Monarch: Legacy of Monsters - As the Season Finale Looms, It's Time For Some Big Love
By John Kirk
Rating: A
Wow … how did something like this get overlooked?
That’s actually a paraphrase of dialogue from the first season of the captivating and innovative series, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. But it applies equally to the show itself, which has flown under the radar since its debut
The series from Apple TV+, is a generational story set in the universe of the monster, Godzilla. Springboarding off of the clandestine organization known as Monarch, mentioned in the 2015 Godzilla film, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters focuses on the history of international research association that studies M.U.T.Os (Massive Unknown Terrestrial Organisms) a.k.a. Titans.
Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Anna Sawai, Kurt Russell and Elisa Lasowski in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
While that film may not have been as successful as hoped, a part of it has spawned a series that makes up for that lack of success. It asks the question: why should we care about monster stories?
A Japanese post-war pop-culture phenomenon, monster films have found a niche in Western films and television. Godzilla has starred on screens large and small, and in animated series over the last 50 years, earning the big lizard a misunderstood hero’s foothold in the culture. Notwithstanding the monstrous disasters he’s caused onscreen, he has become a metaphor for Earth’s mysteries and even a champion for the environment.
That’s essentially what Monarch: Legacy of Monsters aims to explore. This first season has seen the origins of this society through the inceptive work of three 1950s pioneers: physicist Dr. Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto), cryptozoologist Dr. Billy Randa (Anders Holm) and Army officer, Lieutenant (then Colonel) Leland Lafayette Shaw III (a role shared at different ages by Wyatt Russell and Kurt Russell).
However, before that happens, we meet Cate Randa (Anna Sawai). She’s a schoolteacher who is forced to travel to Japan to tie up loose ends of her presumably deceased father, Hiroshi Randa (Takehiro Hira). Imagine her surprise when in his apartment she discovers a half-brother, Kentaro (Ren Watabe) and a second wife she never knew her father had.
Beginning the series with a family mystery may have seemed a strange place to start a story eventually about a giant thunder lizard hiding in the bowels of the planet. But when we learn more about the work that Keiko, Billy and Lee Shaw do in the 1950s and 1960’s, we also learn more about the family legacy that Hiro Randa and his two children unravel. And we can’t help but get sucked down the rabbit hole in this compelling mystery.
The monsters just seem a bonus.
Monarch isn’t a malevolent organization, just a bit misunderstood. Secretive and operating in the shadows, we learn how it got this reputation over the decades because it initially misunderstands the role Titans play in our world.
The joy of this series lies in joinging the Monarch scientists on a journey of monster-understanding, not from a fear-based perspective but from a knowledge-based one. The big beasts fit into our world, even if they seem too big for it.
Kurt Russell, the definitive King of Geekculture films (Soldier, Big Trouble in Little China, The Thing, et. al.) asserts his title in this series. Sharing the role with his son, Wyatt, who plays the younger version of the character, the elder Russell hasn’t lost his pace. He plays the role of Colonel Leland (Lee) Shaw with as much action-packed vitality as he did in his younger days. His pedigree, talent and complete suitability for this part not only add entertainment value but also a sense of authenticity. I can’t think of anyone else who could fit this role. Snake Plisskin would approve.
The focus tends not to be on the monsters themselves, but rather their secret history. That history encompasses Japanese Kaiju origins (Monster Island, Atomic tests in Bikini Atoll), bits of The Right Stuff, covert ops action and even far-out ideas like cosmic radiation, other space phenomena, and inter-dimensional vortexes.
There’s are geek topics galore in this story, woven together so well that it should pleasantly surprise those expecting a simple Monster-Smash-City narrative.
There’s even a poke at the 2015 film in the fourth episode. See if you can spot it.
Part of this success is the involvement of accomplished comic book writer, Matt Fraction who is one of the developers of the series. Given that one of his successes in the comic world is reinventing franchises with new vitality and perspective (everything from Iron Man to Hawkeye to Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen), it makes sense that this show would work well.
Overall, it’s an eye-popping series that - like the gargantuan Titans who are hidden from our world – deserves more attention. If you haven’t seen it, the entire series thus far is available on Apple TV+ for bingeing.
And the series finale drops this Friday, January 12, with a resolution that not only will shock the audience, but will re-invent and re-assert Godzilla’s presence in the pop culture world in a way befitting the 21st Century.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. Cast: Kurt Russell, Wyatt Russell, Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Mari Yamamoto, Anders Holm, Joe Tippett, Elisa Lasowski. Now streaming on Apple TV+.