G-Watch: Monarch TV Series (2023-2024)

I did not expect my viewing of a show about Godzilla and Kurt and Wyatt Russell to turn into a hate-watch, but here we are.

My understanding is that there are enthusiastic viewers of this show, and, if I'm being honest, one of the things I've enjoyed about being a somewhat sideline Godzilla fan over the years is that the fanbase is pretty chipper about all forms and takes on Godzilla. There's no shock it would extend to this show. Maybe they're not as critical about film as they could be, but I was not going to be the guy to point out that maybe Destroy All Monsters is not going to double-bill with Citizen Kane.*

And it is a great time to have a general fondness for Godzilla. The movie in 2021 from Legendary was super fun, Minus One and Shin Godzilla are actual think-pieces, the shorts Toho put out are perfectly recreating what I like about pre-2000 Godzilla. I keep finding funny Japanese shorts aimed at kids with the monsters in-character and adorable and insane. And if I'm being candid, there's a hurricane of affordable (and less-affordable) Godzilla merch out there right now.

When Apple+ and Legendary announced Monarch, I was ambivalent. To me, the track record of the Monsterverse is not amazing, and I am decidedly less enthused about the existence of Monarch in those films than other fans. It's my opinion that the execution has, overall, been inconsistent and sloppy across the few movies they've put out. And, after several episodes, it seems the raison d'être for Monarch as a show was to paper over the bad continuity. Which, as every DC Comics fan should know, is actually just going to make things worse.

And, indeed, it did!

This show had every opportunity to be something good and, despite having the Russells, Godzilla, multiple financially successful films and 70 years of Godzilla in their pocket - managed to be a wildly disappointing mess about the least pleasant young people on the planet. Those people are not part of Monarch, by the way.

I cannot begin to guess what the creators were thinking, but someone needed to read a draft of this before it went to production, and someone else needed to check the casting to see if they were getting three leads who would choose to deliver every line like they were all very cross with the Doordash guy.

This show was already unnecessary padding between big, goofy movies that were clearly not well stitched together. But now it's decided what the show *really* wants to be about is... holes.

Which, you know, if you have people showing up to enjoy the exciting world where, like, Baragon could really fuck up your commute, what I want to spend time on is, obviously "yes, but what if holes?". Which Godzilla: King of the Monsters already set-up and explained completely in about two minutes by jumping on "hollow Earth theory",** so we all basically got it. And then they showed it, in detail, in the very expensive movie that paid for Rebecca Hall's new Mercedes.

What's really wild is - this is essentially just Sid and Marty Kroft's Land of the Lost, and someone owes them a dollar.

What the Monarch show did not show was... Monarch. What are they doing around the events of 2014? Before? During? After? What's their deal? Well, 10 episodes later, no idea. Where did they get the giant planes and undersea mega-bases we saw in Godzilla: King of the Monsters? It's a secret. How do they operate as an international authority that apparently can rendition people on Japanese soil but nobody ever heard of them? Or break into homes in Japan and make demands? Fuck you for asking. Why is the head of Monarch constantly insistent they do nothing? We're not going to say - but, man, she has great hair. Why did they shove Kurt Russell into a rest home as the one guy who survived, and could tell them something about the very thing they were researching? And would be what we call a Subject Matter Expert IRL?

If he's been in cozy jail, how did he know a guy in South Korea? One who would help him escape? Why did he decide to break out now, when it was so obviously easy and do-able?

Look - this is just sloppy writing. And, yes, I know - it's the human story in a franchise about giant lizards and the giant apes who love them, but getting this right at the script stage is the cheap part. And I feel like something just got away from them. Utterly and completely got away, and whatever it was, it just ran off, past the hills and over a cliff.

Maybe it was supposed to just be bits of this, initially, and focus on the 1950's portion over a few episodes. That was the most engaging part, after all. But instead we got the modern portion with the three absolutely-not-Monarch characters just killing time and globe-trotting pursuing the Macguffin that was the same dad both kids just swore they hated. And none of it really pushed anything forward, character wise or plot wise, beyond giving the audience signs saying "now go to Korea. Now go to Alaska". The event just kind of kept unspooling, managing to never make you really give a shit about any of these characters, who showed no curiosity about the actual monsters, worm holes, or the amazing world in which they now lived.

I don't say this lightly - the three modern-day young adults are may be the worst characters I've ever seen on television. And I watch some pretty dumb TV.

Part of having characters anyone is going to give a shit about is that they seem to rise to the occasion, and care about something other than themselves when presented with larger problems, and they ducking do not do that. They are carried along, complaining at every step. I was praying to Godzilla that Kurt Russell would stop everything and tell them to grow up or he was ditching them.

All three leads vacillate wildly, unpredictably and free of motivation - a thing the show thinks is for cowards. So: why are we supposed to care about these people at all? We're following them because they are the people on the show. not because anyone behind the camera gave us a reason.

Look, both the script and acting choices were lazy at best and juvenile at worst. Near as I can tell, our three youthful leads were never told that "pissy angry" is the laziest go-to for a line read. Nor did the showrunners realize that all three of them hitting that same note for 10 episodes was going to be... bad. The end result is that the characters just come across as whiny and spoiled rather than traumatized or dealing with grief - and while I know why Monsterverse wants to acknowledge the grief one would feel after monsters killed everyone you know, how many movies and shows are going to be a eulogy in this series about atomic monsters doing a suplex?

Further, if Monarch is a Federal agency, it is wildly more likely they would have just put these kids in an office park somewhere and kept them fed until they sorted out what was going on while lawyers looked into how to fuck them up for life. What we do see of Monarch is alternately confusing and looks like an uninteresting, inept bureaucracy that's SHIELD-level massive and made no progress since Randa died.

Unfortunately for this show, Godzilla Minus One hit in the middle of Monarch's release and was like "you want to see what dealing with grief vis-a-vis Godzilla looks like? Hold my atomic beer." And, hey, it managed to use that story to tell a compelling, heart-wrenching story. In a tight two hours. So it can be done without feeling tedious to the audience.

Like I say, the 1950's part is the far more tolerable part of the show where a fiery, sexy Japanese scientist is partnered with Wyatt Russell as her personal protection, while also being paired romantically with a dork who will one day be John Goodman in Kong: Skull Island. And while I think they could have expanded this quite a bit, the show turned out to not really be about these characters. For reasons.

There's maybe three or four good scenes in the show, and they mostly happen in the first three episodes, and all in the 1950's sequence. At the end of the 9th when Grandma predictably shows up with a bow and arrow, I was giggling. By the 10th episode, I was literally laughing watching the little transdimensional travel bubble bobble around on screen like a 1950's movie effect. It was... bad.

Like, look, I get it. This was about people. And I am sure the show believed it was doing something very clever with the "secrets of people = secret world under the one you think you know". But, no. You made a boring show about boring characters in a world with Godzilla and King Kong at the middle of it.

All I really wanted was to see what Monarch was and did, and this was not that. This was a show about everyone refusing to say what Monarch actually does and is, stalling for time between movies and trying to make Apex a thing. It's a weird, Monarch-shaped hole in the middle of the show that they wanted to be about... secrets or something. And bad dads. And stealing your brother's amazingly lame girlfriend.

And, of course, pointing out how much Wyatt Russell looks like his dad.

Btw, Monsterverse and Apple+ - your best character was Tim. By a country mile. That should have been your POV character, and you know it.

*btw, the arrival of Godzilla Minus One has certainly put a rift in the fanbase, with a portion cheering for the Monsterverse, a different portion cheering for Minus One, and the rest of us saying "shut up and enjoy the wealth of Godzilla, you fools".

**somewhere the ghost of Art Bell is furious he's not getting paid for this