Universal Monsters Cinematic Universe

The first two Mummy movies did not suck.

I doubt it's actually him anyway.

Peace is the only battle worth waging.

The first one is So Okay, It's Average.

Two onward its downhill.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

The first Mummy kicked ass and I will fight you.

My various fanfics.

First Mummy is great. The second one I find more arguable in terms of quality, but that's as far as personal taste is concerned.

edited 19th Jun '17 7:32:37 AM by VeryMelon

I find the first one genuinely awesome. #2 has flaws but it is still significantly better than the new one.

That's explicitly a fanpage that posted that.

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

The second one is objectively not a good movie, but it's so damn fun and entertaining I don't care.

Definitely.

I like to keep my audience riveted.

http://deadline.com/2017/06/the-mummy-tom-cruise-box-office-bomb-loss-1202114482/

NOW is the dream dead?

For now.

Until we hear in 3 years Universal bought the Hellsing rights and that totes the real start!

Or they finally make del Toro's Lovecraft film.

edited 20th Jun '17 6:02:40 PM by Spinosegnosaurus77

Peace is the only battle worth waging.

Roger Ebert's review of The Mummy was quite famous. He essentially said that he can't argue for any of it's artistic value, but he had a grin on his face the entire time and couldn't find it in him to dislike it.

I'm curious about the movie, might check it out in the cheap theaters.

A Lovecraft film universe would be neat but I don't think any major studio would be willing to do the stories justice.

So I have watched The Mummy recently (at the insistence of my brother) and after I gathered my thoughts, I say the movie's problem is that it is largely inconsistent of what it wants to be (and has too many unnecessary scenes and expositions when one is enough). The first scene seemed to suggest that the Mummy will be about Russel Crowe's Dr. Jekyll as the main character. Then the next scene gives us the backstory of Ahmanet, doing it the manner of The Mummy (1999). The next scene, featuring Nick Morton, suggested it will be like a modern version of The Mummy, with the main character being an Asshole Victim. Then when Nick and his team find the Mummy's Tomb, it treats it like a mystery but the mystery is already ruined by Jekyll's backstory exposition and Jenny describing what all of those statues and symbols mean instead of letting the scene play out it self.

There is too many scene like that for me to properly cover. It should either have gone with Dr. Jekyll simply providing the backstory and have the monster be our main character (as she would have no idea what the modern world is like) or just open with the tomb excavation and have the set speak for itself. Then fill in about Ahmanet's backstory. There is potential horror and suspense in that scene. And they are most effective the less you know about it. How great would it be if you have no idea what's in that tomb and let your imagination play as you uncover the mysteries within?

Oh, and I have to say about the ending. If the director was people to genuine feel that Tom Cruise is helpless and is going to lose (and not be an action hero), he should have gone ballsy and have Cruise die. Because an A-star like Cruise is never going to have any suspense or fear unless you truly kill him. Otherwise, audience will suspect that Cruise will win somehow (and the final trailer ruined it by showing Crusie with supernatural powers). There's a reason why unknown actors are more effective because they are not well-known enough to guarantee survival. Heck, some memorable scenes from The Mummy series are when conventional happy ending tropes are brutally subverted such as The Mummy's Ghost.

The best parts of the movie is the Mummy. I want more of here. She's a good monster with a good backstory. Though I would prefer if she doesn't really love Tom Cruise and just wants to use his body as a vessel for Set. Just like how Imhotep doesn't really cared about Evie in the 1999 version and only use her as a sacrifice for his deceased loved one.

Oh, and it's a missed moment Ahmenet drain Jenny's fluid and flesh like she did with her other victims. It would have hammered in that Jenny is dead and foreshadowed Vival's resurrection. Not to mention that it would have made great psychological torment if Ahmenet said to Nick that Jenny lives within her and that he could be with Jenny through Ahmenet.

edited 24th Jun '17 8:56:30 PM by Shadao

Well I have bad (or good depending on your view) news about the Dark Universe. It seems that the Bride of Frankenstein movie was push forward undefinitely. Not surprisingly after The Mummy's critical and financial disappointment.

The problem with this universe IMHO is, as some say it before, these should be horror movies, not adventures/superhero flicks. And I know that Hollywood mentality is or was "Blockbusters are action movies" and see horror as B Lister dump to put in October to make some side earnings. But they are really really missing the point. Sleeper hits like It Follows and The Conjuring show that horror could be profitable, and now the tremendous hit of It (2017), breaking box office records and making around a billion in money prove me right. There's a market for horror, a notable amount of movie goers that really want an R-rated scary film. I think Comic Book Girl 19 put it good when she's says that this are villians, you can't turn Dracula into a superhero. Even if you focus the material on the "monster hunters" the main magnet to the movie is the antagonist. The superhero formula just doesn't work.

I personally am a big fan of the Universal Horror movies. I watched all when I was like 12 when they were played on saturdays afternoon in the Universal Channel. I had to wait for the Internet to be a thing in order to see the Hammer remakes because they were almost impossible to find in home video. I really enjoyed the 90s remakes like Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Mary Reilly and Wolf with Jack Nicholson. I think those are very good films and show how this material is versatile and can be turn in good non-action movies (whether the 90s movies are horror or more like thrillers is another matter, but they work IMO).

The last representation of this characters I enjoyed was Penny Dreadful which I think it really shows the influence of the 90s movies. It has that atmosphere, and saddly it came to an unexpected and premature finale, but is still an example on how this kind of material can be done intro something dark, dramatic and scary even in the modern age.

I don't know if universal will push for their Cinematic Universe again, this was the third attempt (first was The Wolf Man remake, in case you don't remember, followed by Dracula Untold and now The Mummy) but if they do, I really hope that It's success will inspire them to do a horror-based franchise (with self-contain solid individual films before they start mixing them).

edited 26th Oct '17 3:30:41 PM by Luppercus

Oh and BTW I also liked the 1999's version of The Mummy (1999) with Brendan Fraser, which is indeed more and adventure film than horror, but the thing is it has a nice Indiana Jones-vibe to it and the exotic Egyptian setting helps. That is something that can't be replicated with every monster, probably with any other than the Mummy.

edited 26th Oct '17 3:33:41 PM by Luppercus

Most of the original Monsters Cinematic Universe back in the day wasn’t straightforward horror either. Drac, Frankenstein’s monster, Larry Talbot, etc all had more horror centric origin movies before moving onto more marketable adventure/mystery/drama stories in their sequels. There are even a couple of comedies in there.

I still think Larry Talbot is the character around which they should’ve built the universe.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

It's an enjoyable flick....it works more or less the same way Con Air works. It is a ridiculous movie, but you somehow don't mind while watching it and at no point it feels lazy. Plus, the characters are kind of fun. They are certainly more interesting that the majority of boring leads out there.

Anyway, RIP Monsters Cinematic Universe. I won't miss you.

Well, Van Helsing was pretty similar - classic monsters, exotic setting, emphasis on action and adventure, same director and evil henchman actor... lump it together with The Mummy Trilogy and it's as close to a new Universall Horror cinematic universe as it's gonna get for a while yet.

For the moment Abbot and Costello met the monsters, which was like 20 years or more after the first ones, the franchise was already so used that could only go into selfparody to be profitable after monster fatigue. This was predicted by film theorist Christian Metz on his four stages of genre evolution, that according to him film genres go through:

• Experimental stage (Phantom of the Opera, the Cabinet of Dr. Caligary, etc.)
• Classic stage (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, etc.)
• Parody stage (Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein, Abbot and Costello meet the Mummy, The Munsters, etc.)
• Deconstruction stage (be my guest to especulate)

Now, I won't mind to see Simon Pegg and Nick Frost eventually appearing in a movie with the new monsters (which I guess they're like the modern Abbot and Costello) but I think that's still far from happening nor I think that is what Universal has in mind for the near future, and basing us in Metz ideas, that's not the stage these movies are, yet. There are, of course, movies that handle that spot-on, like The Monster Squad, which can be scary at times but is mostly a comedy adventure for kids (and that with the example of It maybe its planned reboot would be a good thing to look forward).

The classic movies might at some point have some elements of adventure over horror, especially the mummy series IIRC, of course, but the point is if the modern incarnations like Dracula Untold and now The Mummy (2017) are not really engaging the audiences with their action-oriented plots, maybe the producers may think outside the box and try something different.

edited 26th Oct '17 7:26:10 PM by Luppercus

Well, a big difference is that as far as Hollywood is concerned, "adventure" as a genre is pretty much dead whereas if a series is going to be of that type, it's going to be an out and out action thriller flick, and they're slowly learning that action doesn't work as a blanket genre in the way they think it is. The Brendan Frasier Mummy movie is a throwback adventure movie a la Indiana Jones, and that's one of the reasons it works - the concept is just too out there for straight up action, and just too mythological and daring for straight up horror.

It's arguably the same with, say, Dracula, whose original story is more of a mystery folkloric story (like a lot of Gothic stories) and thus he doesn't work as a straight horror or especially not a straight action character either - there's an element of gravitas that's always going to need to be there with the character. And the Wolfman is an out and out tragic hero, so he's not the best fit for current trends either.

Hollywood today, with studios constantly trying to catch up with other, more successful studios with substanceless but "safe" cookie cutter films, was probably always going to fail at adapting these characters.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

I tend to agree. Although I do think Dracula could still be done right for modern audiences with the right concept behind, but it will be risky and studios don't like to risk.

I really would like this to work, as a fan of the originals and the Hammer remakes I really would be the happiest person if these characters are brought back into a succesful modern franchise, I would love to be witness of that part of film history. But is truly hard to see how, it's the execution the problem, and whether you go for the comedic adventure side like Monster Squad or 1999s Mummy or you go with the serious horror/bizarre side like Coppola's Dracula, which in modern times would be like choosing a very out of the box director like del Toro o Josh Trank, but both cases are very risky. Or you play safe but doesn't seem to be working because the formula somehow doesn't fix.

edited 26th Oct '17 9:12:52 PM by Luppercus

In the end, there are two possible approaches: you either portray them as tragic but still evil figures or you portray them as monsters and focus on the hero. But I actually would do both.

So how about this: Start in modern day with a group of treasure hunters accidentally freeing Dracula from some sort of crypt in Transylvania. Then spend the movie with Dracula trapping those people in his castle for the purpose of information, food and, well, service. Meaning you spend a lot of time with those people not knowing what their fate will be and desperately looking for a way out, but also a lot of time with Dracula interacting with them, trying to figure out this new world, while also revealing a lot about himself. Towards the end of the movie Dracula decides to leave Transylvania with whoever he has decided to be his new servants (at least one of them should still be human and into it either out of fear or for money...or both....) and one member of the group might actually survive but being unable to warn the world because who the hell would believe a story about Dracula?

And after that we can either follow Dracula, who has decided to look for other monsters in order to take revenge on the humans who killed his kin and trapped him a crypt for so long, or the survivor, who is looking for people who might help him after all, like the Helsing family (which maybe has forgotten its proud tradition, or is still believing in it, who knows). There are a lot of possibilities.

I saw someone say it was a dumb idea to try and start this universe with the mummy anyway, since he's not as memorable or iconic as someone like Dracula or Frankenstein.

Even with the Brendon Fraser movies, the mummy himself wasn't really the draw.

That worked well for those movies, but in an MCU style shared universe that is meant to be IP driven, your title monster can't be an afterthought.

edited 28th Oct '17 7:25:46 AM by comicwriter