How to Fix the Dark Universe: Part 2 (The Universe)

Part 1

Now that we've figured out the basics of what the Dark Universe actually is as a franchise, let's take this installment to flesh out the universe itself and figure out what the over-arching story is.

Universal is actually at something of a disadvantage here. Unlike Marvel or DC, which has decades of material to draw from and who could basically just port their universe as is over from the comics to the movies, the Dark Universe doesn't have as strong a foundation. Yes, there are the original films from the 30s and 40s, but those were made in a very different time when worldbuilding and continuity were still nascent ideas. Since there have also been tons of knockoffs and adaptations of this same material by other studios which have had influence on the popular perception of the Monsters. It's all kind of a jumbled mess. Everyone has an idea of who Dracula is, of what a werewolf and a mummy is, and perhaps they even know some of the rules, but the specifics are fuzzy.

That's a challenge to overcome, for sure, but it also presents an opportunity. Because the specifics are fuzzy, it leaves us to set the specifics in people's mind. We can take everything that's iconic about the brand and distill it into the platonic ideal of itself. Like what Grant Morrison did with Superman in All-Star Superman.

How to Fix the Dark Universe: Part 1 (The Basics)

It's a cliche to point out by this point that ever since the explosive success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, every other studio in Hollywood has been trying to launch their own interconnected universe of films to get in on the action. But less pointed out is the fact that, so far, Disney and Marvel have been the only ones who've pulled it off with any luck. The DC Cinematic Universe has finally pulled out of its tailspin but Justice League's box office may make that too little, too late. Legendary's MonsterVerse with the 2014 Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island is doing all right, but there are significant gaps in releases for that. Even the nascent expanded Star Wars movies have been dealing with a lot of behind the scenes drama. But no enterprise shows off the failure of launching an expanded cinematic universe more than Universal Studios' Dark Universe project, which came into theaters dead on arrival with last summer's The Mummy.

The Mummy failed for many reasons; bad script, unclear tone, too much focus on the lore, but the initial idea of rebooting the classic Universal Monsters as a Marvel-style cinematic universe wasn't a bad one. After all, the Universal Monster movies of the 1930s and 40s basically invented the concept of crossover movies and shared universes, even if they weren't as fastidious about the continuity and actors as Marvel is. It's an idea I think still has merits, as does Universal as they've brought in a new producer team to rework the concept from the ground up. But just for fun, I'm going to do my own take on it. Over this three-part series, I'm going to lay out my own thoughts on how Universal should fix the Dark Universe in regards to which characters to use, what approach to take, and what some of these potential films could be like.

(And we'll pretend the good version of the Dark Universe doesn't already exist and is called Penny Dreadful.)

But before we get into specific movies, we've got to hammer out the basics first.