Beyond the unintentional hilarity of the first spin-off to one of Warner Bros.’ biggest properties streaming on a rival platform, the overwhelming feeling since the first trailer dropped is that MonsterVerse series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has the potential to be a thing of beauty.
On the big screen, the franchise has been fairly consistent in terms of its critical and commercial success, with Godzilla sequel King of the Monsters the only real outlier. Of course, you can make the argument that humans are the least important part of the shared universe, but that could be about to change thanks to one piece of casting.
Kurt and Wyatt Russell will star as the character of Lee Shaw separated by 50 years in the dual-stranded story, with director Matt Shakman barely able to contain his glee while speaking to Collider.
“Also, it’s such a unique fit because Kurt Russell stars in all the movies I love, and since I was a kid, I’ve been watching him on screen. The idea of Kurt Russell plus Godzilla just feels absolutely, 100% right. He occupies the same awesome space. Then the fact that Wyatt could work so beautifully as the young version of that same character, it just was serendipity, you know, things that we couldn’t have planned that the fates made possible for us.”
You’ve got to be dead on the inside not to feel even the merest twinge of excitement over the phrase “Kurt Russell plus Godzilla,” which stands Legacy of Monsters in good stead to become one of the rare Apple originals that manages to puncture the mainstream zeitgeist.