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The flag of the protagonist's unnamed home country in Pygmy
As mentioned in previous media updates, although superhero properties do a pretty brisk business TTL they are nowhere near the all consuming cultural force we would be familiar with. In many ways this is a blessing, with the success of the
Dune Chronicles, the
Indiana Jones series and the
Miskatonic Cycle over the preceding decades setting the stage for a viewing public more open to experimenting with the blockbusters they were willing to take a chance on. Even then there were limits however, a case made most strongly by the public reaction to
Fight Club.
Written by Chuck Palahniuk in 1996 in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombings the novel attracted immediate controversy over the perception by moral guardians that the novel glorified the violent nihilism of the Regressive movement. Although it was far too outré to ever be filmed it nonetheless won attention from critics even as censors tried and failed to see the book banned and Regressive groups deliberately began emulating it self-consciously in their rhetoric as yet another way to provoke a sedentary and passive society. Palahniuk had been catapulted to international acclaim and it was not long before some of his other work was optioned for films.
In the end a loose trilogy would be produced, all three directed by David Fincher and starring River Phoenix in three unrelated roles. The first,
Survivor, featured Phoenix as the survivor of a cult mass suicide who hijacks a plane and narrates his life's story as he proceeds to crash it. It would premier on September 11, 2001* to critical acclaim even as many were turned off by the violence and extreme themes, a pairing that would continue through the series. The second and most experimental would adapt
Rant, a strange and visceral dystopia revolving around segregated cities, a zombie-like rabies outbreak and car crash-enabled time traveling rapists. The third Palahniuk adaptation would be of his novel
Pygmy, recasting Phoenix as a terrorist sleeper agent from an unnamed totalitarian country infiltrating a midwestern college**.
Although public outrage from the moral majority types had ironically made the films more commercially successful through sheer exposure, by the early 2010s tastes were beginning to change as audiences began gravitating toward films that could have deep themes without being quite so stomach churning. Into this void would step Guillermo del Toro, who had been entrusted by Universal Pictures with relaunching their Universal Monsters properties. It was an enormous gamble, but del Toro had made a name for himself with standalone films that could be simultaneously artistic, beautiful and macabre and he would throw all his energy into a set of films that he would call
Gods and Monsters. Inspired by the original films and meant to offer a more emotionally weighty contrast to the more humorous
Miskatonic Cycle, del Toro set out to present these staples of twentieth century pop culture in a new form for the new century.
Though not directly connected to one another in the early stages, the films would have several commonalities, including 20th century period settings, a focus on pathos over more visceral horror elements and a far greater sympathy for the monstrous characters than they typically received. The first film in the series would set the tone for the others, with 2015's
Crimson Peak offering the public an emotionally engaging reinterpretation of Dracula and setting the series off to over a decade of critical acclaim and solid box office returns. Del Toro himself would go on to offer his own reinterpretations of the Bride of Frankenstein and the Creature from the Black Lagoon before turning over the reigns of the series to other directors. The latter, 2017's
The Shape of Water, would set an incredibly high bar for his successors and while some have come close it's a threshold that remains uncrossed.
*
Fight Club premiered September 10, 1999 so I thought fudging the date would give a bit of parallelism.
**Changed from a high school in the book given the graphic depictions of sex and drug use. The scene where Pygmy rapes a bully is still included though thankfully not shown.