There’s a very difficult dance Godzilla fans must play when suggesting entries to watch, because we know what to expect from the legacy franchise. It makes sense people want to know; the series has been around for nearly 60 years, and the number of entries seems daunting. Here’s the secret: it’s all kind of bad, and where Monarch: Legacy of Monsters could have allowed these issues room the breath, it is instead ten hours long, ten times as expensive, and shows the monsters for the same amount of time as any of the aforementioned kaiju classics, if not less. Through all that, it doesn’t do much to create compelling human characters to follow throughout its runtime.
Save for a select few that include Ishiro Honda’s classic Gojira, (I personally also recommend Rodan on Criterion Collection), the rest of the series is very much template B-movies of their time from the 1970’s through the 2000’s. This sometimes works, as the medium occasionally finds a synergy between the effects presentation and writing to let viewers look in awe and terror alongside the characters without being grating. Great examples include The 90’s Gamara trilogy and most recently Hideaki Anno’s award winning Shin-Godzilla.
What’ve you got in there, Godzilla vs Kong?
Sometimes that’s exactly what you need on a weekend chill out movie — a film that’s nostalgic and nonsensical. A true classic Godzilla feature of yesteryear has ninety minutes of humans with thin characterization, low budget sets, techno-babble, themes of survivors guilt, adversaries in the form of politicians, tech bros and aliens (sometimes all three.) At the end of the day, a Godzilla fan takes comfort in the excitement in the classic tokusatsu sequences as they watch big monsters wrestle about on screen for the final twenty to thirty minutes.
A Legendary Legacy
Legendary Pictures is known for creating hit genre films with massive impact, and have always burst at the seams with style and production value. We have them to thank for producing most of Christopher Nolan’s films, Zack Snyder’s 300, The Pacific Rim series, Pokemon: Detective Pikachu, Denis Villenueve’s Dune, and so many others. While not all of their filmography are winners, they are all visually unique and manage to excite audiences with some of the best visual effects in the business, memorable iconography, and characters. Unfortunately, Warner Bros’ hemorrhaging of money left a crater in Legendary’s wallet when they, without asking first, put Godzilla vs Kong up for Day and Date streaming release in 2021.
In retaliation, Legendary, which fully financed that film, took Monarch: Legacy of Monsters to a new home at Apple TV+, but it is still very much connected to Legendary’s preestablished Monsterverse that began with Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla. Save for The Expanse on Prime Video, this series is no doubt the most expensive venture into television for Legendary to date, and the show sure looks like it.
Unfortunately, alongside the Apple TV+ budget to keep Edwards’ Godzilla looking fresh comes some poor writing, which is the biggest failing of this new series that for better or for worse tries to bridge the gap between the 2014 film and the rest of the films in the franchise: Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Kong Skull Island, and of course Godzilla vs Kong and its sequel this spring. With the baggage of how divisive every one of those films are to a global audience, it also comes with their established story beats. Perhaps a different version of this series could have made these things puzzle together neatly, but instead, we get to follow frustrating heroes and villains, all of whom make inconsistent decisions, while the world’s acclimation to Godzilla and the Titans settle into the backdrop.
………………………………..
Robert DufferSenior Editor
January 22, 2025
In the next two years, Audi plans to launch 20 new models globally. About 15 of those models will be sold in North America. No other luxury automaker has such an intense product launch, and it’s fueled by two new platforms. The Premium Platform Combustion (PPC) builds out vehicles powered by more efficient internal combustion engines and the Premium Platform Electric (PPE) girds the brand’s new battery electric vehicles.
There’s a lot to come in 2025 and 2026, and so far we’ve only driven the vanguard of this product launch in the Q6 and SQ6 E-Tron electric SUVs and S6 E-Tron electric sedan. We’ve had a chance to study the new A5 and S5 launching in the U.S. by next spring, so much of what we know and what we’re listing below is based on those impressions.
With EV sales cooling off in the U.S., as well as an uncertain EV future from a regulatory standpoint, Audi plans to launch more plug-in hybrids this year.
Some of the brand’s forthcoming models debuting in Europe and destined for North America next year are tentatively classified as 2025 models, but we expect them to be 2026s. Plans, like life, change, but whatever the case the brand emblazoned with four rings is evolving.
The clearest signifier of this evolution is a new naming convention that hopefully will dispense of the E-Tron tag for the brand’s growing portfolio of electric vehicles. Staring now, all even-numbered models will be electric vehicles. Hence, the new Q6 E-Tron and the carryover Q8 and Q4 E-Tron models. All odd-numbered models will be powered by combustion engines, which is why the discontinued nA4 sedan is now the new 2025 (or 2026) A5 sedan.
Most 2025 Audi models will have a navigation trial extended from six months to three years, a garage door button will be integrated into the rearview mirror, and some packages have more features. The mandatory destination fee increases $100 to $1,295, and all prices listed below include that charge.
Here’s a roundup of what’s new for Audi in 2025, and what is carried over.
New or refreshed Audi models
2025 Audi Q6 E-Tron electric SUV
The first vehicle employing the PPE makes a huge leap from the smaller Q4, which was refreshed in all the right ways for 2024. It slots below the larger Q8, which launched as the E-Tron in 2018 and was the second electric SUV to arrive after the Tesla Model X. Sharing its underpinnings with the Porsche Macan EV but built more for comfort and luxury, the Q6 E-Tron has an 800-volt electrical architecture for quicker fast charging, a larger and more energy dense 94.9-kwh battery pack, more potent and efficient motors, and a hypermodern digital interface that’s more intuitive than overwhelming. Prices will be announced closer to its November on-sale date.
January 22, 2025
In the next two years, Audi plans to launch 20 new models globally. About 15 of those models will be sold in North America. No other luxury automaker has such an intense product launch, and it’s fueled by two new platforms. The Premium Platform Combustion (PPC) builds out vehicles powered by more efficient internal combustion engines and the Premium Platform Electric (PPE) girds the brand’s new battery electric vehicles.
There’s a lot to come in 2025 and 2026, and so far we’ve only driven the vanguard of this product launch in the Q6 and SQ6 E-Tron electric SUVs and S6 E-Tron electric sedan. We’ve had a chance to study the new A5 and S5 launching in the U.S. by next spring, so much of what we know and what we’re listing below is based on those impressions.
With EV sales cooling off in the U.S., as well as an uncertain EV future from a regulatory standpoint, Audi plans to launch more plug-in hybrids this year.
Some of the brand’s forthcoming models debuting in Europe and destined for North America next year are tentatively classified as 2025 models, but we expect them to be 2026s. Plans, like life, change, but whatever the case the brand emblazoned with four rings is evolving.
The clearest signifier of this evolution is a new naming convention that hopefully will dispense of the E-Tron tag for the brand’s growing portfolio of electric vehicles. Staring now, all even-numbered models will be electric vehicles. Hence, the new Q6 E-Tron and the carryover Q8 and Q4 E-Tron models. All odd-numbered models will be powered by combustion engines, which is why the discontinued nA4 sedan is now the new 2025 (or 2026) A5 sedan.
Most 2025 Audi models will have a navigation trial extended from six months to three years, a garage door button will be integrated into the rearview mirror, and some packages have more features. The mandatory destination fee increases $100 to $1,295, and all prices listed below include that charge.
Here’s a roundup of what’s new for Audi in 2025, and what is carried over.
New or refreshed Audi models
2025 Audi Q6 E-Tron electric SUV
The first vehicle employing the PPE makes a huge leap from the smaller Q4, which was refreshed in all the right ways for 2024. It slots below the larger Q8, which launched as the E-Tron in 2018 and was the second electric SUV to arrive after the Tesla Model X. Sharing its underpinnings with the Porsche Macan EV but built more for comfort and luxury, the Q6 E-Tron has an 800-volt electrical architecture for quicker fast charging, a larger and more energy dense 94.9-kwh battery pack, more potent and efficient motors, and a hypermodern digital interface that’s more intuitive than overwhelming. Prices will be announced closer to its November on-sale date.
2025 Audi Q5 SUV
The third-generation Q5 is Audi’s first crossover SUV to utilize the brand’s new Premium Platform Combustion that will underpin everything from the related 2025 Audi A5 sedan to eight more Audi vehicles in the next few years. With a software defined architecture and cleaner engines with some form of planned electrification, Audi’s bestseller wears new ends, more dynamic exterior lighting, and an interior aglow with screens that aid the driver instead of overwhelming them. The 2025 Q5 uses the same 268-hp 2.0-liter turbo-4 as the A5 sedan and the same 362-hp turbocharged 3.0-liter V-6 as the S5 sport sedan; all-wheel drive is standard. Audi says the engines are more efficient than their predecessors, but a plug-in hybrid model won’t return to the North American market for now and the mild-hybrid standard in Europe won’t be offered here.
The Q5 Sportback S Line 45 is offered in Premium ($53,595), Premium Plus ($57,595), Prestige ($60,695); SQ5 Sportback costs $9,400 more
The Q5 40 is offered in Premium ($46,695), Premium Plus ($52,395), Prestige ($55,995)
The SQ5 is offered in Premium ($59,695), Premium Plus ($64,595), Prestige ($67,795)
January 22, 2025
In the next two years, Audi plans to launch 20 new models globally. About 15 of those models will be sold in North America. No other luxury automaker has such an intense product launch, and it’s fueled by two new platforms. The Premium Platform Combustion (PPC) builds out vehicles powered by more efficient internal combustion engines and the Premium Platform Electric (PPE) girds the brand’s new battery electric vehicles.
There’s a lot to come in 2025 and 2026, and so far we’ve only driven the vanguard of this product launch in the Q6 and SQ6 E-Tron electric SUVs and S6 E-Tron electric sedan. We’ve had a chance to study the new A5 and S5 launching in the U.S. by next spring, so much of what we know and what we’re listing below is based on those impressions.
With EV sales cooling off in the U.S., as well as an uncertain EV future from a regulatory standpoint, Audi plans to launch more plug-in hybrids this year.
Some of the brand’s forthcoming models debuting in Europe and destined for North America next year are tentatively classified as 2025 models, but we expect them to be 2026s. Plans, like life, change, but whatever the case the brand emblazoned with four rings is evolving.
The clearest signifier of this evolution is a new naming convention that hopefully will dispense of the E-Tron tag for the brand’s growing portfolio of electric vehicles. Staring now, all even-numbered models will be electric vehicles. Hence, the new Q6 E-Tron and the carryover Q8 and Q4 E-Tron models. All odd-numbered models will be powered by combustion engines, which is why the discontinued nA4 sedan is now the new 2025 (or 2026) A5 sedan.
Most 2025 Audi models will have a navigation trial extended from six months to three years, a garage door button will be integrated into the rearview mirror, and some packages have more features. The mandatory destination fee increases $100 to $1,295, and all prices listed below include that charge.
Here’s a roundup of what’s new for Audi in 2025, and what is carried over.
New or refreshed Audi models
2025 Audi Q6 E-Tron electric SUV
The first vehicle employing the PPE makes a huge leap from the smaller Q4, which was refreshed in all the right ways for 2024. It slots below the larger Q8, which launched as the E-Tron in 2018 and was the second electric SUV to arrive after the Tesla Model X. Sharing its underpinnings with the Porsche Macan EV but built more for comfort and luxury, the Q6 E-Tron has an 800-volt electrical architecture for quicker fast charging, a larger and more energy dense 94.9-kwh battery pack, more potent and efficient motors, and a hypermodern digital interface that’s more intuitive than overwhelming. Prices will be announced closer to its November on-sale date.
2025 Audi Q5 SUV
The third-generation Q5 is Audi’s first crossover SUV to utilize the brand’s new Premium Platform Combustion that will underpin everything from the related 2025 Audi A5 sedan to eight more Audi vehicles in the next few years. With a software defined architecture and cleaner engines with some form of planned electrification, Audi’s bestseller wears new ends, more dynamic exterior lighting, and an interior aglow with screens that aid the driver instead of overwhelming them. The 2025 Q5 uses the same 268-hp 2.0-liter turbo-4 as the A5 sedan and the same 362-hp turbocharged 3.0-liter V-6 as the S5 sport sedan; all-wheel drive is standard. Audi says the engines are more efficient than their predecessors, but a plug-in hybrid model won’t return to the North American market for now and the mild-hybrid standard in Europe won’t be offered here.
- The Q5 40 is offered in Premium ($46,695), Premium Plus ($52,395), Prestige ($55,995)
- The SQ5 is offered in Premium ($59,695), Premium Plus ($64,595), Prestige ($67,795)
- The Q5 Sportback S Line 45 is offered in Premium ($53,595), Premium Plus ($57,595), Prestige ($60,695); SQ5 Sportback costs $9,400 more
2025 Audi Q7 three-row SUV
The refreshed Q7 follows the same updates as the Audi Q8 that was spritzed in 2024. A new front end, updated technology, and four different DRL displays highlight the changes. The footprint remains the same, so the cramped third row is best for occasional or emergency situations. The in-car technology is superlative, except for Apple CarPlay connectivity issues, and it’s one of the best-handling three-row SUVs in the luxury class. The 2025 Q7 55 TFSI ($66,995) uses the same 3.0-liter turbo V-6 that makes 335 hp and 369 lb-ft, good for a 0-60 mph time of 5.5 seconds. Every Q7 has a telepathic 8-speed automatic transmission and standard all-wheel drive. The Audi SQ7 is something special, though. For $91,995, it upgrades to a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 making 500 hp and 568 lb-ft, good for a 0-60 mph in 4.0 seconds. The V-8 thrums, and the power seems extra potent when the baffles open and traffic clears.
