The Dark Universe Thread

[Skitch]

One of them did. He dies in the plane crash presumably.

[Grouchy]

I never saw the Robert Englund one.

Me neither. It looks like good, campy fun.

[Ezee E]

If you mean contemporary, well, yes. I'm a fan of the Hammer and Universal versions and the Lon Chaney Sr. one is a classic. Although none of them manage to convey what's unique and sexy about the novel.

I don't necessarily even care for the Universal one either.

The allure of the book seems to have never hit right for me in the movies.

[Dukefrukem]

I bought tickets for this on opening night.

[megladon8]

Didn't the very first trailer show him being resurrected from the dead?

Yes but he's still...Tom Cruise.

I'm saying I think there'll be something significantly more monstrous about him that we are obviously not seeing.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Yeah, I figured she mummied him, and now it's mummy versus mummy.

[Wryan]

Maybe he'll take over for her and become some kind of terrifying figure in a wacky cult with intensely zealous devotees.

[number8]

Maybe he'll date a younger woman and become a daddy.

[Ivan Drago]

I would like to see a good Phantom of the Opera in my lifetime.

I like the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

And the Lon Chaney version from the silent era.

[Grouchy]

I like the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

I like it too, I've listened to it as soundtrack countless times, but the film is pretty boring. Ezee E is right, the tone of the book was never properly captured. In Argentina there's a writer and Horror fan who died recently called Alberto Laiseca who was obsessed with this particular complaint and used to talk a lot about how to make a decent adaptation.

There's also a very weird and random Argento.

[Wryan]

If you don't give an absolute shit about this movie and want to be spoiled, here are some grain-of-salt details I saw on reddit.

[

Show Spoiler

Apparently, Cruise stabs himself and Ms. Mummy with some McGuffin weapon to destroy her and becomes an avatar of (or literally becomes) evil Egyptian god Set, which in this movie they are somehow, some way, transfiguring to mean Satan. So now he's got an internal evil to fight against that might also help him fight external evil and blah blah, whatever, you know...

]

[Skitch]

I'm cool with that. As much a care about a mummy movie, that is.

[megladon8]

Reviews are not good.

[Dukefrukem]

Reviews are not good.

No worries. I'll buy a ticket for you.

[Spinal]

I never saw the Robert Englund one.

It's not good.

[number8]

Universal must not know how to celebrate this. They just lowered the projected domestic opening because apparently interest is dropping. They're expecting it to lose to Wonder Woman's second week.

OTOH, it just broke South Korea's opening day box office record.

[Dukefrukem]

$35 million opening weekend is not only terrible for a $125 million budget film, it's compounded by their Dark Universe plans using this as a launching pad. More like a diving board.

[number8]

They won't be able to do what they did with Dracula Untold and just sweep this under the rug as a standalone movie. They're locked in to this Dark Universe thing now.

I don't even necessarily think the whole endeavor is stupid, but I still can't fathom why they're pushing these properties as blockbuster action movies. Can you imagine if they had actually attempted to launch this universe as interconnected mid-budget horror/gothic romance movies? I mean, come on, I know Penny Dreadful didn't break into the mainstream, but the concept obviously worked incredibly well for that show.

[Dukefrukem]

Agreed Arya. Look at the way people are eating up the Conjuring, Nun, Annabelle movies!

Though, out of all the Dark Universe movies, the Mummy feels like the only candidate to even be considered an action/adventure movie. Maybe Van Helsing.

[number8]

Their first attempt at this universe was a Dracula movie where Dracula's a medieval action hero. I honestly would not put it past them to turn Frankenstein's monster into Hellboy and the Invisible Man a CIA spy. If this is gonna be an interconnected franchise, I'm gonna assume they will all aim for more or less the same tone as The Mummy.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Give the rights back to Blumhouse.

[Dead & Messed Up]

My understanding is that Dracula Untold was developed prior to the conception of this new "Dark Universe," and they added the modern-day epilogue well into post-production. Gary Shore, the Untold director, wasn't even privy to their actual plans for the DU.

...How they are going to create that architecture, I’m not quite sure.

But it was always being viewed as being part of something else. I could only look at it and focus it as being one thing, which is I just want to be able to tell this story from beginning to end.

And then when we were in post-production, they had announced that they were going to do something with this universe, which was around the same time we were going back for reshoots. So it made sense to be able to try and tie it in in some way.

[number8]

This quote by Gary Shore is actually a pretty interesting point:

If you break down the monster universe or any kind of superhero analogy to that, I think when superheroes really work, it’s where an audience can relate to it; where you have that sense of wish fulfillment or involvement.

I think of all those characters, I don’t particularly want to be a wolf. I don’t particularly want to be a creature from a black lagoon or a mummy. However, I really would love to be invisible. [laughs] I’d say absolutely that would be my choice.

These horror icons are built to be manifestations of human flaws and failings. They're rejects and tragic figures. They can be sympathetic or relatable protagonists, but not really wish fulfillment or power fantasies. This may very well be at the heart of why it feels so weird to me to try and marry the two. They're more suitable for romance than adventure.

[Dead & Messed Up]

For sure. We're supposed to empathize with the frailty of Frankenstein's Monster or Lon Chaney Jr (instead of the Wolf Man). The Blumhouse comment is actually sort of honest. It might've been better to just build small-scale suspense/horror movies and entrust some of that studio's talents, like Derrickson, Wan, Peli, or Flanagan, to oversee them as producers. But Uni clearly wants gargantuan tentpoles instead of modest movies with ridiculously strong ROI.

[Pop Trash]

Phantom of the Paradise yo