Horrible Isn't Horror: The New Universal Universe & Its Crummy Mummy

Thursday, there was a pretty good article on Decider on the problems Universal is going to have in creating its "Dark Universe," which launched Friday with the premiere of THE MUMMY. Written by Brett White, "Monster Problem: Dark Universe is the Anti-Marvel" covers some of the things that have made Universal's model, the Marvel's cinematic universe, work but that won't be applicable to Universal's effort. Marvel prioritizes "character over celebrity"; it doesn't do vehicles for huge-name stars. Universal is grabbing up every uber-A-list actor in sight and using them as major selling-points.[1] "While some Marvel characters weren’t massively popular before their film debuts..., their personalities were well-defined from decades of consistent storytelling," whereas the Universal monsters were archetypes that have been used by basically everyone for decades. Marvel was patient and built its universe over time; Universal is rushing into things, going big, going expansive (and, I'd add, making a lot of the same mistakes as Warner Brothers has made with its DC comics universe).

I'd add another item to this. Universal is going upbudget tentpole with properties that don't work well in that box.[2] In doing so, it's running away from what makes those properties enduring and bankable in the first place: their status as horror icons.

By and large, studio suits hate horror movies, consider them lowbrow trash and don't want to be associated with them. Because horror can be done very inexpensively and has a huge and loyal audience, they'll hypocritically crank out some from time to time to keep the lights on (mostly tamed-down PG-13-rated rehashes of past successes) but they typically reflect the larger Hollywood culture in acting as if they're ashamed of such productions...

The rest is here:
http://cinemarchaeologist.blogspot.com/2017/06/horrible-isnt-horror.html