Fortunately, the lead actors — particularly Sawai, Yamamoto, and the Russells — are uniformly skilled at wielding the show’s secret weapon, a sense of profound yearning thank links one person to another, whether their connection is familiar or romantic in nature. The dynamic in the past between Mari, Bill, and Lee, three people who love each other but who can never properly resolve that love since a romantic pairing is only possible between two of them at a time, is sophisticated, heartbreaking, and acted with both tenderness and humor.At times, this group is asked to take on material that isn’t at their level: big gobs of “I’m going back, it’s what he would have done for us” genre-movie motivation, say, or an underwritten scene in which Cate and Hiroshi finally address his bigamy that should have been emotionally riveting. When that happens, you feel the disconnect between their abilities and the script.

I suppose having a cast strong enough to expose the occasional weakness is one of them good problems, however. Certainly you see the advantages of a cast this stacked come through in the character work: Young Lee’s petulant sneer when Kei cracks a dirty joke about Bill, Kei’s mesmeric connections with both men, Cate wrestling with how her Monarch experiences have completely uprooted her from the world. Sawaii makes it feel like Cate’s quest to rescue Lee is less a matter of hero-of-the-story bravado and more a desperate woman clinging to a man who’s been her literal lifeline. 

And the monsters! Man, this show has not disappointed there. In addition to Kong and the trilobites and (presumably) Biollante, there’s a giant bat thing that barfs electricity, a huge rat monster Kentaro kills with a forklift, and one of those cool giant ram/boar/rhino things whose hides are protected by a layer of trees and plants and giant thorns. Monarch’s thought process for creating and deploying new monsters and Titans appears to be “Hey, you know what would be cool?”, and so far their answers have been correct. The result isn’t a perfect show, but it’s certainly a fun one.

I’m covering Monarch: Legacy of Monsters for Decider again this season, starting with my review of today’s premiere. Woo!

I really, really, really want to call attention to the score by composer Leopold Ross in this scene. Director Andy Goddard, working off a script from showrunner Chris Black, lets the moment linger. He pretty much just points the camera at the two actors and lets them cook. But Ross’s score fills in the blanks. It’s a woozy, swooning, repetitive series of two notes, like a deep inhale and a deep exhale. Taken in tandem with the radiant acting of Russell and Yamamoto and the dreamlike background provided by the strange neither-here-nor-there fauna of the so-called “axis mundi” between our world and that of the titans into which they’ve fallen, it feels like a dream you might have of reuniting with someone you once loved, finding yourself as you are and them as they were, and all you have to share is sadness. I loved it.

I reviewed the season finale of Monarch for Decider.

No, don’t worry, I won’t bury the lede: This week’s episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters ends with a hero shot of actor Mari Yamamoto wielding a bow and arrow. In other news, I’m pregnant!

Certainly one of the great discoveries of this strangely sophisticated Godzilla TV show for American audiences is a woman who looks like she should be photographed by the same people as Marlene Dietrich, and that’s no doubt what I’m responding to. I’m kind of over the whole character you thought was dead comes back as a survivalist badass thing to be frank; that would not be “strangely sophisticated,” if you were wondering. But this character, who as the only major participant on the losing side of the first atomic war is the heart of the old Monarch enterprise, and this actor, who handled complicated romantic material with both of her leading men so adroitly…well, by all means, hand her Legolas’s gear and see what she can do.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Monarch for Decider.

Some of the best, sweetest, sexiest, most convincing romantic storytelling being done on TV this year is happening on — get this — Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. I know! I didn’t see it coming either! But first with May and Kentaro, then with Kei and Lee, and now with Kei and Billy, this show has given the blossoming of romance the kind of casual intimacy and heat that makes you crave the stuff in the first place. That this week’s expert demonstration of yearning and desire involves the younger version of a crackpot character played by John Goodman and eaten by a monster in a film called Kong: Skull Island is part of the fun.

I reviewed this week’s Monarch for Decider.

In short, this is good stuff, written and acted and directed (by Hiromi Kamata) by people who believe this goofy science-fantasy universe can be used to tell human stories that are actually compelling, not just quote-unquote human, and who work with full commitment to this idea. I’m not ready to use the A-word as an overall comparison just yet, but no doubt about it: That’s Andor-coded behavior.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Monarch for Decider.

Now look here, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: I came here for giant monsters. What gives you the right to spring a Mad Men–style storyline about explosive romantic chemistry in the workplace and the way desire can cause us to lose the things we hold dearest? On top of a bunch of totally awesome shots of Godzilla doing cool shit? At least give me a heads up next time!

I reviewed this week’s terrific episode of Monarch for Decider.

That’s the other thing: The whole concept of people who go into the ruins, collect photos and stuffed animals and other personal effects rather than valuables, and attempt to contact their owners to return them is just one of the artifacts of post-Godzilla life that crop up tantalizingly this episode. There’s the airport signage admonishing travelers to “respect the authority of ALL first responders,” the kind of uptick in low-grade authoritarianism you might expect in the aftermath of a literal monster attack. There are the underground bunkers for rich “tech bros” our heroes see advertised on airport TV. There’s the economy of state violence and military graft that determines who can and can’t trespass in the forbidden zone. There’s the constant drumbeat of denialism, of people who think it’s all a hoax to “burst the real-estate bubble,” as one kid puts it.  It’s all thoughtful, even provocative stuff.

Then there’s my favorite moment of all, one of the scariest split seconds of television in a long time. After an administrator admonishes Cate to take the warnings about the titans seriously and then departs, another woman is briefly seen running down the hall just before we cut away from this flashback. We know why: She’s seen what’s coming, and she’s about to tell a classroom full of children that their death awaits them. The show doesn’t lean on this at all, doesn’t even draw your attention to it. It’s just…there, hidden in the background by director Mairzee Almas. 

It’s a little uncomfortable texture in a world that, based on this episode, benefits from uncomfortable textures greatly. If Monarch can get to the Andor point, where you don’t need to be bombarded with capital-F Franchise stuff to feel what it’s like to live in that Franchise’s world…well, let’s not count our MUTOs before they’re hatched.

I reviewed today’s episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters for Decider.

I can’t remember who, but someone once said that a title like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is more than a title, it’s a promise. In that light, I expect a show called Monarch: Legacy of Monsters to do certain things. So I’m really not sure where I come down on “Parallels and Interiors,” the show’s knowingly pretentiously titled fourth episode. On the one hand, you have an effectively sketched-out romance between characters with believable chemistry. On the other hand, there’s only one monster, and it’s not even a new one or a famous one. I’m not sure that’s a trade I’m comfortable making.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Monarch for Decider. The inclusion of a strong, sexy, convincing romance storyline marks a turning point for the season, though I didn’t know this at the time I wrote the review. Stay tuned!

It can be a cheap trick for a popcorn flick or its TV equivalent to mine real-world tragedy for pathos. It’s so easy for the relative tastelessness of that kind of entertainment, much as I love so much of it, to read as defilement of something that should be held sacred. When it goes wrong, it does so in spectacular fashion: Marvel attributing the authorship of Hiroshima to one of its Eternals, say, or Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer” playing over the memorial for Emmett Till in Lovecraft Country. 

These are not accusations you can level at any project in the Godzilla franchise. Godzilla is inextricably linked to the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki specifically, and to the threats of nuclear war and environmental devastation generally. So when the third episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters depicts a Japanese woman trying to physically stop the detonation of a nuclear bomb while screaming in terror and grief, all I can do is respect it. With a paraphrase of “My God, what have I done,” writer Andrew Colville and director Julian Holmes underline what’s really going on here, though they respect you enough to catch it without anyone bringing up Dr. Keiko Miura’s nationality. In this franchise, they shouldn’t have to.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Monarch for Decider.

What a difference a dragon makes, huh? There’s a lot I find misjudged and misguided in Apple TV+‘s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters at this early stage, but they got at least this much right: They ended their two-episode series premiere with a huge berserk reptilian creature emerging from the wreck of a sunken World War II battleship that’s now on land for some reason. After all, this is not Monarch: Legacy of America’s Next Top Best Friend. There’s a promise the show makes with its very title, and it knows it has to deliver.

I’m not sure it’s delivering on much else at the moment, unfortunately. Once again written by co-developer and showrunner Chris Black and directed by Matt Shakman, this episode (“Departure”) is not, as I’d hoped, all delivery after the first episode’s setup. It’s basically more of the same.

I reviewed the second episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters for Decider.

The MonsterVerse is a mixed bag. As an official welding together of the big screen’s two biggest giant-monster icons, Godzilla and King Kong, it mostly does what it needs to do, i.e. toss giant monsters at each other and get out of the way. But there’s a pretty wide range of quality in terms of the movies surrounding those monster fights. Kong: Skull Island is a charmingly berserk adventure-movie throwback, with a fun cast of memorable little characters. This puts it head and shoulders above the three Godzilla-led entries in the series, in which the characters range from inert to inane. But there are some truly awe-inspiring, almost cosmic monster visuals in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and Godzilla vs. Kong has the lizard/ape action you crave. 

The biggest disappointment in the series is its opening entry, 2014’s Godzilla, for two reasons. First, it hides its monster effects by staging its fights at night, an annoying maneuver also employed by Pacific Rim. Second, it fails completely to deliver on the horror promised by the Bryan Cranston–heavy trailer (not least by killing off Bryan Cranston after the second reel). One of the reasons the subsequent entry, Kong, feels so strong is because it does just the opposite: It focuses squarely on its best actors, roots itself in horror with genuinely gruesome kills, and shows us its titans clashing in glorious broad daylight.

So there’s a template to be followed for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, the new TV show set in the MonsterVerse — a set of Giant Radioactive Do’s and Don’t’s already established by the franchise. What approach will showrunner Chris Black, who developed the show with Matt Fraction, wind up taking?

I’m covering the new Godzilla TV show Monarch: Legacy of Monsters for Decider, starting with my review of the first episode. It has its moments.

It’s unlike me, but with Monarch I banked all the reviews I could in advance, so I’ve seen and reviewed the first eight episodes. My initial reviews won’t reflect it, but the show does get much better as it goes. The material centered on romance and on Godzilla himself is very strong by the end. The Russells are as good as you’d expect and Mari Yamamoto is really something.