WHEN IT COMES TO unleashing kaiju on the screen, it’s all a matter of perspective.
“You don’t go to see a Godzilla movie because you want to see the people,” argues Matt Fraction, executive producer of Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters – a series that brings cinema’s celebrated city-smashing beast to television, along with an entire menagerie of supersized threats to property values.
“The movies are about people being stepped on. The show is about the people underfoot. In the film the cameras are up, looking down. In the show the cameras are down, looking up. It’s all about the ant beholding God, rather than God beholding the ant.
“Films are spectacle, especially these kinds of films. They’re things you leave your house for. In a perfect world you see them in a big auditorium with other people. TV is more intimate, it’s longer, and it’s something you invite into your home. We weren’t even interested in trying to compete with the films. It’s a really different medium.”
Launched in 2014 with Gareth Edwards’s , the MonsterVerse is one of the big screen’s more successful stabs at franchise building, breeding sequels, crossovers and now this live-action TV offshoot. 2017’s brought the great ape into the fold, setting up the blockbuster title bout, while 2019’s put Toho Studios faves Ghidorah and Rodan in the frame.
