Over at Crave Online Joe Belcastro has a piece on “How to Revive Universal’s Iconic Monsters.” Along the way he suggests ways in which the creatures might be re-invented, even with the potential, as he sees it, of them becoming “modern blockbuster franchises.”

I really appreciate Belcastro’s attempt. I have a fondness for these monsters and would like nothing more than to see them rise again for a new generation of fans. However, I wonder whether this represents a case of idealism rather than a realism. I would never say it is impossible. After all, we have seen these classic monsters come and go over time, and just when we count them out they seem to return as both shadows and reflections of our culture. But our monsters evolve with us as a society. These Gothic horror icons seem more like monstrous fossils from a previous cultural age. Their general species of monster remains with us: vampires, werewolves, mummies, and so on (not to mention their ongoing light hearted legacy expressed through things like Monsters vs. Aliens, Hotel Transylvania, and Frankenweenie). But the specific iconic monsters of Dracula, Frankenstein’s creature, Imhotep/the Mummy, the Wolfman, etc., may have seen their day. Today we prefer more generic types of monsters that allow us to explore our fears without a specific connection to a single iconic monster, and the reigning creature is certainly a general one, the zombie, that represents many things, but surely a general fear of deadness reanimated with little desire beyond endless consumption.

Belcastro presents a number of suggestions to support his pitch, but what do you think? In light of the sociological and cultural aspects of these monsters, can the iconic monsters themselves be revived to blockbuster status?