The Recurring Wolf Problem

Last night brought the first MCU Halloween special, Werewolf by Night. It was a cute little thing, a potentially decent beginning of something, which makes it a little puzzling that it's a one-shot.

The writing isn't great. Various monster hunters gather to decide who will inherit the Bloodstone, a magical device used to hunt monsters. The heiress by blood is Elsa Bloodstone (Laura Donnelly), but it's implied she's been disinherited for choosing some kind of vague, alternative teachings. We're meant to take all the monster hunters, and Elsa's stepmother (Harriet Sansom Harris), as simplistically evil villains, to help justify the use of extravagant, bloody violence in the special. It leads to a similar problem endemic to The Boys--the show has to constantly side-step the question of whether or not these corrupt superbeings actually ever do help people. It's a worse problem on The Boys but it also makes for a weak foundation in Werewolf by Night. If we know these people help others in the course of their career, even if they also end up hurting innocent monsters, it complicates the question of whether or not they deserve to die. If the hunters have never helped anyone with their actions, it makes them cartoonishly delusional and cheap. The writers are too cowardly to deal with either problem so they just keep things vague.

Elsa and Jack (Gael Garcia Bernal) have a nice, sweet, meetcute in the cemetery. Jack has nice rapport with the cgi Man-Thing.

The special was directed by Michael Giacchino, best known as a composer for films. I respect his attempt to emulate the style of classic Universal monster movies but it's all undermined by the fact that he shot on digital. This really needed to be shot on film to get the right look.

I'm also not a big fan of the "ape-man" style werewolf. I know there are a lot of filmmakers and aficionados who have a hard on for the Lon Chaney, Jr. movie, who like having an actual human actor's expression on the beast. But I like my werewolves to look like wolves, not one of the monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. At best, Jack just looks as good as Seth Green on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Werewolf by Night is available on Disney+.