Despite the global streaming success of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and the Wyatt Russell Cold War prequel spinoff now in production in Prague, Czechia and London, UK (working title‘Birdwatcher’), it’s third season renewal remains uncertain.
Apple and Legendary Television are reportedly in discussions about a significant reworking of the show with a new creative team and showrunners and promises of more new titans.
For those of us, especially in the international audience, who really liked how Monarch was more grounded and leaned back into the original grounded and character-driven narratives that we saw in the 2014 film and in Skull Island, this is not great news.
For the younger audience (mainly in the US) who have been so vocally critical of Monarch, this seems to be a reset to change their narrative.
The reports say that any new direction for Monarch will not affect the prequel show with Wyatt Russell.
Honestly, branching the cold war narrative out is probably the more obvious way to streamline the show. It can’t be easy to juggle two plot lines, past and present, and have them reflect upon each other without becoming contrived and gimmicky.
But the late '50s part of the show feels more vital than the rest of the show, maybe for its heightened Indiana Jones feel. The bigger challenge IMO is to make the contemporary human characters seem relevant. Especially the twenty-something cast is given mostly filler to work with, against a backdrop of pretty dire kaiju fare.
Although I think that the best Godzilla movies have focused on human drama, I can genuinely understand if viewers of corresponding ages don’t identify with Cate, Kentaro, and Corah. They’re the biggest albatross around the show’s neck, even given the Rodan appearances.
Fair enough point that if the target audience for the 20 somethings isn’t resonating with the show, it’s a problem.
But my question is whether that’s just a US social media thing or a real global take for the youth target audience.
Is Apple putting too much priority on chasing / selling shows to the declining US male youth audience that’s watching less and less television anyway?
Even in the US, the show brought in a larger and more diverse audience share to the franchise, not just preteen and adolescent boys looking for monsters bashing one another. Is it a bad thing when a show can draw young women?
The show did very well outside the US other than in the CANZUK countries and Ireland (which just seem not to have a large kaiju fandom base). Why fix what’s not broken when the show pulled some of Apple’s highest audience numbers overall?
As someone who watches a lot of Asian productions in the original languages with subtitles, mainly because American productions have less and less that interests me, I’m seeing this as a sign that decision makers in Hollywood are still stuck in the idea that if they make stuff for the US market, everyone will want to see it. Meanwhile, Asian produced content now dominates globally.
I can’t speak to US social media trends as I live in Europe. There is a certain overlap for sure, but I can’t say I follow the online water cooler talk about current shows outside of this server. My critique was based only on watching the show.
You could have a point about changing audiences, and certainly about broadcasters lagging behind such changes. If the powers that be chase their own tail rather than connecting with the actual viewership, surely their shows suffer.
It surprises me a bit that Legacy of monsters reached beyond its target audience, though. It just doesn’t feel very engaging to me. But I may be closer to the intended viewer rather than the people actually watching? Which again just emphasises the discrepancy between intent, expectation, and reality in terms of this show and its audience.