Horror
The Munsters reboot becomes Mockingbird Lane
News of various changes in Bryan Fuller’s reboot of the 1960s comedy The Munsters is enough to make many fans wonder whether they’ll even bother linking it to the original, […]
News of various changes in Bryan Fuller’s reboot of the 1960s comedy The Munsters is enough to make many fans wonder whether they’ll even bother linking it to the original, now that the hour long dramatic series is going by the title Mockingbird Lane, the street in which the Munsters reside.
Not only that, according to a report at Entertainment Weekly, “the characters in the reboot will shed the heavy goth makeup from the original series — so the family can better match everyday folks rather than looking like 1940s horror movie refugees.” Since one of the fun parts of the show was watching the contrast between the characters as they moved around wearing the Universal movie make-ups, and the ordinary people (including their niece, Marilyn), it does seem as if Fuller’s version is throwing the baby out with the bathwater…
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What’s the point, then? Weird people who look like the rest of us has already been done — it’s called “The Addams Family”…
I kind of disagree. The original was sooooooo broad and slapsticky that I never liked it, even as a kid. I mean, once the obvious joke had gone by, what was left? If the characters are all still the creatures they originally were–Frankenstein, werewolf, Vampira, whatever–but aren’t as slap you in the face obvious–it could be more fun.
Um, well if they don’t want it to *be* The Munsters why even start on it in the first place? I rather doubt that they could make The Munsters work today anyway, they couldn’t in the ’90s (The Munsters Today – shudder) so why bother? Now the default reaction is to mention Battlestar Galactica but the original there wasn’t supposed to be a comedy (and in any event the remake became too choked with bleakness by its 3rd season and eventually sank as the makers pretensions outweighed the storytelling uhrm well irrelevant rant ends) while The Munsters was a cheerfully silly sitcom what on earth is the point in turning it into a “drama” about folks who don’t look much if any different from anyone else? So many questions no worthwhile answers! I suppose some would talk of the “sophisticated” modern audience but… Twilight? N.C.I.S.? Two and a Half Men? Nth number of CSI clones? Any number of CW “dramas”? All those dramas that mistake an *unbroken* chain of depressing events for art and complexity? Sophistication is not the first description that springs to mind. Ha.