The MonsterVerse expands as Apple renews Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters

Conventional wisdom would say that Godzilla is simply too big for television, that his massive frame, beefy legs, and blood-curdling screech would push LCD screens to the limit with his incredible power. Well, conventional wisdom has once again been proven wrong—dead wrong. Apple TV+ has renewed Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters for a second season of Kurt and Wyatt Russell hijinx.

Despite its mealy-mouthed title, Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters
was far better than we had anticipated, particularly the human drama. Set one year after Gareth
Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla and the mid-century emergence of the Titans, the show used its period
trimmings to pass itself off as a prestige monster TV. Though confusing
temporally (just how old is Kurt Russell supposed to be on this show?),
the human characters were the hardest sell on the show. It can’t be 10 episodes of Monster Smash, which is part of the reason there was
some apprehension surrounding a serialized live-action Godzilla TV show.
It’s hard enough for audiences to engage with humans in a two-hour
movie. Now we’re expected to care about them for an hour every week for
10 weeks? Well, they did, and now we’re expected to care for another 10
weeks.

Of course, this comes as little surprise, even to conventional wisdom havers. Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, a buddy comedy that forces viewers to reckon with King Kong wearing a power glove in order to start the empire nouveau, has enjoyed two weeks atop the domestic box office and grossed more than $367 million. The other Godzilla movie released in the last six months, Godzilla Minus One, is the highest-grossing live-action Japanese film in U.S. box office history and the first Godzilla film to win an Oscar. So yeah, it’s safe to say that the world is more on board with the big green machine than ever.