at us. You just can't fake that kind of charisma. This may be a streaming TV series, but Russell is an old-school movie star, and that lends "Monarch" some much-needed juice.
Though some may bemoan the lack of Godzilla, who mostly just pops up now and again in the beginning episodes of the season, this is okay when there is an even greater force in Kurt Russell. Without overselling his role too much, especially since he too can frequently fade into the background, he's just such a fun screen presence. Even as the effects of the creatures themselves can be a little hit or miss, the ease with which Russell leans into cheese remains delightful. When the gang finds themselves in a colder environment, there are even some moments where you feel the spark of the man who helped make The Thing such a classic. This series is obviously not as sharp, often spinning its wheels as it searches for the next destination to aim the characters at, but it's still good fun with Russell in the driver's seat. While the show plays around with juxtaposing the grizzled older version of the character with the one played by his son, even making use of a cheeky little crossfade at one point to show how he has changed, the story is made better when it spends more time in the present.
The CGI and central mystery are surprisingly good
Between carefully doled out monster encounters (accomplished via impressive special effects), "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" advances its intersecting stories a little bit at a time. Revelations about its characters move at a similarly deliberate pace. Episodes play less like individual installments than chapters in a long story. That makes it a tough show to judge halfway through a season. Will Cate and Kentaro's investigation ultimately take them somewhere or just keep the mystery spinning? Will what we learn of Cate's backstory and messy pre-Godzilla life deepen the character, or is it just there to provide some shading (and maybe fill some time)?
Despite being a little smaller in scale, "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" still tries to capture the films' sense of grandeur and world-changing discovery. And for the most part, it succeeds. Like other Apple TV+ original series, the money and high-scale production quality are clearly felt on the screen — the monsters and locations look great and the effects are far more impressive than your average television/streaming endeavor. Director Matt Shakman ("WandaVision") helms the first pair of episodes and delivers the exact kind of character-driven drama that should surround an extraordinary story like that of Godzilla and company, while also establishing the show's intriguing central mysteries.
This melding of the emotional and the plot mystery is a brilliant touch to keep the plot moving forward — what is Monarch, what the hell does it have to do with our father — and keeping things fraught between the two main characters laying blame on one another and the others family in their anger and confusion. In going down this rabbit hole of clues, inklings, and suspicion — which reconnects Kentaro with his hacker ex-girlfriend, May (Kiersey Clemons, who is a bit of a plot contrivance and excuse to have a tech-savvy person on hand, but it works well enough one supposes) — "Legacy of Monsters" jumps back to a seemingly unrelated story in the 1950s.
TL;DR
"Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" is slowly and carefully starting to flesh out this universe.
It's a set-up that satisfies the first rule of good genre entertainment: establish character stakes that would work in any kind of story.
"Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" is an incredibly epic show that only dives deeper into the Godzilla lore and Monarch itself.
[Image: YouTube]
