Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters review: A surprisingly good Godzilla series

In movies where there are big, cool things (dinosaurs, Transformers, etc.) and also regular little humans, it’s safe to assume that the humans will always, always, always be less interesting than a big, cool thing. That’s not to say that any movie with a dinosaur is better than any movie without one, but if a movie has a dinosaur, everyone’s going to be more interested in seeing the dinosaur than the dinosaur’s human friends. That, naturally, also applies to Legendary and Warner Bros.’ series of “MonsterVerse” movies, which have featured loads of very talented/famous actors—Ken Watanabe, Bryan Cranston, Brie Larson, Tom Hiddleston, Charles Dance, Millie Bobby Brown—but only really pop when there’s a monster onscreen doing cool monster stuff.

And yet, paradoxical as it may be, the people are actually fun to follow in Apple TV+’s MonsterVerse spin-off Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters, which premieres November 17. And Godzilla is in the show! You get to see Godzilla every few episodes! And other monsters! This isn’t one of those TV shows that doesn’t have monsters, so you have no choice but to pay attention to what the humans are doing. This is a show that has monsters, and yet the humans and their little human plots are the more propulsive narrative force.

Even better is the fact that, while that may sound like damning with faint praise, it’s not. The show is good—surprisingly good—in a way that occasionally surpasses the stuff you see in the movies. For example, Millie Bobby Brown being Godzilla’s friend in Godzilla: King Of The Monsters was a narrative contrivance, like the movie just needed someone on the human side who could root for the lizard. Most of Monarch’s humans, though, offer a more grounded take on the human perspective, like Anna Sawai’s Cate, who was left deeply traumatized after witnessing the destruction of San Francisco in the 2014 Godzilla movie.

Seeing what life is like for regular people in a world where Godzilla exists is a great hook for a TV show, and there’s a lot of interesting stuff on that topic in Monarch (like designated Godzilla shelters in Tokyo or a sequence set in the ruins of San Francisco that frames the broken remains of the Golden Gate Bridge like a perpetual monument to mankind’s worthlessness in the face of Godzilla). It gradually stops being about that, since there’s a few conspiracies to untangle and mysteries to solve, but it’s a credit to the basic appeal of a world where Godzilla exists that the show itself doesn’t stop being interesting when it shifts away from that fascinating small-stakes perspective.

Speaking of shifting perspectives, it’s going to be hard to ever talk about Monarch without talking about its much-publicized split-timeline gimmick, where some of the show takes place in the ’50s at the birth of Monarch—a government organization built around hunting monsters—and the rest takes place shortly after the events of the 2014 Godzilla, with Wyatt Russell playing the ’50s version of a man named Lee Shaw and Kurt Russell playing the more modern-day version of the same guy. That’s also a great hook, though it does raise some questions about how old Kurt Russell’s version of Shaw is supposed to be (questions that the show lampshades from time to time, with characters noting that Shaw should be in his 90s even though he doesn’t look it).

The two Russells are predictably great, though it takes a bit for Wyatt to liven up. By the time both versions of Shaw are introduced, it’s clear that they’re having some fun with the role—and it’s even more clear that Kurt is just kind of playing a regular Kurt Russell character while Wyatt is having to work a little harder to play Kurt Russell as a young and uptight military man (which is not a regular Kurt Russell character these days).

Both the past and present storylines are centered around a trio of main characters, both of which feature a love triangle of sorts (though the dynamics are more interesting than that would imply). In the past we have Russell’s Shaw (a soldier initially appointed to oversee monster research), Mari Yamamoto’s Keiko (a Japanese monster researcher who doesn’t get taken seriously because of her race, gender, and area of expertise), and Anders Holm’s Bill Randa (a young version of the character John Goodman plays in Kong: Skull Island).

Holm is the liveliest one of the bunch, playing Randa as bit of a himbo who nevertheless charms the hell out of Keiko—much to Shaw’s chagrin, though the three end up loving each other so damn much after spending a few minutes together on their first adventure that it wouldn’t be a huge twist to reveal that they were all sleeping together.

In the present, Sawai’s Cate is mostly the lead and does most of the interesting work, but her buddies (Kiersey Clemons’ May and Ren Watabe’s Kentaro) never feel like a waste of space. They both also have their own stories going on, but to say more would be a spoiler. The short version is that nobody here is just a regular person in a world where Godzilla exists for very long.

Hopping between the timelines gives Monarch a lot of opportunities for stories that mirror each other, with a thing happening in the past that is relevant or similar to a thing happening in the future. But the timelines aren’t switched often enough for it to feel like a cheap gimmick—like, say, the flashback plots in Arrow that often perfectly lined up with relevant information for whatever was going on in the present. In fact, even with the double-Russell gimmick (which is fun enough to let its obvious gimmick-ness slide), the split timeline premise just feels like an organic part of the narrative.

One issue that Monarch does have, and one that will surely be more grating for weekly viewers who didn’t get half of the whole season ahead of time, is that things can drag a bit. The show is very much in love with the idea of its globe-trotting mystery, where the characters go from Japan to Alaska to Africa over the course of a few episodes, that sometimes not enough things happen to justify the time spent in or going to those places. Or the reverse, where so much time is spent going to a place or talking about doing a thing at a place that a major plot event just kind of happens and everyone quickly moves to the next thing.

But no matter what’s going on, or whether Monarch is dragging its feet a little, this is still a show where, if you wait a couple of minutes, Godzilla will show up. Or someone will say “remember when we saw Godzilla?” or there will be an anti-Godzilla commercial airing on a TV in the background. Yes, the humans and their interesting human stories are compelling, but it will always be better to see Godzilla than to not see Godzilla. That’s just how it works.

Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters premieres November 17 on Apple TV+