Bringing Larger than Life Kaiju to Life on the Small Screen: VFX Supervisor Sean Konrad talks ‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’
Godzilla is an indisputable mainstay of the cinematic landscape. Regardless of where you’re from or what your experience with cinema is (really entertainment media as a whole, at this point) you’re bound to have crossed paths with the king of monsters by this point. Also commonly known as Gojira, the indescribable monster of Japanese origin has completely transcended the bounds of characterization and, in a way, expectation. He’s an icon, only growing through the generations as the art from which he came grows, too.
His most recent bout in American cinema, the Legendary Studios-led franchise fittingly dubbed The MonsterVerse, has already seen three movies featuring the big fella’ in just under ten years. Now, he’s got his own show set within the universe, currently streaming on Apple TV: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
The show takes an unconventional storytelling approach, jumping forty years in time in either direction as it traces the life of the lead, played in each time frame respectively by Kurt and Wyatt Russel. A bold choice, certainly, but it seems to have paid off. Acclaim for the series has flown in from all sides, with fans and critics alike celebrating both a successful entry into the MonsterVerse canon, as well as a rare foray into television for Godzilla going so well.
Of course, unlike the Russels, Godzilla can’t be brought on set, given a trailer, some time to get ready, and eventually put in front of a camera. The days of a person in a practical Godzilla suit are all but dwindling, as well. That’s where Sean Konrad and his visual effects team come in. This isn’t Konrad’s first endeavor in the MonsterVerse; before he became the VFX supervisor for Monarch, now coordinating a team and pulling a few proverbial strings, he worked as a VFX artist on Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla in 2014; the film that kicked the cinematic universe off in the first place.
“It’s been an interesting arc for me. I worked on ‘Godzilla 2014’ as an artist, then I worked on ‘King of the Monsters’ as a sort of secondary supervisor… working on it as an artist gave me a lot of really low-level insight into how to actually get this work done. It’s an interesting evolution for sure.”
Even before that film, Konrad had already worked on multiple massive blockbusters of the same ilk; namely, Man of Steel, Tron: Legacy, and the first Avatar film among many others. His storied career led him to bring to life one of cinema’s most crucial figureheads, and the 2014 blockbuster was just the beginning. By the time the 2019 sequel to that film, King of Monsters, rolled around, Konrad was in a supervisory position.
He duly noted the differences this project presented in comparison to past works: “Every show is totally unique. One of the real challenges on this one is, from a financial point-of-view, we can’t have monsters on screen for one-third of the episode’s runtime and stuff, and so it’s really figuring out how we get the most bang for our buck out of the monster sequences we do have… on a feature film you’re often taking these giant set-pieces and backing the characters moments into these giant set-pieces, where in this one it’s very much character forward. These action set-pieces are the evolution of the character arcs. It’s the natural punctuation marks for a beat and their story.”
When it comes to Monarch, he was back in the saddle, aware of the job and the challenges it entails. “The job is super complicated. The main bulk of what you’re doing as a supervisor, all of this work is done by a multitude of companies. So we work with 15 different vendor studios across the planet, around 1,200 people in all those studios worked on the TV series in some capacity… I decide where that work is going, and then I review the work as it comes in… it’s an interesting job on the project because I was involved in November of 2021 and I finished kind-of October 2023.”
Though when it comes to making big decisions for the legendary monster, especially regarding his looks and actions, Konrad and the show running team still had to ask his owner and creator: the infamous Japanese entertainment company, ToHo. Konrad recalls one moment in particular when he and his crew had an idea for a shot, and ToHo considerately shot it down.
“We had a storytelling problem that we were trying to solve, and we asked ToHo if it would be possible to do a point-of-view of Godzilla, and see, like, what does he see that’s different than humans, and try to visualize that in some way. ToHo got back to us and said “We’ve thought about this a lot, and our conclusion for the current time is that Godzilla’s point-of-view is unknowable. That was really perfect.”
This just goes to show the sheer dedication to preserving the lineage of Godzilla that all involved in every one of these projects emit, Konrad of course included. This also doesn’t mean that Konrad and his team didn’t have their cake and eat it too, compromising with ToHo and instead going with a push-in over Godzilla’s shoulder in the final shot, creating a similar effect without impacting the mysterious nature of the titular monster’s being.
The show is full of creative, incredibly detailed expressions of Godzilla’s range. This adaptation, in line with the MonsterVerse iteration of the character, treats him as just that: a character. Godzilla exudes an understanding of the situations he finds himself in and the people that stare up in awe at him. All the same, he brawls and shows his strength consistently, too. Through it all, the special effects shine.
With the success the show has seen thus far, and two more episodes yet to air, its continued future seems well within the bounds of expectation. Either way, the show is a marvel, and Konrad’s work in bringing Godzilla to life over the years has brought millions upon millions of moviegoers joy.