They're hardly intimidating, are they? They're really rather BORING. I just don't get why geriatrics and delusional young people like James Rolfe get such a hard-on for them, I just don't.
It's no wonder the last Mummy movie flopped like it did, cos it just SUCKED.
Of course you are right. Of course that doesn't mean that you are right... Shit, the original films are relics of another age. I love them anyway but I know they can't simply be re-made and work. But they can be used as a basis for new re-imagined films.
You pick the 2017 Mummy as an example, but, as you say, it simply sucked. That movie was a glossy, polished turd, chock full of premature world-building, like chunks of corn in the turd.
Any halfway competent writer could devise a good screenplay built from the original 1932 film. All you have to work from is an ancient sorcerer, interred several thousand years ago, revived in the contemporary world. He (or even she, the 2017 film's mistakes had nothing to do with the sex of the mummy) is evil, and vengeful and will have to figure out modern language and customs, but the mummy is also smart... So the basic framework of the 1932 film still applies.
I may not be the man for the job but....
I'm not suggesting the use of the reincarnation plot from the original, that didn't thrill me when they dug it up for Bram Stoker's Dracula...
1) The mummy is uncovered and released (warding symbols damaged when the sarcophagus is opened).
2) A tragedy ensues, deaths, madness, maybe imperfect or damaged recordings of the event survive. Headlines "Three Dead in Egyptian Tomb Massacre. Only Survivor Catatonic."
3) Time passes. A few years. Relatives? Colleagues? Someone is investigating... How about those damaged recordings?
4) The investigators encounter our modern version of Ardeth Bey, probably wealthy from hidden treasure he knew where to find and/or from using his powers to control a few wealthy individuals. Ardeth Bey would seem eccentric but might try to use the investigators. The question the writer needs to answer is "What does he want?" He may need cooperation of the investigators if they are trusted academics with access to some previously discovered site or artifact which Ardeth Bey needs to wreak his vengeance on all mankind.
5) Ardeth Bey mind controls people... He causes bloody murders, suicides... He invokes CGI demons if you're into that. His struggle to obtain his end while our protagonists try to deal with the fact that real horrible supernatural stuff. It can be twisted anyway you like. Disorienting surreal stuff, J-horror style imagery, extreme body-horror and buckets of gore... Or, again, CGI up the wazoo.
Universal's monsters come from the ideas and stories of authors and screenwriters such as Horace Walpole, Matthew G. Lewis, Bram Stoker, H.G. Wells and Mary Shelley – and many others – who tapped into something pervasive, giving names and bodies to a universal emotion: fear.
The fictional monsters correspond to a deep seated anxiety about progress, the future and the human ability to achieve anything like control over the world.
For example, "Dracula" comes out of a pagan world and offers an alternative to ordinary Christianity with his promise of a blood feast that will confer immortality. Like a Nietzschean superman, he represents the fear that the ordinary consolations of religion are bankrupt and that the only answer to the chaos of modern life is the securing of power.
Mary Shelley’s "Frankenstein" delved into the concept of life, reflecting fears born of the various scientific experiments being done on cadavers at the time. Science of the era was reflected in the increasing obsession and madness of her protagonist, Victor Frankenstein.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" brought us to question the dueling nature of "good" and "evil," as well as the beast that sleeps within us all.
Each of these stories, as well as many other horror works around the 1800s, can serve as a mirror to the concerns of society. The fact that these works became so popular when they did, to the point of creating a lasting genre, indicates that they resonated with people’s fears and interests in a way that folklore didn’t.
With the rise of social media, fears and fads and fancies race instantly through entire populations. Our fears morph with the times, but they're ever-present - so it seems monsters won't be dying off any time soon, either.
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