Monarch: Legacy of Monsters takes Kurt Russell’s Lee Shaw into the cold in episode three. The show, which explores the creation of the Godzilla/Kaiju research organization Monarch, is a smash hit on Apple TV+. But there’s something special about the show taking Russell into the cold.
While Kurt Russell’s career has spanned the last 40 years on the big screen with iconic characters we’ve come to know and love, the movie that really catapulted him from teen heartthrob to action star/legend was John Carpenter’s 1982 horror film The Thing. So whenever Russell is trapped in the cold and bundled up fighting against some beings he can’t quite understand, much like his role in The Thing, fans of his work are understandably on edge.
Lee just landed in the cold in Monarch, but it was enough to remind us what it means for fans of Russell’s work because The Thing is such a staple of his career. It is such a simple thing to just have an actor standing in the same terrain as another movie, but that’s a testament to both The Thing and Russell’s career as a whole that simply being in the cold is still that connected with his filmography. When you think about Russell, you can easily pinpoint what roles he is connected with and most everyone will say The Thing no matter what else they think of within his long-spanning career.
Maybe that’s also a testament to the work of Carpenter and how The Thing has continued to wow audiences, but it’s also just really a showcase of how Russell approached the character of MacReady in the film.
The appeal of MacReady after all this time
R.J. MacReady was on a scientific adventure in Antarctica when a beast taking the form of a dog came into his crew’s camp and began to take them out one by one, taking the form of whoever it came in contact with. The beauty of The Thing is the terrifying nature of not knowing who to trust. MacReady is, at one point, enemy number one in the great battle of who not to trust, and it makes The Thing still one of the best thrillers of our time.
The greatest thing about the movie is that it really took Russell from a teen star and turned him into the Kurt Russell that we know and love today. He had done Escape From New York the year prior with Carpenter, and while that is now one of his most iconic roles, it did begin to establish Russell in a new light in Hollywood. Between these two movies, we saw Russell become the star we now know him to be, so it really was because of both Mac and Snake Plissken that we have the Kurt we love now.
That appeal is what makes seeing Lee Shaw in the snow so fun. It wasn’t intentional from Monarch writers and creators Chris Black and Matt Fraction, as my interview with the two revealed, but it is something that fans can connect with because that’s just the beauty of Kurt Russell’s filmography.
(featured image: Universal Pictures)
