Soapbox Rant: Or my utter contempt over Universal’s colossal classic monster movie blunder

Why in the seven worlds is Universal opening its vault for the sole purpose of rebooting/rehashing its classic anthology of movie monsters? If you haven’t seen or heard the news yet, let me break it to you. You may want to sit down. Apparently Universal Studios is bringing back everyone’s favorite classic movie monsters, we’re talking Frankenstein (1931), The Wolfman (1941), Dracula (1931), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), The Mummy (1932), and The Invisible Man (1933). “What’s so terrible about that?”…you may ask. Well…let’s talk about it. According to most of every article I’ve read on the subject, this rehashing has been going around the table for some time. Lots of rumor and speculation has boiled the pot into an absolute frenzy among horror nerds and bloggers, such as myself. But why are we so worked up? More movies is good movies, right? Unfortunately that is not the case. More/new movies does not necessarily mean good, as in quality. In fact, we’re more than likely to get flicks representative of 2004’s (a decade ago, if you can believe that!) telling of Van Helsing (which stared Hugh Jackman, our lovable Wolverine). Which is to say, a boring story with plenty of action. Now, I’m not personally saying Van Helsing was horrible. It was actually a fun watch. A movie you where you could unplug and allow your brain to ooze out the ear. Van Helsing was a popcorn movie, no doubt. But weren’t the original Universal monster movies more than that? Van Helsing may have been fun to watch, with all the flashing lights and bells, but it had no meaning, no purpose. The original films said something about the era in which they were made…God, I hope that doesn’t hold true for the films we’re putting out today! 

Frankenstein had the subtext of a world torn apart by The Great War and reassembled in this new world order. Dracula, for me at least, dealt with xenophobia and blood mixing. Powerful stuff in the 1930’s, perhaps more nowadays if you so happen to turn on the news. The Wolfman was a classic Greek tragedy where beneath the fur and fangs, you saw the terrified glimpse of Hitler’s raise to power in Nazi Germany. Not that the Wolfman was Hitler, but rather Talbot represented European Jewry during a time of mass hysteria and persecution. A power manifested image of how people may have felt to be looked at differently.

Do you see where my concern is coming from? The classics had significant meaning and purpose. What significance or meaning will the reboots bring? Well, as it turns out, Universal is only looking at the dollar signs. With this huge insurgence with cinematic universes being explored with both Marvel and DC, Universal wants to cash in, the only issue is that they do not have anything in their stable, but the classic monsters, to bring back. And to make matters worse, the most recent rumor is that Universal executives want to cut out the horror aspect in the films and turn them into action films instead. This goes back to my Van Helsing comment. This films might end up being fun to watch, something we can unplug our brains to, but it will not have any significance. And the removal of the horror aspect makes no sense to me. The entire essence of the classics are in themselves horror. How is it even possible to do such a thing? Perhaps the executive who mentioned it or started the rumor meant that the films were going to be geared toward horror/action and not just horror in general.

To tell the truth, when I first heard the news that Universal was bringing back the classics, there was some excitement there. The most recent rehash with The Wolfman (2010) was not entirely horrible. It wasn’t the mind numbing action of Van Helsing, thank goodness. The only thing they got wrong on that one was the overuse of CGI. Hairy Hopkins would have been forgivable had the producers/director stuck with practical/traditional effects. Had they called in Rick Baker….damn…it could have been a phenomenal movie!! In my opinion, the acting in the 2010 Wolfman was on par with the 1941 original. And as far as scripts go, they retold the story without ignoring the roots. It really shows how close they came, but ultimately gave up because of poor reviews and revenue. Some may disagree with me on this one. But hey, its just my opinion.

My hope is that all these rumors are just that, rumors. Creating a cinematic universe with the original baddies of horror is not entirely awful. There are many classic crossovers in the vault to compare. The Wolfman meets Frankenstein (1943) is my personal favorite. However, if the new ventures become nothing more than another meaningless Van Helsing rendition, well… in retrospect it’ll be nothing more than another golden opportunity lost in creating something with real, lasting significant.