Nickelodeon relaunched the Monster High Franchise with their live-action film, Monster High The Film. The franchise about children of famous monsters attending a high school took a long five-year break before this. During this break, they had a massive reboot, changing the concepts so they appeal to a younger audience.
As a fan of the franchise pre-reboot, I was excited to hear that they were making a live-action film. However, I should’ve held my expectation for this live-action as I did for the Winx remake, especially after seeing the promotional pictures. As someone who wanted a wave of nostalgia, the revamp of the characters was very disappointing.
While there wasn’t exactly a main character in the franchise, initially the show revolved around Frankie Stein, daughter of the monster of Frankenstein. Instead, the new franchise revolves around Clawdeen Wolf, a half-werewolf and half-human who is a new student at Monster High.
Instead of the confident, cheerleading werewolf we’ve known to love, we are introduced to a new character. She’s not the only one to undergo this transformation. The once bubbly daughter of Dracula, Draculaura, is more reserved and practices witchcraft. Cleo de Nile, the daughter of the Mummy, is portrayed as a bully rather than a drama queen that would do anything for her friends.
While watching it, I couldn’t help but yearn for my old characters back. I didn’t want to learn about these new characters, and instead held them in the same light as their predecessors.
However, at the end of the day this movie was enjoyable. If I were ten years old, this would’ve been one of the best movies of the year, and it’s important to remember this film was made for an audience with no prior knowledge of Monster High. It has a certain charm that I would liken to Descendants. I know, a bold statement considering Mattel started the children-of-legends attending a school trend first.
If it’s one thing Monster High The Film does that isn’t like Disney, it’s their lack of nostalgia-baiting. Disney has made such an industry relying on memories to propel the success of the film’s live-action counterpart that we forget not all live-action films are remakes. Monster High The Film was never advertised as a remake, but it’s safe to say many of us assumed so.
One of the things I love about old films is their ability to touch on sensitive topics discreetly. For example, we have the issue of racism, specifically with werewolves versus vampires, in Monster High: Fight On, or the subtle queer-coding of their characters, such as Frankie being non-binary or Deuce Gorgon, son of Medusa, being a trans-man.
The film does touch on these topics. There may not be a rivalry between vampires and werewolves, but there is a rivalry between vampires and witches. Frankie is displayed as non-binary, and we don’t know enough about the other characters to surmise their coding.
So to answer whether the film was a hit or miss, it did everything it needed to. It was entertaining and engaging, the characters stood out in their own ways, and important messages were conveyed. Was it a CGI masterpiece? No, but children wouldn’t necessarily care if it was.
If you’re looking to go down memory lane, this movie might not be for you. For that, I would suggest just rewatching the older films.
While I don’t think I’ll be redipping my toes back into this new era, I’m excited to see where the Monster High franchise will go.