Universal Monsters Cinematic Universe

So, anybody remember Dracula Untold?

No?

Well, that just so happens to be the first step in a new line of monster movies from Universal Pictures.

...Or at least it is unofficially.

The official first step is actually The Mummy, with absolutely no relationship to the Brendan Fraser series of movies.

This time, it's Tom Cruise vs. a mummified Sofia Boutella, with Russell Crowe as a certain man named Dr. Henry Jekyll.

Full trailer coming this Sunday!

The Mummy teaser looks meh. We already have the protagonist claiming the creature in title of the movie is real. come on script person. stop making me feel dumb. might as well say Welcome to a new cinematic universe of gods and monsters instead of copying Bride of Frankenstein's line.

Dracula Unchained was Dracula uninteresting, not justifying the excitement and anticipation to see what happens on that same Earth. Thematic, setting, and narrative consistency thrown out the window. I rather see more Transformers. I thank Dracula Unchained for my doubts and this teaser.

Universal has Jurassic Park, Minions, Fifty Shades, and the Furious franchise. Furious and Jurassic Park won't last forever. Shared universes are easy cash grabs, so I don't blame them for following the trend. They already have a built in audience format.

edited 2nd Dec '16 7:13:02 AM by WolyniaBookSeries

Well I'm hooked. Tom Cruise may be nuttier than a fruitcake, but his agent has yet to fail him. Also, dollars to rubles the full trailer will have him sprinting toward/away from something. It's what he does.

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I'm actually quite interested in seeing a non-superhero shared universe. The capes have gone too big and too monochromatic - everyone gets an origin story, then a team-up, and then it's repetitive battles till the cows come home. But here, there's the potential for anyone to be able to do their own thing, without checking up with a committee, while still enjoying the occasional crossover - kinda like the various Star Trek series. Fingers crossed.

It occurs to me that the original Columbia monster movies were also a cinematic universe. Larry Talbot met everybody, iirc.

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

Just saw this:

Does this mean we can expect an erotic dinosaur street racer spy comedy anytime soon? 'Cause that would be awesome!

Or Dracula being killed by a Minion?

Directed by Alex Kurtzman. I don't have high hopes.

And here I was thinking Untold would be used as a Hellsing prequel.

The whole point of the shared universe is for all the monsters to team up against...something or other, right?

Or fight against each other like the last shared Universal Monster Universe.

But if they were to perform an Enemy Mine, either against the Lich, some Lovecraftien Horror, or some sun like alien who has an army of Mayan robots.

Or maybe, and hopefully, the monsters are teaming up and are the villains of the movie and the sole hero to face them is Simon Belmont.

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If it's anything like the last cinematic universe, it's probably going to revolve around Dracula - with a role that's kind of like a mix between Nick Fury and Thanos.

Either that, or Abbott and Costello.

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

I'm partial to Eric Lecarde myself. Though I imagine when the monsters go at each other, it'll be more of an X-Men deal - they're not fighting for truth and justice here, they're trying to survive. At most, I'm picturing something like Van Helsing or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - unpopular opinion as it is, even the latter is pretty good from a non-comic-related perspective. But the whole obligatory teammate scuffle deal has been done, and I mean done. It's far more prudent to keep the monsters separate altogether, and only interact when approaching a particular crisis independently.

The official trailer is out. And apparently, the mummy is called Princess Anaka or Amenek, I'm not sure how they spell it.

edited 4th Dec '16 8:21:42 PM by Shadao

This is Tom. See Tom run. Run, Tom, run!

Apparently, the official spelling is Ahmanet.

So the film is set in the modern day... I dunno, that's a bit too Suicide Squad-ey for me right now, I hope they can pull it off.

I wonder if Dracula will appear as a cameo?

I'm kind of torn. On the one hand I enjoyed the creepy vibe from having the sarcophagus in the plane and slowly feeling the turbulence increase. On the other hand, the whole Gravity Screw inside the twisting plane felt like a completely different movie, screaming out as one of those pre-storyboarded action sequences that the script has to justify rather than the other way around.

Seeing Tom Cruise wake up in the morgue was an interesting surprise, making the protagonist a supernatural creature himself puts it more in the realm of Underworld or Blade instead of "Indiana Jones vs. The Mummy" the prior trilogy went with.

“In looking to figure out how to place The Mummy in a larger context and setting up this organisation that has actually been dealing with monsters for longer than any of us have been around, it became clear that we needed somebody to be the voice of that organisation. The next thought was like, ‘Well, it could be Joe Mc Gillicuddy, or we could actually go into another character that makes sense organically.’ It was a real point of conversation with Tom.”

“If we’re going to bring in Henry Jekyll, how is bringing Henry Jekyll into the mummy story not detract from the mummy story? How does Henry Jekyll become part of this story in an organic way? And part of what Tom’s character, Nick, learns about the mummy and about the history of the mummy comes through Jekyll’s very deep understanding of monsters and how monsters have existed quietly in this world for eons.”

so it seems theres a dangerours hidden masked world and the secert hidden orgization deals with it run by Jekyll. Nick gets caught up in it when he takes a monster. in the end he becomes a monster slayer.

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DU is not part of the MU anymore. so that was a waist of production and time. if this one tanks i guess they will reboot the attempt again or adapt some similar monster book series/anime

edited 5th Dec '16 8:46:21 AM by WolyniaBookSeries

Hellsing? I know a pitch got turned down a few years back (presumably because it wouldn't play well in the South) but that's always my go-to for "What do we do with a modern day Dracula?"

The answer is "team him with a cute British girl as part of a secret British special ops team and have them fight crime/threats to the crown.

The good thing about most of the monsters is that they tend to be rather timeless classics, the bad thing is that few are interested in seeing their stories retold again.

I hope the cute British girl refers to the cute British vampire girl (with the nice rack) and not the bespectacled dominatrix tsundere. Integra is a lot of things, but cute wouldn't exactly be on the list.

The problem with monster stories is that once you know what the monster is, there's not much to do to make it original again. A mummy is a mummy, a lagoon creature is a lagoon creature, and so on. Vampires only get so much mileage out of constantly being revamped.

Still, there are ways to get around it - the last Mummy trilogy built its own mythos and focused on the fairy-tale adventure aspect; and it worked pretty well. Van Helsing and Solomon Kane went for more action, and the League had a nigh-superhero world-saving story. So it's definitely doable, the question is what approach the UMCU (or oomkoo, for short) will take.

edited 5th Dec '16 1:43:23 PM by indiana404

I was referring to the sniper. The dominatrix with the cigarette is Da Chief.

Dracula Untold gets uninvited from Universal's shared monster-verse

So that Dracula is no longer part of the new Universe. So does that mean a new Dracula reboot?

Hopefully better this time.

Okay, so I have no idea what they're planning for the shared universe. I've been assuming it would all revolve around Dracula, like last time.

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

If done right this could be something similar to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, it just demands that they have an interesting connecting thread bringing them together.

Apparently, a Van Helsing reboot is officially included in the UMCU... starring Tom Cruise again. Hm. His character is heretofore called Nick. And there's only one Nicholas Van Helsing that I can think of. This should be good.

Doesn't help that LXG used three Universal Monster Movies character she in their film. So yeah the crossover might end up like that movie, only mainly comprise of the monsters rather than literally characters Andre Take That's toward such James Bond and Harry Potter.

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