Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Season Two, on Apple TV+

Some of the best Godzilla lately has come in comic book form. Where else could you see the King face off against the Power Rangers, the Marvel Universe superheroes, and literary figures like Jay Gatsby and Sherlock Holmes (in Godzilla: Monsterpiece Theatre). Arguably, the recent Japanese films, Shin Godzilla and Godzilla Minus One are as good or better, but they have come less frequently. Regardless, the Apple TV+ “Monsterverse” series has far outclassed Legendary Pictures’ films. With the release of second season, episodes are also arriving more frequently. Plus, Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt return as shoot-from-the-hip Col. Leland Shaw (or Captain in scenes from the past) in season two of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which is still releasing new episodes on Apple TV+.

Season one ended with a massive cliffhanger, trapping crusty “old” Shaw in Axis Mundi, the monster dimension. However, it is quickly resolved in season two when Cate and Kentaro Randa, the Randa step-siblings, and their ambiguous friend May Olowe-Hewitt (who are sort of like Mystery Incorporated) devise a Doctor Who-worthy plan to save him.

Unfortunately, their operation rouses a new titan from hibernation. That would Titan X, who apparently grew up in the 1980s. This kaiju also has a cooperative symbiotic relationship with a horde of armored crabs known as Scarabs. It turns out Shaw and Mari and Bill Randa have seen these creatures before—and it wasn’t much fun for them the first time, either.

Ironically, when his boss’s presumed death elevates the nebbish Tim, who still has no last name, to command of Outpost 18, the new role surprisingly suits him. Unfortunately, he will have to navigate Apex, a politically connected tech company, who temporarily wrangles control of Titan policy away from Monarch.

Frankly, just about everyone goes rogue at some point in the second season, including both Randa step-siblings, Olowe-Hewitt, and, of course, Shaw, who was born a maverick. Understandably, the destructiveness of Titan rampages brings out strong feelings in the characters and inspires very different strategies to prevent them.

Much of season two feels like one step forward followed by one step back, or vice versa. However, a late season episode, “String Theory” written by Joe Pokaski and directed by Gandja Monteiro, understands what fans have been hoping for. It doesn’t quite happen, but Kurt and Wyatt Russell, who both play the younger and older Shaw, sort of, kind of participate in a sequence of scene. Thy obviously can’t be on-screen together, but the workaround solution is satisfyingly clever.

Godzilla: Heist, the Comic Story

Godzilla is surprisingly fast for his size and he is always furious. Still, he is not an obvious accomplice for a caper, because he is impossible to control. Nevertheless, there is no denying he can create quite a distraction. That is what Jai will count on in the collected issues of Van Jensen’s Godzilla: Heist, illustrated by Kelsey Ramsay, which goes on-sale this Tuesday.

The highly motivated Jai discovered how to use radio frequencies to lure Godzilla to a location, like a casino in Macau, and to employ an energy beam focus his fury on a specific area, like a vault. Jai’s fleet of spherical drones also help lead Godzilla back to the sea, once he has secured the loot. It goes off like clockwork thanks to the big guy, but it is only a warm up for the main event.

Soon, a professional crew of hardboiled thieves and mercs approaches Jai for help with a really big score. They don’t explain why, but they want Godzilla’s help (via Jai) to break into a vault underneath the British Defense Ministry at Whitehall. Jai plays it cool, but that was his plan all along.

Obviously, Jai intends to double-cross them at some point, so it is a safe bet the Roman Letter Gang (Alpha, Beta, Kappa, Chi) would double-cross him too. The question is where will the inevitable triple-cross come into play. Of course, none of this matters to Godzilla, who will be smashing things regardless.

These are bulish days for Godzilla. On the big screen, Godzilla Minus One was a breakout hit, while in comics, Godzilla has encountered Marvel and DC superheroes—and even the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. Jensen’s Heist is a clever concept and the execution clearly shows a deep understanding and affection for the Kaiju genre. It is fun in an aptly capery way, but Jensen still addresses the human collateral damage (including a lot of British servicemen guarding Whitehall).

Frankly, Jai is really the only character who gets much development, but his motivations are fully explained. Most of the bad guys are basically stock figures, but seriously, they are going to be overshadowed by Godzilla anyway.

Godzilla Minus One: The Godzilla Movie We Need

Koichi Shikishima was supposed to be one of the original suicide bombers. Despite his dog-fighting skills, he was ordered to become a kamikaze pilot. Yet, he did not feel like sacrificing his life for an ideology of death. Initially, this is the cause of great disgrace, but the new Japan will need his skills in the battle against the god of all kaiju. For the first time ever, Godzilla stomps Japan in a period production. It is something to behold in director-screenwriter Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One, which is now playing in theaters.

Towards the end of the war, Shikishima feigns engine trouble, detouring from his flight plan into an American battleship to a remote south pacific base. Sosaku Tachibana, the chief mechanic knows Shikishima is faking it, but he is not unsympathetic. That night the monster native call “Godzilla” attacks the base. It turns out Godzilla predates the A-bomb, but he is still about regular dinosaur-size. Bikini Atoll will radiate him into a giant kaiju. Regardless, he is already plenty dangerous. Perhaps Shikishima might have had a chance against him with his plane’s guns, but he freezes. For that, Tachibana vows to never forgive him.

Nevertheless, Shikishima returns to Tokyo, where he has lost everything and everyone. Yet, Shikishima falls into a cohabitating relationship with Noriko Oishi and the abandoned baby girl she informally adopted. They could be a family, if Shikishima could ever get past his guilt. Then Godzilla attacks, but this time he is Godzilla-sized.

Rather archly, Yamazaki uses the Cold War setting to explain why the American Navy is not allowed to mobilize for Japan, lest the Soviets object and respond to the “provocation.” (So, blame Stalin.) Japan is on its own and already reeling. Title explanation: occupied Japan was already at zero, Godzilla took it to “minus one.” However, a core of veterans disillusions by their service in the Imperial military will rise to the occasion. Obviously, this will include Shikishima and his co-workers clearing mines off Japan’s coast, but he suspects he will need Tachibana too.

Let’s not mince words. Godzilla Minus One does not merely school the recent Monsterverse movies. It humiliates them. It is nearly as good as Shin Godzilla, which was a kaiju masterwork, but it has a deeper, timelier message. Godzilla Minus One is literally about choosing life over death and toxic ideologies. Perversely, we currently see extremists demonstrating in the streets and on college campuses against a tiny democratic nation and in favor of the death cult seeking to destroy it. Shikishima’s experience makes it clear there is nothing heroic in serving as a suicide bomber. Sacrifice only has meaning when it comes in the protection of the innocent and that which makes us civilized.

Over and over, Yamazaki condemns the early Showa era’s death-worshipping nihilism. Yet, he still takes care of the kaiju business. Minus One features some of the best catastrophic special effects of any Godzilla film to-date. The trains look like trains and the buildings look like buildings, not scale models. However, despite considerable up-grades, there are times when the new CGI Godzilla still resembles his old Suitmation self, which is fitting and rather cool.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, on Apple TV+

The agents of Monarch, the super-secret kaiju-response agency, are the world’s worst Men in Black. In their defense, it is hard to keep a Godzilla rampage under wraps. Now that the kaiju is out of the bag, the agency is internally debating its role post-G-Day (as seen in the 2014 American-produced Godzilla). Two step-siblings stumble across the agency right when the kaiju are stirring in co-creators Chris Black & Matt Fraction’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which premieres tomorrow on Apple TV+.

Technically, Godzilla levelled greater destruction on San Francisco than the current mayor and governor have so far, but give them time. Cate Randa barely survived G-Day, but her elementary school kids were not so fortunate. Although still traumatized, she agrees to visit Japan to attend to her recently deceased father’s affairs. However, instead of an empty commuter flat, she finds a second family, including the adult-aged (but not necessarily adult-behaving) Kentaro Randa.

Obviously, it is a super awkward first meeting. Nevertheless, she and her step-brother agree to clear out his office together, where they find a cache of secret Monarch files, which they decrypt with the help of Rentaro’s resentful not-quite ex, May. That trove of documents leads them to retired Col. Leland Shaw, who was there when Monarch was founded, along with their grandparents, Keiko and Bill Randa.

In flashbacks, we see young Shaw and the Randas (who aren’t the Randas yet) chasing after radioactive anomalies that turns out to be kaiju trails. Their research prompts the miliary to create what becomes Monarch. Even back then, Shaw was not always on the same page as his superiors. That is particularly true when the Randa step-siblings break him out of his maximum-security retirement home.

According to the timeline, post-G-Day Shaw would have to be in his 90’s, but Kurt Russell certainly does not look that old. Somewhat cleverly, Black, Fraction, and their co-writers make a regular bit out of characters telling him, dude, you can’t really be that old. Regardless, the paring of Russell and his son Wyatt as the 2010’s and 1950’s is not just a stunt. It is a genius stroke of casting. Obviously, the older Russell can grin and growl his way through any action scene, but the real news is how good Wyatt Russell is as the young Lieutenant Shaw.

Legacy of Monsters shifts so frequently between timelines, some viewers might experience whiplash. Based on the first eight (out of ten) episodes provided for review, it is always easy to distinguish the respective eras, but they are not equally compelling. In addition to Russell the younger, Mari Yamamoto and Anders Holm are convincingly smart and conscientious as the Randa grandparents, thereby giving the 1950’s the clear advantage.

In contrast, the Randa grandkids and the mysterious May are abrasively whiny and annoying. It would be more pleasant to weather a kaiju attack than sit next to any of the three on a transcontinental flight. Aside from old man Russell and old man Godzilla, the most interesting character in the post-G-Day timeline is Tim, a geeky Monarch analyst seeking redemption in the field. Joe Tippett’s performance initially delivers laughs, but evolves in interesting ways.

Godzilla Vs. the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

Godzilla is the King of all monsters and a champion of “Vs.” titles. He survived “Vs. King Kong,” so there is a good chance he can survive the Power Rangers too. However, they will eventually have to be like “Ecks vs. Sever” and find a way to work together. “Team-up” might be too strong a term to use for the King, but the Rangers will try to keep out of his way while he battles the monsters controlled by Rita Repulsa and the Xiliens in Cullen Bunn’s Godzilla Vs. the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (the tradepaper collection of issues 1-5), illustrated by Freddie Williams II, which is now on-sale at book and comic retailers.

As often happens, the Power Rangers were fighting Repulsa, having discovered her plan to invade another dimension. Somehow, she managed to slip into Godzilla’s universe and Green followed after her. When the rest of the Rangers catch up with him, they find themselves battling Godzilla, in their mecha-“zord” forms. It is easy to see why they perceive him as a threat, but after not exactly vanquishing him, but sending him off in a greatly weakened condition, they learn the King was the innocent planet’s sole defense against the monsters created by the Xiliens, the deceitful militaristic aliens first seen in the Godzilla film Invasion of the Astro-Monster.

Although Repulsa and the Xiliens do not trust each other, they quickly form an alliance to defeat Godzilla and the Rangers. It will obviously be a little trickier for the Rangers to come to an understanding with Godzilla, but they have to figure something out, since their ‘zords are largely depleted from their fight with King.

In some ways, the Godzilla-Power Rangers team-up finds clever ways to combine the Toho and Saban universes. For kaiju fans, after Godzilla, the biggest star of the limited series will be King Ghidorah. In fact, it arguably better represents the Toho characters than the Power Rangers. Frankly, the none of the Rangers seem to have much personality, accept perhaps Green (Tommy Oliver), who comes across like an undisciplined screw-up. Really, the best realized character is the duplicitous and megalomaniacal Repulsa.

Shin Godzilla: Still the King, Now More than Ever

Godzilla/Gojira was born out of nuclear anxiety in the post-Hiroshima 1950s, so a reboot makes perfect sense in the angsty post-Fukushima teens. Apparently enough time has passed in the five years since the tsunami and nuclear emergency to destroy Tokyo again, but the echoes of the real tragedy conspicuously reverberate in the King of Monsters’ latest outing. Fittingly, the creator of the Evangelion franchise and the special effects director of the more serious 1990s Gamera reboot trilogy explore those apocalyptic themes in Hideaki Anno & (co-director) Shinji Higushi’s Shin Godzilla (trailer here), a real deal Toho-produced Japanese-language Godzilla movie, which opens this coming Tuesday for a special week-long run in select cities.

A large mutating lizard is heading straight for Yokohama, but if the Prime Minister’s cabinet is going to address the issue, someone will have to make a motion to set aside the agenda. Bureaucracy is sluggish, myopic, and turf-conscious throughout this Godzilla film, giving the scaly creature a further advantage he does not need. From early sightings through his initial landfall, they consistently underestimate the King. However, at least one sub-cabinet appointee, earnest but rather tactless Rando Yaguchi, recognizes the danger (how could he miss it?).

It turns out at least one prominent government scientist had an inkling of what was to come, but he chose to end it all rather than stick around to witness the carnage. When the government finally realizes they have a situation on their hands, they authorize the self-defense force to throw the kitchen sink at Godzilla, but they only succeed in drawing a little blood. Of course, this enrages the stomping kaiju no end, so he turns himself into a veritable disco ball of death rays. He proceeds to wreak some incredible havoc, even incinerating the Prime Minister’s evacuation helicopter. However, he will have to hibernate for two weeks to restore his energy.

That gives Yaguchi and his team of government misfits and rebels a narrow window to develop a strategy to freeze Godzilla by targeting his unique circulatory system, before the Yanks nuke him with the UN’s blessing. Fortunately, he has the backing of U.S. Special Envoy and prospective presidential candidate Kayoko Ann Patterson, who will also remain in harm’s way with the ragtag group of scientists and emergency management specialists.

Shin Godzilla harkens back to the moodiness original, unadulterated 1954 Godzilla, but it shows the monster almost immediately and subsequently never leaves him out of the frame for very long. However, kaiju fans might be put off by the film’s 1970s docu-drama tone. Screenwriter Anno is almost perversely obsessed with meeting rooms, following the various cabinet and sub-cabinet officials as they convene and re-convene around sundry conference table’s throughout the PM’s residence. Clearly, the politicians and bureaucrats are preoccupied with procedure and minutes, very much to the detriment of public safety. Rather annoyingly, there is also a pronounced strain of anti-Americanism in this film (what would Raymond Burr’s Steve Martin say?), but at least we can support the idea of a Pres. Kayoko Patterson, especially in a year like this.

While not exactly Yes, Minister, Shin Godzilla is surprisingly sly when skewering bureaucracy and the political class. However, it still has room for idealism, especially with respects to the jaded and ambitious Yaguchi and Patterson, who risk everything to save Tokyo and perhaps the very soul of Japan. Hiroki Hasegawa and Satomi Ishihara forge some terrific chemistry together—especially since Anno and Higuchi force them to do it on the run. They just don’t have any time for backstory, so all character development (and there is some) emerges organically from within the on-screen crises.

And then there is Godzilla. Mostly computer generated, he looks terrific from a distance and when engaged cataclysmic destruction. To borrow a technical film studies term, when Godzilla gets Medieval on Tokyo, it is just plain awesome. However, during his close-ups, the King still looks a little “fake.” Yet, this is not necessarily a mistake. In fact, it feels like a fitting way to observe tradition.

To the great credit of Anno & Higuchi, Shin Godzilla is a surprisingly tight, tense, and pointed disaster movie, as well as jolly fun kaiju romp. One can very easily see echoes of Fukushima and Katrina in scenes that remind us how helpless mankind is in the face of apocalyptic natural disasters (obviously defined quite broadly). This is the first eagerly anticipated blockbuster that lives up to its hype since Ip Man 3, so good luck following in its wake, Rogue One. Very highly recommended, Shin Godzilla screens Tuesday (10/11) through Tuesday (10/18) at theaters nationwide, including the AMC Empire in New York.

The Original Japanese Godzilla—Feel his Wrath

There was a time when the sight of a mutant lizard leveling the city of Tokyo would have been somewhat traumatizing. It became a campy tradition, but it started as a surprisingly moody expression of national angst. Sixty years later, Godzilla is still the king of the monsters, but his original uncut 1954 Japanese debut (sans Raymond Burr) will be a revelation for many fans. Film Forum pays homage to the granddaddy of all kaiju movies with a special one week engagement of Ishirô Honda’s Godzilla (trailer here), beginning this Friday.

There are dozens of drastic differences between the version released in the U.S. (with scenes added featuring Burr as American reporter Steve Martin) and Honda’s original high concept apocalyptic morality play. Initially, we do not see Godzilla, but we witness the effects of his handiwork. In an episode reportedly inspiring by the Lucky Dragon Incident, a commercial fishing boat has inexplicably disappeared in a remote quadrant of the Pacific. The company responds by sending more ships to the last known coordinates, which only compounds their tragic losses. Of course, we know who is responsible, but Godzilla will not actually show himself, peaking over a mountain ridge in an entrance to rival Harry Lime in The Third Man, until late in the first act.

Dr. Kyohei Yamane suspects the mutant monster dubbed Godzilla (or Gojira) is a nasty by-product of the nuclear age. Destroying such a beast is no easy feat, as the military conclusively proves during their futile defense of Tokyo. As events unfold, the professor’s daughter Emiko finds herself in uniquely Japanese love triangle, betrothed to the distant Dr. Daisuke Serizawa, but in love with salvage captain Hideto Ogata, who suddenly finds himself all kinds of busy. Serizawa has developed an Oxygen Destroyer that just might be able to stop the rampaging monster, but he refuses to open another Pandora’s Box.

Of course, Godzilla is all about the monster, but Serizawa is a fascinating character in his own right. He adopts western style dress and furnishings, yet he consents to a traditional arranged marriage. Frankly, he often seems oblivious to Emiko, driven by his obsessions and haunted by his mysterious wartime experiences.

There also happen to be real performances in the genuine article Godzilla, including Akihiko Hirata as the brittle and intense Serizawa. Momoko Kōchi also gives an acutely sensitive turn as the conflicted Emiko Yamane. As for screen presence, it is hard to beat Ozu and Kurosawa veteran Takashi Shimura, who would later reprise his role as Dr. Yamane, unless you were a mutant lizard monster.

Yes, most of Godzilla’s scenes were rendered by “Suitmation” (which was exactly what it sounds like), but Honda really focuses in on the human dimension during his now legendary attack. He makes us feel for the people caught up in the terror, rather than glossing over the little people getting stomped on. Obviously, the look of Godzilla caught on, but it is the sound that seals the deal. There is something alarming (even bitchy) about his high-pitched keening roar that gets under the skin. You would absolutely not want to hear anything like it in real life.

By any reasonable critical standard, the original Godzilla qualifies as a good movie—for real. It has far more going on than you would assume for subsequent sequels. Yet, it still delivers the kaiju goods. Sixty years later, Godzilla is still one of the baddest cats to grace a movie screen. If you do not catch him now in his original glory, you risk some profoundly bad karma. Recommended for fanboys and cineastes, the restored, undubbed Japanese Godzilla opens this Friday (4/18) at Film Forum.