The Big Picture

‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ aims to defy expectations by showcasing more of the monsters and creatures than the movies did. The focus of the series is to dive into the characters’ stories while embracing the world of monsters. The creative team had to balance creating a visually impressive show while centering the human story and staying authentic to canon.

Created by Chris Black and Matt Fraction, the Apple TV+ original series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has all the elements of a family drama so chaotic that you might want to avoid the next holiday gathering, but it also creates a very juicy backdrop for surviving the shocking fact that monsters are real and Godzilla, along with a variety of other monsters, roams (or stomps through) the earth. Taking place after the destruction of San Francisco that occurred in Legendary’s Monsterverse, the 10-episode series explores past and present timelines that connect generations of one family that seems to keep finding itself drawn back into the secret (and secretive) organization known as Monarch.

The journey of the series starts with Cate Randa (Anna Sawai), who finds herself in a position of knowing more about how to survive alongside Godzilla and Titans, than her own family history. After meeting her half-brother Kentaro (Ren Watabe) and his former girlfriend May (Kiersey Clemons), and turning to Monarch co-founder Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell) for answers, they’ll have to face their fears and rely on each other as they work together to save humanity.

During this interview with Collider, Black and Fraction, along with Tory Tunnell (executive producer with Safehouse Pictures) and visual effects supervisor Sean Konrad, talked about defying people’s expectations with this franchise, getting to dive deeper into character, how they make the monsters feel big, following a creative mandate that they set for themselves, the biggest challenges in telling their own story in an already existing world, how they came to have Kurt Russell and son Wyatt Russell sharing the role of Lee Shaw at different ages, bringing to life an ensemble of monsters that include the iconic Godzilla, and their favorite monster moments.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Set after the battle between Godzilla and the Titans, revealing that monsters are real, follows one family’s journey to uncover its buried secrets and a legacy linking them to Monarch. Release Date November 17, 2023 Cast Christopher Heyerdahl , Mari Yamamoto , Kurt Russell , Qyoko Kudo Seasons 1

‘Monarch’ Showrunner Chris Black Said They Want to Defy Expectations With the Series
Image via Apple TV+

Collider: First, I have to say that I greatly appreciate how much we actually get to see of the monsters and creatures on this show.

CHRIS BLACK: Part of what we set out to do was to maybe defy people’s expectations that what they thought they knew from the franchise and from the features, creating a television show is different from the movies. I think some of the most positive feedback we have gotten from the show thus far has been, “Oh, that wasn’t what I thought it was gonna be.”

It feels like one of the things about telling a story like this is deciding when and where to show the monsters and how much of them to show. Was there a general rule for that? Did you talk about that a lot?

TORY TUNNELL: We knew that we were a TV show, and TV allows you the opportunity to really dive into characters. That’s something that the features that have done such an amazing job at showing spectacle and being such engaging entertainment don’t have the time to do. And so, we felt like that’s our special sauce, so we wanted to really lean into that. At the same time, this is a world where our characters live in a world of monsters, and that’s something that we wanted to really embrace and excite and keep people guessing about, as they’re watching the show. We’re really sinking our teeth into this family soap and these different relationships that are having their own various issues, in the way that we have our own in real life.

Sean, from a visual effects perspective, is it a different approach to bringing something to life when you really can see it and they’re not just a shadow in the dark?

SEAN KONRAD: Yeah. One of the big challenges is, how do you make him feel big? It’s movement and it’s how you photograph it. For the Gareth Edwards 2014 film, he had this idea that the monsters are too big to ever fit in the frame, so that’s just how you approach it from a cinematography point of view. But then, once you go to execute the stuff, how do you render it? How do you light it? How do you add little bits of dust? What’s your scale indicator? That stuff is always a really big challenge, but it’s one of the best parts of the job.

‘Monarch’ Co-Creator Matt Fraction Said Their Monster Moments Have to Live Up to the Franchise
Image via Apple TV+

I love that the series not only weaves in the previous movies, but it feels like it was on a quality level of those movies, as far as the look and the visuals. Did it feel like you had freedom and room to create a series on that scale, or was it also about figuring out ways to push and stretch and you did have?

MATT FRACTION: Mandate is maybe the wrong word, but just internally our creative mandate was that this is a show in that world. It has to exist on a stage of that scale. Sean Konrad, who worked on Godzilla 2014, is the leader of our visual effects team, and those big monster moments have to stand side by side with some of the biggest monster spectacle moments in movie history. The challenge of the show is always centering our characters in that very human story. There’s a lot of fun in putting these very human humans in these really extraordinary, dangerous situations. So, when those moments happen, things really pop, but the challenge of television is telling that sustainable human story for 10 hours, and that meant always leading character first. We knew we had such a tremendous team on the other side of the camera building this world with us. I don’t imagine it’s any more or less daunting than ever doing this, but we certainly never felt restricted. We knew this has to stand next to these things, but it also needs to be a television show and that means character first, character forward.

BLACK: The first priority was to tell a great story. The first priority was to tell a story about these characters that pulled an audience forward. We also were very aware that the bar is very high and it’s gotta look great. People who are used to the spectacle of those movies could not come to this and go, “Eh, it looks like the cheap TV version of the Monsterverse.” We were lucky that we did have a generous amount of resources to execute. This is, far and away, the biggest project I’ve ever been associated with. But at the same time, there’s never enough and you always need more. We were lucky, as Matt said, that we had this incredibly skilled and experienced team who were able to maximize the resources we have. And no one was more exacting and obsessive and meticulous about the look of the show than Sean Konrad, our visual effects supervisor. There were times when I was looking at approving visual effects and I’d be like, “Wow, guys, that looks incredible!” And Sean would be like, “Well, we can do a little bit better. The dorsal spines aren’t kicking the light the way I want.” And I would be like, “Okay, it’s gotta be perfect.”

You’re pulling from a lot of threads at one time in this story, and I was really impressed with how well the series really juggles all of that. When you’re telling a story that works within the existing mythology, is also its own thing, and has to set up threads and stay open for anything that might come, how do you even keep track? What are the biggest challenges in figuring that out?

FRACTION: The biggest challenge is finding large enough dry-erase boards.

BLACK: The short answer is sometimes you don’t. We were constantly trying to keep all the plates spinning.

FRACTION: And we’d have to stop ourselves. This happens after Gareth Edwards’ 2014 film. We didn’t want to tell a story about the end of the world. We wanted to tell a story about the day after the end of the world. How do these characters get up? It’s not a 9/11 show, it’s a 9/12 show. It’s about the first time you have to take your shoes off to get onto an airplane. Everything Cate knows about her world has changed. It’s both the literal world, and then the secrets of her family. Cate, Kentaro and May are learning who Monarch is as our audience is learning. But then, we would always have to have a 30,000-foot view about, “Okay, what does the world know? Have they been in front of a camera? Do people know quite yet?” There were enough beats on the timeline that we had that we knew between 2014 and 2019 Monarch becomes a civil defense thing around the world, where when the sirens go off, people know where to evacuate to, there are monster bunkers, people are protected and saved, and everybody knows to look for the Monarch guys when the sirens go off. But in 2014, nobody knows anything about who they are, what they do, or why they exist. There’s an A and a B, so it’s about how we get there and what that journey looks like. We could zoom in and out from the canon, but then also just practically build the story and build the world. It was part of the world-building experience of the show.

BLACK: And to your point, it was a challenge. We were telling a story that stretches all the way back to the formation of Monarch and trying to track all these characters across multiple generations and multiple timelines. There were times when we would get excited about a pitch in the writers’ room and our writer’s assistant would go, “Uh, I don’t think Hiroshi’s been born yet.” And we’d be like, “Oh, shit, you’re right. Sorry.” It was always a challenge to make sure we were tracking everything to keep all those balls in the air, but that was also the fun of it, to keep multiple stories spinning at the same time, and being able to jump around and keep pushing the characters and the narrative forward. I wouldn’t say that was easy, but it certainly helped with the engine of the series.

FRACTION: Maybe creatively, part of the challenge was, how do we build a Monsterverse show or a Godzilla show that is intriguing, and that you can’t get up and leave the room and come back and still follow it. How do we use the parallel narratives and the parallel timelines to complicate the story and the dramatic stakes, and play one against the next, and play what the audience knows against what the characters know, and when and all that. Hopefully, their question is, “Wait, how did they get from this to this?” That’s the whole story of the show. How did my father become a man with a whole secret family? What happened to him? We find echoes of that throughout all the fun stuff.

BLACK: We obviously do not want the show to be confusing, but I think it’s also okay for the audience to be challenged and for them to go, “Wait a second, what’s this?” The audience is smart, they’ll figure it out.

FRACTION: I trust that our audience is way smarter than us and they’ll be able to enjoy the story as we tell it. The answers are coming. They key is to make a show that’s intriguing. The nicest thing people say is, “Oh, this wasn’t what I expected.” Can you make a show that requires attention and consideration, and asks questions and maybe he doesn’t answer them right away?

‘Monarch’ Producer Tory Tunnell Said Their Mythology Manager Keeps Them Within the Boundaries of Canon
Image via Apple TV+

When you want to do something new or different within this world, do you need to run it past Legendary? How much freedom do you feel that you have, in doing something like this?

TUNNELL: Our brain trust of Matt Fraction and Chris Black had so many amazing ideas, but we also always want to be authentic to canon. We have Toho, who are at the tip of that spear. They keep us in line and make sure that we’re always being respectful and in line with everything that’s come before, and we have Legendary, who obviously knows the IP through and through. They also have a great mythology manager in-house that we’re allowed to work with and collaborate with to make sure that we’re telling a story that is both modern and interesting and something you haven’t seen before, but also within the boundaries of canon that make it feel authentic.

Tory, are there aspects of a story like this that you most connect to? Is there a character that you found yourself wanting to follow throughout this journey?

TUNNELL: It’s a great question. As a producer, they’re all my children, so I can’t pick one. The thing that we really loved and we really helped push for it was this really juicy character drama at the center of it. I always talk about how Game of Thrones is my favorite soap opera, and I think that we have this really compelling family drama with characters grappling with real issues. You’re in this big, fantastic genre world, and we have multiple timelines, it’s very dynamic, and it keeps you guessing, and I love the fact that we have a love triangle and a romance. We offer so much in this show, not to mention just a tremendous amount of spectacle and a globe-trotting adventure. We’re really proud that we’re able to pull all that off.

The character of Lee Shaw is a particularly interesting one because we not only get to see how he’s evolved across these timelines, but we get to watch Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell each do their work alongside each other. How did that come about? What was it like to work with both of them, even though they couldn’t actually share any scenes with each other?

TUNNELL: And make no mistake, they absolutely did work together behind the camera. They’ve been approached a lot about doing father and son roles. They knew they wanted to work together. They were just absolutely delighted with the idea of playing the same role and they spent a lot of time crafting a character where Kurt was becoming Wyatt, and Wyatt was growing into Kurt. They spent a lot of time thinking about how to have it feel like a seamless character. Kurt was someone that Chris Black, our co-creator, always knew was Lee Shaw. And our amazing casting director, Ronna Kress, said that we should think about Wyatt playing the young Lee Shaw. It was so obvious and so brilliant and so dynamic. I think it really makes our show something that you have to tune into. Oftentimes, as producers and writers and directors, when you’re trying to cast a younger self, you’re forced to do de-aging or casting a different actor, and it can sometimes pull the audience out of it. But Wyatt has such Kurt essence that it’s so much fun to see. It was just such a great magic trick.

This series essentially has two main trios, with Cate and Kentaro and May, and Lee and Keiko and Bill, but the strength of those trios really comes from the women at the center of them. What do you love about Cate and Keiko and how we can really learn about them through each other, knowing that they’re generations of the same family?

TUNNELL: Yeah, we purposely have these really smart women at the front of each storyline, who aren’t without their struggles of being a woman, and that’s really compelling to see. Legacy is a word that’s in our title, and you have Legacy of Monsters, but you also have legacy with Kurt and Wyatt, and you have legacy with Keiko and Cate. Seeing how we’re informed by our ancestors, our lineage and our parents, we see that, even if we don’t know that person directly, somehow we’re still influenced by it, and we’re influenced by time and space. All of that is wrapped up in our show.

‘Monarch’ Monsters Have a Biological Foundation That’s Based in the Real World
Image via Apple TV+

You also have a whole cast of monsters. Do they feel like their own ensemble?

TUNNELL: They really do. Sean Konrad, who’s our amazing VFX supervisor, early on, when we were building these monsters and what they were gonna look like, we had these Zooms that I would be so concerned about showing up for. It was always looking through your fingers because he would show real world animals and insects that were absolutely disgusting or horrifying, and you couldn’t believe that they’re actually real, and they’re on our planet, but just as a basis for inspiration. We wanted all our monsters to have a biological representation that’s authentic and that isn’t just total fantasy, so they’re all based on something in our world. It was so much fun to explore and develop. And then, of course, we have our cast of hero Titans that we’ve all come to know and love.

Sean, Godzilla is one of those rare characters that everybody knows. Even if they’ve never seen a Godzilla movie, they just know who Godzilla is and what it looks like. Is it exciting to be able to bring a character like that to life? Is it terrifying? Is it both of those things?

KONRAD: Yeah. I worked on Godzilla 2014 as an artist, and going through that process, you learn what works and what doesn’t work, and you learn what that process of making it work looks like. It’s not just about what I think Godzilla should be, or even what Chris Black thinks it should be. It’s also about what Legendary thinks it would be and what Toho thinks it should be. Finding that emotional truth with these experts is part of the journey and part of the experience, and you don’t want to get it wrong. You don’t want to disappoint the fans, and the great thing is that you have terrific collaborators that help you along that path.

You seem like you have the coolest, most amazing job ever, not only getting to bring monsters and creatures to life, but getting to bring Godzilla to life. This series is not your first go around with Godzilla, so what is it about this world that you’re most drawn to? How did you end up getting to bring this creature to life?

KONRAD: I love monsters as metaphor. It speaks to fears and it gives personality to fears. And there’s a complexity with Godzilla and a history of Godzilla that implies so much. It’s this great archetype of fear. That stuff is really exciting to me. I also love the wackier parts of it, like the big, fun, adventure-y things that make it both a hearty meal and a delicious candy.

What do you think it even is about a character like Godzilla that is so lasting and that has become so iconic? He’s not this cute, cuddly creature, so what is it about him?

TUNNELL: All genre is a great way of telling us some of the real challenges of humanity. When Godzilla was birthed by Toho, it was a representation of a nuclear power and a nuclear challenge. During the development of this, we talked about how Godzilla has represented climate change, and then it was COVID. He’s always represented this existential threat. But there’s something that’s interesting about Godzilla because he’s not a villain. He is someone who protects us from other Titans. He is a force that can be very destructive, but he’s not actually out to get us. That complicated relationship with the world is something that I think has always drawn people in, for generations.

Sean, you’ve previously talked about how you got involved pretty early on, when there were only a couple of scripts ready. How does that work to your advantage? When you can get involved at such an early stage, how much of the visual effects work evolves and changes as more scripts get written? What’s it like to go through that process when you’re involved so early?

KONRAD: It’s great. It’s very unusual for a visual effects supervisor to be brought in that early. I started in November when there was only one script. We had a rough outline, and we knew where we wanted to go, and then Chris and Matt [Fraction] would come to me and ask questions about what we could do here and there. There are a lot of boring tensions in budget and things like that, that you have to navigate, so it’s about, how do you use the budget in the most efficient way possible? How do you get the monsters on screen as much as possible, to satisfy fans and to satisfy the audience, but also to support the rest of the photography in a way that you need to do? That was great, being able to contribute to that process early on. It was unusual, but it’s really one of the more satisfying things about working on the show.

‘Monarch’ Visual Effects Supervisor Sean Konrad Wanted the Monsters to Feel Tangible
Image via Apple TV+

This series has different monsters in different environments, interacting with and alongside people. What are the challenges specific to doing that kind of thing, where they are living in a world that is very familiar to us?

KONRAD: It’s a constant challenge. We had a scene in the first episode, and Chris had written it in this one way, and we’d even storyboarded and done the pre-vis, in that way. And then, six weeks before we had to go shoot the scene, it was a Skull Island scene, so we went to Hawaii and scouted locations, but we could not find a location. We were like, “Okay, what if we put blue screen here and shoot half of it here, and then half of it here?” From a production point of view, it didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense to fly 2,000 kilometers and shoot into a blue screen. So, (director) Matt Shakman asked for a whole bunch of different wild card ideas from the locations team, and they brought us to this place, Lanai Lookout. Instead of it being this one creature that we had conceptualized, we turned it into something that fed off that volcanic rock terrain that was there. We allowed that to drive the design of the creatures and give the actors and everybody else something tangible to relate to, in some way.

Do you guys each have a monster that you just think is the coolest, or a moment that most stands out for you?

BLACK: I like the critters in the pilot. I like the creatures that come out of the eggs and swarm up. To me, that is one of the creepiest, coolest things. It’s not a conventional Titan.

FRACTION: It’s a fun chance to invert the paradigm. Mine comes in the latter half of the season. As a monster fan, I got some red meat. I’m happy.

TUNNELL: Whenever I see one of our episodes, I’m like, “That’s the best episode.” And then, when I see the next episode, I’m like, “No, that’s the best episode.” This is something that’s been really fun. We’ve had a team of all-star players, with the writers, our VFX team, our directors, our actors, and the monsters coming alive in a real way. We keep on topping ourselves, or at least that’s our hope and our intention. So, I can’t claim one as a favorite.

KONRAD: When we storyboard and do pre-vis for scenes, we show it to the actors, and sometimes they’ll have feedback about it. So, there’s one particular moment where it had been scripted that Kurt Russell looks at one of the monsters and he has a classic Kurt Russell quip. The line is, “It’s dinner time, you ugly son of a bitch.” He added the “ugly” into it. He’s seen the pre-vis and the concept art, so he was thinking about it and decided to make fun of the monster. So, really, it’s not so much about what the monster does, it’s about how the people react to it. That’s the stuff that I love. The surprises like that are just really thrilling to be a part of.

Because of how ambitious this series is, with everything that you’re trying to accomplish within it, was there a scene or sequence that you were most nervous about having everybody pull off, but ultimately were really happy with?

TUNNELL: Yes, we shot at the top of a glacier and it was a worry, where we were gonna bring Kurt Russell up in a helicopter. You don’t have all the comforts of home. You don’t even really have a proper bathroom facility. So, were we gonna be able to pull that off? It was cold. It was tricky. We had to compliment it with a lot of VFX, so there was a conversation about, should we take the thing off the glacier and just do it all on a soundstage? But we really felt like the audience would feel that authenticity of being up there. It was hard, but we did it. There was also some sort of goat migration that we had to contend with. There are things that you just don’t really expect, as a producer, to have to navigate, and an animal migration is one of them. But we pulled it off and it was so well worth it because we’re so proud of the show, just offering such tremendous international scope. It really just takes you places that you don’t get to go in your ordinary life.

Do you feel like you learned a tremendous amount about how to pull off a show like this, that would really help with doing a second season?

TUNNELL: Yeah. I have the privilege of working with such an amazing team. It’s always easier to do your job when everyone in their position is bringing their A-game. It was a really complex show and we were everywhere, and yet it was never something where you were pulling your hair out. It felt like it was all really organized and mapped out in a smart way, and I credit the production team that we had for making it feel that way.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is available to stream on Apple TV+. Check out our previous Q&A with the cast and creators:

Watch on Apple TV+