by Billy Russell, Staff Writer

Developed by Chris Black & Matt Fraction
Starring Anna Sawai, Ren Watabe, Wyatt Russell, Kurt Russell
All episodes streaming now on Apple TV+

The pitch for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters must have sounded too good to pass up for all parties involved. The pitch, I have to convince myself, went something like, “Sure, it’s set in the world of big beasts like Godzilla and King Kong, but at the end of the day, it’s a very human story.” All of us know that a monster movie is only as good as its human characters—if we don’t have that emotional connection, what’s the point? Why are we even watching? Mindless mayhem and destruction are boring distractions by themselves. But if we have that spark, that connection to the people running and fleeing on screen, we’re invested. We care so much about what happens.

The problem with Monarch is that it’s a series set in an exciting world, rife with monsters and danger, and almost solely focused on the most boring humans any show has to offer. It’s a show with “monsters” right there in the title, but decided to focus on human characters, without having any idea of what makes them interesting, or what makes them tick.

Monarch is about a broken family, broken over generations, from the past to the present, all in search of themselves. In the present, Cate Randa (Anna Sawai) is looking for her father, who went missing during the events of G-Day (which refers to Godzilla appearing in the 2015 film, carving a path of destruction through San Francisco). He is presumed dead, but she finds that he has an address in Tokyo. To her shock and horror, he has a second family in Japan. She and her half-brother Kentaro (Ran Watabe), follow a series of clues to find him. They believe that he’s not dead and is involved, somehow, with Godzilla and the appearance of other monsters.

Flashback to the past, and their grandmother Keiko (Mari Yamamoto) is one of the founders of the company Monarch, a sort of government contractor to study monsters and their habits to help predict when they may appear.

Lee Shaw, who is in both timelines, is played by Wyatt Russell in the flashbacks and by Kurt Russell in the present-day. He is the only character who’s fully developed. He has fears we understand. He’s relatable. He’s funny. He has good lines and zingers. Everyone else sort of reacts to the events going on in the series, logic be damned. And we often find them in global locations, wondering, “Why, exactly, are they here now?”

In the present-day plotline, Monarch recruits Cate and Kentaro to help find their dad, because they believe monster-hunting is “in their blood.” See, that kind of plotting is all well and good for a movie that knows how to have fun, or a kid’s movie, but Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is completely devoid of any sense of wonderment or fun. It’s a slog. A humorless, overly serious slog. Every millennial character is assembled on a factory line out of leftover cliches and broad, sweeping generalizations of an entire age-bracket. Every young character bops along to terrible music, while wearing big, obnoxious headphones, oblivious to danger occurring mere feet from them. Or they’re some other hackneyed characterization. These characters are to millennials as Austin Powers is to the 1960s… baby.

The Legendary Pictures “monsterverse” has had this problem since 2015’s Godzilla. These movies don’t understand the ratio of monsters to humans, or when and how to spend their screen time developing what aspect. The studio doesn’t want to sideline its human characters, but by setting them front and center and having no idea what to do with them, it feels like a solution looking for a problem. Just sit down, write a story, and everything will flow organically. “Story” here is a relative term, as it’s just a series of semi-connected events looking for meaning in a larger framework. It’s so sloppily assembled.

The overarching theme of the show is grappling with familial drama and various mommy and daddy issues, but these things feel like they were written by people from happy homes. The show doesn’t understand this kind of drama, so I don’t know why it has such a single-minded focus on it. Cate and Kentaro’s dad is like an insufferable Princess Peach—whenever they arrive to a location they know he’s at, it’s just in time to see him leave, giving zero shits about either of his kids from his two families. “Sorry, your dad is in another monster castle!” And by the time we finally get to meet him, he’s an unrepentant piece of shit, but the show doesn’t seem to understand this. It believes he’s “flawed,” sure, or maybe even “complicated.” Every single element here is so half-baked and ill-prepared, it makes me wonder why they even bothered.

Monarch wants to have the character nuance of a better show, like The Sopranos, where we see and love characters with huge, gaping flaws. It doesn’t earn this, though, so it never feels like “nuance” and instead feels like “tonal inconsistency.”

Focusing on family drama, but having no idea how it actually works, while keeping monster mayhem to a bare, bare, bare minimum—and I mean bare minimum, there’s about ten minutes total in a 10-part series—feels like some overzealous editor trimmed the fat in the wrong order. Instead of trimming out the fluff and leaving only the excitement, we’re left with nothing but fluff. Every set-up leads to a non-payoff. It’s all buildup with no climax. It’s like porn without the sex.

In the timeline that goes through the 1940s and 1950s, during the formation of Monarch, our team of scientists and military personnel study the first known monsters and trek around the globe in search of them. We see a smidge of this, and the rest of what we’re left with are the bureaucratic meetings discussing budget allocation. This show feels like being stuck inside on a rainy day and the only thing on TV is golf.

Monarch also believes, perhaps naively, that this is a cinematic universe that viewers understand as well as, say, Star Wars, or Marvel. It treats the timeline of events between American Godzilla movies like it’s sacred, like someone might refer to as “Between Empire and Jedi.” It believes that the name of the company itself, “Monarch,” is household and recognizable. I just don’t believe the kind of ardent fans for a series of movies that are totally fun, at best, even exist. I’m not sure who this show is made for.

And, of course, the ending leaves the door wide open for a second season. Sometimes all you can do while watching a show is to roll your eyes and make the jerk-off hand gesture at the TV.