When I reviewed episodes 1 & 2 of MONARCH a couple of months ago I was cautiously optimistic. That optimism fell quickly to the wayside and I had a difficult time finishing the season. MONARCH: LEGACY OF MONSTERS might be better called “MONARCH: LEGACY OF UNIMPORTANT EMPLOYEES & THEIR FAMILIES”.
First things first. When the show started I was thrown off by how Kurt Russell could seemingly look so young and play someone so old. The timelines didn’t match up. The show does rectify this in a really good way, so I have to give them credit for that. The stunt casting of Kurt and Wyatt Russell as the same character, Lee Shaw, decades apart works well and isn’t just a gimmick.
The kaiju, when we got to see them, were mostly cool. The issue was they were hardly in the show. Most episodes had just short scenes with Godzilla or other monsters, while the rest of the time was spent on a bunch of human characters who worked, did, or will work for Monarch. I couldn’t quite figure out how most of these characters fit into the stories around GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS, GODZILLA VS. KONG, & future films in this universe. As if the series picked some background characters that could exist and then gave them a backstory. It’s all really unimportant to the big picture.
A close friend of mine has a 5-year-old who is obsessed with Godzilla. He watches all the old Japanese films that are streaming, the newer American films, and any appropriate Godzilla content he can find on YouTube. She asked me if he would enjoy this show and I told her I didn’t think so. He, like so many of us Godzilla fans, is in it for the monsters, and MONARCH: LEGACY OF MONSTERS falls very short on that promise.
MONARCH: LEGACY OF MONSTERS S1 is streaming in full on AppleTV+.
