Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has landed a positive score of 88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes ahead of the live-action MonsterVerse series’ Apple TV+ premiere on November 17.
At the time of writing, 16 reviews have been counted for Legacy of Monsters on Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregate site that lets audiences evaluate average critical scores. This includes SuperHeroHype’s own review by Luke Y. Thompson, which gave the first five episodes of Monarch a grade of 4/5.
In his review, Thompson wrote that Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is “a set-up that satisfies the first rule of good genre entertainment: establish character stakes that would work in any kind of story.”
The MonsterVerse expands into television
Legendary Entertainment launched the MonsterVerse in 2014 with its reboot of Godzilla. Since then, three additional installments have been released: Kong: Skull Island (2017), Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), and Godzilla vs. Kong (2021). A fifth film, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, is set to hit theaters in April 2024. At the time of writing, the four released MonsterVerse films have earned almost $2 billion at the global box office.
The franchise expanded into television in 2023 with the release of the animated series, Skull Island, set after the events of Kong: Skull Island. The series premiered on Netflix in June. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters will be the first live-action series set in the MonsterVerse.
“Following the thunderous battle between Godzilla and the Titans that leveled San Francisco, and the shocking revelation that monsters are real, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters tracks two siblings following in their father’s footsteps to uncover their family’s connection to the secretive organization known as Monarch,” reads the official synopsis. “Clues lead them into the world of monsters and ultimately down the rabbit hole to Army Officer Lee Shaw, taking place in the 1950s and half a century later where Monarch is threatened by what Shaw knows.”
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters stars Kurt Russell, Wyatt Russell, Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Mari Yamamoto, Anders Holm, John Goodman, Joe Tippett, Elisa Lasowski, and Christopher Heyerdahl.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters premieres on Apple TV+ on November 17.
