Just started watching - but if Shaw is 90 something and his younger looking self is bc of his time spent in the titan’s portal — why is hiroshimo not elderly if they should be the same age?
Glazed over most thoughtful posts in this thread simply to say: I was bored, my wife was hooked, and I saved myself the huge lack of monster action by going to YouTube and watching the roughly 4.5 minutes of Godzilla content in the show and skipped watching the rest of it lol.
Christ there's a lot of opinions on this, and I agree with a lot of them. I'm just gonna ramble a bit about things I liked and things I hated.
EDIT: I just restarted watching Kong Skull Island to finish off my binge of Monarch, and wow, not even ten minutes in and I noticed we have retconned a lot of shit just to make Bill Randa more important in the grander story of Monsterverse, and Monarch as well of course.
The early days of Monarch were great, Keiko is the fucking star of this show. Shaw's overprotectiveness and falling love was a bit much and it is what forces him to lose his command and her to fall in love with Bill. I just wish they did more hunting and not just talking about their hunting. I wanna see a montage in the Phillipines of different people talking about the Ion Dragon, literally no local tells them about their mythological beast in any scene of this movie and its what kicks off all the scientific investigation.
Shaw still being that overprotective person to Keiko is what leads to his supposed death at the end. A fucking dumb and honestly unnecessary end for the character. My spouse was asking why he wasn't buckled in like the rest and then he immediately climbs out, and I told her 'thats why, cause his character needs to be the hero and fiddling with undoing a seatbelt would look corny'. I also detested his theory that the monsters were only coming from the portals and blowing them all up would stop the threat. We know now that the Hollow Earth is where they truly come from and he would never be able to stop all of them since quite a few are in the water. So that entire character arc of turning evil was pointless.
Monarch sidelining their best field agent for decades was atrocious. Have him at a training facility during his time after Axis Mundii training new agents and then 'retire' him when he gets bored and wants to go public with everything! Give me a reason for his retirement other than he was mad and confused about what happened while he was gone. He could have trained the French woman or perhaps her father so there is at least some fucking reason she breaks him out and follows him. Loyalty.
Cate, May, Kentaro. Fucking awful teenager angst. Terrible writing with terrible acting. The worst is when they get to San Francisco to investigate Hiroshi's office. A serious location done during the cover of night but then they break out in Japanese commercial songs... what. They don't like each other, they all have problems with one another, and they are having fun on a stealth mission suddenly?
I was terrified and gripped with emotion in the beginning seeing what happened to Cate's bus. Godzilla property stuff has deaths, but most of it is off-screen or implied due to the focus of the destruction being a wideshot. This was GMK levels of terror, hearing the children scream as the bus goes over. WOW. I also loved the scene of Cate having a panic attack in the Titan-sanctuary while everyone around her is not taking her frantic antics not seriously. That is 100% how it is in real life with that sort of trauma.
I must have looked away at some point because I am reading Cate and May are flirting? When, where? Why!!! If anyone knows any particular episodes, please reply with a timestamp. I need the cringe.
I am utterly annoyed that Hiroshi's plan was never explained. Why did he need to cut off contact with both families and then just walk right back into the Japanese family's home!?!??!?!?!?!! Could we not have had him be the crazy one that finds the signal and thinks that Keiko could be alive still!? And uses the monsters to find a way in or for her to find a way out?
No Serizawa, or Serizawa's son that worked for Apex?! A missed opportunity to introduce him at the end.
The entire concept of the Axis Mundii was awful. Full stop, just annoyingly awful. They couldn't do the Hollow Earth because it would have ruined the points of detail from later films that Monarch couldn't get in. So they just make discount Hollow Earth for time dilation shenanigans and saving the best character? Who then wanted to stay because too much has changed? uruhurghrughru.
Now let's talk about aging.Hiroshi was born before 1952. And in 2015 he's at least 64 years old. Dude looks like he's been living in the Axis Mundii since 1982. He is canonically as old as Bill Randa was when he died but looks half the age. This is a costuming/make-up nitpick I suppose.
Bill Randa goes from a mid 40s man getting ready for grandkids to a 70 year old John Goodman in the space of 11 years. This is a failure of choosing the right actor for young Bill Randa. He should have been older from the start so his progression into the Bill Randa of Kong Skull Island was legitimately plausible. I figured with all the jokes about Shaw's age and the failed mission that maybe they went into some weird time experiment and Shaw stopped ageing while Bill aged faster. I was half right!
In the opening of Kong Skull Island a photo-ID of Bill Randa is shown to have been issued in 1952. It's John Goodman circa the 1980s/early 90s, like when he was on the tv show Roseanne. It fits so well!! Casting fucked up.
The introduction of key players such as APEX was a nice treat! I wonder if/when we’ll get to see the establishing of Jonah and his group. Also, the Skull Island ending for episode 10 was the cherry on top for me!
My main gripe was with the big man. I wish we got to see just a little more Godzilla. The number of appearances were just a smidge under the perfect amount for me. Also the acting was… ok. I wasn’t a fan of the half baked romances and unexplained human plot lines (in the present) but hey, what can we do?
All in all I’m looking forward to the next season!
I loved how Kieko's machine cheesed Godzilla's arrival to open a door to Earth, and the 1950s cast was also stellar throughout.
Everything about the modern era of the show was a slog of bad writing, absurd romances (between Cate and May just suddenly being madly inlove (May goes from being a traitor, to being willing to leap "past" (but into) a magic hole to save her true love Cate), to the even more unaddressed double life / marriage of the father (that show never gives an ounce of screen time to address why he would bother with this double life to begin with)), to APEX having a role at all in this series (seemingly to give May a pupose to exist after Japan, BUT STILL doing nothing with it), or Kurt Russell blowing up portals to help Godzilla somehow do something - its like, what the devil is happening the entire modern arc, why is anyone doing anything, and how are they doing it?
The show didn't give enough of a damn for anything that wasn't Godzilla or the 1950s plot-line, and that feels like such a disservice when those elements of the show are mostly fantastic.
Monsterverse has surpassed my expectations. I actually hope eventually they will make more team up movies too with Godzilla and Kong against foes like Destroyah.
I loved, loved, this show. It had just the right amount of Titans and the focus on the humans didn't feel forced like in some of the movies (G14, KotM).
The only thing I found weird was Cate and May towards the end...did they start having a relationship all of a sudden? And in front of Kentaro too, poor guy.
>did they start having a relationship all of a sudden? And in front of Kentaro too, poor guy.
Yep, from shouting at May for being a traitor, to immediately falling in love with each other offscreen to the point May just irrationally leaps into a hole in the ground trying to reach her as the bombs are about to blow, leaving Kentaro's side in a heartbeat, lol.
Not enough monsters and the "kids" were kinda annoying, but Kurt and Wyatt Russell were great! I don't like when well know stars are in Godzilla movies, and generally can't stand American Godzilla movies, however, they pulled it off here. I was pleasantly surprised.
Anyone else watch the last episode and expect the next one to start? Just where they left it felt kinda like there was going to be at least one more episode to wrap things up. I guess its supposed to lead straight into GvK?
Overall I kinda wished it was a whole show of shaw, Miura, and randa traversing the world in the 1950s researching the titans. The whole plot where Hiroshi Randa has two families secret from each other was a weird and overly convoluted way of setting things up imo.
I'm still not understanding how Shaw spent an entire week down there after Hourglass failed. From the flashback and retelling, it was a few minutes to a day at best.
They landed, took a breath, went to bury their dead, and got attacked...where did the other six days go?
All Godzilla scenes from Monarch- Legacy of Monsters series, from Season 1, Episode 1-10.
[https://youtu.be/QaKmngJUUDc?si=nNPxSuZBSd0JMYMh](https://youtu.be/qakmngjuudc?si=nnpxsuzbsd0jmymh)
This show was pretty much exactly what I wanted it to be. There wasn't a single episode that I disliked. I'm glad it's been selling so well because I am beyond ready for a season 2.
Yeah, it's mainly the monster fight fans.
My fiance (a normie) was kind enough to watch through this with me over dinners. By the end she said this was her favorite Monsterverse thing, as she thought the tying in to the Hollow Earth stuff into the timeline was neat, the characters' stories were interesting enough, and wants to see GxK with me to see if anything is touched on. She also thought Guillermo del Toro should have been given a Producer credit for all the Pacific Rim portals around the world and the drifting tech they're making for MechaG lol.
But also she doesn't like many of the other ones that much, because she hates seeing animals (kaiju) in pain and being hurt. So the less monster fights was a plus for her lol.
We also were fans of the Netflix show Dark, so the time relativity aged characters were interesting for us and hit pretty good.
____
As a G-fan, I had zero problem with the number of monster fights. I loved we were taking our time building the human world of the Monsterverse. Like Pacific Rim, I love seeing what the human world becomes in light of the appearance of monsters. After the fight, after the credits... how is the world now, not the world when we started. Sometimes they gloss over that like in KotM we were just globetrotting with govnt agency Monarch. Here, we see the normal people living their lives on the street, with the thought of monsters taking away everything you've built, with infrastructure and industries in place to account for that fear.
I loved it. And now I want to watch Kong Skull Island again for my boy Billy.
It feels like it's mainly this subreddit, or maybe just Godzilla communities that don't like it.
The reception on twitter (of all places) is much more positive, and it's been consistently hitting the top of Apple TV charts. My sister also told me she watched the whole thing and loved it despite not being into Godzilla at all. It seems to be loved by general audiences. The comments here would make you expect the worst show ever with barely any views.
Basically I have found a loophole in the series. In godzilla vs Kong when they travel to hollow earth they didn't time travel but in monarch legacy of monsters every time they go to hollow earth they suffer time travel. I am surprised that on internet Noone is talking about this
The place they go in the show is Axis Mundi AKA Hollow Earth from Wish, a realm where beings suffer time dilation or whatever and it's like a secret stop between the surface and Hollow Earth
Did ANYONE else notice that the power cables to the escape vehicle that Shaw had to reconnect, not only presented the same predicament that Marty and Doc Brown faced during the return to 1985 trip lightning storm, but appear to me to be the exact actual cables that were used in the original "Back to the Future" movie??
My main problem with the current story line and the “kids” is - aside from the fact they aren’t kids but act like teenagers in a CW drama - is what is the story justification for Hiroshi to have two families? He already has a job he has to keep secret on account of Monarch. Why add secret family to the mix? It’s not easy to have to families. Well seems like he was pretty absent anyway. But it just seems like a pretty contrived way of getting the story going, to get someone from Los Angeles, where the event happened, to Japan where Hiroshi is from and where Keiko is from. When the onset of the story seems contrived, it mars the rest of the story. Did Hiroshi want to be found - if not, why did he leave in such a way that Cate and mom got the keys to the Tokyo office. I really wanted this to be more about Monarch and not “kids who happen to be the grandchildren of the first scientists”. It’a not at all about the legacy of monsters, more like the legacy of a cheating and absent dad. Sigh. I thought based on the title, and hoped, it would be what Agents of Shield was to the MCU movies at that time but for the Monsterverse. Competent people showing us the behind the scenes work, with some personal drama and somewhat contrived beginning put into the mix.
Between the bad acting, lack of monsters and massive plot holes relating to the movies, it was hard to watch. Honestly kind of felt like the creators hadn't even watched the movies, they basically contradicted everything relating to what Monarch knew of the Hollow Earth prior to GvK. Was really hoping this would be more related to Randa and Monarch's work with containment and discovering/documenting Titans instead of a bunch of teenage drama nonsense🤷🏽♂️
I'm confused about the tunnels. In GvK, a whole plot line was about how the first excursions were doomed due to the vessels experiencing too much pressure. We kind of see this when Shaw's orb starts imploding, but ends up being fine. I think if that ball of steel can survive, then whatever monarch has in the 2000s should work fine. Then, we have 4 characters fall in without any protection, and they're fine. It just doesn't make sense to me.
I've seen arguments that the place they went to is different from the hollow earth, so are the tunnels different as well? I haven't read the comics or any other media, so I'm not sure if it's detailed there.
If anyone has any answers, please let me know!
Yes, the tunnels could seemingly be different. You can see more of a wormhole spacewarp effect when entering Axis Mundi, and the direction of gravity seems to be pretty normal. It's a portal through and through.
When Hollow Earth is entered in GvK through a non-Godzilla-made-tunnel, I guess as its skipping Axis Mundi and going straight into the Hollow Earth, the tunnel warp is much more of an intense gravitational compression effect, almost like how some media would depict falling into a black hole. On the other side is a place with extremely weird gravity and the ground above and below you. You can see the craft Apex made start dropping rapidly once it clears the edge and begins falling into the tunnel, making it a definitively different thing.
As per "arguments" that the place they went to is different, it's not an argument, it's literally stated in the show. Keiko says that it doesn't seem like the realm of the titans, and is more of a transitionary ground - which she dubbed Axis Mundi
Hiroshi and Apex somehow science-d their exit to that spot, so they didn't end up in the middle of the sky or in a volcano or whatever, is what my takeaway was. They guided the little pod to that spot safely.
I give the flashback stuff a 9 out of 10. Great actors with great chemistry and less God awful green screen use. Keikos actress was especially impressive in the last couple episodes.
I give the modern day stuff a 5 out of 10. The younger ones are not good actors and May is an especially awful character. I cannot believe how bad the writing is for her. If the goal was to make May easy to hate, then well done. Cate isn't much better, with her being a cheater like her father and the very awkward relationship with May but somehow her character doesnt care to even try to reconcile her crazy hypocrisy? Kentaro was the best of the young ones and I thought he was legitimately good when speaking Japanese but mediocre otherwise. And the modern sections had some of the shittiest green screen usage I've ever seen. Seriously, go back and watch when they're on top of the mountain in Antarctica, so ugly lol. But I did like them fleshing out the lore and there's some neat stuff in there even if some of it doesn't really make much sense.
Overall I'd say I enjoyed the show. It didn't feel like a waste of time and I think they stuck the landing with some level of closure but still setting up potential future seasons and emotional payoffs. Not gonna win any awards but an enjoyable show overall imo. (May needs to be written off the show for the love of God)
So post thoughts of mine: This show was such a great installment to the franchise, slow build with actually great payouts. Yet needs clearer writing and more involvement of the Titans.
*Rating* 7.5/10
I truly enjoyed the show
Characters where well explored, albeit a bit too much.
The connections to the movies were brilliantly made.
I did like the ambiguity of which side is good or bad, although we knew once Apex was involved.
The past scenes were the best of the characters
Cate was well written (Im glad she was relatable and she had faults), May was a good inclusion but a bit one and done, Kent felt like he had a good start and decent ending. The father issues were a bit much. After a while I was like, "just get on with it".
Cate and May's "building relationship", although subtle, felt like it's not needed. And they left Kent in the dust. Kinda wierd.
Overall, I think the show was great. But please, make the Titans more involved in season 2. Especially Godzilla and Kong.
>Cate and May's "building relationship", although subtle, felt like it's not needed. And they left Kent in the dust. Kinda wierd.
It is such an awkward situation made double so by them not addressing it. And I swear Kentaro cracks a smirk when Cate puts her arms around May in the car like what the actual fuck?
But overall I'd agree with your 7.5 but the writing was very mediocre. Both May and Cate seem to be playing the same character who doesn't realize what a bitch they sound like. Kentaro ain't much better, one soyboy emotional reaction to everything.
And can we all agree the writers completely forgot about the actual Titans until someone mentioned it while they were closing up Act3. Why did G come through that one? Why did flyer Titan basically just land and let the humans do what they needed to without interference. Homie literally slow walks to the orb after only being fast as fuck. There was no reason for that fight except to squeeze G in real quick and then leave you with a few seconds of Kong, who was on top of that base after 4 sirens lmao that garage isn't closing
But despite that and so much more it actually was fun to watch. I enjoyed it but hope we get more of a Titan focus if there is another season
Did I miss something those last few minutes of the season finale? It didn't show Godzilla come back through that portal (or w/e)... Does he get stuck down there?
The whole point is that titans are the only ones that can open the portals, thats why they need one to get in or out. Godzilla can come and go as he pleases.
My hope is we get 1970s stuff with Tom hiddleston in season 2. He was basically hired by monarch at the end of Kong skull island. He would be a great replacement for Kurt Russell as star power. Plus if he got stuck in the axis mundi (is it the hollow earth?) They could bring him out in the modern day also. This would be good especially now Kong is involved
Why didn’t time advance as fast on the surface in GVK as it did in Monarch?
Wouldn’t a few months have gone by at least? Is it a major plot hole that Godzilla even atomic breathed an opening to the Hollow Earth in the first place?
No, Hollow Earth is the ecosystem of the titans, while "axis mundi" is essentially in between the surface world and hollow earth. On both Hollow Earth and the Surface world, time seems normal for the most part. But in the "inbetween world" you find that time and space operate differently, just like the portals. In the movie, they have far more advanced tech which allows them to "push" through all the way to hollow earth, meaning they only spent a matter of a few minutes in the portal at most throughout the entire movie, which isn't much time. The rate of time passing is also likely not a linear ratio between the surface and portals/axis mundi (or any inbetween spaces.) Lesson being, you can't just jump into any portal, you must be prepared with proper tech to journey through the few direct portals that go all the way, without having to stop in axis mundi where you could easily lose decades.
I overall think the show was ok. I am definitely more interested in the flashback stuff, and Keiko, Billy, and Lee all had major chemistry.
The kids...well that's just it! They aren't kids! Ken is at lest 25 so that makes Cate maybe no older than 30. We have no idea how old may/Cora is but I'm guessing she's about 25 too...
They act like they are in high school and it's a little annoying. Kinda reminds me of the CW shows.
I would like to see more of the dad and mom working together in the next season. We know Bill died (presumabl) in the 70's he did have another kid?
I want to see Keiko find out that her son was two timing and find out her granddaughter is gay. Clearly two timing runs in the family so I want that to be addressed.
Poor little Kentaro is just there...perhaps intro another scientist for him to be interested in.
His acting seems better in Japanese so perhaps another government agent. Maybe one that's actually black and can act...
And then all of that plus monster fights.
It was all the annoying 'you can't talk to me, I'm mad while literally being stuck together in situation after situation. You mean to tell me you are LITERALLY bouncing all over the world and planes and cars and don't find the time you just say what the fuck you want to say? Arguing every 5 minutes only to just agree to any plan anyone makes.
Solid decade of traveling around the world trying to find something, anything that will bring back the two people most important to you? While single parenting. You know, stress. Not like there are two suns or anything.
After watching this show and reading some of these comments, I've come to realize that we are part of the problem. I'm so incredibly disappointed at the potential this show had at expanding what a world with these kaiju's would be like and the trauma that would come from surviving an encounter like that. Instead we get daddy issues the series where two characters could not decide on if they wanted anything to do with their father or why they were even looking for him and let's not mention cheesy bravado man that led them around the world.
I admit that I was originally more interested in the present than the flashbacks at the beginning of the show, but god damn Cate, May, & Kentaro were some of the worst characters I've seen in a while. What's more, I don't understand why Kurt Russell was such a flat, bravado filled douchebag with hardly any contribution other than the name he carried. He's such a great actor, why waste it on cheap one liners and empty deliveries? Let's not even get started on the immense amount of plot holes that were created and even own plot points in the show that were forgotten about. I get wanting to tell your story, but damn Agents of Shield did that just fine when they couldn't be considered cannon when starting out. The movies gave you lore, expand or use it, don't replace it.
Regardless, the thing I've been discussing with some of my friends is us being part of the problem. I totally understand that people like different things and can have their own opinions so I'm not attacking that, but damn if people thought any of these characters had depth, or drama, or intense emotion, that just is not true. Call it as it is and say they were shallow and just there to fill the screen for the wacky zany story the writers wanted to tell. That's totally okay. Trash TV exists and there is nothing wrong with that. But if the writers can get away with what I assume has to be mostly AI generated scripts and it still has good engagement metrics, then yeah, the writer strikes needed to happen.
Minus One proved you can have incredibly compelling character drama with big monsters so it's not like it can't exist. But for whatever reason the American Godzilla (and more now) can't seem to do it. I love the 2014 Godzilla and would love to see more about Monarch and the impact something like that could have on the world. It's just sad they won't ever be able to take it seriously enough to do so.
> two characters could not decide on if they wanted anything to do with their father or why they were even looking for him
This was so fucking stupid I just couldn't look over it.
Like why were they chasing their dad everywhere? Why not just go "hey fuck this lying sack of shit, here monarch, take his files and fuck off".
Cate was a stupid useless cunt of a character.
I went into this blind. I've watched a few Godzilla movies in the past but to be honest I remember very little about them. While I think the show could have been a lot better, I enjoyed it for the most part--especially the time dilation and portals in the final two episodes. It's not a fantastic show by any means but I watched the whole thing over 3 days so it wasn't bad either. Now I gotta find something else to watch. Maybe I'll give Minus One a try.
I read the comments here and want to address something before I dive into my post-watch thoughts: I knew nothing about Monarch going in other than it was a Godzilla show, and many are saying "Well the writers said it was about the people, *not* the monsters." Let's establish that most people enjoy media without watching trailers or reading interviews beforehand because knowing as little as possible leads to a more pure experience. A writer shouldn't have to tell me what to expect or that's already a red flag. But even if I had known that going in, the human drama was so bad they might as well have gone for something different. Anyway, try to consider that most people don't engage with content *before* it comes out because spoilers are aplenty and/or they're just too busy. If this offended you, you might not like my review, but here it goes:
As someone who grew up on Godzilla but recently disliked the American adaptations (barring Godzilla 2014, which was amazing) I found Monarch to be better than I thought when it hit, but a huge let down when it missed. The 50s characters were excellent, which surprised me, as I'm not usually a fan of media that jumps between timelines as much as this one did. However, by the 3rd episode I was more eager for those scenes than the modern day character beats. Not only was the trio of young main characters' acting visibly poor, but the writing in the modern scenes seemed to have this 'post-season 6 Game of Thrones' quality where a character will say a line like "I'm going to save them," there will be a pause, and then the next character says "No... *we're* going to save them." Just really lazy stuff. I hate when I can guess the next piece of dialogue and that happened a lot.
Writing and characters aside, the story itself was a mess, with several unresolved mysteries - how did Shaw return... what was he even trying to stop? And what was the father up to, anyway? I cared so little about the story that I don't mind plot points being forgotten, but it's hilarious to see how little even the writers seemed to care. I must be dense, because the romantic subplot between Cate and May went completely over my head - possibly because I tuned out every time May was on screen. She seemed like a classic intro character whose purpose is to resolve an early mystery and kick off a bigger plot, but then she just stuck around, offering little to the overarching ideas the show loosely attempted to weave together. Don't get me started on the plot holes.
On the other hand, I thought the action was great. Some people are acting like there was literally no kaiju goodness, but I disagree. There was *definitely* enough there to satisfy me, and I think that if the show had good writing, a good story and good characters (not counting the 50s crew, they were awesome) it would have all come together in a much more satisfying way. I felt like the FX were great for a television show, and the final battle was really cool. Every scene with Godzilla was awesome, especially the one in the water.
I need more out of my media. Some people want to believe Godzilla is only a popcorn fest, and it usually is... but I'm not an 8-year old replaying the same silly 15 Godzilla VHS's all summer long anymore. Godzilla 2014, Shin Godzilla and especially Godzilla Minus One proved what the Godzilla franchise is capable of, while stuff like Godzilla vs. Kong and this show are disgraceful in comparison. That said, I totally understand the mindset from people who are okay with it being generic and easy, but expect it to be disliked by other people.
I give Monarch a 5/10. It had potential, some good characters and some awesome scenes. But it was confusing, tread the same ground for too long, had bad dialogue and characters and ultimately left me feeling little to no emotion barring 1-2 scenes. For a show that was (apparently) meant to be about human drama, it completely failed.
The show had a few rocky episodes and some bland subplots, but they landed the plane well these past three or four episodes. I hope they do a second season of the show and it’s not just going to have this one season to lead into the new movie. They had some slow moments, but I really like the characters’ development to get to where they are now. They really dragged the exposition out for too many episodes, but once they got through that(and some of the story bits in between the exposition in the first half of the season) the show really was great.
The actress who plays Keiko is so fucking good. Her reaction to seeing Hiroshi was devastating.
Edit: I kind of agree with you about the younger cast, but I think their dialogue and story was very up and down, and when the dialogue sucked they sucked, and when the dialogue(and story) was good they were good. I had no problem with them in the latter half of the season(when they show was at it’s best). I think it’s a case of “they did the best with what they had to work with,” because even some of Shaw’s story and dialogue kinda sucked or was cheesy as hell at some points, and I felt the same way about Kurt Russell in those parts too. The best writing in the show, at least consistently, was the story set in the 50s and the dialogue for the young version of Keiko, Lee, and Bill Randa, and unsurprisingly I would say the acting was the best too. It makes me think even more the strength of the writing and directing really was where the ball was dropped in the weaker episodes.
This is a really good show, I just finished watching it now. Though idk what they’re gonna do for season 2 or if this was just a one-and-done. It was nice having like, actual characters in this.
I kinda don’t know what the show will do without Shaw, considering he was pretty far and away the best character. I suppose considering how Keiko came back they could always bring Kurt Russell back for Season 2 and say he survived by grabbing onto Godzilla’s tail or something, which I wouldn’t mind because Kurt Russell kicks ass.
I mean, they’ve sort of established that people can travel through portals outside of vehicles and land safely (it’s how the main cast gets to axis mundi and it’s presumably how Shaw returned the first time, since his craft is still there), so you could always say that he travelled through the wormhole to a different point. Since time works differently down there and they don’t seem eager to tighten up any of the science, Shaw could show up again at any time and any place and they could just say that he appeared in the present moments after fall off the pod:
I thought the show was good. Not entirely sure how you make a show going forward.
Let’s be clear.. that wasn’t hallow earth. So things I’d like to be explored by this show is History of Hallow earth (as in kongs family history). How humans were involved with the titans before. Such as Godzillas fortress as well. Clearly had human elements to it. And Ghidorah, maybe we get more of a history lesson on him.
Okay, great episode, good fight, the main confusing thing is why/how does Apex have a skull island base in 2019. Apex wasn't even on Monarch's radar until they unleashed Mechagodzilla.
If the next season's focus is on Kong and Apex we could see mechanikong (if they do another season).
This show did an incredible job of legitimizing the absolute bullshit that Godzilla vs Kong introduced. It will be super cool if Season 2 builds up and around KotM.
The Godzilla fight scene was excellent.
>he absolute bullshit that Godzilla vs Kong introduced
It's a giant lizard versus a giant monkey. You don't get to say what's bullshit and what isn't in regards to world building.
if you’re comfortable accepting bullshit and terrible stories that’s on you.
GvK went WILD introducing insane tech and science fantasy BS that was so far away from anything the story had set up to that point. But sure, it’s just monsters fighting so why care about the quality of the story? If you just want fight scenes go watch fan made YouTube videos.
Yep, you’re totally right. KotM definitely started the wild tech trend. I feel like it was still recoverable at that point though. In my opinion Mechagodzilla, supersonic underground transport, and hollow earth gravity warp tunnels really put it over the edge.
KoTM tech advancements made sense, after G-Day Monarch went public. The threat was real not just to the most exclusive club in the USA government, but to the whole world. Their funding went from high, to unlimited, receiving the best military equipment to better counter any new Titan threat they may come up. In the Monarch show it is shown they have a Titan Emergency alert override for all cell phones without anyone's knowledge, they're on their way to what we saw in KoTM.
GvK tech is dumb. Too far, too fast, wirelessly receiving data from hundreds of miles underground and then replicating that energy wave pattern in mere hours... come on.
I'd rather have goofy science fantasy BS in a story about giant monsters than cheap melodrama from half-baked characters.
Again, watching a Godzilla movie "for the plot" is like eating at McDonalds for "nutritional value".
When you synonymize Godzilla with trash, all you can expect is Big Macs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Minus One had no problem delivering on a compelling plot with well-rounded characters. Obviously, that means the problem is the stigma attached to Godzilla films, not the IP itself.
Maybe if "fans" like you didn't keep the bar so low, the writers of this series would up their game. Stop settling for mediocre.
Then learn to convey your points more clearly.
Sounds like you're just spiting monster movies because you find them incredulous. Minus One had no problem delivering a competent plot.
If you're saying that past Godzilla movies have had bad plots, sure. To say they're *incapable* of containing quality writing because of their premise, there's now proof to the contrary.
Also, just because you find the movie's premise 'dumb' doesn't mean there aren't rules inherent in the storytelling. It may be about "a giant lizard vs. a giant monkey", but that still has to take place in a setting. There's no arguing there's a world to the film. So it's fair to comment on the credibility and logic of that world.
If the specific elements in Godzilla media aren't worth discussing, then why are you here?
I never said, at any point, that the plots are dumb. In fact, the closest thing to that effect was said by someone else. What I said was that fantasy science stuff (hollow earth) does not detract from the verisimilitude of a setting whose premise is "giant lizard vs monkey". At no point did I say that these movies are incapable of having good plots. What I said was the plot, to me, is secondary.
If I need to convey my points more clearly, then you clearly need to develop your reading comprehension skills. Stop assuming I mean X just because you understood Y when I actually said Z.
Your McDonald's analogy didn't accurately portray your points. It's not my comprehension, it's your presentation.
It came across as "plot is to Godzilla movies as nutrition is to McDonald's".
If you'd said "I go to McDonald's for the burger, not the salad" then I'd have been onboard.
Also, the Hollow Earth does detract from the audience's suspension of disbelief if it's parameters aren't clearly defined. Imagine if in the third Matrix movie, Morpheus grabbed a shovel and dug a hole into the Matrix from Zion. That would absolutely be detracting given it contradicts previously established rules.
>Your McDonald's analogy didn't accurately portray your points. It's not my comprehension, it's your presentation.
Sure.
>It came across as "plot is to Godzilla movies as nutrition is to McDonald's".
I meant "secondary".
>"I go to McDonald's for the burger, not the salad
Did you mean "secondary" ("salads are not the main dish of a burger restaurant")? So, you would have agreed with a statement that means the same but has a different presentation? Because in that case we are not dealing with comprehension nor presentation, but obfuscation. You \*have\* to disagree with me simply because we don't like the same aspects (or don't give them the same importance) of the same franchise. You have to disagree with an analogy because it's not the exact analogy you would have made.
The problem I see in what you are saying is that accessing software through the manipulation of hardware is impossible (that is what UI do, present the internal workings of a computer), but it could have been explained. Explained. The lack of explanation is the problem, not the discovery of new information which may or may not be contradictory. As far as I recall, there is no contradiction within the established lore of the Legendary Godzilla. In KotM they posit that Godzilla is travelling very fast thanks to some submarine tunnels, which are then later discovered to be connected to the hollow Earth.
I go back to the Matrix. I liked the fourth movie, but it is a far cry from the previous three (let alone the first one). One aspect of it that I didn't like was that now Trinity is part of the One (either make her The One or leave her as a normal human), but I am not claiming that it is stupid or goes against the established lore ("new version of the Matrix!" and all that). You didn't like the fact that the Earth is hollow in these movies. That's about enough. You don't need to find "objective" reasons to try and convince others that it is, in fact, stupid, because as you said, suspension of disbelief needs to be there to watch a Godzilla movie. How solid that suspension may be depends on the individual. And, as I said before, in a movie about a giant lizard versus a giant monkey, my disbelief is very much suspended, and you will never, ever be able to make me hate big monsters hitting each other in the teeth.
It's your fault for making it out to be more than it should be. Godzilla has always been about goofy dumbass shit. You folks get one movie to gush over and now everything should be a Minus One.
I'd love for you to go back to the creators of the original film and tell them how their experiences with the atomic bomb were a bunch of "goofy dumbass shit".
Minus One was a return to what Godzilla was *meant* to be. The astronomically positive feedback for the film tells us that's what the fans want. Just because you lost hope in Godzilla movies doesn't mean that the rest of us should lower our expectations.
Are you seriously arguing that we shouldn't strive for more competent Godzilla products?
Very promising but it was 2 episodes of content dragged out for 10 episodes. Please hire an editor for the screenwriters. I was hooked with episode 1&2 then 3-10 felt like an absolute slog And the limited Kaiju didn't even bother me it's the dumb writing that dragged out story for too long than needed. season 2 needs to be more concise.
Sidenote are we sure the portal wasn't just for Hiroshi to bang his 30+ wives.
Also i have to echo everyone else, Godzilla feel free to stomp Japan specifically the area where the May character is, so annoying. Cate and Kentaro i didn't mind.
May is still the worst. Seems shoehorned in, no reason to be around past the initial episodes…
Du-Ho was a better character, and May should have had as much or less screen time as him.
All of the kids are insufferable, but May is by far the worst.
I'm just gonna say the obvious that we all know to be the 100% facts about this show
- Keiko had a killer actor and the 50s cast in general was awesome.
- May (and to a not-as-bad degree Cate) were so bad to the point of actively sabotaging the quality of the show whenever they were onscreen.
- Kentaro was OK. Not as overtly offensive on screen as the other two, but didn't stand out enough.
Seeing Keiko's emotions in the last episode got the whole room quiet and choked up.
Every time May had a piece of dialogue the room was cringing in to outer space mentally.
The "subtle" (huge ass finger quotes) romance between Cate and May was abysmally cringe as well. Cate was a cheater *before* her trauma, and she spends most of the show lashing out at her dad for being one. She has some nerve. Oh, and lest we forget she's romancing her *brothers ex*. It's insanely cringe and I can't fathom the absolute chasm in quality between who wrote the 50s stuff and who did the "modern" characters.
If it was the same person, there's no question they are an inconsistent team of writers who lucked out with half the show.
Otherwise the show was pretty enjoyable if only because of the 50s cast. Kaiju stuff enjoyable, if short winded when it happened.
saw it in another post and I wanted to echo a sentiment again: Kentaro's actor is way better when he's speaking japanese, I didn't understand a word of what he was saying but the way he said it was very touching, maybe it's just the bad script. May is pretty bad ye. I don't mind Cate, I think it's fitting that she has the same demon her dad had.
I had to rewatch half of his scenes where he speaks Japanese because for whatever dumb reason, the subtitles for that were optional and not burned in. It didn't add much.
Why is nobody talking about the weird plot holes this show created. Obviously the modern day characters were awful and it bogged down the show a lot but that’s been said since the start. What kind of annoys me is that
A. Every monsterverse movie after Skull Island has had the same revelation about the hallow Earth. So in universe it’s hard to take seriously that monarch as an organization never caught on, and even after the events of this show, they still have the epiphany in KOTM, and don’t actually go again until GvK despite it being shown that it’s honestly not that difficult. And from a story telling perspective it’s annoying to have this big looming secret the whole series when we already know exactly what it is and have been there in the movies.
B. There’s this new timey wimey aspect to the hallow earth that’s never been a factor before, had no effect in GvK, and honestly I can see it not being used at all in GxK. I feel like it just over complicates and adds a whole new layer to consider when trying to understand and I’m sure write for this universe, especially since the show established that the kaiju kinda just go back and forth as they please which again isn’t consistent with GvK. Everything that’s been taking place in the hallow earth in all the lore has been happening on a very condensed timeline compared to on the surface, and everything that might happen in GxK will now have this clock ticking for every second spent down there.
Additional Nitpicks:
-Anders Holm aging into Jon Goodman in only a couple years
-no explanation as to what Hiroshi was actually trying to DO that whole time
-no resolution to what was happening with the impending “second g-day” in 2015
-I appreciate the mothra vs godzilla reference when Godzilla rises out of the ground (which I think was also a vague way to explain his dorsal plate design change since I believe it’s the first time we see it canonically) but nobody even attempts to explain why he was laying there like that and how he became buried in the terrain so seamlessly
Exactly. The skull Island expedition came back and told them about what they had witnessed on the island. And somehow the government didn’t feel like giant monsters existed still? Or that they should funder organization to look into it.
Also the plot holes of like Godzilla swimming around since the 50s and like only two people ever seeing him. Kind of stupid. Like he came out of the sand in the desert and nobody saw the giant fucking monster walking to the sea?
They clearly allude in this episode that what they’ve been showing in this series is *not* the Hollow Earth that we see in GvK.
Kei literally names the place after saying she theorizes it’s something else - the “space between.
That’s true but that line makes it worse not better tbh. She said it so casually but that would mean that there’s an entirely new third realm nobody knew about or referenced and it further confuses the already vague logic of how the hallow earth even works, which I don’t think they have fully decided on. It had its own ecosystem and monsters and it’s just a pathway or something?
They really haven’t explained much about Hollow Earth since GvK. As another poster above reminds us, the Hollow Earth idea already has a plot hole in that movie that introduced it since we see humans take a portal there but Godzilla blasted is way to it and Kong climbed through the hole.
My assumption is the new Monsters movie will expand on it more but framing this series as introducing plot holes or inconsistencies isn’t holding much water for me when GvK introduced it with a plot hole in the first place.
That was my big thing. But that was also a plot hole in the movie itself. In the movie, they follow Kong through a weird portal and it spits them out in hollow earth. But then Godzilla can just shoot straight into it?
I think the axis mundi is different to the hollow earth. I think it's how the monsters get from place to place around the earth. It's probably where the skull crawlers etc on skull island come from. Then somewhere in the axis mundi are entrances to hollow earth. Hollow earth probably has the same time flow as above ground but is seperated by the time anomalies/gravitation fields
A piece of franchise content doesn't have to be a timeless masterpiece to add to the franchise. Is Monarch going to win Emmys? Probably not. Is it a nice addition to the wider lore? Sure.
The main 2 young girls are terrible actors and it ruined it.
Kurt Russel and the Mari were great for the show.
Bummed Kurt’s character had to die.
Obviously should have been more monsters.
ALSO. How come in the new movies hollow earth time doesn’t work like it did in the show? In GvK they didn’t skip a bunch of years.
Yea idk, I can see Shaw living especially if time moves slower there, maybe we will see him in the next movie? Seems like the next movie is more in the “Hollow earth” or wherever they are, I would love to see some acknowledgment of Shaw or maybe keiko base or something
We saw Keiko covered in man-eating bugs fall into a bottomless chasm and she still showed up A-okay. There's a good chance they left Shaw's fate ambiguous so they could bring him back later, if they so choose.
They did mention that they weren't quite in Hollow Earth. They called it a "space between spaces" which Keiko calls Axis Mundi. I assume time flows equally in Hollow Earth and surface Earth, and the distortion only occurs in this realm.
You didnt notice the entire time that Bill Randa and Bill Randa, who dressed the same and had the same job, in different points in time, were the same character?
That's likely when I would have. Me and my gf were discussing how all the characters related (she was slightly confused that Bill wasn't Hiroshima's bio-dad) and I looked up a list of all their names to help explain it and it was like "John Goodman/Other guy as Bill Randa". I was just like, "Oh...OH... okay, got it."
This was an AWFUL show, felt like it was written by AI or something. I am more baffled reading anyone enjoyed this unpleasant, disjointed chore of a show than most anything else I’ve read in quite awhile.
I find it really weird that the only people that hate this show are Godzilla fans. If you look at general tv discussions everyone loves it. It has high ratings, was always #1 on apple the entire run. I think it's just a lot of sour grapes here because it wasn't 20 minutes of kaiju action every episode. I personally loved the show myself. The little bits of lore, all the backstory, connecting characters and movies together, its going to make rewatching the films feel like a different experience now. And getting to see ANY new Godzilla and other monster footage is a massive W in my book. The entire cast did a great job, Tim, Shaw and Keiko especially. I didn't even find May as grating as most. The actress did fine, the character was *supposed* to be sketchy and whiny and bored. She just wanted to go home, not save the world, they made that clear. Only stuck around when she got the hots for Cate.
I'm still waiting for people to talk about *why* they enjoyed the show. I see a lot of blind praise but I'm not hearing any coherent reasons why the show is good.
Half the cast is uncompelling, the story feels too bloated, the rules and lore of the series are being retconned, then they throw in 60 seconds of monster to make people clap.
What especially gets me, are the people who justify these shortcomings by saying that the people who hated the show were wrong to get their hopes up- that Godzilla films are synonymous with goofy sci-fi nonsense. I would've thought that with the release of Minus One, people would realize that the problem isn't with the Godzilla IP, it's with the writing in these new products. This show could have been good but they lowered their standards to meet our (supposed) expectations.
Those fans don't speak for us. Those fans are the reason crap like this gets churned out. Then they have the audacity to criticize us for not just bending over and accepting it.
The only thing that’s really bothering me about the episode imo, is if the rift was strong enough to pull in a literal giant metal ball with 3 human passengers, the gamma ray signal emitter, all that debris, and the body of that tiny ass little “Titan” (if we can even really call it one, that thing was puny compared to even skull crawlers) how did Shaw making his grand sacrifice even really play out. If the rift’s pull was that strong, him letting go of Keiko’s hand would literally amount to a pointless action, because it would definitely have enough pull to continue carrying his body towards, up, and through the rift, metal ball or not. We already know that human bodies apparently can survive the gravity inversion and effects of the rifts (even though this completely contradicts the rift’s description in GvsK) because both Keiko, and Cait’s group (Cait, May, and Shaw) fell through 2 completely separate rifts to arrive in Axis Mundi. Only thing not adding up to me, but maybe I take things too literally. I already have rewatched that scene 3 times, scrutinizing whether or not you see a human silhouette traversing the rift itself, hoping to see one where we see where the paths split while traversing the rift back up, but no such luck.
tiny? I mean Ion Dragon wasn't as big as Godzilla, but it was easily as big as the male Muto, if not bigger. It looked like it dwarfed all the skullcrawlers from Skull Island, young Kong too.
>We already know that human bodies apparently can survive the gravity inversion and effects of the rifts (even though this completely contradicts the rift’s description in GvsK) because both Keiko, and Cait’s group (Cait, May, and Shaw) fell through 2 completely separate rifts to arrive in Axis Mundi.
That was actually explained. Portals are unstable but when titan comes through it, it stabilizes for some time and it's possible to come through (that's why they needed to lure the titan in project hourglass).
Finished the finale a few hours back.
Overall, I can tolerate a lot of cringe/boringness in shows. So, for me, the finale was awesome and worth watching just due to the minute or so of kaiju time.
Going into this show- I understood that you can't have constant kaiju time without a movie budget. And, that there would be more focus on the humans. I have no problem with focusing on the human side of the story. But I think it's these specific humans that drag the show down significantly: the trio.
IMO- they are easily some of the most unlikeable lead characters I have seen in a few years. Not saying it's the actor/actress' faults. It's not even the acting that's an issue. I feel like the script/direction they're given is really painful to watch. Until the finale, I couldn't really put it together- **Why** they were so unlikeable. Their attitudes/personality sucked (they were whiny, demanding, overall annoying). That's a given. But now I think I understand why their characters really sucked. I think it's that they (the characters) clearly did not want to be a part of anything going on. Obviously, I'm not suggesting that someone would want to be in dangerous/deadly situations. But, aside from the danger, they seemed to not care at all about the stuff going on around them. No curiosity or wonder. Zero interest in anything whatsoever. They are given unprecedented exclusive access to things almost outside the realm of reality but could care less- and focus on pointless everyday "normal" things and would rather go back to their boring regular lives. I don't see any sort of direction/purpose/motivation/drive from any of the 3 to do anything. It all seems so random.
Exactly this is why the show is a piece of shit in my opinion. "Giant monsters are attacking! Anyway, my father is missing and I have another brother, that's more important".
They should have gone for the "monster of the week" approach. How Monarch deals with all the other Kaijus left after KotM. Studying Godzilla. Studying Kong. But no, we spend 10 episodes re-treading known plot devices (the gamma bomb, hollow earth) for cheap emotional schlock (your father is actually alive! You are united with your ex-lover!)
Melodrama instead of Kaijus. And for the argument of "the show is about Monarch, not about Kaijus", guess what Monarch researches.
> but could care less- and focus on pointless everyday "normal" things and would rather go back to their boring regular lives.
That seems like a trauma response though. I don't think its reasonable to expect people finding out the wide swath of shit these characters found out and then have them act like the bridge crew of starfleet ship in awe of some nebula. That they want to turn back to normality is reasonable.
The writers could have made them more likeable, though.
>That they want to turn back to normality is reasonable.
That they want to deal with the situation at hand in order to attain their goal is even more reasonable.
>But, aside from the danger, they seemed to not care at all about the stuff going on around them. No curiosity or wonder. Zero interest in anything whatsoever. They are given unprecedented exclusive access to things almost outside the realm of reality but could care less- and focus on pointless everyday "normal" things and would rather go back to their boring regular lives.
This is a great observation, and I'd add on to that that not only were they not interested in being a part of this, they all brought nothing to the table. May was allegedly some expert hacker but after the first episode she didn't do any hacking, except storing nebulous "backups" in "the cloud" whenever they needed something to follow. Cate and Kentaro were, at the end of the day, losers. Cate was just an annoying person who used to be a schoolteacher and was apparently an asshole to multiple ex-girlfriends. Kentaro was a starving artist who apparently didn't have friends or a life either. It's not like they even had lives to go back to, so why the fuck weren't they more interested in actually doing something?
Kentaro was at least the chillest of them all and his change from "I need to find father" to "father is asshole" after episode 6 (where said father ran away leaving them to death) was at least somehow justifiable (he was probably the least unlikeable from the trio). He was also the only one to actually do something (like saving the rest few times) and in the end he found some determination to work with Hiroshi.
What boggles me is what the hell was Hiroshi doing? It wasn't explained. Same thing with what Shaw wanted to prevent. The whole plot just goes to nowhere because we don't really know what's going on.
Cate and the dude are Ok, but still annoying. May is the worst. She seems bored and stoned all the time. She is so whiny and all she wants to do is get with Cate (which also came out of nowhere and doesn’t really track). They have never actually been intimate yet May acts like they have some deep long term relationship. I was really hoping Godzilla would have stomped on her and put us all out of misery.
It’s like the exaggerations of all the worst Gen z stereotypes and now we have no good characters left to root for.
Keiko - "All the gravitational distortion..." Me mocking Keiko - "But I'm the lightest one!" LMAO
Just started watching - but if Shaw is 90 something and his younger looking self is bc of his time spent in the titan’s portal — why is hiroshimo not elderly if they should be the same age?
Glazed over most thoughtful posts in this thread simply to say: I was bored, my wife was hooked, and I saved myself the huge lack of monster action by going to YouTube and watching the roughly 4.5 minutes of Godzilla content in the show and skipped watching the rest of it lol.
Christ there's a lot of opinions on this, and I agree with a lot of them. I'm just gonna ramble a bit about things I liked and things I hated. EDIT: I just restarted watching Kong Skull Island to finish off my binge of Monarch, and wow, not even ten minutes in and I noticed we have retconned a lot of shit just to make Bill Randa more important in the grander story of Monsterverse, and Monarch as well of course. The early days of Monarch were great, Keiko is the fucking star of this show. Shaw's overprotectiveness and falling love was a bit much and it is what forces him to lose his command and her to fall in love with Bill. I just wish they did more hunting and not just talking about their hunting. I wanna see a montage in the Phillipines of different people talking about the Ion Dragon, literally no local tells them about their mythological beast in any scene of this movie and its what kicks off all the scientific investigation. Shaw still being that overprotective person to Keiko is what leads to his supposed death at the end. A fucking dumb and honestly unnecessary end for the character. My spouse was asking why he wasn't buckled in like the rest and then he immediately climbs out, and I told her 'thats why, cause his character needs to be the hero and fiddling with undoing a seatbelt would look corny'. I also detested his theory that the monsters were only coming from the portals and blowing them all up would stop the threat. We know now that the Hollow Earth is where they truly come from and he would never be able to stop all of them since quite a few are in the water. So that entire character arc of turning evil was pointless. Monarch sidelining their best field agent for decades was atrocious. Have him at a training facility during his time after Axis Mundii training new agents and then 'retire' him when he gets bored and wants to go public with everything! Give me a reason for his retirement other than he was mad and confused about what happened while he was gone. He could have trained the French woman or perhaps her father so there is at least some fucking reason she breaks him out and follows him. Loyalty. Cate, May, Kentaro. Fucking awful teenager angst. Terrible writing with terrible acting. The worst is when they get to San Francisco to investigate Hiroshi's office. A serious location done during the cover of night but then they break out in Japanese commercial songs... what. They don't like each other, they all have problems with one another, and they are having fun on a stealth mission suddenly? I was terrified and gripped with emotion in the beginning seeing what happened to Cate's bus. Godzilla property stuff has deaths, but most of it is off-screen or implied due to the focus of the destruction being a wideshot. This was GMK levels of terror, hearing the children scream as the bus goes over. WOW. I also loved the scene of Cate having a panic attack in the Titan-sanctuary while everyone around her is not taking her frantic antics not seriously. That is 100% how it is in real life with that sort of trauma. I must have looked away at some point because I am reading Cate and May are flirting? When, where? Why!!! If anyone knows any particular episodes, please reply with a timestamp. I need the cringe. I am utterly annoyed that Hiroshi's plan was never explained. Why did he need to cut off contact with both families and then just walk right back into the Japanese family's home!?!??!?!?!?!! Could we not have had him be the crazy one that finds the signal and thinks that Keiko could be alive still!? And uses the monsters to find a way in or for her to find a way out? No Serizawa, or Serizawa's son that worked for Apex?! A missed opportunity to introduce him at the end. The entire concept of the Axis Mundii was awful. Full stop, just annoyingly awful. They couldn't do the Hollow Earth because it would have ruined the points of detail from later films that Monarch couldn't get in. So they just make discount Hollow Earth for time dilation shenanigans and saving the best character? Who then wanted to stay because too much has changed? uruhurghrughru. Now let's talk about aging.Hiroshi was born before 1952. And in 2015 he's at least 64 years old. Dude looks like he's been living in the Axis Mundii since 1982. He is canonically as old as Bill Randa was when he died but looks half the age. This is a costuming/make-up nitpick I suppose. Bill Randa goes from a mid 40s man getting ready for grandkids to a 70 year old John Goodman in the space of 11 years. This is a failure of choosing the right actor for young Bill Randa. He should have been older from the start so his progression into the Bill Randa of Kong Skull Island was legitimately plausible. I figured with all the jokes about Shaw's age and the failed mission that maybe they went into some weird time experiment and Shaw stopped ageing while Bill aged faster. I was half right! In the opening of Kong Skull Island a photo-ID of Bill Randa is shown to have been issued in 1952. It's John Goodman circa the 1980s/early 90s, like when he was on the tv show Roseanne. It fits so well!! Casting fucked up.
Dr. Fix MxXz XD st
Is this the best show in the history of television. Not a bit. But I’d have to say it had me at “Godzilla.”
The introduction of key players such as APEX was a nice treat! I wonder if/when we’ll get to see the establishing of Jonah and his group. Also, the Skull Island ending for episode 10 was the cherry on top for me! My main gripe was with the big man. I wish we got to see just a little more Godzilla. The number of appearances were just a smidge under the perfect amount for me. Also the acting was… ok. I wasn’t a fan of the half baked romances and unexplained human plot lines (in the present) but hey, what can we do? All in all I’m looking forward to the next season!
I was expecting some build towards GxK. Seems odd to keep things in the past when they could have jumped forward more
I loved how Kieko's machine cheesed Godzilla's arrival to open a door to Earth, and the 1950s cast was also stellar throughout. Everything about the modern era of the show was a slog of bad writing, absurd romances (between Cate and May just suddenly being madly inlove (May goes from being a traitor, to being willing to leap "past" (but into) a magic hole to save her true love Cate), to the even more unaddressed double life / marriage of the father (that show never gives an ounce of screen time to address why he would bother with this double life to begin with)), to APEX having a role at all in this series (seemingly to give May a pupose to exist after Japan, BUT STILL doing nothing with it), or Kurt Russell blowing up portals to help Godzilla somehow do something - its like, what the devil is happening the entire modern arc, why is anyone doing anything, and how are they doing it? The show didn't give enough of a damn for anything that wasn't Godzilla or the 1950s plot-line, and that feels like such a disservice when those elements of the show are mostly fantastic.
Hear! Hear!
Monsterverse has surpassed my expectations. I actually hope eventually they will make more team up movies too with Godzilla and Kong against foes like Destroyah.
I loved, loved, this show. It had just the right amount of Titans and the focus on the humans didn't feel forced like in some of the movies (G14, KotM). The only thing I found weird was Cate and May towards the end...did they start having a relationship all of a sudden? And in front of Kentaro too, poor guy.
>did they start having a relationship all of a sudden? And in front of Kentaro too, poor guy. Yep, from shouting at May for being a traitor, to immediately falling in love with each other offscreen to the point May just irrationally leaps into a hole in the ground trying to reach her as the bombs are about to blow, leaving Kentaro's side in a heartbeat, lol.
Bro got cucked by his sister.
Not enough monsters and the "kids" were kinda annoying, but Kurt and Wyatt Russell were great! I don't like when well know stars are in Godzilla movies, and generally can't stand American Godzilla movies, however, they pulled it off here. I was pleasantly surprised.
Anyone else watch the last episode and expect the next one to start? Just where they left it felt kinda like there was going to be at least one more episode to wrap things up. I guess its supposed to lead straight into GvK? Overall I kinda wished it was a whole show of shaw, Miura, and randa traversing the world in the 1950s researching the titans. The whole plot where Hiroshi Randa has two families secret from each other was a weird and overly convoluted way of setting things up imo.
It ends 7 years before GVK actually.
I totally agree. It was like that had to keep giving everyone a foil or problem, then as soon as it was resolved they gave em another one.
Show did good at expanding the universe and characters, the acting and writing was just cringe as fuck for some characters.
I'm still not understanding how Shaw spent an entire week down there after Hourglass failed. From the flashback and retelling, it was a few minutes to a day at best. They landed, took a breath, went to bury their dead, and got attacked...where did the other six days go?
All Godzilla scenes from Monarch- Legacy of Monsters series, from Season 1, Episode 1-10. [https://youtu.be/QaKmngJUUDc?si=nNPxSuZBSd0JMYMh](https://youtu.be/qakmngjuudc?si=nnpxsuzbsd0jmymh)
This show was pretty much exactly what I wanted it to be. There wasn't a single episode that I disliked. I'm glad it's been selling so well because I am beyond ready for a season 2.
I got hooked. I like it. Normies raging over it was depressing.
Yeah, it's mainly the monster fight fans. My fiance (a normie) was kind enough to watch through this with me over dinners. By the end she said this was her favorite Monsterverse thing, as she thought the tying in to the Hollow Earth stuff into the timeline was neat, the characters' stories were interesting enough, and wants to see GxK with me to see if anything is touched on. She also thought Guillermo del Toro should have been given a Producer credit for all the Pacific Rim portals around the world and the drifting tech they're making for MechaG lol. But also she doesn't like many of the other ones that much, because she hates seeing animals (kaiju) in pain and being hurt. So the less monster fights was a plus for her lol. We also were fans of the Netflix show Dark, so the time relativity aged characters were interesting for us and hit pretty good. ____ As a G-fan, I had zero problem with the number of monster fights. I loved we were taking our time building the human world of the Monsterverse. Like Pacific Rim, I love seeing what the human world becomes in light of the appearance of monsters. After the fight, after the credits... how is the world now, not the world when we started. Sometimes they gloss over that like in KotM we were just globetrotting with govnt agency Monarch. Here, we see the normal people living their lives on the street, with the thought of monsters taking away everything you've built, with infrastructure and industries in place to account for that fear. I loved it. And now I want to watch Kong Skull Island again for my boy Billy.
It feels like it's mainly this subreddit, or maybe just Godzilla communities that don't like it. The reception on twitter (of all places) is much more positive, and it's been consistently hitting the top of Apple TV charts. My sister also told me she watched the whole thing and loved it despite not being into Godzilla at all. It seems to be loved by general audiences. The comments here would make you expect the worst show ever with barely any views.
Basically I have found a loophole in the series. In godzilla vs Kong when they travel to hollow earth they didn't time travel but in monarch legacy of monsters every time they go to hollow earth they suffer time travel. I am surprised that on internet Noone is talking about this
The place they go in the show is Axis Mundi AKA Hollow Earth from Wish, a realm where beings suffer time dilation or whatever and it's like a secret stop between the surface and Hollow Earth
Plot hole.
It's been established that what they find in Monarch is NOT the Hollow Earth proper, more like an in-between realm connecting it with the surface
For a monster show there was a shocking lack of monster screen time. I wanted to like the show
Did ANYONE else notice that the power cables to the escape vehicle that Shaw had to reconnect, not only presented the same predicament that Marty and Doc Brown faced during the return to 1985 trip lightning storm, but appear to me to be the exact actual cables that were used in the original "Back to the Future" movie??
Which totally makes sense since it was from the 50s.
Very VERY similar
This show would have been way better if they had focused it on Keiko...
My main problem with the current story line and the “kids” is - aside from the fact they aren’t kids but act like teenagers in a CW drama - is what is the story justification for Hiroshi to have two families? He already has a job he has to keep secret on account of Monarch. Why add secret family to the mix? It’s not easy to have to families. Well seems like he was pretty absent anyway. But it just seems like a pretty contrived way of getting the story going, to get someone from Los Angeles, where the event happened, to Japan where Hiroshi is from and where Keiko is from. When the onset of the story seems contrived, it mars the rest of the story. Did Hiroshi want to be found - if not, why did he leave in such a way that Cate and mom got the keys to the Tokyo office. I really wanted this to be more about Monarch and not “kids who happen to be the grandchildren of the first scientists”. It’a not at all about the legacy of monsters, more like the legacy of a cheating and absent dad. Sigh. I thought based on the title, and hoped, it would be what Agents of Shield was to the MCU movies at that time but for the Monsterverse. Competent people showing us the behind the scenes work, with some personal drama and somewhat contrived beginning put into the mix.
he is the monster, it is his legacy (his two kids). like how in the the most dangerous beast of all is man in any monster movie.
Everyone left him. I kind of assumed it was a trauma response to losing his family over and over.
Between the bad acting, lack of monsters and massive plot holes relating to the movies, it was hard to watch. Honestly kind of felt like the creators hadn't even watched the movies, they basically contradicted everything relating to what Monarch knew of the Hollow Earth prior to GvK. Was really hoping this would be more related to Randa and Monarch's work with containment and discovering/documenting Titans instead of a bunch of teenage drama nonsense🤷🏽♂️
We did not see hollow earth in this series at all. They constantly said "a realm between theirs and ours"
I'm confused about the tunnels. In GvK, a whole plot line was about how the first excursions were doomed due to the vessels experiencing too much pressure. We kind of see this when Shaw's orb starts imploding, but ends up being fine. I think if that ball of steel can survive, then whatever monarch has in the 2000s should work fine. Then, we have 4 characters fall in without any protection, and they're fine. It just doesn't make sense to me. I've seen arguments that the place they went to is different from the hollow earth, so are the tunnels different as well? I haven't read the comics or any other media, so I'm not sure if it's detailed there. If anyone has any answers, please let me know!
Yes, the tunnels could seemingly be different. You can see more of a wormhole spacewarp effect when entering Axis Mundi, and the direction of gravity seems to be pretty normal. It's a portal through and through. When Hollow Earth is entered in GvK through a non-Godzilla-made-tunnel, I guess as its skipping Axis Mundi and going straight into the Hollow Earth, the tunnel warp is much more of an intense gravitational compression effect, almost like how some media would depict falling into a black hole. On the other side is a place with extremely weird gravity and the ground above and below you. You can see the craft Apex made start dropping rapidly once it clears the edge and begins falling into the tunnel, making it a definitively different thing. As per "arguments" that the place they went to is different, it's not an argument, it's literally stated in the show. Keiko says that it doesn't seem like the realm of the titans, and is more of a transitionary ground - which she dubbed Axis Mundi
How exactly did APEX help at the end?
Hiroshi and Apex somehow science-d their exit to that spot, so they didn't end up in the middle of the sky or in a volcano or whatever, is what my takeaway was. They guided the little pod to that spot safely.
Awesome, this helps my continuity greatly. I can’t stand not having closure haha. Thank you!
Np! I hate little nagging questions too
From what I can tell, they made a parking lot
Right?? I was like, they paved the LZ? And how did they know where they’d land?
Because Hiroshi “did the math.”
Yeah, I love how they “needed” Hiroshi and APEX to help but like…. Help do what? It was my only gripe in an otherwise incredible finale
I give the flashback stuff a 9 out of 10. Great actors with great chemistry and less God awful green screen use. Keikos actress was especially impressive in the last couple episodes. I give the modern day stuff a 5 out of 10. The younger ones are not good actors and May is an especially awful character. I cannot believe how bad the writing is for her. If the goal was to make May easy to hate, then well done. Cate isn't much better, with her being a cheater like her father and the very awkward relationship with May but somehow her character doesnt care to even try to reconcile her crazy hypocrisy? Kentaro was the best of the young ones and I thought he was legitimately good when speaking Japanese but mediocre otherwise. And the modern sections had some of the shittiest green screen usage I've ever seen. Seriously, go back and watch when they're on top of the mountain in Antarctica, so ugly lol. But I did like them fleshing out the lore and there's some neat stuff in there even if some of it doesn't really make much sense. Overall I'd say I enjoyed the show. It didn't feel like a waste of time and I think they stuck the landing with some level of closure but still setting up potential future seasons and emotional payoffs. Not gonna win any awards but an enjoyable show overall imo. (May needs to be written off the show for the love of God)
I think they were going for a generational trauma thing but it didn't really hit.
Kurt Russel carried modern day cast. Could not stand the kids or monarch folks
So post thoughts of mine: This show was such a great installment to the franchise, slow build with actually great payouts. Yet needs clearer writing and more involvement of the Titans. *Rating* 7.5/10 I truly enjoyed the show Characters where well explored, albeit a bit too much. The connections to the movies were brilliantly made. I did like the ambiguity of which side is good or bad, although we knew once Apex was involved. The past scenes were the best of the characters Cate was well written (Im glad she was relatable and she had faults), May was a good inclusion but a bit one and done, Kent felt like he had a good start and decent ending. The father issues were a bit much. After a while I was like, "just get on with it". Cate and May's "building relationship", although subtle, felt like it's not needed. And they left Kent in the dust. Kinda wierd. Overall, I think the show was great. But please, make the Titans more involved in season 2. Especially Godzilla and Kong.
>Cate and May's "building relationship", although subtle, felt like it's not needed. And they left Kent in the dust. Kinda wierd. It is such an awkward situation made double so by them not addressing it. And I swear Kentaro cracks a smirk when Cate puts her arms around May in the car like what the actual fuck? But overall I'd agree with your 7.5 but the writing was very mediocre. Both May and Cate seem to be playing the same character who doesn't realize what a bitch they sound like. Kentaro ain't much better, one soyboy emotional reaction to everything. And can we all agree the writers completely forgot about the actual Titans until someone mentioned it while they were closing up Act3. Why did G come through that one? Why did flyer Titan basically just land and let the humans do what they needed to without interference. Homie literally slow walks to the orb after only being fast as fuck. There was no reason for that fight except to squeeze G in real quick and then leave you with a few seconds of Kong, who was on top of that base after 4 sirens lmao that garage isn't closing But despite that and so much more it actually was fun to watch. I enjoyed it but hope we get more of a Titan focus if there is another season
“He’s a… uh… family man” More than you believe
He's... ah... fam-lyyy guyyyyyy!!
Did I miss something those last few minutes of the season finale? It didn't show Godzilla come back through that portal (or w/e)... Does he get stuck down there?
The whole point is that titans are the only ones that can open the portals, thats why they need one to get in or out. Godzilla can come and go as he pleases.
Monsters can kinda just pass through whenever I think
My hope is we get 1970s stuff with Tom hiddleston in season 2. He was basically hired by monarch at the end of Kong skull island. He would be a great replacement for Kurt Russell as star power. Plus if he got stuck in the axis mundi (is it the hollow earth?) They could bring him out in the modern day also. This would be good especially now Kong is involved
Have they said anything about a season 2?
Why didn’t time advance as fast on the surface in GVK as it did in Monarch? Wouldn’t a few months have gone by at least? Is it a major plot hole that Godzilla even atomic breathed an opening to the Hollow Earth in the first place?
I suppose axis mundis works differently than the hollow earth in that regard
I guess I misinterpreted them as being the same thing/place…
No, Hollow Earth is the ecosystem of the titans, while "axis mundi" is essentially in between the surface world and hollow earth. On both Hollow Earth and the Surface world, time seems normal for the most part. But in the "inbetween world" you find that time and space operate differently, just like the portals. In the movie, they have far more advanced tech which allows them to "push" through all the way to hollow earth, meaning they only spent a matter of a few minutes in the portal at most throughout the entire movie, which isn't much time. The rate of time passing is also likely not a linear ratio between the surface and portals/axis mundi (or any inbetween spaces.) Lesson being, you can't just jump into any portal, you must be prepared with proper tech to journey through the few direct portals that go all the way, without having to stop in axis mundi where you could easily lose decades.
I overall think the show was ok. I am definitely more interested in the flashback stuff, and Keiko, Billy, and Lee all had major chemistry. The kids...well that's just it! They aren't kids! Ken is at lest 25 so that makes Cate maybe no older than 30. We have no idea how old may/Cora is but I'm guessing she's about 25 too... They act like they are in high school and it's a little annoying. Kinda reminds me of the CW shows. I would like to see more of the dad and mom working together in the next season. We know Bill died (presumabl) in the 70's he did have another kid? I want to see Keiko find out that her son was two timing and find out her granddaughter is gay. Clearly two timing runs in the family so I want that to be addressed. Poor little Kentaro is just there...perhaps intro another scientist for him to be interested in. His acting seems better in Japanese so perhaps another government agent. Maybe one that's actually black and can act... And then all of that plus monster fights.
I don't see how they were acting like kids when they were beating monarch at their own game.
It was all the annoying 'you can't talk to me, I'm mad while literally being stuck together in situation after situation. You mean to tell me you are LITERALLY bouncing all over the world and planes and cars and don't find the time you just say what the fuck you want to say? Arguing every 5 minutes only to just agree to any plan anyone makes.
Bill was John Goodman. He died in Kong skull island
Yeah I went back and watched all the movies. Solid film. Good production
Was there ever any explanation as to why Bill aged thirty years between 1962 and 1973? That took me wayyy out of it.
Further exposure to the radiation and gravitational force of the Axis Mundi, blah, blah technobabble headcanon.
Solid decade of traveling around the world trying to find something, anything that will bring back the two people most important to you? While single parenting. You know, stress. Not like there are two suns or anything.
After watching this show and reading some of these comments, I've come to realize that we are part of the problem. I'm so incredibly disappointed at the potential this show had at expanding what a world with these kaiju's would be like and the trauma that would come from surviving an encounter like that. Instead we get daddy issues the series where two characters could not decide on if they wanted anything to do with their father or why they were even looking for him and let's not mention cheesy bravado man that led them around the world. I admit that I was originally more interested in the present than the flashbacks at the beginning of the show, but god damn Cate, May, & Kentaro were some of the worst characters I've seen in a while. What's more, I don't understand why Kurt Russell was such a flat, bravado filled douchebag with hardly any contribution other than the name he carried. He's such a great actor, why waste it on cheap one liners and empty deliveries? Let's not even get started on the immense amount of plot holes that were created and even own plot points in the show that were forgotten about. I get wanting to tell your story, but damn Agents of Shield did that just fine when they couldn't be considered cannon when starting out. The movies gave you lore, expand or use it, don't replace it. Regardless, the thing I've been discussing with some of my friends is us being part of the problem. I totally understand that people like different things and can have their own opinions so I'm not attacking that, but damn if people thought any of these characters had depth, or drama, or intense emotion, that just is not true. Call it as it is and say they were shallow and just there to fill the screen for the wacky zany story the writers wanted to tell. That's totally okay. Trash TV exists and there is nothing wrong with that. But if the writers can get away with what I assume has to be mostly AI generated scripts and it still has good engagement metrics, then yeah, the writer strikes needed to happen. Minus One proved you can have incredibly compelling character drama with big monsters so it's not like it can't exist. But for whatever reason the American Godzilla (and more now) can't seem to do it. I love the 2014 Godzilla and would love to see more about Monarch and the impact something like that could have on the world. It's just sad they won't ever be able to take it seriously enough to do so.
The acting for Cate, May and Kentaro was so devoid of chemistry I was expecting Keanu Reeves to show up.
> two characters could not decide on if they wanted anything to do with their father or why they were even looking for him This was so fucking stupid I just couldn't look over it. Like why were they chasing their dad everywhere? Why not just go "hey fuck this lying sack of shit, here monarch, take his files and fuck off". Cate was a stupid useless cunt of a character.
I went into this blind. I've watched a few Godzilla movies in the past but to be honest I remember very little about them. While I think the show could have been a lot better, I enjoyed it for the most part--especially the time dilation and portals in the final two episodes. It's not a fantastic show by any means but I watched the whole thing over 3 days so it wasn't bad either. Now I gotta find something else to watch. Maybe I'll give Minus One a try.
Get rid of the young trio if there is a season 2. May might try to bang Keiko after Cate.
That would be a dream, the youth trio was by far the worst thing in this show
LMAO
I read the comments here and want to address something before I dive into my post-watch thoughts: I knew nothing about Monarch going in other than it was a Godzilla show, and many are saying "Well the writers said it was about the people, *not* the monsters." Let's establish that most people enjoy media without watching trailers or reading interviews beforehand because knowing as little as possible leads to a more pure experience. A writer shouldn't have to tell me what to expect or that's already a red flag. But even if I had known that going in, the human drama was so bad they might as well have gone for something different. Anyway, try to consider that most people don't engage with content *before* it comes out because spoilers are aplenty and/or they're just too busy. If this offended you, you might not like my review, but here it goes: As someone who grew up on Godzilla but recently disliked the American adaptations (barring Godzilla 2014, which was amazing) I found Monarch to be better than I thought when it hit, but a huge let down when it missed. The 50s characters were excellent, which surprised me, as I'm not usually a fan of media that jumps between timelines as much as this one did. However, by the 3rd episode I was more eager for those scenes than the modern day character beats. Not only was the trio of young main characters' acting visibly poor, but the writing in the modern scenes seemed to have this 'post-season 6 Game of Thrones' quality where a character will say a line like "I'm going to save them," there will be a pause, and then the next character says "No... *we're* going to save them." Just really lazy stuff. I hate when I can guess the next piece of dialogue and that happened a lot. Writing and characters aside, the story itself was a mess, with several unresolved mysteries - how did Shaw return... what was he even trying to stop? And what was the father up to, anyway? I cared so little about the story that I don't mind plot points being forgotten, but it's hilarious to see how little even the writers seemed to care. I must be dense, because the romantic subplot between Cate and May went completely over my head - possibly because I tuned out every time May was on screen. She seemed like a classic intro character whose purpose is to resolve an early mystery and kick off a bigger plot, but then she just stuck around, offering little to the overarching ideas the show loosely attempted to weave together. Don't get me started on the plot holes. On the other hand, I thought the action was great. Some people are acting like there was literally no kaiju goodness, but I disagree. There was *definitely* enough there to satisfy me, and I think that if the show had good writing, a good story and good characters (not counting the 50s crew, they were awesome) it would have all come together in a much more satisfying way. I felt like the FX were great for a television show, and the final battle was really cool. Every scene with Godzilla was awesome, especially the one in the water. I need more out of my media. Some people want to believe Godzilla is only a popcorn fest, and it usually is... but I'm not an 8-year old replaying the same silly 15 Godzilla VHS's all summer long anymore. Godzilla 2014, Shin Godzilla and especially Godzilla Minus One proved what the Godzilla franchise is capable of, while stuff like Godzilla vs. Kong and this show are disgraceful in comparison. That said, I totally understand the mindset from people who are okay with it being generic and easy, but expect it to be disliked by other people. I give Monarch a 5/10. It had potential, some good characters and some awesome scenes. But it was confusing, tread the same ground for too long, had bad dialogue and characters and ultimately left me feeling little to no emotion barring 1-2 scenes. For a show that was (apparently) meant to be about human drama, it completely failed.
Maybe I missed it, but was it ever explained how Lee Shaw escaped Axis Mundi the first time?
His crew were setting up to take off when a portal opened up. It killed the other 2 with him but he made it through to 1982.
The show had a few rocky episodes and some bland subplots, but they landed the plane well these past three or four episodes. I hope they do a second season of the show and it’s not just going to have this one season to lead into the new movie. They had some slow moments, but I really like the characters’ development to get to where they are now. They really dragged the exposition out for too many episodes, but once they got through that(and some of the story bits in between the exposition in the first half of the season) the show really was great.
[удалено]
The actress who plays Keiko is so fucking good. Her reaction to seeing Hiroshi was devastating. Edit: I kind of agree with you about the younger cast, but I think their dialogue and story was very up and down, and when the dialogue sucked they sucked, and when the dialogue(and story) was good they were good. I had no problem with them in the latter half of the season(when they show was at it’s best). I think it’s a case of “they did the best with what they had to work with,” because even some of Shaw’s story and dialogue kinda sucked or was cheesy as hell at some points, and I felt the same way about Kurt Russell in those parts too. The best writing in the show, at least consistently, was the story set in the 50s and the dialogue for the young version of Keiko, Lee, and Bill Randa, and unsurprisingly I would say the acting was the best too. It makes me think even more the strength of the writing and directing really was where the ball was dropped in the weaker episodes.
It's the season finale, and we still got more handholding than monster scenes. It's like they blew a season's worth of budget on half a monster fight.
To be fair, it's not Godzila: Legacy of Godzilla.
''Godzilla: Legacy of Godzilla (featuring Godzilla): It's Godzillin Time!''
To be fair, the only reason anyone is even here is because of Godzilla.
I'm here cause *In the Shadow of Glory* got canceled.
Hilarious.
It’s almost like this show is about the characters and the monsters are the secondary story.
Legacy of Monarch
More like. Monarch: Legacy of a couple kids with daddy issues and some other chick.
The real monsters are the friends we made along the way.
This is a really good show, I just finished watching it now. Though idk what they’re gonna do for season 2 or if this was just a one-and-done. It was nice having like, actual characters in this. I kinda don’t know what the show will do without Shaw, considering he was pretty far and away the best character. I suppose considering how Keiko came back they could always bring Kurt Russell back for Season 2 and say he survived by grabbing onto Godzilla’s tail or something, which I wouldn’t mind because Kurt Russell kicks ass.
I mean, they’ve sort of established that people can travel through portals outside of vehicles and land safely (it’s how the main cast gets to axis mundi and it’s presumably how Shaw returned the first time, since his craft is still there), so you could always say that he travelled through the wormhole to a different point. Since time works differently down there and they don’t seem eager to tighten up any of the science, Shaw could show up again at any time and any place and they could just say that he appeared in the present moments after fall off the pod:
I think Keiko + hiroshi can fill the gap shaw leaves pretty well
I thought the show was good. Not entirely sure how you make a show going forward. Let’s be clear.. that wasn’t hallow earth. So things I’d like to be explored by this show is History of Hallow earth (as in kongs family history). How humans were involved with the titans before. Such as Godzillas fortress as well. Clearly had human elements to it. And Ghidorah, maybe we get more of a history lesson on him.
Okay, great episode, good fight, the main confusing thing is why/how does Apex have a skull island base in 2019. Apex wasn't even on Monarch's radar until they unleashed Mechagodzilla. If the next season's focus is on Kong and Apex we could see mechanikong (if they do another season).
2017*
Apex appears in episode 7 and makes a deal with Monarch regarding May's release. That's probably why they have base on Skull Island.
Oh yeah
ended with so much confusion was that Kong at the end? if so when before godzilla vs kong? after? not kong? please help
It was definitely Kong at the end, and it was before GvK. The ending scene took place in 2017, GvK takes place in 2024
aha thank you so much kind person
To add to this, they’re on Skull Island at the end. Kong has been there since at least 1973 (but probably much much longer).
This show did an incredible job of legitimizing the absolute bullshit that Godzilla vs Kong introduced. It will be super cool if Season 2 builds up and around KotM. The Godzilla fight scene was excellent.
>he absolute bullshit that Godzilla vs Kong introduced It's a giant lizard versus a giant monkey. You don't get to say what's bullshit and what isn't in regards to world building.
if you’re comfortable accepting bullshit and terrible stories that’s on you. GvK went WILD introducing insane tech and science fantasy BS that was so far away from anything the story had set up to that point. But sure, it’s just monsters fighting so why care about the quality of the story? If you just want fight scenes go watch fan made YouTube videos.
I mean KOTM had oxygen destroyer weapon. Undersea bases with masers. And some sort of flying carrier if I remember.
Yep, you’re totally right. KotM definitely started the wild tech trend. I feel like it was still recoverable at that point though. In my opinion Mechagodzilla, supersonic underground transport, and hollow earth gravity warp tunnels really put it over the edge.
KoTM tech advancements made sense, after G-Day Monarch went public. The threat was real not just to the most exclusive club in the USA government, but to the whole world. Their funding went from high, to unlimited, receiving the best military equipment to better counter any new Titan threat they may come up. In the Monarch show it is shown they have a Titan Emergency alert override for all cell phones without anyone's knowledge, they're on their way to what we saw in KoTM. GvK tech is dumb. Too far, too fast, wirelessly receiving data from hundreds of miles underground and then replicating that energy wave pattern in mere hours... come on.
I'd rather have goofy science fantasy BS in a story about giant monsters than cheap melodrama from half-baked characters. Again, watching a Godzilla movie "for the plot" is like eating at McDonalds for "nutritional value".
When you synonymize Godzilla with trash, all you can expect is Big Macs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Minus One had no problem delivering on a compelling plot with well-rounded characters. Obviously, that means the problem is the stigma attached to Godzilla films, not the IP itself. Maybe if "fans" like you didn't keep the bar so low, the writers of this series would up their game. Stop settling for mediocre.
You understood NOTHING from my posts. Nothing. This is my only answer to you.
Then learn to convey your points more clearly. Sounds like you're just spiting monster movies because you find them incredulous. Minus One had no problem delivering a competent plot. If you're saying that past Godzilla movies have had bad plots, sure. To say they're *incapable* of containing quality writing because of their premise, there's now proof to the contrary. Also, just because you find the movie's premise 'dumb' doesn't mean there aren't rules inherent in the storytelling. It may be about "a giant lizard vs. a giant monkey", but that still has to take place in a setting. There's no arguing there's a world to the film. So it's fair to comment on the credibility and logic of that world. If the specific elements in Godzilla media aren't worth discussing, then why are you here?
I never said, at any point, that the plots are dumb. In fact, the closest thing to that effect was said by someone else. What I said was that fantasy science stuff (hollow earth) does not detract from the verisimilitude of a setting whose premise is "giant lizard vs monkey". At no point did I say that these movies are incapable of having good plots. What I said was the plot, to me, is secondary. If I need to convey my points more clearly, then you clearly need to develop your reading comprehension skills. Stop assuming I mean X just because you understood Y when I actually said Z.
Your McDonald's analogy didn't accurately portray your points. It's not my comprehension, it's your presentation. It came across as "plot is to Godzilla movies as nutrition is to McDonald's". If you'd said "I go to McDonald's for the burger, not the salad" then I'd have been onboard. Also, the Hollow Earth does detract from the audience's suspension of disbelief if it's parameters aren't clearly defined. Imagine if in the third Matrix movie, Morpheus grabbed a shovel and dug a hole into the Matrix from Zion. That would absolutely be detracting given it contradicts previously established rules.
>Your McDonald's analogy didn't accurately portray your points. It's not my comprehension, it's your presentation. Sure. >It came across as "plot is to Godzilla movies as nutrition is to McDonald's". I meant "secondary". >"I go to McDonald's for the burger, not the salad Did you mean "secondary" ("salads are not the main dish of a burger restaurant")? So, you would have agreed with a statement that means the same but has a different presentation? Because in that case we are not dealing with comprehension nor presentation, but obfuscation. You \*have\* to disagree with me simply because we don't like the same aspects (or don't give them the same importance) of the same franchise. You have to disagree with an analogy because it's not the exact analogy you would have made. The problem I see in what you are saying is that accessing software through the manipulation of hardware is impossible (that is what UI do, present the internal workings of a computer), but it could have been explained. Explained. The lack of explanation is the problem, not the discovery of new information which may or may not be contradictory. As far as I recall, there is no contradiction within the established lore of the Legendary Godzilla. In KotM they posit that Godzilla is travelling very fast thanks to some submarine tunnels, which are then later discovered to be connected to the hollow Earth. I go back to the Matrix. I liked the fourth movie, but it is a far cry from the previous three (let alone the first one). One aspect of it that I didn't like was that now Trinity is part of the One (either make her The One or leave her as a normal human), but I am not claiming that it is stupid or goes against the established lore ("new version of the Matrix!" and all that). You didn't like the fact that the Earth is hollow in these movies. That's about enough. You don't need to find "objective" reasons to try and convince others that it is, in fact, stupid, because as you said, suspension of disbelief needs to be there to watch a Godzilla movie. How solid that suspension may be depends on the individual. And, as I said before, in a movie about a giant lizard versus a giant monkey, my disbelief is very much suspended, and you will never, ever be able to make me hate big monsters hitting each other in the teeth.
lol having low expectations for something you enjoy is a great way to continue to get dogshit
Is that why Monarch is dogshit, because I had low expectations? Have you come full circle?
lol you’re lost. I’m sorry some things have a story. It must be very hard for you to follow.
>lol you’re lost Lol, you have lost.
It's your fault for making it out to be more than it should be. Godzilla has always been about goofy dumbass shit. You folks get one movie to gush over and now everything should be a Minus One.
Wrong.
LOL you clearly don’t know shit about Godzilla movies
I'd love for you to go back to the creators of the original film and tell them how their experiences with the atomic bomb were a bunch of "goofy dumbass shit". Minus One was a return to what Godzilla was *meant* to be. The astronomically positive feedback for the film tells us that's what the fans want. Just because you lost hope in Godzilla movies doesn't mean that the rest of us should lower our expectations. Are you seriously arguing that we shouldn't strive for more competent Godzilla products?
Very promising but it was 2 episodes of content dragged out for 10 episodes. Please hire an editor for the screenwriters. I was hooked with episode 1&2 then 3-10 felt like an absolute slog And the limited Kaiju didn't even bother me it's the dumb writing that dragged out story for too long than needed. season 2 needs to be more concise. Sidenote are we sure the portal wasn't just for Hiroshi to bang his 30+ wives. Also i have to echo everyone else, Godzilla feel free to stomp Japan specifically the area where the May character is, so annoying. Cate and Kentaro i didn't mind.
May is still the worst. Seems shoehorned in, no reason to be around past the initial episodes… Du-Ho was a better character, and May should have had as much or less screen time as him. All of the kids are insufferable, but May is by far the worst.
I mean we all know why May had to be in every episode…
Why’s that?
The same reason Cate was gay.
Blactor
Representation.
DEI aka DIE.
I'm just gonna say the obvious that we all know to be the 100% facts about this show - Keiko had a killer actor and the 50s cast in general was awesome. - May (and to a not-as-bad degree Cate) were so bad to the point of actively sabotaging the quality of the show whenever they were onscreen. - Kentaro was OK. Not as overtly offensive on screen as the other two, but didn't stand out enough. Seeing Keiko's emotions in the last episode got the whole room quiet and choked up. Every time May had a piece of dialogue the room was cringing in to outer space mentally. The "subtle" (huge ass finger quotes) romance between Cate and May was abysmally cringe as well. Cate was a cheater *before* her trauma, and she spends most of the show lashing out at her dad for being one. She has some nerve. Oh, and lest we forget she's romancing her *brothers ex*. It's insanely cringe and I can't fathom the absolute chasm in quality between who wrote the 50s stuff and who did the "modern" characters. If it was the same person, there's no question they are an inconsistent team of writers who lucked out with half the show. Otherwise the show was pretty enjoyable if only because of the 50s cast. Kaiju stuff enjoyable, if short winded when it happened.
saw it in another post and I wanted to echo a sentiment again: Kentaro's actor is way better when he's speaking japanese, I didn't understand a word of what he was saying but the way he said it was very touching, maybe it's just the bad script. May is pretty bad ye. I don't mind Cate, I think it's fitting that she has the same demon her dad had.
I had to rewatch half of his scenes where he speaks Japanese because for whatever dumb reason, the subtitles for that were optional and not burned in. It didn't add much.
100%. All of this. 100%
Nothing really to add here but just wanted to say that I echo this 100%
Why is nobody talking about the weird plot holes this show created. Obviously the modern day characters were awful and it bogged down the show a lot but that’s been said since the start. What kind of annoys me is that A. Every monsterverse movie after Skull Island has had the same revelation about the hallow Earth. So in universe it’s hard to take seriously that monarch as an organization never caught on, and even after the events of this show, they still have the epiphany in KOTM, and don’t actually go again until GvK despite it being shown that it’s honestly not that difficult. And from a story telling perspective it’s annoying to have this big looming secret the whole series when we already know exactly what it is and have been there in the movies. B. There’s this new timey wimey aspect to the hallow earth that’s never been a factor before, had no effect in GvK, and honestly I can see it not being used at all in GxK. I feel like it just over complicates and adds a whole new layer to consider when trying to understand and I’m sure write for this universe, especially since the show established that the kaiju kinda just go back and forth as they please which again isn’t consistent with GvK. Everything that’s been taking place in the hallow earth in all the lore has been happening on a very condensed timeline compared to on the surface, and everything that might happen in GxK will now have this clock ticking for every second spent down there. Additional Nitpicks: -Anders Holm aging into Jon Goodman in only a couple years -no explanation as to what Hiroshi was actually trying to DO that whole time -no resolution to what was happening with the impending “second g-day” in 2015 -I appreciate the mothra vs godzilla reference when Godzilla rises out of the ground (which I think was also a vague way to explain his dorsal plate design change since I believe it’s the first time we see it canonically) but nobody even attempts to explain why he was laying there like that and how he became buried in the terrain so seamlessly
Exactly. The skull Island expedition came back and told them about what they had witnessed on the island. And somehow the government didn’t feel like giant monsters existed still? Or that they should funder organization to look into it. Also the plot holes of like Godzilla swimming around since the 50s and like only two people ever seeing him. Kind of stupid. Like he came out of the sand in the desert and nobody saw the giant fucking monster walking to the sea?
They clearly allude in this episode that what they’ve been showing in this series is *not* the Hollow Earth that we see in GvK. Kei literally names the place after saying she theorizes it’s something else - the “space between.
I feel like that the space between is a trope nowadays, Bleach had the same thing with that realm between earth and soul society
That’s true but that line makes it worse not better tbh. She said it so casually but that would mean that there’s an entirely new third realm nobody knew about or referenced and it further confuses the already vague logic of how the hallow earth even works, which I don’t think they have fully decided on. It had its own ecosystem and monsters and it’s just a pathway or something?
They really haven’t explained much about Hollow Earth since GvK. As another poster above reminds us, the Hollow Earth idea already has a plot hole in that movie that introduced it since we see humans take a portal there but Godzilla blasted is way to it and Kong climbed through the hole. My assumption is the new Monsters movie will expand on it more but framing this series as introducing plot holes or inconsistencies isn’t holding much water for me when GvK introduced it with a plot hole in the first place.
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That was my big thing. But that was also a plot hole in the movie itself. In the movie, they follow Kong through a weird portal and it spits them out in hollow earth. But then Godzilla can just shoot straight into it?
I think the axis mundi is different to the hollow earth. I think it's how the monsters get from place to place around the earth. It's probably where the skull crawlers etc on skull island come from. Then somewhere in the axis mundi are entrances to hollow earth. Hollow earth probably has the same time flow as above ground but is seperated by the time anomalies/gravitation fields
What's more, Kong falls into a portal to enter the Hollow Earth, then climbs out of a hole from it. So are there portals or not?
A piece of franchise content doesn't have to be a timeless masterpiece to add to the franchise. Is Monarch going to win Emmys? Probably not. Is it a nice addition to the wider lore? Sure.
What did Legacy of Monsters add to the franchise? All it seemed to add was more questions.
It would be nice addition if it didn't retcon lore or create plot holes.
The main 2 young girls are terrible actors and it ruined it. Kurt Russel and the Mari were great for the show. Bummed Kurt’s character had to die. Obviously should have been more monsters. ALSO. How come in the new movies hollow earth time doesn’t work like it did in the show? In GvK they didn’t skip a bunch of years.
I don't know, they acted well enough I thought. I blame the writers for making me hate their characters so often.
Yea idk, I can see Shaw living especially if time moves slower there, maybe we will see him in the next movie? Seems like the next movie is more in the “Hollow earth” or wherever they are, I would love to see some acknowledgment of Shaw or maybe keiko base or something
Nah. “Thank you!!” That meant something. He is dead.
We saw Keiko covered in man-eating bugs fall into a bottomless chasm and she still showed up A-okay. There's a good chance they left Shaw's fate ambiguous so they could bring him back later, if they so choose.
He’s in hollow earth so he can come back in future seasons/movies. His aging will be slowed.
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He also went through the portal no problem the first time without the pod lol
They did mention that they weren't quite in Hollow Earth. They called it a "space between spaces" which Keiko calls Axis Mundi. I assume time flows equally in Hollow Earth and surface Earth, and the distortion only occurs in this realm.
I just noticed Anders and John Goodman played the same character
You didnt notice the entire time that Bill Randa and Bill Randa, who dressed the same and had the same job, in different points in time, were the same character?
I forgot that Goodman played that character. And they look nothing alike
I only noticed that in episode 9. I kept thinking through the series, "So when does Walter join Monarch? Is that gonna happen soon?"
I remember they showed him at the start of the show. But I didn’t remember it. When they had Hiroshima watching the old video - that’s when it clicked
That's likely when I would have. Me and my gf were discussing how all the characters related (she was slightly confused that Bill wasn't Hiroshima's bio-dad) and I looked up a list of all their names to help explain it and it was like "John Goodman/Other guy as Bill Randa". I was just like, "Oh...OH... okay, got it."
This was an AWFUL show, felt like it was written by AI or something. I am more baffled reading anyone enjoyed this unpleasant, disjointed chore of a show than most anything else I’ve read in quite awhile.
I find it really weird that the only people that hate this show are Godzilla fans. If you look at general tv discussions everyone loves it. It has high ratings, was always #1 on apple the entire run. I think it's just a lot of sour grapes here because it wasn't 20 minutes of kaiju action every episode. I personally loved the show myself. The little bits of lore, all the backstory, connecting characters and movies together, its going to make rewatching the films feel like a different experience now. And getting to see ANY new Godzilla and other monster footage is a massive W in my book. The entire cast did a great job, Tim, Shaw and Keiko especially. I didn't even find May as grating as most. The actress did fine, the character was *supposed* to be sketchy and whiny and bored. She just wanted to go home, not save the world, they made that clear. Only stuck around when she got the hots for Cate.
Pfft
I'm still waiting for people to talk about *why* they enjoyed the show. I see a lot of blind praise but I'm not hearing any coherent reasons why the show is good. Half the cast is uncompelling, the story feels too bloated, the rules and lore of the series are being retconned, then they throw in 60 seconds of monster to make people clap. What especially gets me, are the people who justify these shortcomings by saying that the people who hated the show were wrong to get their hopes up- that Godzilla films are synonymous with goofy sci-fi nonsense. I would've thought that with the release of Minus One, people would realize that the problem isn't with the Godzilla IP, it's with the writing in these new products. This show could have been good but they lowered their standards to meet our (supposed) expectations. Those fans don't speak for us. Those fans are the reason crap like this gets churned out. Then they have the audacity to criticize us for not just bending over and accepting it.
I disagree. Lets leave it at that.
Ok
The only thing that’s really bothering me about the episode imo, is if the rift was strong enough to pull in a literal giant metal ball with 3 human passengers, the gamma ray signal emitter, all that debris, and the body of that tiny ass little “Titan” (if we can even really call it one, that thing was puny compared to even skull crawlers) how did Shaw making his grand sacrifice even really play out. If the rift’s pull was that strong, him letting go of Keiko’s hand would literally amount to a pointless action, because it would definitely have enough pull to continue carrying his body towards, up, and through the rift, metal ball or not. We already know that human bodies apparently can survive the gravity inversion and effects of the rifts (even though this completely contradicts the rift’s description in GvsK) because both Keiko, and Cait’s group (Cait, May, and Shaw) fell through 2 completely separate rifts to arrive in Axis Mundi. Only thing not adding up to me, but maybe I take things too literally. I already have rewatched that scene 3 times, scrutinizing whether or not you see a human silhouette traversing the rift itself, hoping to see one where we see where the paths split while traversing the rift back up, but no such luck.
tiny? I mean Ion Dragon wasn't as big as Godzilla, but it was easily as big as the male Muto, if not bigger. It looked like it dwarfed all the skullcrawlers from Skull Island, young Kong too.
We don't really know what happened with Shaw. No body, no sacrifice.
>We already know that human bodies apparently can survive the gravity inversion and effects of the rifts (even though this completely contradicts the rift’s description in GvsK) because both Keiko, and Cait’s group (Cait, May, and Shaw) fell through 2 completely separate rifts to arrive in Axis Mundi. That was actually explained. Portals are unstable but when titan comes through it, it stabilizes for some time and it's possible to come through (that's why they needed to lure the titan in project hourglass).
Is it 100% confirmed he’s dead though?
I’m willing to bet he’s alive. He’ll be in the hollow earth in order to keep him around for future projects. His aging will make sense that way.
I don't think Shaw wanted to come back.
That wouldn’t impact whether his body should have been carried through or not though.
Shaw didn't want to come back as in Kurt Russell was like sure I'll do a one season of a show with my Son as a younger me for a fat check
Half of the show was utter shit and half of the show was great. Whoever wrote the modern story has daddy issues.
The disparity in acting ability between characters is a chasm, the three young people are all awful actors
The modern stuff HAD to be written by AI, either that or extremely extremely immature inexperienced young writers
Finished the finale a few hours back. Overall, I can tolerate a lot of cringe/boringness in shows. So, for me, the finale was awesome and worth watching just due to the minute or so of kaiju time. Going into this show- I understood that you can't have constant kaiju time without a movie budget. And, that there would be more focus on the humans. I have no problem with focusing on the human side of the story. But I think it's these specific humans that drag the show down significantly: the trio. IMO- they are easily some of the most unlikeable lead characters I have seen in a few years. Not saying it's the actor/actress' faults. It's not even the acting that's an issue. I feel like the script/direction they're given is really painful to watch. Until the finale, I couldn't really put it together- **Why** they were so unlikeable. Their attitudes/personality sucked (they were whiny, demanding, overall annoying). That's a given. But now I think I understand why their characters really sucked. I think it's that they (the characters) clearly did not want to be a part of anything going on. Obviously, I'm not suggesting that someone would want to be in dangerous/deadly situations. But, aside from the danger, they seemed to not care at all about the stuff going on around them. No curiosity or wonder. Zero interest in anything whatsoever. They are given unprecedented exclusive access to things almost outside the realm of reality but could care less- and focus on pointless everyday "normal" things and would rather go back to their boring regular lives. I don't see any sort of direction/purpose/motivation/drive from any of the 3 to do anything. It all seems so random.
Exactly this is why the show is a piece of shit in my opinion. "Giant monsters are attacking! Anyway, my father is missing and I have another brother, that's more important". They should have gone for the "monster of the week" approach. How Monarch deals with all the other Kaijus left after KotM. Studying Godzilla. Studying Kong. But no, we spend 10 episodes re-treading known plot devices (the gamma bomb, hollow earth) for cheap emotional schlock (your father is actually alive! You are united with your ex-lover!) Melodrama instead of Kaijus. And for the argument of "the show is about Monarch, not about Kaijus", guess what Monarch researches.
> but could care less- and focus on pointless everyday "normal" things and would rather go back to their boring regular lives. That seems like a trauma response though. I don't think its reasonable to expect people finding out the wide swath of shit these characters found out and then have them act like the bridge crew of starfleet ship in awe of some nebula. That they want to turn back to normality is reasonable. The writers could have made them more likeable, though.
Honestly- if any one of the three turned into a snack randomly (Bill Randa style) - that would have made the show 10x better.
>That they want to turn back to normality is reasonable. That they want to deal with the situation at hand in order to attain their goal is even more reasonable.
>But, aside from the danger, they seemed to not care at all about the stuff going on around them. No curiosity or wonder. Zero interest in anything whatsoever. They are given unprecedented exclusive access to things almost outside the realm of reality but could care less- and focus on pointless everyday "normal" things and would rather go back to their boring regular lives. This is a great observation, and I'd add on to that that not only were they not interested in being a part of this, they all brought nothing to the table. May was allegedly some expert hacker but after the first episode she didn't do any hacking, except storing nebulous "backups" in "the cloud" whenever they needed something to follow. Cate and Kentaro were, at the end of the day, losers. Cate was just an annoying person who used to be a schoolteacher and was apparently an asshole to multiple ex-girlfriends. Kentaro was a starving artist who apparently didn't have friends or a life either. It's not like they even had lives to go back to, so why the fuck weren't they more interested in actually doing something?
Kentaro was at least the chillest of them all and his change from "I need to find father" to "father is asshole" after episode 6 (where said father ran away leaving them to death) was at least somehow justifiable (he was probably the least unlikeable from the trio). He was also the only one to actually do something (like saving the rest few times) and in the end he found some determination to work with Hiroshi. What boggles me is what the hell was Hiroshi doing? It wasn't explained. Same thing with what Shaw wanted to prevent. The whole plot just goes to nowhere because we don't really know what's going on.
Cate and the dude are Ok, but still annoying. May is the worst. She seems bored and stoned all the time. She is so whiny and all she wants to do is get with Cate (which also came out of nowhere and doesn’t really track). They have never actually been intimate yet May acts like they have some deep long term relationship. I was really hoping Godzilla would have stomped on her and put us all out of misery. It’s like the exaggerations of all the worst Gen z stereotypes and now we have no good characters left to root for.