Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

I've been saying for quite some time now that I think Apple TV Plus is one of the best streaming services out there. The cost is relatively low compared to many other streaming plans and given the budget that Apple has, they are putting out some really awesome content. Big name stars, mostly well written episodes, and fairly decent production value.

@mypathtofire might argue a couple of those points given his experience watching "Invasion", but I've seen him review some other stuff from Apple TV Plus and it has been pretty favorable.

@mrsbozz and I were watching "Lessons in Chemistry" (which is fantastic) and I happened to see the commercial for "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters". I didn't really know what it was about, but it looked cool, so I decided to give it a shot.

Little did I know, "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" was about Godzilla. More specifically, the people impacted and hunting Godzilla. In fact, I had a feeling it was going to be one of those shows where they shaved the budget by never actually showing Godzilla, but boy was I wrong.

I've gotta be honest, I have never really been into Godzilla. Lore in general is something that tends to bore me, I don't usually care how something originated or the history behind it, but Monarch presents the Godzilla story in a way that is engaging and leaves you ready for more after each episode.

Monarch fits into the recent cinematic universe that has been revived as of late. They actually call it the "Monsterverse" and it is pretty clear they have a planned roadmap for all of it.

In case you are wondering, I haven't seen any of the movies and I was able to follow along with Monarch pretty easily. I did have to Google a few things to make some of the puzzle pieces fit, but once I did that, everything kind of made sense.

Monarch jumps back and forth between a couple of timelines. One of them takes place before the events of Kong: Skull Island. The other timeline (same universe) takes place after the events of the 2014 Godzilla movie. Beyond the first season of Monarch, you then have 2019's Godzilla: King of the Monsters, 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong, and the forthcoming Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire coming out later this year.

I'm not saying all the special effects are top notch in this, but I have said before that I am willing to suspend belief at the expense of entertainment. I know some people aren't able to do that (my wife for example).

While a bit disjointed at first, I found you really start caring for the characters. Plus, it has Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt Russell, so that is cool. They are really sort of minor characters though. The real stars of the show in my opinion are Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, and Mari Yamamoto. All of which I have never heard of before watching this show.

Monarch is one of those rare instances where the more I read about it, the more I started to get engrossed in it. It's also one of the rare cases that I couldn't wait until all the episodes were out before watching them. I had to wait for a new one to come out each week.

I remember when I was a little kid I used to watch the old Godzilla movies that were on in the middle of the day. I never really paid too much attention to the plot as I was more focused on the large monster smashing things.

Circling back now and watching these shows where they go in depth into the fact that Godzilla's radiation actually heals the Earth and other concepts like that is pretty cool.

If you looked really hard, you might be able to find some kind of woke agenda about the delicate balance of Earth and how humans are destroying it, but from what I could see, you really have to look to find it. Definitely much less than some other shows I have seen in the past couple of years.

I haven't looked into it too much yet, but I really hope that Apple TV Plus does a second season of Monarch. The show deserves it, the fans deserve it.

You need to check this one out! Even if you aren't a fan of monster movies. It's just that good.