The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell, 2020) was almost a very different movie. When Universal’s Dark Universe was still a possibility, the plan was to have Johnny Depp star as the unseen entity and overlap it Marvel-style with movies like Tom Cruise’s The Mummy. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Dark Universe producer and The Mummy director Alex Kurtzman explained that Universal’s original monster movies were “beautiful because the monsters are broken characters, and we see ourselves in them” (Goldberg). It is likely that, with Depp starring and driven by this idea of the monsters as beautiful broken characters, The Invisible Man we almost got would have centered on the scientist who discovers a way to make himself invisible only to find it damaging to his mental stability.

There’s nothing wrong with that story. We’ve seen plenty of examples of it, from the original Universal version of The Invisible Man in 1933 to the sleazy Hollow Man in 2000, starring Kevin Bacon and directed by Paul Verhoeven. It is, however, a version of the story that we are very familiar with: A man’s ability to exist unseen enables him to enact his base desires. Even though he becomes the villain, it is only after audiences identify with him as the protagonist that his peeping tom (or worse) side comes out. Although Alex Kurtzman may see this shift as exposing man’s beautiful brokenness, and may indeed see some of himself in such a character, it is a story that ultimately asks audiences to understand how taboo desires and lack of accountability might lead a man to do what he was unable to do when he was visible. I’m tired of that story, and, luckily, writer-director Leigh Whannell was tired of it too. Read more