• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Universal Studios Classic Monsters Extended Universe - wuh?

Captaindemotion said:
I like Johnson but I agree that the actor as Talbot should be more of an Everyman and less of a superman.
Click to expand...

The same could be said of some of Arnold Schwarzenegger's characters, like Total Recall's Quaid (who was actually a milquetoast named Quail in the original story, befitting someone who wanted to take a fantasy vacation from his life). At the time, I made my peace with it by considering that many of those movies wouldn't have gotten made at all without Schwarzenegger's star power. I suppose that's less of a factor in this case, though.
 
Greg Cox said:
I admit I'm having a little trouble visualizing The Rock as the Wolfman, though. Kinda the point is that he's just an ordinary dude until the full moon rises, but The Rock is already larger-than-life. I can see him as Doc Savage, but Larry Talbot?
Click to expand...

The Rock will play a bad ass dude who turns into a wimpy werewolf with a full moon, so they'll flip the story on its head and have it be about a werewolf trying to survive until sunrise when he can then kick some serious butt. :D
 
Am I the only one that kinda sorta liked Van Helsing? :shrug:

For years afterward, to annoy my girlfriend I would shout "Van Helsing! You MURDERER!!!" at her.

We eventually broke up. :guffaw:
 
Christopher said:
The same could be said of some of Arnold Schwarzenegger's characters, like Total Recall's Quaid (who was actually a milquetoast named Quail in the original story, befitting someone who wanted to take a fantasy vacation from his life). At the time, I made my peace with it by considering that many of those movies wouldn't have gotten made at all without Schwarzenegger's star power. I suppose that's less of a factor in this case, though.
Click to expand...

Totally hear ya (IIRC Christopher Reeve was once linked to the lead in The Running Man, which was at that stage much closer to the book, while I can forgive Total Recall because it's such a great film) and I note your acknowledgment that star power is less an issue in this case. Indeed, it's less a factor in general these days, where even Will Smith, Tom Cruise etc have their flops and under-performers.

It's interesting that on the one hand Universal picked Luke Evans, relatively unknown as a box office draw, for Dracula (though as you've said, that film wasn't initially envisaged as part of a greater universe) and the better-known but less superheroic Cruise (I hesitate to call the still handsome and charismatic Cruise an everyman) and (these days) positively slobbish Crowe for The Mummy but opt for the impossibly buff Johnson for Mr Wolf.
 
Captaindemotion said:
It's interesting that on the one hand Universal picked Luke Evans, relatively unknown as a box office draw, for Dracula (though as you've said, that film wasn't initially envisaged as part of a greater universe) and the better-known but less superheroic Cruise (I hesitate to call the still handsome and charismatic Cruise an everyman) and (these days) positively slobbish Crowe for The Mummy but opt for the impossibly buff Johnson for Mr Wolf.
Click to expand...

Actually Russell Crowe is playing Dr. Jekyll, although he will appear in The Mummy. The title character in said film is being played by Star Trek Beyond's Sofia Boutella.
 
Mr Light said:
Am I the only one that kinda sorta liked Van Helsing? :shrug:

For years afterward, to annoy my girlfriend I would shout "Van Helsing! You MURDERER!!!" at her.

We eventually broke up. :guffaw:
Click to expand...
I enjoyed it, even if it went way too far down the nonsensical road and was a little overstuffed. I imagine this new Van Helsing movie will be set in the modern era, like The Mummy. If they use any ideas from Stephen Sommers' movie then the setting doesn't particularly matter, since it was heavily implied that Van Helsing was either immortal or just extremely long-lived. (He recalled vague memories of the siege of Masada, for example.) I also remember Dracula referring to him as Gabriel, though I can't remember if that was also meant to imply that he was the archangel Gabriel fallen to Earth, or if just his name was Gabriel. I assume it's the former because that seems more interesting to me.
 
Mr Light said:
Am I the only one that kinda sorta liked Van Helsing? :shrug:

For years afterward, to annoy my girlfriend I would shout "Van Helsing! You MURDERER!!!" at her.

We eventually broke up. :guffaw:
Click to expand...
Came on HBO recently and watched it while visiting my stepdad. It's not bad but would probably be better trading a little bit of the over-the-top Sommers CGI with a little more character development. It's got enough eye candy to make nice background wallpaper in the midst of a visit.
 
Mr Light said:
Am I the only one that kinda sorta liked Van Helsing? :shrug:

For years afterward, to annoy my girlfriend I would shout "Van Helsing! You MURDERER!!!" at her.

We eventually broke up. :guffaw:
Click to expand...
I loved the movie and still watch it on occasion. The CGI looks REALLY bad but its still a guilty pleasure for me.
 
Greg Cox said:
Just to nitpick, the 30s movies recycled the same actors over and over, but the characters didn't start crossing over until FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN in 1943, followed by HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, HOUSE OF DRACULA, and the Abbott & Costello movie.
Click to expand...

Technically, A&CMF is not an official part of the serious Universal horror series (for several reasons), so its crossover status is questionable.
 
JD said:
I haven't seen it yet, but I read online that it has a present day post-credits scene. Was that supposed to be the set up for the shared universe?
Click to expand...

Wiki says it still could get a sequel and is still in the running for the shared universe... i never knew anything about any of this until now, so obviously, am probably wrong.
 
The one thing I remember about Van Helsing is a shockingly bad CGI scene of a guy jumping from horse to horse in a carriage team. I mean, come on, this is a stunt that people have been performing for real since the days of silent movies. Okay, it's less dangerous to CGI it, but it just looked so damn awful. They didn't even try to approximate the laws of physics. If they wanted to use computer technology to achieve the shot more safely, then they could've had the stuntman on a wire harness that they digitally erased. It was a classic example of how not to use CGI -- i.e. as a substitute for something that can and should be achieved practically.
 
Christopher said:
The one thing I remember about Van Helsing is a shockingly bad CGI scene of a guy jumping from horse to horse in a carriage team. I mean, come on, this is a stunt that people have been performing for real since the days of silent movies. Okay, it's less dangerous to CGI it, but it just looked so damn awful. They didn't even try to approximate the laws of physics. If they wanted to use computer technology to achieve the shot more safely, then they could've had the stuntman on a wire harness that they digitally erased. It was a classic example of how not to use CGI -- i.e. as a substitute for something that can and should be achieved practically.
Click to expand...
Yeah, Sommers went ridiculously overboard with the CGI in Van Helsing and it's really dated the movie quite badly.
 
Christopher said:
That's kind of what the Fast and Furious franchise is, though, I think. The later movies combined characters from earlier movies with separate casts.
Click to expand...
Well, if we're going to get all scholarly on the concept of cinematic universes, I think the term requires at least two separate, simultaneously ongoing franchises. For instance, X-Men qualified at the latest when The Wolverine was made between First Class and Days of Future Past. (One could argue it qualified with XMO:W, but the main franchise was on indefinite hiatus at the time. A better case could be made that First Class was the qualifier, as The Wolverine was in development all along.) The DCEU will qualify with Suicide Squad's release. The MCU qualified right out the gate with the simultaneous production of IM1/TIH.

The Fast and Furious franchise, however, has only really produced one outlier in Tokyo Drift, with the studio not expecting to continue the Dom/Brian storyline until Diesel was brought in for a reshoot cameo. So it's close, but ultimately one sprawling franchise, not a cinematic universe per se.
 
JD said:
I haven't seen it yet, but I read online that it has a present day post-credits scene. Was that supposed to be the set up for the shared universe?
Click to expand...

It was a stand-alone movie where they tacked on an ending to be the potential startup for the monster universe. But the movie was poorly received, so it went out the window.

Skywalker said:
Yeah, Sommers went ridiculously overboard with the CGI in Van Helsing and it's really dated the movie quite badly.
Click to expand...

One-upping previous CGI overkill was a trend for him, going from The Mummy Returns to Van Helsing to GI Joe.
 
Hansel and Gretel get's a free pass for Jeremy's delivery of "Don't eat the fucking candy." alone.
 
Greg Cox said:
Absolutely. Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolfman were crossing over into each other's movies as far back as 1943.
Click to expand...

But we never saw Lugosi's Dracula and Karloff's monster face Lon's Wolf man. That was what I wanted.


I might try an Ed Wood here and have those three face the Alien, the Predator, and Carpenter's The Thing. Old vs the new.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top