Exclusive: VFX Secrets Behind Rodan’s Monarch Comeback and Kong’s Titan X Showdown

I know, season two of 'Monarch: Legacy of Monsters' went out with a lot of roaring and crunching. Kong and Titan X tore up Skull Island while Keiko was basically threading a needle in a speeding jeep under their feet. No, the giant monsters are not real. Yes, someone still had to make them look that way.

Meet the guy making the monsters fight

VFX Supervisor Sean Konrad has been around the Monsterverse block. He was on 'Godzilla ' (2014), then back as a VFX Supervisor on 'Godzilla: King of the Monsters' (2019), and he has credits on 'Loki ', 'The Witches', 'Deadpool 2', 'Justice League'… the man has receipts. He and his team not only sold that finale brawl, they also sneaked in a last-second flex: Rodan rising out of a volcano to cap the episode 'Where We Belong'.

How big was that finale, VFX-wise?

Konrad told ComicBook he thinks the episode ran somewhere around 450 VFX shots. That includes the obvious big creature beats and the sneaky stuff you might not notice, like paint-outs and other cleanup. For scale, he said that on 2014's 'Godzilla' he was at a vendor that handled roughly 350–400 shots, with other companies contributing another ~300 or so, plus additional cleanup. Across Monarch season two, the team clocked about 3,000 shots. The strategy, according to Konrad, was always to save the pennies for the monsters and trim back elsewhere. If a set extension wasn’t essential to the story, they found ways to compress the scope and spend where it counts: claws, fists, teeth.

• Finale VFX load: roughly 450 shots (creatures plus cleanup)
• 'Godzilla' (2014): his shop handled about 350–400 shots; other vendors added ~300 more, plus cleanup
• Monarch season two total: around 3,000 shots
• Priority: funnel budget to monster sequences over optional set extensions
• Konrad’s credits: 'Godzilla' (2014), 'Godzilla: King of the Monsters' (2019), 'Loki', 'The Witches', 'Deadpool 2', 'Justice League'

Building the Kong vs. Titan X chaos

This is the part that sounds simple on paper and gets messy in the dirt. You can previs and storyboard a monster brawl all day, but once you roll cameras on location, real-world terrain starts making decisions for you. In this case, they found a stunt driver who could literally pop the car onto two wheels and carve a killer arc, which opened up moves that no previs pass would have guessed.

Konrad said the sequence was a full handshake between SFX, VFX, and the stunt team. They knew the major beats they wanted to hit: start with Keiko, throw her into wild driving, hit a stop, a reverse, a pull back, connect to Cate, wreck the truck, keep moving. The connective tissue between those points wasn’t improv in the loose sense — the stunt team rehearsed it to death — but it also wasn’t something you can rigidly plan in a computer. The VFX department set guardrails (yes, including how wide Titan X’s tentacle arc would be so the driver knew how big to swing the car), then shot, reassessed, and stitched it together in post.

And then there’s the budget reality check. The first cut of that sequence? Way pricier than the episode could handle. So they found ways to let scope breathe without blowing the bank — jump inside the cab with Keiko, let dust whip by, then slam back out for the showstopper moments. After the initial assembly, they also realized they wanted louder punctuation — a massive punch here, a nasty bite there — and designed extra creature beats in post to give the fight more snap.

"As long as it needs to be to make it cool as heck."

That was the marching order on length. No strict time cap — just whatever they could realistically finish, both financially and logistically. It ended up being the biggest thing the show has tackled so far, with one very specific aim: give us a new perspective that the films haven’t really gone for. In this case, someone blasting a vehicle straight through a Titan’s legs, threading the danger zone while two skyscraper-sized monsters try to tear each other apart.

That Rodan reveal

In the final moments, a winged silhouette peels out of a volcano and, hello again, Rodan. Konrad clearly has a soft spot for the 'King of the Monsters' Rodan sequence — he calls it great, even if the poor guy gets taken out fast. Monarch’s take plays with the mythology a bit more, pulling from the original Toho spinoff and letting the creature have a little personality. They mostly kept the existing design intact; the tweaks were about making it sit better in this new environment and selling the moment.

Performance was the swing factor: this Rodan isn’t out for blood here, so they gave it a hint of swagger — a little cocky, some idle business, even a specific mouth movement — to fill the time as it coils around. It’s only one shot, but it was a bear to nail. Konrad says they reworked the camera move about half a dozen times and kept some artists up well past their bedtimes to get it right.

He also shouted out VFX Supervisor Pier Lefebvre at Rodeo FX (the interview references 'Radio FX' — if you follow vendors, this is almost certainly Rodeo), who also served as CG Supervisor on that big Rodan sequence in 'King of the Monsters'. Nice bit of continuity there: same hands helping shape the same Titan, years later.

Looking ahead: who’s on the kaiju wish list?

If Monarch comes back for season three, Konrad would love a proper swing at Mothra. He touched some of her material on 'King of the Monsters' but didn’t get to go deep. He’s also curious about dusting off the less-loved creatures and finding modern spins. Caveat: that call isn’t his — writers and franchise owners steer the monster roster.

One last thing

For everyone clutching pearls about production safety: the only things hurt here were pixels and sleep schedules. The kaiju are CG. The dust in Keiko’s face? Real. The teeth aiming for Kong? Not so much. And that’s the magic trick.