REVIEW: ‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ Gives Depth To The Monsterverse

Legendary has been accelerating the media around its Monsterverse, the shared universe for Godzilla and Kong. Now, the AppleTV Original Monarch: Legacy of Monsters aims to turn the focus from just the kaiju to the people. It’s a tall order and one that 2023’s Godzilla Minus One executed exquisitely. For Monarch, though, building dynamic characters and investment beyond the kaiju, called Titans in the Monsterverse, isn’t always easy.

From Legendary Television, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is set one year after the events of Godzilla (2014).  Known as G-Day, the day Godzilla descended on and ripped apart San Francisco, this is one of the series’ emotional threads. The other is set in the 1950s when Monarch was founded and tied to the people who were central to its creation and unintended militarization. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is co-developed and executive-produced by Chris Black and Matt Fraction, and if this first episode is any indication, it’s blending a kaiju epic with a dramatic family narrative.

The series starts in the aftermath of G-Day and how it shaped one family, The Randas. The first one we meet is Cate Randa (Anna Sawai), who survived the attack only to lose her father, Hiroshi (Takehiro Hira), in the chaos after the event. Cate heads to Japan after her mother finds a key to an apartment in Tokyo. While she knows her father traveled for work a lot, she didn’t necessarily know what that job was or where it was. But when she opens the apartment door, she finds a brother, Kentaro Randa (Ren Watabe).

After confronting each other with shared anger and grief, the siblings find their father’s office and, with that, Monarch. What starts next is a quest to find their father and ultimately tap into their legacy that pulls them into Monarch’s crosshairs, puts them at odds with Titans, and connects them to the past. Along for the adventure is May (Kiersey Clemons), a coder unwillingly pulled into the orbit of Monarch because of her relationship with Kentaro.

The 2015 story attempts to show the audience that Godzilla is a devastating creature as much as he is an awe-inspiring one. For Cate, he is terrifying; he is death. She’s scarred by him, and the trauma runs deep. Kentaro is curious, just like his father. Their goal to find Hiroshi brings them to Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell) and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which gives the past its due.

The series is ultimately told across generations, and the emotional strength of the narrative comes directly from the past. Here, we see a young Lt. Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell) escorting Dr. Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto). Shaw is brash in the face of authority and driven by his own goals. Keiko is resolved in her intelligence and in not letting anyone take that away from her. Accompanying them is Bill Randa. Yes, Anders Holm plays a young John Goodman, connecting the series directly to Kong: Skull Island.

The three of them explore the Titans. The men hold fear and aren’t necessarily against being the aggressors against the monsters. But Keiko, she’s in awe. She wants to learn from them, study them, and make the future better with them. Keiko is the emotional core of the series. It’s how Monarch: Legacy of Monsters reflects on the post-war reality in which Godzilla was created. She deals with racism, and in the most emotional moments of the series, in Episode 3, she has to watch a group of wickedly happy American soldiers drop a bomb.

In the past, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters understood the purpose of Godzilla as a metaphor and how American militarization impacts that narrative. This is where the story gets grounded, even with all the sci-fi and monsters it throws at you. It’s the heart of the series.

A lot about the past could have been played up for camp or absurdity. Instead, the switch in costuming and cinematography gives the past a grittier quality. It’s vibrant, but it’s also older, and it carries the weight of its era well without ever feeling out of place. In fact, the quality of the time spent in the 1950s left me yearning for more time with the trio in that time period. Their performances and roles dwarfed that of the 2015 timeline. Mari Yamamoto’s performance as Keiko is the strongest of the series, and her chemistry with Lee is both undeniable and heartbreaking. But more importantly, she isn’t defined by him.  Keiko is her own person, and she feels like it in her acts of defiance and depth of emotion.

That said, Shaw is the connective tissue. Expertly cast with Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt Russell playing the elder and the younger versions of the same character, the series never loses the impact of that casting choice. With smart editing and transitions, they use Shaw to move back and forth between the time periods. In doing so, they make up the core of the series both in the past and the future as he bridges the gap for the Randas. But his connection between the two time periods and its emotional impact is saved until the penultimate episode. While it makes for a good episode, it also feels too late.

What was the series’ strength in Episode 1, its handling of two time periods, becomes its biggest flaw. Both are well-shot and well-directed and have fantastic set and production designs. But the 1950s carries the lion’s share of the narrative importance.

The Titans, though? They are magnificent. Godzilla’s design is imposing, closer to what we saw before his Kong team-up, and the series is better for it. Even outside Godzilla, however, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters handles each and every monster and shows the crowd a sort of majestic beauty that you can capture if you love creature special effects work. Scales, talons, and every single piece of them are detailed fantastically, so much so that you understand why Keiko looks at them with admiration.

On the whole, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters makes the majority of the shots that it takes. Even though the 2015 storyline isn’t as strong as that in the 1950s, it is still engaging enough to hold on, especially when Cate is laying her trauma bare. Sometimes, the series buckles under the weight of its massive ensemble, but it ultimately succeeds in expanding the Monsterverse’s lore, Titans, and future.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is streaming now, exclusively on Apple TV+.