Monarch trailer: At long last, Kurt Russell and Godzilla are teaming up
Plus: John Goodman, Wyatt Russell, Anne Sawai, and more round out the cast of the Apple TV+ giant monster series
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In what we’re certain is set to be one of the great TV team-ups of all time—a buddy pairing on the order of Cagney & Lacey, Laverne & Shirley, and other beloved team-ups with an ampersand trapped betwixt their names—Apple TV+ has released the first teaser trailer for Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters, a.k.a. “The show where Godzilla & Kurt Russell will soon be hanging out.”
Okay, so there’s slightly more going on with the series than just that particular collab-o, as Legendary’s fitfully extant “Monsterverse” Cinematic Universe finally gets its own WandaVision or Loki equivalent in the realm of streaming TV. That includes what looks to be a lot of jumping between timelines, much of it centered on Russell’s character, Lee Shaw, who appears as both a young man in the 1950s, and in the modern era; luckily, producers had access to “a young Kurt Russsell-type” in the form of his son, Wyatt Russell, who plays the younger Shaw.
Also appearing in the trailer: John Goodman, who appears to be hanging out in a whole separate timeline of his own, reprising his role from Kong: Skull Island, and giving the series a subtitle by talking about his “legacy.” (Of monsters, presumably.) (Also, Workaholics star Anders Holm is apparently playing a younger Goodman, which is a wild thing to consider.) The series also stars Anne Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Mari Yamamoto, Joe Tippett, Elisa Lasowski, and Godzilla, who pops up at the end of the trailer to remind that this is, in fact, a Godzilla TV show, at least kind of.
Because, we’re going to be honest here: This thing looks stupid-complicated for a show meant to give a backstory to movies about big animals hitting each other a bunch. The Monsterverse movies have always been a little too into their own backstories—presumably hoping to create a web of narratives as rich and beloved as the ones that power the MCU, despite having to make all this stuff up out of whole cloth instead of relying on decades of comics—and Monarch feels like it’s steering into that side of things shockingly hard.
But, hey: We’ll know more when the series premieres on November 17.
14 Comments
I really liked Skull Island but I think that last one killed it for me with the whole “journey to the center of the earth” thing. My favorite part though was when Godzilla attacks the ship transporting kong. He’s explicitly there to kill Kong, and the human’s solution is to power down their ship. Like what does electricity have to do with the giant monkey he wants to kill? Godzilla doesn’t like check to see if he won or anything. It’s just “huh they shut their engines off, that monkey I hate must have died. I’ll fuck off now.”
‘”My favorite part though was when Godzilla attacks the ship transporting kong. He’s explicitly there to kill Kong, and the human’s solution is to power down their ship. Like what does electricity have to do with the giant monkey he wants to kill?”’Follow me here for a little thermal energy science. All thermal energy unless it’s endothermic gives off heat, right? Electricity in particular gives off heat. Could it not be that the heat is the very thing that Godzilla was actually detecting? ‘”Godzilla doesn’t like check to see if he won or anything. It’s just “huh they shut their engines off, that monkey I hate must have died. I’ll fuck off now.” “’“Huh? There’s no heat. I must’ve killed it. There’s nothing left but a cold corpse…”
but Kong would still be generating heat?its as good an explanation as any though.
The best part is all the plot armor they had to give Kong for him to keep up with Godzilla. They might as well have played the chest opening music from Zelda when he stumbled upon an anti-Godzilla axe while spelunking to the center of the earth. Even with it, he still wound up physically beat to death and needing to be revived by someone kitbashing a futuristic hover-ship into a pair of jumper cables.
They did the same thing in the original Godzilla vs Kong too. They gave Kong random electricity powers at a time where electricity was one of Godzilla’s weaknesses.
The movie did kinda drop the ball on making it clear that Ghidorah is probably still alive since the novelization hints that it took over the scientist that was linked to it’s skull while controlling Mecha-Godzilla. Plus Ghidorah has a history of completely regenerating from a torn off head in the older Godzilla series.
It’s odd that everyone can accept the concept of fringe science like multiverse, quantum verse or parallel dimension but can’t accept hollow earth theory on a fictional movie about giant monster.Godzilla attack Kong not to kill him but to impose his dominance as the King of Monster. And the giant ship electricity messed up his sense to detect Kong body signature. By the time he can sense that Kong already defeated he just leave him alone.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say English isn’t your first language. This isn’t an insult, it’s just to let everyone know that, and to let them know not to use any grammatical mistakes against you just because they disagree with you. I largely agree with what you’re saying. I hope this doesn’t make me sound like a condescending douchebag.
Thanks. You didn’t sound like a douchebag. Like a reverse Sam Barsanti
No, but apologies all the same.
Just because a movie has a sci-fi concept doesn’t mean anything goes. If I were watching a zombie movie and a character started shooting lasers out of his eyes I’d still complain even though the movie clearly isn’t grounded in reality.That said my issues with the hollow earth parts of the movie weren’t really about the science of it. If it was interesting or added anything to the movie I’d be totally willing to ignore how little sense it made.I’m not totally sure what you mean in the second part of your post. If the electricity was messing up Godzilla’s ability to detect Kong then I don’t see how turning it off would help. Or how Godzilla found him in the first place. I only saw the movie once when it came out so I might not remember it right.
A hollow Earth definitely doesn’t cross my threshold of “anything goes” for a kaiju movie. Seems very fitting for the genre.
In that case you *really* shouldn’t watch Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead.
I’ll check it out, I love kaiju shit, my son’s almost 20 now and has remained a fan since before I took him to see the 6oth anniversary of the original Godzilla in the theater. He was 9 and he told me after this was the greatest thing he’s ever seen.
The number one rule of surviving a Godzilla attack seems to be “make sure you’re far away from the city when it’s raining”
“This is what happens when you find a kaiju in the Alps!”