The Pitch: Of all the post-MCU multiverses that studios scrambled to build after the success of Marvel’s The Avengers in 2012, Legendary’s MonsterVerse has strangely held up the strongest over time. It helps, of course, that its foundations are built on the same kind of shared universe conceit as the original Toho films that spawned Godzilla in 1954 and spent dozens of films pitting him against (or teaming him up with) one rubber-suited beastie after another.
But with Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, the MonsterVerse heads down the same road to ruin that has plagued (and is still plaguing) Marvel: Trying and failing to port the big-budget spectacle of Godzilla to TV. In this spinoff series for Apple TV+, co-creators Chris Black and Matt Fraction turn their focus not on Godzilla or the other “Titans” that occasionally use our major cities as their personal rage rooms but on the SHIELD-like organization that tracks and studies them, Monarch.
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’ 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).
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (Apple TV+)
No, No Godzilla? The trouble with a Godzilla-based TV series, or any Godzilla-based thing, really, is that the humans are usually the weakest bit. Everyone loves a good dustup between two dudes in rubber suits, and even the Americanized films sport some impressive visual effects when Big G and his friends throw hands. But soon as they cut away to the usual cast of overqualified actors spouting gibberish dialogue and going through the motions, it’s easy for the eyes to glaze over.
This, unfortunately, is also Monarch‘s biggest problem. For all the money Apple and Legendary throw at it — and don’t get it twisted, it still looks feature-quality — it still has to stretch that budget somehow. That means that, alas, the monster sightings are few and far between. In the five episodes provided for review, the Titans on display largely comprise the odd, intermittent chase between man and beast, with a whole lot of waiting in between. (As for the big guy himself, his appearances carry a great deal of weight — but don’t linger long enough to hold your interest.)
What remains, then, are the same half-baked family conflicts and stern talkings-to in airplane hangers and conference rooms, just stretched out to 45-minute episodes of television. It’s most noticeable in Cate’s storyline, which plays like a Ryusuke Hamaguchi film collided with a monster flick. That’s an interesting wrinkle in concept, merging two halves of a family in the midst of a fantastical tragedy. But Sawai and Watabe’s characters aren’t given much to do but whine and run, and the performers don’t inject enough life to overcome the hurdles of the writing.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (Apple TV+)
Buy One Russell, Get One Russell Free: More than Godzilla, though, the real selling point of Monarch is the Russell boys, playing a fun father-son parlor trick as younger and older versions of the same character. In the flashbacks, Wyatt’s a capable lead, an aw-shucks Boy Scout going on Doc Savage-like adventures through the jungle even as he tries to negotiate his twin loyalties to his military leaders and the more altruistic founders of Monarch.
But it’s Kurt and his irrepressible movie star quality that really helps move the series along past its initial episodes. Even in his early seventies, he’s still spry and rakish (a remark about how Shaw should really be in his nineties by now is handwaved away as “good genes,” a quip only Kurt could sell), and he leads his motley Scooby-Doo gang of young’uns nicely. The fourth episode, which strands the gang in the Arctic, is easily the highlight of the series thus far (and gives Russell a nifty reprise of The Thing).
The Verdict: Let’s hope the remaining episodes of the season cut to the chase but quick — as is, it feels like a leg of the MonsterVerse that chooses to place its focus too heavily on the human half of the equation. There’s still little sense of what Monarch is or does even five episodes in, and whether they’re meant to be a threat or boon to humanity.
Perhaps that’s the point, and the rest of the season will give us the answers and bone-rattling monster fights we crave. Up to this point, it’s a lot of sitting through tepid family drama while you wait for the next flashback or appearance from Russell or another.
Where’s It Playing? Monarch: Legacy of Monsters skreeonks its way onto Apple TV+ starting November 17th.
Trailer:
