Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters Review - Score One For The Monsterverse
- Dynamics between the characters drive the plot rather than monster fights
- Welcome focus on the PTSD of Godzilla's attack in San Francisco
- Lackluster costume design doesn't communicate when each scene is set
"Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" is the first TV show in the Monsterverse. So far, there have been several movies — four since 2014 — but the TV show takes us back to 2015, right after the first "Godzilla," to tell a tale of family and monsters in the immediate aftermath of Godzilla's unveiling. It takes us to earlier periods as well, where we can see the beginnings of the secretive monster-hunting organization Monarch and the beginnings of the family we're following. While the monsters are fun, it's the dynamics of three generations of one family that make this worth watching — and the family is where the series starts.
"Monarch" begins on Skull Island in 1973, with Bill Randa (John Goodman) running from a giant spider many times his size. On an outcropping, he throws his pack away and prepares to meet his fate, but then a crab comes out of the Earth and the two monsters do battle, saving Randa for now (those who know the movie "Kong: Skull Island" will know he doesn't survive that expedition). Randa is a major player in our saga — not the old Randa as played by Goodman, but the young Randa as played by Anders Holm. But before we get to that, we meet Randa's granddaughter, Cate (Anna Sawai).
In 2015, Cate takes a plane to Tokyo from San Francisco. She's going there to settle her father's affairs after his death, but she finds more than she bargained for. Her father's apartment is occupied by Kentaro (Ren Watabe), her surprise half-brother. While Cate is furious at her father for the betrayal, she ultimately ends up going with Kentaro and his friend May (Kiersey Clemons) on an adventure across multiple continents, from Alaska to Kazakhstan, looking for their father, whom both Cate and Kentaro have a hard time believing is dead. Throughout most of their time together, they're accompanied by Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell), a colonel in the U.S. Army who breaks out of captivity from Monarch to help them.
At the same time, we see the start of Monarch. In the 1950s, Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell) is one of three people who begins the clandestine organization. With his connections to the army, he's the money; the two others, Keiko Mira (Mari Yamamoto) and Bill Randa, are the science team. The show skips backward and forward in the '50s to flashbacks of their research and their attempts to keep Monarch open, but we never get confused. This is probably because we have the main timeline in 2015 unfolding chronologically, although we have flashbacks to Cate, Kentaro, and May's pasts, too.
Taken together, the show presents a fascinating, multilayered story of a family and the monsters that have both kept it together and torn it apart. While you'll appreciate the show more if you've watched the movies, having that background isn't required, and the show digs deeper than the movies into the ins and outs of the various individuals and their evolving relationships with one another.
Family dynamics
"Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" shows us plenty of monsters, but it's the relationships between the characters that keep us coming back from episode to episode. Cate and Kentaro are uneasy but determined allies; they both know that they're not responsible for their father's actions. Eventually, their alliance even leads to reminiscing about their father, like his penchant for using a knife to sharpen his pencil and leaving shavings on everything.
Then there's Lee Shaw, who in the '50s was the losing corner of a love triangle with him, Keiko, and Bill. Lee still loves them both, and Keiko, Bill, and Lee all form a tight bond that seems to juxtapose what happened to Monarch years later when Keiko and Bill's kid, Hiroshi (Cate and Kentaro's father), became part of the organization. Seeing the three of them search for monsters is very different from seeing Cate, Kentaro, and May do so. Keiko, Bill, and Lee are pumped full of the spirit of discovery, whereas Cate, Kentaro, and May are mostly full of dread. The older Lee no longer has his youthful optimism either. In fact, by the time Cate, Kentaro, and May find him, he no longer agrees with the way Monarch does things. Still, he tells the trio that he cared for Keiko's son like he was his own, so he's willing to accompany them to find out what happened to him.
These relationships move each plotline along and create different dynamics that work for the story. Each one tells us something about the people involved while organically filling in information about Monarch and the Monsterverse. You never wonder what they're doing or why they're doing it, but the information is never spread so thick that it takes away from the characters' personal stories.
Cate's story
Cate is a schoolteacher by trade. When she was in San Francisco during Godzilla's attack, she barely escaped a school bus when Godzilla killed many of her students. Cate has post-traumatic stress disorder from the incident and is repeatedly shown having flashbacks to that time and reacting to things like an early warning alarm for Godzilla like someone who's seen the worst he can muster. Plus, San Francisco one year later is still rebuilding, and Cate and her mother are still living in FEMA housing. In many of these kinds of city-leveling monster stories, the victims are often forgotten. Even when the films try to remember the dead, they don't spend much time showing the devastation. This show, in contrast, through Cate and her circumstances, has built a whole story around this fallout and is all the better for it.
There are things I could complain about regarding "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters." For example, for a show that hops around both time and place, the people don't look especially period-appropriate, instead wearing generic outfits that could suit any setting. And the series doesn't share one big spoiler until the eighth episode, leaving us to mistake a small but noteworthy detail. But overall, the show is a delight, whose very human stories are a compelling jumping-off point for all the monsters.
"Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" premieres on Apple TV+ on Friday, November 17, with two episodes. New episodes premiere weekly after that.