Monarch Legacy of Monsters is turning to be a great TV series with three episodes already in, the series doesn’t look full of promises without putting up a show, I have try to cover the movies that connect to the series and also put up a post about the trailer and something that I mention that is key for me when watching any type of content that goes around a certain monster is the monster itself, in the past movies tend to just show parts of the monster and small scenes of it compare to the rest of the story and I was afraid this might be the case but its not, on the first episode we see one fight and two attacks from all different type and size of monsters, along with this a side story of a disappear man who have two families without each other knowing, this man has a secret life that none of his two families know of but it was necessary to keep them protected.
The series is not perfect, there are a few characters that I don’t like too much but I have come to the conclusion that some times that’s how it is suppose to be, when an actor makes you feel certain way because of his/her character and not because of their acting itself then this means its working and in this case it’s Kate and Kentaro, both daughter and son of the disappeared Hiroshi Randa who has been studying all this monsters, this too kids some times get my nerves, both annoying and always arguing like teenagers.
Monarch so far does a great job a resembling to the predecessor movies Skull Island, Godzilla (2014) and we still haven’t seen much related to King of the Monsters and that’s fine because I think when the series get to that point its show time, full blown Goji ready to destroy.
Episode one opens up strong with Bill Randa at Skull Island, this was either a part of the original movie that was not shown or a second tour to the island, he is recording himself, asking someone to forgive him but I’m not sure who is he referring too although it will be useful for the future in the series. Bill is running away from a giant spider that was seen on the Skull Island movie but this time it is trying to eat him probably or at least kill him and when he is at a dead end on a cliff throws a bag with his recordings to the ocean, right after that another monster shows up, giant Crab stands up from the ground to fight the spider and Bill gets away, I think this was a perfect opening scene, you got a monster fight, one monster that was never seen and brings a characters from the monster verse movies.
As any other first episode its time to present all different main characters and provide context, meaning to their stories, on the image above Kate, a women who her father “died” or disappear, at this point she and her mom are not sure what happen, looking for answers she goes to Tokyo after finding a set of keys to an apartment and probably documentation that tells her about her father apartment in Tokyo.
OG Godzilla story starts in Japan so what a great detail to the series without trying to make it so American, the story at first feels like there is a lot going on and you just got drop in the middle, trying to figure out who is who and what is what but its not complicated, Godzilla at this point in time has appear a few times and already attack San Francisco in the US, that’s reference to Godzilla (2014), Japan is now heavily loaded with weapons against a possible attack, would be ridiculous seen that many missile turrets around the city.
Kate gets to her fathers apartment to figure out he had a second wife and son that no body in the US knew about, there is confusion all over the scene but this is the part that annoys me, how Kate and Kentaro fight about their father, both in a position that one of the is lying instead of trying to figure things out.
Kentaro and his mother Emiko cools down but Kate is just a spoiled brat and kept acting like a bitch about her father cheating trying to make Kentaro and Emiko like he is a bastard, that sux and is very shitty from her. Emiko is a sweet women, very patient, before Kate left to the airport an alarm sound off, possible Godzilla attack and everyone ran into the subterranean, Kentaro and Emiko help Kate to cool down and at that moment when she felt vulnerable and supported my Emiko she cools down and lower her guard.
To clear things out and find out exactly what their father was up to, Kentaro takes Kate to his father office, where they kept arguing because Kate is still bitching about her father secret life, they found a safe in the wall with a bunch of recordings and there is when the adventure to figure out what their father work with and potentially what happen to him but they need help to read all this very old data.
May steps up to the scene, she is Kentaro ex girlfriend that for some reason he dump, she is a sweet heart too, I like her, May is very good with computers and after some more arguing with Kentaro she agrees to help them because of him and because she is curious about the story behind this documents.
May manage to read the data that is encrypted, but it seems that part of the encryption work against a remote server that authenticates or decompress the data some how, because the minute she starts reading all this data an alarm is set off at Monarch that gets to Tim who work for Monarch and is very interested to know who is working with this documents that seem to be lost and they want them back badly.
Finally the pioneers of MONARCH, from left to right, Dr. Keiko Miura, Lee Shaw and Bill Randa, they story goes back and forward through their time lines making reference to younger versions of Bill and Lee.
Same as Godzilla all this monsters feed from radiation, they are after a location that has high radiation readings that come and goo like there is a radioactive material but something is feeding from it creating all this peak readings, they get to what seems to be an old power plant that must had a core and they did find what they were looking for, MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) a term they came up with for some of this monsters, a category.
This is where the episodes gets intense, Keiko was very talented and brave, she volunteer to go down where all this glowing eggs are to take genetic samples, Lee seem to be in charge of their security that Keiko and Bill doesn’t seem to care that much , their passion for the science blinds their judgement exposing them to high risk specially Keiko. Lee and Keiko go down but the place seem to be very unstable and after just a few minutes of walking the surface where the eggs are the place start to crumble and go down, I have a theory that what ever monster that lay down the eggs felt them and was coming making the place shake, monsters that look like insects, look like cockroach, start to run towards Lee and Keiko, that’s how we get to the cover image were Keiko is trying to climb back but the insects got to her, Bill was pulling her up but could not hold the rope, there was too much weight after the insects got her and she falls down.
Working with two time lines gives the series the ability to recreate multiple scenes that sparks that rush of dopamine and then slow things down again, in the case of episode one you have attack at Skull Island with Bill running for his life, the Godzilla attack in San Francisco and at the end the scene where all this insects end up killing Keiko, well I assume she is dead. My point is that its not a boring constant story trying to only figure things out as they go, allowing the series to always have two or three action scenes per episode, at least that’s my expectation.
So far as I mention above the monsters scenes have been as expected, nothing ridiculous, they are not going to give you a big Godzilla fight on the first episodes, probably we get one or even two big fights on season one but so far so good in that department, the story behind the disappearance of Hiroshi seems very interesting also making sense with the movies that back it up, I give episode one a 8/10 because it was very entertaining and had bits of all the movies and the story behind them but this series is not GOT or The Rings of Power so giving it a 10 is very hard for me, Monarch is delivering everything I expected from it and I’m glad not everything was shown on the trailer.
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