Monarch: Legacy of Monsters [Apple+]

Huh, couple of reviews of this are saying it's ... no-caveats good? tepidly excited to see this now.

Caught the 2 episodes and to my surprise, I'm hooked. It was nuts and bolts stuff but was really well put together; the bouncing between timelines worked really well, and they haven't overplayed their hand with the actual monsters aspect - using them in smart places. Cate was a bit grating TBH, sometimes more obnoxious than wounded - but the rest of the cast have been good so far, the trio from the 1950s portions a fun adventuresome good mix.

This has become a quick and surprising Must Watch for me.

I'd say the 2014 film and Kong Skull Island is probably all you'd need. The whole series jumps off from the events of the 2014 Godzilla film and the impact it has on the world (again, something really well done in those Episodes with Tokyo's new normal of "Titan Drills"), while the Skull Island more texture for the Monarch background.

Episode 3 was a bit of an interstitial but everything inched a little further enough to make it enjoyable, including a little cameo from the big G Man himself.

Really love the plotting, and even the dialogue of this; it's functional but the occasional flashes of with are there to make it more than just boilerplate. This might be the first Kaiju production where its human cast are legitimately interesting and engaging - and not just vessels to further the carnage.

It does all strike an odd balance though: knowing the movie sequels went further into the realms of insanity, MechaGodzilla n all. Everything here is played so straight and grounded, it's hard to reconcile where the series goes.

Ha, yeah. The fact that that trailer belongs to the same universe as this show, is utterly wild. It's not like the show hasn't had a playful edge but nothing on that level. They're trying to keep it all relatively grounded.

Tangentially, releasing that trailer while this show exists, and a new Japanese Godzilla film came out this weekend (and did quite nicely, considering) is a weird bit of marketing.

Fourth episode down and again, good characterisation with some neat and creative way to frame the backstory of Kentaro meeting May with the events in Alaska. Had a little sense of being filler despite that, given nothing plotwise was revealed through the literal circles walked in the snow. So probably the "worst" episode yet insofar as merely being watchable as opposed to outright thrilling - but still good stuff. Certainly if you're stuck isolated in the snow, Kurt Russell is the man to have lol.

It's the one "flaw" with the show all right, where the series seems to be playing it relatively straight & grounded, in a cinematic universe that has just gone completely batshít crazy.