Dark Universe has been born. If you didn't know, that's the snazzy new name for Universal’s new cinematic universe drawing together its classic monsters.
First up is The Mummy, writen and directed by Alex Kurtzman who also serves as one of the key architects of this new universe of gods and monsters.
We spoke to him at length to find out more about the project and the rules governing its creation.
It's clear from our conversations that Kurtzman is a lifelong, crazy fan of Universal’s classic monsters, and while these new movies will be indebted to the horror tradition, he sees them as a genre in their own right.
Kurtzman: "I think for me the thing that defines the Universal Monsters as it's own genre, separate from even really The Hammer monsters and horror films and slasher films, is that you fear the monster and you fear for the monster. Those original monster films were, they were character films. They were played by movie stars who imbued those monsters with a heartbreak and an agony, and a pathos and a emotion that I think is so specific to the Universal Monsters.
"You know I think there was a particular scene for me as a kid that struck me from Frankenstein. It's the scene with Frankenstein at the water, with the little girl. What struck me about that scene is that.... he's so desperately wanted to connect to a human being and be appreciated and be loved. And in his desire to connect didn't realise he was destroying the very thing that he wanted to connect with. To me that symbolises what the monsters are about.
"If you ask a four-year-old kid to draw Frankenstein, they're going to draw green skin, flat-top head, and bolts in the neck, and that's the Universal Monsters' Frankenstein. For almost 100 years, these monsters have endured, I think, because they represent something so human."
And they won’t be messing with those classic designs. It sounds like we’ll be seeing Javier Bardem in Jack Pierce’s iconic makeup for the monster.
Kurtzman: "When we started this, we had some amazing artists working on monster designs, and we started putting together look boards for the monsters which as an adult being able to do that for your job is pretty much the best thing in the world.
"We started taking different designs and playing around with them, saying what if we remove this, what if we add that, and it became incredibly clear - almost instantaneously - that we must not touch these monsters.
"If you start messing those things up you are fundamentally betraying what everybody loves about them. Yes, we can make little adjustments that - if we make adjustments, they have to be story based adjustments. There has to be something about the story that mandates that we make the adjustment.
"To do the Bride of Frankenstein, and not have the streaks in the hair from the electricity. Or to do Frankenstein, without the bolts in the neck would be a fundamental betrayal. I think the key is figuring out how to really protect and preserve and not change what is not broken."
While the idea of a shared universe brings to mind comic book movies, Kurtzman was keen to point out that it wasn’t the first...
Kurtzman: "You know I tend to feel like the best way to build a universe is to deliver individual satisfying films. If the audiences like those films, the universe will begin to build itself.
"Obviously Marvel did an amazing job starting with Iron Man. I have so much respect for the work they've done. But people forget the monsters were the first shared universe starting with Frankenstein Meets Wolf Man.
"The reason that worked was because they'd already done three Frankenstein films and they'd already done Wolf Man films and the audiences loved both characters and they kind of ran out of gas with those stories. They said what are we going to do. What if we put them together. And suddenly a new story was born, and it was actually really exciting to see and that birthed a million monster cross overs.
Promotional still of The Monster (Bela Lugosi) and The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.) in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Dir. Roy William Neill (1943).
"The monsters were the first shared universe. I think that I want to follow that… Hopefully the Mummy is a satisfying contained story that also leaves a lot of unanswered questions at the end and opens lots of doors and hopefully that doesn't – that's not mutually exclusive with you having a satisfying standalone story there."
Russell Crowe plays Dr. Henry Jekyll in the movie, functioning a little bit like the universe’s Nick Fury. Overseeing the secret organisation Prodigium, but the character was never a core character in the original monster movies. Kurtzman eventually included for very specific reasons...
Kurtzman: "I tend not to respond to worlds where a lot of characters are thrown at me before I have individual relationships with them. So the idea of bringing Dr Jekyll into the Mummy was a real debate because you don't intuitively think that Henry Jekyll is going to be in The Mummy. So... in our conception of the film the idea that Tom's character Nick inadvertently opens Pandora’s Box and comes to understand that The Mummy exists in a continuum of Gods and Monsters.
"The Mummy may be the oldest but there are many more. There's an organisation that's been tracking them, protecting them, and hunting them. And doing different - depending on the monster. It became clear that somebody would have to introduce Tom's character to that world. And then you start to say it's got to be someone who has his own relationship to evil.
"Okay, well, if I'm describing Tom's character - this is a man who has good and evil in him, he has to decide which side of the line he's going to be on; he has a monster potentially lurking inside of him waiting to explode outward. I could also be describing Henry Jekyll. And so... the idea that Henry is in the movie because Henry has been where Nick is going and acts as a mirror to Nick's character.
"Suddenly, it allowed us a real story reason to put him in the film. And... the key I think was not have the Henry story consume the film; he comes into the movie quite late. It can't feel like you're shifting gears into a whole other thing but in fact the movie has been leading you up to that reveal."
While they might be keeping tabs on these monsters, it’s not exactly clear whether Prodigium are the good guys and that’s sort of the point.
Kurtzman: "I think that's what's interesting about the organisation is that you have an organisation that is as I said either protecting, researching or hunting monsters run by a man who can be good or evil. It's a somewhat unpredictable thing. Even though Prodigium's agenda is ultimately to protect the world from this whole existent of monsters. There's a kind of grey area that I think is interesting and stays true to what I think the monster movies are about.
"I just don't think anything's ever black and white in a Universal Monsters universe. While their intentions are good, sometimes you have to do really bad and scary things to serve a greater good. And maybe Prodigium will be in that position."
The overarching threat is also less than clear right now. It’s definitely not as simple as the fighting the monsters. We asked Kurtzman if there was a big bad?
Kurtzman: "Mmm... that's a very spoiler-rich question you're asking me. Tricky. Sneaky.
"Well, I can say this: the threat could come from within Prodigium. There might be other forces out there; other organisations that want to do the opposite of what Prodigium want to do. Maybe those organisations were built by other monsters. Maybe the monsters don't all have the same agendas. Maybe they want very different things. Maybe some want to bring evil into the world, while others want to protect the world from it.
"If you look back at the original monster films, all the monsters did want different things. That's the juice. That's where you get your conflict."
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