“If people could put rainbows in zoos, they’d do it,” quips the anthropomorphic stuffed tiger of “Calvin and Hobbes” in one of the bygone daily comic strip’s most famous panels. His point is well taken; in Apple TV’s “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” folks affiliated with various corporate and bureaucratic entities try endlessly to either domesticate or destroy the Titans, giant radioactive monsters that’ve roamed the Earth for ages, with calamitous results. Tentacular behemoths and fire-breathing thunder lizards would make poor wildlife park exhibits; such is mankind’s unique blend of stupidity, hubris, and greed that we’d give it a shot anyway, then shrug at the aftermath when the plan goes haywire.
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Nobody in the second season of “Monarch” has designs on installing Titans in preserves or setting them up in proportional enclosures for the viewing public to gawk at. They have bigger, bolder plans in mind, which, as the season unfolds, increasingly threaten to pull focus away from the kaiju element–you know, the thing we’re all tuning in for in the first place–toward completely separate science fiction niches. Kaiju films often occupy a Venn diagram where “big monster go smash” overlaps with more sophisticated sci-fi tropes; it’s not wrong, per se, for “Monarch” to genre blend for its own ends. But the series is so low to the ground to begin with, emphasizing a human perspective while holding Godzilla and other colossi in reserve, that adding in tertiary concepts risks overwhelming the primary one.
“Monarch” ended its first outing by reuniting Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto) with her son, Hiroshi Randa (Takehiro Hira), and Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell in the series’ present, Wyatt Russell in its past), and introducing her to her grandchildren, Kentaro (Ren Watabe) and Cate Randa (Anna Sawai); the final scene teased viewers with a King Kong cameo, too, as a treat. Season two picks up there as Kong happens upon Monarch’s Skull Island outpost and wrecks up the place, for reasons literally no one appreciates at first because it’s a tad difficult to be charitable and zen when an ape half the size of Millennium Tower rampages through your base camp. But Kong never incurs massive property damage without a good reason. In this case, he’s pissed at the humans for their reckless and insufferable curiosity.
Surprise: repeated interdimensional joy rides between Earth and Axis Mundi, the Titans’ point of origin, have brought back more to our world than Shaw, last seen making a heroic sacrifice in the season one finale; in addition to tiny scuttling crab-things, referred to as “scarabs,” there’s an enormous pseudo-mollusc-thing, prosaically referred to as “Titan X” by Monarch’s poindexters and as “el gran dios del mar” by the people of the Chilean fishing village Santa Soledad. It’s Cate’s choices that shepherd Titan X into our world, though her intentions are good. She just wants to return the favor to Shaw and rescue him in kind for rescuing her. All the same, there’s an absolutely furious squid creature sloshing around in the ocean, and we can all blame Cate.
Or maybe don’t blame anybody! “Monarch’s” second season focuses on characters’ actions and consequences without worrying about trivial matters like “fault”; people do what they do, and ascribing guilt is a waste of time, according to the wisdom Hiroshi passes down to Cate. This humble, compassionate philosophy aligns well with the show’s conception of the Titans as animals following their survival instincts rather than malicious beasts. No moral compass exists in “Monarch.” Co-creators Chris Black and Matt Fraction choose not to make their story revolve around notions of good and evil, which, frankly, is refreshing. Let Takashi Yamazaki portray Godzilla as a vindictive force of destruction in his Toho productions, “Godzilla Minus One”–the best Godzilla media released in this century–and the upcoming “Godzilla Minus Zero.” “Monarch” scratches a totally different itch.
Traditional representations of Godzilla echo fears of the H-bomb and atomic apocalypse; they require a plot in which their human characters scramble to repel him. “Monarch” has a much smaller scope and, as such, more intimate interests; its characters wonder, whether quietly or aloud, about their place in the world, given the context of the Titans’ existence. What’s the point of individuals, as well as humanity writ large, when we’re living in the shadows of monsters? Black and Fraction have a few good thoughts about that, especially nestled within Cate’s personal arc as a survivor of “G-Day,” the tag used to evoke Godzilla’s arrival in San Francisco in Gareth Edwards’ 2014 “Godzilla” reboot. In fact, if all that the show had to concern itself with were monster mayhem and its characters’ anxieties, it’d be a success. Making figures like Godzilla and Kong feel appropriately secondary in their own narratives is a mighty feat. “Monarch” almost gets there.
But as the season progresses and moves further away from ruminations on our species’ purpose, and indulges in ratcheting technobabble while introducing new science fiction motifs to the story, that character-driven bent fades into the background. Stakes are good. The plot is good. “Monarch” suffers from an overabundance of both, as Black and Fraction don’t trust their viewers to grasp that messing with nature is a bad thing, even if “nature” in this case is embodied by leviathans straight out of a high school folklore and mythology text. Season two feels freer in many ways compared to the first, unburdened by its attachment to Legendary’s “Monsterverse”; at its best, the show has fun exploring its identity divorced from franchise maintenance. Gradual genre excesses weigh down the fun and muddle the central theme. It’s a mercy that the cast is game for whatever direction the narrative takes them–Yamamoto and Russell Sr. are particularly delightful–but a real drag that the writing loses sight of what makes “Monarch” tick. [C+]
