'Monarch: Legacy of Monsters' Filming Locations Add to Its Kaiju Credentials
The new Apple TV+ series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is the newest chapter in Legendary Entertainment's ongoing MonsterVerse, which began with 2014's Godzilla and has continued with Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and Godzilla v. Kong.
Set in the immediate aftermath of Godzilla, the show follows several characters as they unearth information about Monarch, a mysterious and elusive organization linked to the Titans that have begun their destructive rampage across Earth.
When it came to building the world of Monarch, the creative team behind the show didn't have the goal of recreating the citywide destruction on the scale of the movies that preceded it. First and foremost, it was about character and story.
"We knew we couldn't compete with the films, and had no interest in trying," executive producer Matt Fraction told Men's Health. "The worst version of the show would be a scaled-down, made-for-TV version. Especially now, as big as the MonsterVerse films are. They're so massive and so spectacular.... Films are a thing we engage with as a community. You buy a seat, you sit in the theater, and it's a thing. Television is a thing that you invite into your home. It's where you live; it's where your stuff is, right? It's got to be driven by people. There's got to be character. So we always wanted to make a TV show. We didn't want to make a small version of the film. It can't compete with that."
"We wanted to make a show about the people that live in this world and discover they have a much greater connection to it than others," he continued. "[Matt Shakman] built the cinematic language the show lives in, and then he helped us bring the characters out through our actors, and they put in the performances."
Where was Monarch: Legacy of Monsters filmed?
The show takes place in both Oakland, California and Tokyo, Japan. The Japan sections of the show were shot on location, with two weeks of filming in Tokyo. However, the rest of the series was filmed in Vancouver, Canada. Vancouver has long been a go-to filming location for film and TV, as it allows for such a variety of backdrops and settings, from cityscapes to mountains to rivers to lush forests.
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