After making a successful small screen debut with Apple TV+’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters earlier this year, Legendary’s Monsterverse is returning this week with their fifth cinematic entry, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire. With major comic-book movie franchises gradually losing their steam during the last couple of years, now is as good a time as any for the Americanized Kaiju cinematic universe to seize the market. Also, capitalizing on the recent VFX Oscar win of Godzilla Minus One, the upcoming Kaiju flick has the potential to be one of the biggest blockbusters of the year.

It has been a decade since Gareth Edward’s much-acclaimed Godzilla (2014) paved the foundation of the Monsterverse and reignited the fanfare for the atomic lizard. Although during this period only a scant four movies have hit theaters, the in-universe mythology of the Titans (the American counterpart of Kaijus) has sprawled into a behemoth in its own right.