Universal wants to mimic Marvel's cinematic universe with non-scary monsters.

[DetlefK]

http://io9.com/universals-monster-verse-movies-arent-even-going-to-try-1659382706

Have you seen the abysmally disappointing "Dracula Untold"? (Who knew that you can be a cold-blooded mass-murderer AND a sensitive husband and a supportive father at the same time?) Brace yourselves: It was a first step towards the build-up of a cinematic universe encompassing various famous monsters from literature.

There's the vampire, the mummy: The undead coming for you.
There's the werewolf, Mr Hyde: The uncontrollable beast inside us.
There's Frankenstein's monster: The artificial human, a creature that is not supposed to exist.
There's the Invisible Man: Horror unseen.

And what is Universal's plan with these classic tropes of human fear: Put them in an action-adventure set in the present.

They take monsters, leave out the scary and add some cool CGI-fights and turn them into super-heroes. Hell of a plan. That is guaranteed to work out.

Why not make it scary? Oh, right. Because scary means gore-fest nowadays. That drives the rating up and that reduces the audience.







Here's my suggestion: Make them REALLY scary. Make the audience uncomfortable. Make them squirm in their seats.
How?
Tell them things they don't want to hear.

- The undead coming for you?
An immortal is slighted and swears to exact revenge upon a particular family. First he's behind it with all his zeal, but then the eventual ennui of centuries passing robs his life of sense. This revenge becomes the only thing in his life that keeps it interesting. It becomes his way of life, his raison-d'etre. Finally, in the present, his plans, centuries of scheming, influencing, guiding come to fruition and he turns his enemies over to ruin, madness and suicide. Being victorious, he suddenly no longer has a guide in life. He becomes depressed and wanders the streets. He attempts suicide but survives. One night he gets robbed and beaten up and supposedly left for dead. He gets taken to a hospital, the robber gets caught by the police. When he meets the robber again, he walks up to him and whispers: "Thank you."

- The uncontrollable beast inside us?
A seemingly normal guy is really a serial rapist. He wants to stop, but he has neither the inner strength to do that nor the luxury of death, because he's married with kids and has to keep the illusion of a normal life for them. When his colleagues talk about these incidents they hear about on the news, they say that the woman asked for being raped by dressing sexy. If she got raped at all. Maybe she made it up to get famous. Then he rapes a controversial fame-hungry internet-celebrity. The incident goes Gamergate. She gets attacked for getting raped. She gets accused of making it up for publicity. He was careful not to leave evidence and the police fucked up the investigation, so it's inconclusive. Her life is in ruins and he can't help but watch from afar what he's done. He's got away with it and wishes that he never got away with it.

- The artificial human that is not supposed to exist?
He was cloned. He grew up as a research-object. He was raised in isolation by scientists. To not influence his mental development, he was educated without any traces of specific traditions, cultures or norms. He's a purely rational, humanist atheist. No family, no society, no culture, no religion, no loyalty. Nothing but cold analysis towards himself and anything else. When brought into human society, there is little overlap in their thinking.
"Jesus Christ cannot possibly love me, because there is no evidence that this purported cult-leader ever existed. You should free yourself of that delusion that God exists." "No, it's your fault that you are fat, because you are not motivated enough to do sports." "Babies are unfinished humans. On an intellectual level they are all the same and have the same potential for development, which means, they are replaceable."
He attempts to right all the wrongs he sees and becomes a terrorist, targeting Mega-Churches and abortion-opponents.

- Horror unseen?
They move into a brand-new super-modern house with electronics everywhere. You can command everything at the whiff of a hand or a spoken word. One day, a personalized commercial pops up on TV, showing a cream for the skin-rash he checked on his butt. They start to realize that they are being watched all the time. And all the feeds run to the company that installed them. They can't tape the cameras shut, because then nothing works. They can't root them out because they can't afford the renovation. They can't sell the house because the housing-bubble has burst and they have too much debt to find a new home. They can't sue the company because the contract has an arbitration-clause. The live in a golden cage, watched over every day by a myriad invisible eyes.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

1. I would love to see a revival of the old Universal Monsters.

But films like "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", "Van Helsing", and so forth have been done, and with mixed reviews. I don't see how the studio's proposal is different from those.