Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

Binge watched the show today and found it underwhelming compared to the movies that legendary has made since Godzilla(2014). The show has potential and I hope they utilize it better in the next season.

The scenes with Keiko, Shaw and Bill Randa are the ones that make the show worth watching . Everyone else just felt like dragging the show. The CGI wherever used is top notch and the screen presence of Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell made it 7 out of 10 else if would have been around 5.5.

Apple has confirmed that it has been renewed for another season atleast, hope they bring Kurt and Wyatt back for it.

This is a great series to watch if you're stuck on a plane with nothing else to do. It filmed better than most of the generic blockbusters but it has the writing of a CW show.

On the acting side, I am a diehard Kurt Russell fan, however, Wyatt steals every scene he's in and was the sole standout of the show. Joe Tippett, Anders Holm, Anna Sawai, and Mari Yamamoto are able to lift their thinly written characters, and Kiersey Clemons is serviceable in a role where her character sucks. However, Ren Watabe is a standout for all the wrong reasons. His wooden delivery behind a nonsense annoying character really took me out of any scene.

With all that said, it's worth watching if you like spinoff streamers that have more dialogue and less action than their movie counterparts, and it's worth watching Kurt and Wyatt Russell play the same character.

I was super excited for this show but it has been a super disappointment (at 8th episode so far). Only the first episode was good, it all becomes downhill after that. Only Apple TV was still producing big budget sci-fi like Foundation and Silo. Now they are also going to invest less in big world building saga citing the failure of Monarch.

The characters in the present time are so immature especially the teacher from San Francisco who seems to be a teenager living in an adult body. She is such a turnoff with her attitude similar to teenagers. May is useless and the brother from Japan, while not annoying, is so weak and useless.

I really don't care about their family drama or each of their backstory. This is a show about MONSTERS !! Why are we spending 90% of an episode with character backstory and their feelings, especially when none of them are likeable ?? Where are the MONSTERS? Where is the story about their habitats, their backstory, how they have been hidden for thousands of years, what is common between them, where do they come from? These are the elements that make a fantasy sci-fi interesting, not the annoying, unlikeable teenager mindset adults and their story.

They could have just kept this story in the 1940-50s and gone full on Monsters backstory, some WWII and Cold War drama about how many world powers were vying for the power of the Monsters and culminates in how this set off an underground Cold War that was hidden from the rest of the world with Monarch. Subsequent seasons could be what happened in the 70s-80s and so on culminating in D-day. Then once they catch up to current time, new seasons could be in between storylines between blockbuster Godzilla and Kong movies. This Monster universe could be the Marvel universe of this decade. Why are these Hollywood companies these days ruining entertainment ? People just want to be entertained, why is that so hard to understand? And the ironic part is that they could make a ton of money doing that.

This is great.....BUT.

The show is divided in to 2 parts, the origins of Monarch and then what Monarch has become (or contemorary time). BUT WAIT...there is more. The third and final division. Every crappy, boring and irritating moment of the show belongs in the May division.

The May character is one of the most annoying on screen inclusions of all time, worse than Jar Jar Binks!

Everything I dislike about the show is connect to May.

This means if you feel the same as me you will mostly dislike the middle episodes of the series.

SO...perservere. The series starts and finishes strongly, it is totally worth it, just read a book for the middle section :)

Is it that I am 54 ? And am too old to tolerate the kind of pathetic whiney crap that I'm not even sure people actually suffer from ? I mean, the characters, some of them, are so horribly lame and weak and seem to be incapable of acting anything like normal adults it forced me to just fast forward through some pieces, I have zero interest in seeing all the butt hurt emotions of these fundamentally unlikeable characters. May, the computer geek cum self destructive idiot is completely unlikeable, she rude, offensive, dishonest, an ugly person in all respects, how could anyone root for that ?.

The Russel's are both perfectly acceptable, I guess my beef is with most of the female characters but mostly the "weak" ones, so nauseating. Some of the story telling, the logic behind their actions is totally unrealistic and thus irritating, the little things like running around in a restricted zone with their flashlights still on after already narrowly avoiding capture, just stupid, or the stepping into an ice puddle or falling down a huge hole all these things that make the characters seem like utter morons certainly don't help, smarter story telling is required.