Do the Universal Monsters Still Matter, or Are They Already Dead?

No matter how much the film industry changes, certain constants can be relied upon year after year. Christmas movies in December, blockbusters rolling out over the summer, and Universal‘s perennial attempts to reboot its classic monsters.

For the past century, the studio has been synonymous with a handful of characters that first appeared in campy black-and-white Boris Karloff movies and went on to become some of the most recognizable horror iconography of the 21st century. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Bride of Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — you know them, you love them, you’re consistently promised that they’re just one good reboot away from being relevant again.

But is that true? In an era dominated by intellectual property, most of us take for granted that a franchise with a century’s worth of brand equity must be of immense value. But owning the Universal Monsters comes with some pitfalls that the studio hasn’t been able to navigate. They’re not specific enough to prevent other studios from making very similar movies. They’re deeply familiar with a genre that trades on shock value. And they’re often positioned in an awkward middle ground where they’re not terrifying enough for horror enthusiasts but still too scary for younger demographics who might be better suited to appreciate them. It’s not to say that they can’t succeed again, but we’re overdue for a different approach.

The most prominent attempt at reviving the characters in the 21st century was the infamous Dark Universe, a shot at building a Marvel-like cinematic universe that roped in the likes of Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, Russell Crowe, Javier Bardem, and Johnny Depp that fizzled out immediately after Alex Kurtzman’s 2017 “The Mummy” reboot flopped at the box office.

Subsequent reboots have been limited to standalone projects, like this weekend’s “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,” but the monsters always loom large in conversations about Universal’s future. Whenever the studio has a bad year or changes leadership, industry analysts are always quick to point out that it always has the Monsters to build around, if the right artists could just figure out how to crack them. Execution of individual films and shows will always fluctuate, but we take for granted the idea that this is fantastic I.P. that’s just waiting to be properly monetized.

In a sense, that’s clearly correct. Recent years have proved that a new Dracula or Frankenstein movie still comes with some built-in interest. The only problem is that none of those hit movies have been made by Universal. When Robert Eggers can make a “Nosferatu” movie for Focus Features, Guillermo del Toro can rack up Oscar nominations for his own version of “Frankenstein” at Netflix, and Maggie Gyllenhaal can offer her own take on “The Bride!” for Warner Bros., it’s worth asking what the studio actually owns.

There’s the technical answer: even if many of these monsters emerged from books that have now entered the public domain, the visual references to the original Universal movies remain unique to the studio. But how valuable is that anymore?

‘Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman’Courtesy Everett Collection

This isn’t about beating up on Universal as much as it’s a larger question about when blue-chip I.P. expires. There’s no denying that the Universal Monsters were an incredibly valuable franchise for much of the 20th century, but does anybody under 50 have a real relationship with them? The last real hit the characters generated was arguably the Brendan Fraser “Mummy” movies — so it’s no surprise that Universal is making another one of those, too — but it could be argued that those films succeeded because they were fun adventure movies with a popular star, not because of their connection to the Boris Karloff films.

One of the biggest problems Universal has to address is that almost any movie you could make with the monster I.P. could also be made without it. Someone could have made something very similar to 1999’s “The Mummy” without access to the actual franchise, and probably could have enjoyed similar levels of success if it had been executed properly. Truly great I.P. can be defined by its specificity and the impossibility of replicating it: Nobody is making anything close to a “Spider-Man” movie if they don’t own “Spider-Man.” But you can make a lot of great Dracula and mummy movies without owning “Dracula” or “The Mummy.”

There’s also the problem that horror is not a genre that benefits from familiarity. Audiences seek out scary movies to be shocked, and it’s hard to do that with something we’ve seen for 100 years. The original Universal Monster movies are also quite tame by today’s standards, meaning that most of us have spent our lives seeing these monsters as family-friendly Halloween characters, not something to truly fear. Universal might benefit from taking a gentler approach with its next reboot and treating them more as gateway drugs for future horror fans than as something capable of truly scaring adults.

Lastly, Universal has arguably ignored the greatest advantage that its Monster I.P. still holds: crossover potential. One thing it can give us, that nobody else can, is a movie where Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Dracula all interact. The Dark Universe was clearly building towards that, but there wasn’t enough fan interest to survive all of the standalone films Universal wanted to release first. If the studio wants another bite at the shared universe apple, it would be well-advised to put the cart before the horse and start with a big reunion before spinning characters off into individual movies.

It remains to be seen how “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” will do this weekend, and I’m certainly rooting for its success. But if Universal really wants to keep relying on these flagship characters, a radical new approach will be in order soon. Otherwise, it might be time to accept that they’ve outlived their relevance. A century is a good run for an I.P., but nothing lasts forever.