When Pirates of the Caribbean 4 came out and I went on my last violent rampage through Burbank, I promised myself and that district court judge I wasn’t going to murder anymore Hollywood Executives. I mean, honestly it was really very nice of the LAPD to let me off with a misdemeanor to begin with and all of those nice folks at the courthouse were very understanding: “We know, it was an awful film,” They said, “and it should never have been made but you really can’t keep dumping dead bodies in the Mojave desert.”
It’s been several years now and *deep breath* I have been doing a lot better. I kept calm when David S. Goyer had his…incident with She-Hulk. The fact that he is alive and breathing and not locked in a SAW style death trap is a sign I have been making progress.
And then this happens: Universal Executive Confirms That All Future Universal Monster Movies Will Not Be Horror. This is the kind of thing that makes my Dark Passenger start to drool.
I have long suspected that Universal Pictures is just a theme park run by clowns pretending to be a movie studio and at least now that has been confirmed, that much is off my mind. But honestly this entire situation has made me just….*sigh*.
Let’s attack this point by point: Yes. Monster films have under performed the past few years. The most recent Wolfman and Thing films are evidence of that and yes, the Stephen Sommers interpretation of the Mummy was once upon a time a big hit. I will admit these things more or less as truth. So using Hollywood logic, where things like quality and talent are unknown integers, I can understand why they made the decision to switch the Monster films to adventures. It was successful in the past and we can make it successful again. But this is the very definition of selective history and Universal is gonna eat it, hard.
First of all, Classic monsters as an action film? They ALREADY TRIED THIS IDEA. It was called Van Helsing…it was not a hit.
5/7/04 was the day the pain started. Never forget.
Furthermore, while everyone in this situation is quick to bring up the Mummy as a great interpretation of how adventures monsters are better than horror, people tend to forget WHY they stopped the Mummy Movies:
Stephen Sommers has a lot to answer for.
Seriously, he’s like the cinematic equivalent of Mussolini.
“At least the trains run on time.”
And lets face it, the early success of that franchise was also pretty hard to recreate or have you forgotten:
This is the first film ever made where the behind the scenes documentary is scarier than the actual film itself.
So Universal is not exactly walking on steady ground here and even if they were strolling upon the golden path, their first offering in this series, Dracula Untold was not exactly a smashing success. It made millions on a weekend with very little else to compete against and people keep calling it soulless. (FYI, a lot of these reviews steal the jokes I made in MY review. Just saying. I think you people owe me money.) The fact is if they want to make a big effort to turn horror franchises into adventure franchises, why do the keep releasing terrible movies? You say people want a new “Mummy-style” franchise…why didn’t you MAKE a film that was as much FUN as the first Mummy movie?
Also their idea that these things are no longer scary to the public is frankly a disgusting thesis. Walking Dead is one long monster movie, it is now the NUMBER ONE TV SHOW in the country. Evil Dead was a surprise hit, American Horror Story has spent the past few years revisiting aliens, killer clowns, haunted houses, witches, demons. Penny Dreadful is a modest hit and is coming back for a second season. Godzilla was a smash hit last summer because for the first time in years, Godzilla was horrifying!
People. Like. Monsters. People are still SCARED BY MONSTERS! They don’t like YOUR monster films, Unviersal, because they suck. Because you suck in general.
Which is to be expected because it was made by the people who made Battleship.
“Mahalo, Mother Fudgers!”
