TV
Maybe the Real Monster Was the Incompetence Along the Way
Review of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters on Apple TV+
John Goodman dodges between the segmented legs of a spider and crab of giant proportions, a classic, almost Harryhausen-esque scene beautifully translated with modern effects, and I think: “Strong opening.”
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters follows the web of lives impacted by the rise of giant, city-walloping monsters. It jumps around in time from just after World War 2, to Goodman’s Skull Island 70s, to ‘G Day’ in 2014, to the present (2015). The story pivots around Cate and Kentaro Randa, half siblings that just found out the other exists. Monarch is their legacy: their grandparents started it in the 40s, their dad disappeared while working for it, and now they are searching for him despite it. Joining them is Kentaro’s…kind of girlfriend(?), May, who (as a Washingtonian) has one of my favorite backstory lines: “I’m from Tacoma. Tacoma sucks. I moved to Japan.” Finally, there is Colonel Shaw, portrayed in flashbacks by Wyatt Russel, and in the present by Kurt, bringing a pretty trademark ‘unhinged dad’ energy (see: Stuntman Mike, Ego, The Commander) despite being, as everyone points out, at least 90 years old.
There’s a lot to like about AppleTV’s new kaiju — sorry, Titan — show. I wasn’t sure what to expect since AppleTV is a bit off the beaten streamer path; this was my first experience with their catalog since I’m not a subscriber, and I was ready to be converted. Every time Godzilla (the only recognizable Titan from Legendary’s canon) shows up, it’s colossal, impactful, and even frightening. The other Titans on display in the first five episodes are new — the show taking place before the events of King of Monsters. Still, the fresh (and fleshy) faces are visually interesting, the special effects are polished, and the characters’ reactions to their destructive immensity make them even more effective.
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The contrast in how America (specifically San Francisco) and Japan (Tokyo) rebuild and adapt to living in a monster-attacked world is an intriguing background consideration, which felt organic and meaningful. It was genuinely fascinating to see how these spectacular cinematic events affect the street-level lives of regular people over time.
The handling of trauma is often (though not always) nuanced and complicated, the dialogue is frequently funny, tragic, and realistic (often at the same time), and there are many characters you genuinely cheer for (the moms) or at least find compelling.
I love Godzilla movies (someone pay me to write an essay on how Godzilla: Final Wars was the singularity, and we all got dumped in the bad timeline after it), but I’m aware that they carry an inherent dissonance. The kaiju are forces of destruction, they cause the death and suffering of hundreds to thousands of people, and they are intended to be terrifying. But they are also…the main characters, the protagonists, amoral if not the loosest interpretation of ‘chaotic good.’ On the other hand, we have Monarch-as-stand-in-for-authority, another concept people are frequently divided on. We want someone to know what they are doing, but we are also wary of overreach. In the original Gojira movies, the government was usually made up of bumbling bureaucrats the intrepid heroes have to maneuver around. This attitude reflected a not-uncommon one in post-WWII Japan, and I’m sure there are essays on how reinforcing the idea of weak collectivist rule contributed to the rise of Strong Men(™) leaders in more recent times, and if not, someone should pay me to write that, too. I was truly hoping that Legacy of Monsters was going to explore or even deconstruct that dissonance. Instead, it paid homage to that history by seeming to have two minds about every aspect of the story it was telling. Monarch the organization is both manipulative and yet clearly doing more than any government. The characters are earnest and likable except when they’re betraying each other. The scientists are headstrong and confident but also have no idea how to interface with the forces (human or otherwise) that they are dependent on.
Most of all, everyone, from the protagonists to the government to the shadowy not-quite-government monster trackers, everyone, is inconsistently but often wildly and inexplicably incompetent. The scientists make foolish and dangerous decisions and then are shocked at the consequences. The main team just barely sneaks away from soldiers and then breaks into commercial jingle singing while creeping to their destination. The eggheads at Monarch do enough research to find a single person on the street in Tokyo but not enough to know she has intense PTSD and will respond violently to having a bag put over her head after they don’t restrain her in any way. Colonel Shaw has terrible trigger discipline and no discernable plan. In the old films, this could be fun in a campy way, but with the much more serious tone the show works hard to develop, I found many of the script choices baffling. There were so many great moments: May talking Cate through a panic attack was one of the best representations of trauma-informed care I’ve seen on screen; both Cate and Kentaro’s respective moms are MVPs of Women-Having-Complicated-Feelings-But-Doing-Their-Best and I genuinely cheered for both of them; the flashback sort-of flirting between May and Kentaro didn’t make me want to die, and on and on. Unfortunately, this only served to make the weaker/more opaque directions more frustrating.
I kept hoping that many of these issues and other mysteries (why hasn’t Shaw aged as expected? Why is May doing that? What happened to the girlfriend Cate clearly didn’t deserve?) would be resolved in later episodes — and while some were, I can’t say the payoff was worth the wait for all of them. Like Monarch’s writers, I find myself also of two minds: there are interesting and valuable bits…but I don’t know if paying for AppleTV is worth it.
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