Why don’t we make Phantom of the Opera movies anymore?

I think that The Phantom of the Opera is one of those narratives that’s just sort of made for movies. Since 1925, the story has been one that resonated with filmmakers and audiences.

Lon Cheney’s portrayal solidified the story as a commercial success, and goes into the classic monsters canon for a reason. The practical effects and dedication to the novel’s story line really sets it apart from later retellings. Universal’s second take on the Phantom, in 1943 with Claude Rains, would actually win Oscars for cinematography and art direction. Then we had a bunch of horror retellings of the story in the 1970s and ‘80s, including The Phantom of the Paradise and Dario Argento’s Opera.

I think for the classic era, this is a perfect story, and it make sense that this would be a well that they would continue to go back to. A naive, beautiful woman (humble but still ambitious) is haunted by a ghost that lets her rise to the top of her chosen profession. It is revealed that her patron is actually a controlling stalker, which then allows her to be torn between success and love, with her love interest being the one to save her.

The setting also allows for rich, expansive set design and costumes, which is where The Phantom of the Paradise and Opera really shine.

But then… Andrew Lloyd Webber happened.

There was a cultural shift in the 1990s, where anti-heros reigned and monsters became romantic. Webber’s Phantom came at a time when romance was king. We had Coppola’s Dracula, which turned the classic idea of a monster into an “I can fix him” object of desire.

Not that the play is inherently romantic. It is a horror story, still, but there are sweeping duets and the Phantom is not defeated, but gives Christine up at the end because he realizes she doesn’t love him. It’s the aesthetic and fan response in a time when “gothic” shifted meaning into something connected more with a toxic romance than anything abject or horrifying in the analytical sense. The Phantom was the object of desire in the fandom, and still is to this day.

But there is hope. Nosferatu, last year, subverted the romance and beauty of the vampire fandom by going back to it’s classic horror roots. It brought the dirt and grime back to a horrifying story, and brought the vampire back to it’s monster roots.

I think we could do the same with Phantom. Going back to the novel, it is a thrilling tale with horror and suspense. There is a lot of room to make a true Gothic tale out of it, and I think it is something that modern horror fans are looking for.

Phased Out: The Doomsday cast reveal and how Disney screwed up its own winning formula

I have always been a bit of an apologist for the MCU. I was there, from the beginning, before it was a universe spanning franchise. I was watching Phase One's stand alone movies, which defined a genre and set a winning formula made so much more special by those who have tried to follow in Disney's franchise footsteps and failed.

But as the franchise expanded into other media, it has devolved. Phases two and three devolved into intricately entwined storylines, and if you missed one thing, you had to catch up. It's become increasingly clear that these are not movies, they are episodes of television that need to hit a billion dollars for the studio to think it was worth it. And if you don't give more money to watch the actual television shows? Forget about it.

I think they know this. The nerds are going elsewhere, and now only Fandom remains. They need to get people into the seats who haven't already given up. Oh, you want a twist? We have the twist, you can see it in the trailer, but if you want to know how it fits into the greater story, you are actually going to have to watch it.

The trailer for Captain America: Brave New World is a perfect example of this problem. When I saw the trailer, I thought I spotted an epic easter egg: Harrison Ford's character was "President Ross." Oh?! Ross who is the Red Hulk, Ross?!

Well, jokes on me! They showed it in the trailer! The whole thing!

Where the tease? What exactly is putting me in theater seats here? I've seem Hulk movies before, and I know that Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes are in later phase projects, so...? The point of a trailer is to pose a question that the movie will answer. But every question I had was immediately answered, so every reason I had to watch immediately evaporated.

The twistier twist, it turns out, was who was controlling Red Hulk behind the scenes, because it's part of a greater conspiracy that it going to drive the next phase. But... I don't need to watch this movie to learn that. The internet will keep me up to date until I see something that is worth forking over money for.

Which brings me, Dear Reader, to Doomsday.

Doctor Doom is one of my favorite villains of all time, and so I am a little bit offended on his behalf that he got such an underwhelming reveal. Of all of the villains who deserved a Thanos-style end credit tease, it was Doom. And now that has been stolen away.

Imagine, Fantastic Four, already going up against Galactus and stacked with a fandom-backed cast, wraps up, and you're sitting in the theater for the post credit scene. The screen is black, the lights come up, and you just see that mask...

The camera pushes in...

And those eyes look straight into the camera.

It was a prime opportunity to renew a waning excitement for the franchise. It could have captured that spark that brought massive audiences to the MCU in the first phase. And it would have followed the formula that Disney has already shown is a success. Build interest through stand alone movies, and then bring those characters together for the climactic villain showdown.

But that opportunity is gone.

Disney has lost faith in their audience and I mourn what could have been. What could've been a breath of fresh air now stinks of desperation. The chair reveal of all of the actors that are going to appear in Doomsday is not something to be celebrated, it is blatant fandom baiting. They are banking on past success of fans latching onto actors instead of the roles that they play in an attempt to appeal to the fandom instead of telling a good story.

Is it too late to adjust course? Not necessarily. I could hope that the success of Thunderbolts might revive some of that fan-focused energy. But that is probably a little naive. I think the chapter on the MCU in the film history textbooks is closed, even if the franchise itself carries on for a few years. You would think they could take a page out of their own book again with the success of the "side-projects" in the Star Wars universe. Some of the best stories from a galaxy far, far away have been stand alone shows separated from the Skywalker saga. It adds to the universe, it doesn't repeat or undermine it. Shows like Andor respect their audience and their ability to appreciate complex stories, and I don’t think that the execs in charge of the MCU believe that their audience is there quite yet.

Will I go see Fantastic Four? Probably. But not because of its place in the MCU. I would like to reward the filmmakers in whatever way I can for what looks like an attempt to get back to the character driven roots of the MCU. The fact that Galactus got teased in the trailer is enough for me to have a butt in the seat. There is a great big MCU still left to explore. Call me an optimist, but I hope they get there before it’s too late.

Work is Hell: Notes on the Sterile Corporate Liminal Nostalgia Aesthetic

So, Severance, right?

I was terribly late to the party, only binging season one right before the finale. I think it’s a masterpiece, unfortunately regulated to AppleTV instead of a more accessible platform. It’s one of those perfect melding of style and storytelling that does not come around often.

But the style is what has haunted me the most. The aesthetics of the show are grounded in a design tradition that has lasted over fifty years. It does a lot to ground these characters in a certain vibe, one that lends to a general air of paranoia.

I believe that online communities such as r/LiminalSpaces on Reddit have given us a good introduction to the concept of a liminal space. Eerie photographs, usually lit by harsh florescent bulbs, but all with this sense of oddity. It is the idea of having evidence of the world as it exists without any people in it. It’s voyeuristic, as if we are witnessing things that should not be seen.

In corporate culture, these liminal spaces are usually shown by immaculate office spaces at the height of modernism but completely abandoned.

In shows such as Severence, this is familiar but unsettling, not only because of the historical roots of the design elements, but because it has recently been co-opted by other similar “man vs. corporate diety” stories in the last ten to fifteen years.

I have started to call this aesthetic “sterile corporate liminal nostalgia.” It is rooted in hypermodern design trends that began in the 1960s and solidifying in the corporate design of the 1970s. At the time, it was reflecting a utopian ideal of the future that technology was going to give us, with the space race having us look to the stars. This isn’t a grimy cyberpunk dystopia, where the world is human, lived-in, and dirty. It is elevated, something that seeks the pinnacle of human achievement.

We can see this hypermodernism reflected in the movies at the time, such as THX 1138, Westworld, Star Trek, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Minimalist environments, with clean, efficient lines and harsh florescent lighting that leaves nothing in shadow. But even then, as seen in Westworld and 2001, this utopian ideal was hiding something rotten under the impeccable style.

When we place these images into a 21st century context, we as the audience are immediately suspicious. The details give us a sense of nostalgia, a harkening back to that simpler, pre-Internet age where technology was advanced enough to make hard sci-fi believable but still distant.

Today, though, we recognize this as a naive ideal. The technology shown is actually archaic, more deserving of a museum display than an actual sci-fi future. We, with the benefit of hindsight, are aware that the future on display is one that never-would-be and couldn’t-possibly-be. We understand that the characters that populate this world are naive to trust this world and its systems, because we are automatically looking for the cracks in the pristine walls.

We know something is wrong, and we are on the alert.

While I think that Severance is the prime example of this trend, it is not new. A lot of 21st century media relies on this, from Black Mirror’s “White Christmas” episode, to 2018’s Maniac (an underrated Netflix original) and 2020’s DEVS.

It also is used to great effect in online-based media like Kane Pixel’s The Backrooms and to a certain extent Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scared. Adult Swim has made an entire brand identity around this sarcastic liminal vibe, and in fact what is in my opinion one of their most criminally underseen originals, Dream Corp, LLC, exists in a grimy sideroom of this very aesthetic.

One unifying thread to every story that establishes this aesthetic is how it plays into stories of corrupt corporate structure and how it contributes to cultural feelings of alienation. It is the individual against the machine and all the ways that it crushes us, setting us against our fellow man for the benefit of the bottom line. It is about living authentically in a world of conformity, and discovering yourself through the discovery of the dystopia rotting away under the utopian veneer.

And while it is a dystopia, I think that in these stories we can find the hints of the classic science fiction hope. The triumph of humanity against terrible odds. We want to root for the underdogs. We want to believe that if we fight, that things can actually get better.

Myths teach us how to live. And these myths tell us that even if we find ourselves living in these corporate hellscapes, there is a way to carry on with our humanity intact.

And I don’t see that as a bad thing.

The Nosferatu Discourse

Honestly, I get it…

The vampire wasn’t fuckable.

People who have grown up in a world where vampire are a sexy cool subclass of monster, an object of lust as well as a lusty object, are obviously going to be disappointed in the graphically monstrous depiction of Count Orlok in Egger’s Nosferatu.

As someone who grew up in the height of Twilight’s popularity, when being emo or scene was more aesthetic than unifying philosophy, I always held vampires at arms length because of the sexy connotations in the modern understanding of the monster.

When confronted with an object of lust that is presented as ugly and monstrous, it is only natural that it will be rejected with absolute disgust. When you grew up watching Gary Oldman seducing Mina Harker in Coppola’s Dracula, you have that underlying connection between “vampires” and “romance.” You want that relationship where you give yourself to the other, and want the aesthetics of a ruinous romance without all of the messy reality of how visceral a vampiric relationship would actually be.

We don’t really see the blood in these vampiric romances. We don’t have to deal with the arterial spray that would come if a vampire bit on the wrong side of the neck. We don’t have to deal with the clean up. We don’t have to face the horror that such an event would cause.

And why would we want to, when we could be swept away in a ball gown by a tall dark mysterious handsome someone who has centuries and millions to choose from… and chose you?

I was reading a book recently that put a finger on the exact problem that I had. In The Limits of Horror: Technology, Bodies, Gothic, the author Fred Botting explores the disconnect between gothic ideals and their modern interpretation. It explores the idea that gothic, in it’s nature of using monsters to highlight the ingrained fears of a repressive society and a modern world that no longer has the same ingrained taboos.

A notable section covers that commercial appeal of vampires and the subculture that has built up around them. When reporting on the “World Dracula Congress,” Botting makes an interesting observation:

“While the superficial celluloid attractions of vampirism remain good for business, there is certainly no wholehearted indulgence in a life of degradation and defilement. The report details some of the ‘other horrors’ besetting the delegates: Arlene Russo, for example, an editor of a vampire magazine, ‘is shocked at eastern Europe’s lack of vegetarian food, and at having to walk back from the restaurant through an unlit pine forest after midnight’. Vegetarianism and a disinclination for midnight darkness seem utterly out of place at an event celebrating a nocturnal bloodsucker.”

— Fred Botting, "Limits of Horror"

Why, when we so love vampires, do we shy away from them when their ugly, monstrous nature is made obvious?

The problem is, fundamentally, that we have all been collectively lied to. Dracula has been sexy-coded since Bela Lugosi was cast in the 1930s, with each generation of vampire getting sexier and sexier until we’ve completely culturally disconnected the monstrous from the monster. Nosferatu, from its copyright infringing roots has always been about the monster and its hold on a culturally-ideal woman.

The cultural taboos that Dracula spoke to in its gothic roots never went away, it was the cultural view of Dracula that shifted. We chipped away at the monster until we were left with something palatable and safe to lust after, and now that we are confronted with the reality of the monster we are horrified. If we are attracted to vampires, and this is a vampire, what does this say about us? It is better to just reject the unlovable parts and keep what we can tolerate instead of facing the horror head on.

We would censor and avoid an uncomfortable truth within ourselves to pacify an unrealistic ideal.

But, just as Toho’s Godzilla and the Monsterverse can coexist, we shouldn’t condemn a beautfully crafted homage to one of the tripumphs of early film just because our modern understanding of the vampire has shifted. If we can’t confront the core of our feelings, that we are in some sense morbidly attracted to the monstrous, we should not pretend like our feelings are harmless.

If you lust after the creatures of the dark, don’t be surprised when an actual monster is there to meet you.