Hello and welcome to a new episode of Stereo Geeks.
Today we're discussing Apple TV+'s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
I'm Mon.
And I'm Ron.
Let's talk about this show.
So we have 10 episodes of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
It's split into two timelines.
One is set in the 1950s, when the Titans are first spotted, and Monarch is being set up.
And the other is in 2015, after a Titan attack and the search for answers.
So let's delve a little bit deeper into what all this means, because you're probably wondering, who are the Titans?
So Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is a TV show, which is the latest installment in the Monsterverse franchise.
And to explain, the Monsterverse is this American franchise, and it's a shared fictional universe, something like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, if you like.
So this Monsterverse features Godzilla, King Kong, and a bunch of other characters who were originally created and owned by Toho Company Limited.
This franchise started with Godzilla, the movie in 2014, which starred Aaron Taylor Johnson.
Then we had Kong's Skull Island with Brie Larson and Tom Hiddleston, which I had no idea was connected to Godzilla, but it is.
Following which, we had Godzilla, King of the Monsters.
This is a direct sequel to the Godzilla movie.
This was starring Millie Bobby Brown.
And the sequel to that was Godzilla vs.
Kong, which I have not seen.
I didn't even know this movie existed, so this is news to me.
And Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is connected to all these films.
The next film is going to be Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.
That's coming out in 2024.
None of these are related to apparently the superior Godzilla movie, Godzilla Minus One.
We have not seen that yet.
It's on our list.
I have to admit, I'm a little bit confused because I thought all the promos were for the same TV show, and it turns out Godzilla Minus One is a movie.
I have to say, Godzilla is not like a thing that we follow.
He was, you could say, in the background of our childhood.
I remember us catching a few Godzilla movies or snippets here and there, but really he wasn't really a thing for us.
But we decided to watch this show after seeing a few of the promos.
It looked kind of interesting.
And well, surprisingly, the show was compelling.
We could not stop watching it.
I think it helps that you don't have to watch all the other movies to understand what's happening in this show.
In fact, in my opinion, some of the reveals were actually more exciting because I completely forgot what had happened in the movies I'd seen.
First episode in, I was hooked.
I don't know why I was hooked.
But I mean, one of the reasons could be the fact that it really does deal a lot with the aftermath of the G-Day disaster.
It's the day that Godzilla attacked San Francisco.
I've always found that very interesting.
How does humanity pick itself up from mass tragedy?
And then in the first episode, we find out about Hiroshi's double life.
Yeah, I needed to see more of that.
Honestly, this show is unpredictable in so many ways, not always in good ways, but it keeps you guessing and really keeps you wanting more.
So let's get into some of the negatives.
The show is so inconsistent with storytelling.
Is Monarch good?
Is it bad?
When did Monarch actually begin?
Even that's up for debate.
Like they say one date at one point and somebody else is convinced it's another date.
Very confusing.
Also, please explain why Hiroshi made the life choices that he did.
10 episodes, we still don't have an answer.
And let's not even get into what's actually happening in the show.
I can't say I understood most of what was going on on screen.
And I don't believe I understood people's motivations either.
I know this is a fictional fantastical show about kaiju and monsters.
Even then, I would like the science to make some modicum of sense.
I can't say it did.
Maybe because of the unpredictable nature of the story and the characters especially, I was just like, you know what?
It's inconsistent and some of the actions are beyond belief.
But this is riveting stuff.
I want to see more of what's happening.
And I also like to say that I love how this show goes back to the Japanese roots of this character.
When I say this character, I mean Godzilla.
He's the main character, come on.
A lot of stuff when it gets commentated by the US, they kind of forget its origins or its roots.
So it's nice that Godzilla or in the original Japanese pronunciation, Gojira, its heritage is actually acknowledged in this show.
That being said, the Titans, the monsters of the title, aside from Godzilla, I was not that impressed with the other designs.
With Godzilla, I love the scale of this monster.
Apparently, it's even better in Godzilla minus one.
I can't wait to watch that movie.
But in this one, especially, you feel the scale, you feel the fear and this rippling design of this creature.
The others, I don't know, they just look like very poor knockoffs.
For me, I wasn't really thinking that much about the science or the inconsistencies.
I was really going with the flow because, like, you have a very innocuous start.
You have Kate, played by Anna Sawai, basically going to Japan from San Francisco, and she's going to settle her father's estate because he's been declared dead.
And when she goes there, she finds that he's got another wife and a child.
And her newly found brother, Kentaro, played by Ren Watabe, his immediate animosity towards Kate.
I really enjoyed watching that because that is a very natural reaction.
He's angry at his father.
His father is not here.
He's apparently dead.
He's going to take it out on the first person he can, and that's Kate.
And it was such a great foil to his mother's desire to know her husband's other child.
So for me, on the one hand, I was a bit upset that we didn't see as much of a Godzilla.
Ten episodes and maybe three or four glimpses.
The last episode, though, was outstanding.
Oh, my God.
But this is the kind of stuff that kept me riveted.
And the other thing that I really liked was Kate's response to G-Day.
She completely shuts down, which is, again, a very natural reaction because we realize, and it takes a couple of episodes, they don't show it immediately.
We just know that something bad happened to her.
All her students died.
She was the only one who got off the school bus and she watched all of them die.
That's not something that you can just bounce back from.
This trip to Japan is literally the first time in a long time that Kate is being human.
And then we learn, again, this is also slowly eeked out, that it wasn't just her students that she lost.
It looks like she also lost her girlfriend, who she was cheating on.
Like father, like daughter, apparently.
Yeah, I have to say, I really like the younger actors in this show.
Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, and especially Ren Watabe.
They really held their own and carried the show.
Sawai, I felt like she was so sweet and she was so emotional as Kate.
And you really feel for this character, who's been through so much.
And she faces an even more ridiculous circumstance in the very first episode.
She thought surviving a literal monster attack would be the worst thing she ever faced in her life.
Well, wait till you get to Japan.
Talking about Kiersey Clemons, her May is such an anomalous character here.
Honestly, at first, I thought she's just a tech person.
You always have the tech person in these monster movies.
But then we kind of slowly find out that May and Kentaro were in a pretty strong romantic relationship.
She's learned Japanese while she's been there.
And then May just starts revealing that she's got all these secrets.
She's not telling us what secrets, but there are a lot of secrets.
And these are the kind of things that will get her killed.
And everybody around her as well.
Unlocking those truths about May, there's an entire episode that's dedicated to that.
That's how important a character she is.
It really kept me riveted.
But I would say that once those secrets are revealed, I felt like May kind of faded into the background.
She didn't have as much to do.
But the show still tries to keep some kind of a focus on her.
Because then she kind of becomes the love interest for Kit.
Yeah, I've seen Clemence in a few other places, and I've never been all that impressed by her.
But I really dug this performance of hers as May.
She's really someone who's no nonsense.
She's also scared, she's angry, she's kind of lost.
And then it becomes this really sweet kind of thing between her and Kate, where they're always looking for each other and trying to help each other out, and it's really, really adorable.
Oh yeah, that was just so cute.
I really like the fact that, you know, there's romantic chemistry between the actors, and any other show, they might have just ignored it.
But I was kind of relieved that the show just went with it and said, okay, fine, these two have great chemistry, let them be a couple.
It sucks for Kentaro though.
But there's a love triangle in the past as well.
Yeah, see, this is where the story issues come in, because it wasn't until Kate and May have this really sweet moment, not a romantic moment, but it's the start of one, that you realize, oh, this is the start of a love triangle.
Oh, they're paralleling something from 1950.
A better writing team would have made that connection more seamless, and not just that connection.
It would have been throughout the show with other parts of the story.
But I really want to talk about Ren Watabe.
To me, he was the star of this show.
I also think he got a lot to do.
Kintaro is really the emotional core of the story.
He also goes off alone on several occasions.
Those are stupid decisions, but you know, that's focusing only on him.
So I found that he was carrying a lot on his shoulders on his own.
He was really excellent and really understated as well.
I genuinely would love to see more of him in Hollywood, but I do not know.
But yeah, these young folks, really, really good.
Let's go to the storylines in the past.
So we've got Keiko, who is a Japanese scientist.
She meets Lee Shaw, played by Wyatt Russell, and Will Randa, played by Anders Holm.
Now this is where the other love triangle comes in.
I have to say they didn't have as much chemistry as the three in 2015.
Honestly, the romance makes no sense in this show.
It's absolutely bizarre.
Like, who's in love with whom?
Why?
How do the timelines on some of these romances even work?
Why is X kissing Y when they were actually marrying Z?
I don't understand what is happening.
Weird, weird, weird.
Yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Keiko is an amazing character.
Like, she was my favorite on this show.
She is formidable.
She's smart.
She's also really passionate about her work, and especially to protect the Titans.
I really liked that about her.
She doesn't want to blow the Titans up.
She doesn't just see them as a threat.
She sees them as a whole bunch of other creatures who have been happily living side by side with humanity and she wants to protect them and learn from them.
Mari Yamamoto was really good as Keiko, but I think she needed more story.
I feel like she got the emotional angles, and yes, her passion for her work and these creatures was great, but I just felt like she needed to be more of a doer.
Well, there's a reason why she didn't get as much story as we would have liked, and that's kind of something that happens in the very first episode.
And the rest of the season, I felt like it subsumed the fun science stuff that Keiko was doing with the Keiko-Lee-Billy love triangle in a way that added a layer of complexity to their interactions, but I'm still struggling to understand why Keiko got with Billy at all.
He seems to be a bit thick to me.
No offense, but I was wholly unconvinced by Anders Holm, who plays Billy Rander in this show.
Not sure what vibe he was going for.
I mean, it's kind of explained in the last episode, but at the same time, throughout the show, I'm like, he seems to be on a different plane than the rest of the show characters, so I was just not interested in watching this character at all.
But I love the casting choice of Wyatt and Kurt Russell playing the same character at two different ages.
I'll admit, the Nippo baby conversation comes into the fray here, but it was still a lot of fun to watch.
I don't know about you, though.
For me, it does put a spotlight on how Wyatt lacks the charisma of his dad.
I mean, I'm not even the biggest Kurt Russell fan here, though we did watch a lot of Tango and Cash's Kids, so that might explain a lot.
But even then, I'm like, Kurt Russell just has this presence, and he's so good.
And then whenever it was Wyatt, it's like, okay, yeah, he's doing his thing, but oh, no, let's bring Kurt back on the screen.
Honestly, I really liked watching the Russells.
It was so unexpected.
And I love the...
Obviously, the camera did these things where you're looking at one person's face and then you go to the other ones.
But there was such synergy between their characters.
I really was very impressed by that.
And yes, I agree.
Wyatt doesn't quite have the charisma of his dad, but you can kind of see why Keiko liked him.
And you can kind of see why the young people in 2015 just follow Lee Shaw, even though they don't know who he is, they don't know his connection to their dad.
They just go with him.
But there's just something about Kurt Russell.
His Lee Shaw is just so scarily driven and he's almost like way too enthusiastic and funny and jolly, but at the most inopportune moment, like everybody is terrified around him and he's like, oh my god, this is amazing what's happening.
What?
No, we are almost going to die.
But I loved watching him.
Yeah, I think, you know, when you're watching somebody like that, who's got just so many levels to his performance, the way his face lights up and he sees this particular person and other times when he knows something and he doesn't want to reveal it or he's like a little bit scared, but again, Macho Guy doesn't want to reveal that.
You see that and then you've got all these characters in Monarch.
They were the weakest link for me.
Everybody, I know they were doing a good job, but they just were so dull.
All those performances were so dull.
The characters were so dull.
But that final scene in the finale though, huh?
I'm not even that invested in the Monsterverse and I got so excited.
Bring on season two.
Honestly, this is the kind of show where you come for the titans, but you stay for the human drama.
And with that ending, we need a season two.
And that's it from us talking about Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
Let us know how you like the show.
See you next time.
Ron: You can find us on Twitter @Stereo_Geeks. Or send us an email [email protected]. We hope you enjoyed this episode. And see you next week!
Mon: The Stereo Geeks logo was created using Canva. The music for our podcast comes courtesy Audionautix.