DRAMA & SPECTACLE

Trevor Hogg gets dangerously close to kaiju to uncover the secrets behind Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

Looming large on AppleTV+ are kaiju, as well as the mysterious global organisation founded to keep track of them, which lurks in the shadows of public consciousness. Created by Chris Black and Matt Fraction, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters bridges and fills in the gaps of Godzilla (2014), Kong: Skull Island (2017), Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), and Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) while following its own narrative in the past and contemporary times.

The overriding throughline for the 10 episodes is how the histories of the Randa family and Monarch are interwoven with each other. "The show is so many things," says Jess Hall, the cinematographer on episodes 101 and 102. "It's both a family drama and a story about trauma, and then you've got this action element. Matt Shakman [series executive producer, and director of episodes 101 and 102] and I talked early on about not wanting the action scenes to be tableau. We were like, 'How do we balance the drama and spectacle?'

One of the ways to bring those elements together was to say that, ‘Action should be drama. And how does it become dramatic?’ It’s dramatic because your characters are in the action. If you can’t smell it, you’re not close enough. It’s like war photography.”