Midway through The Mummy, Universal's 2017 effort that was supposed to be the launching pad for the wider Dark Universe, we are introduced to Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe). Jekyll is a member of the Prodigium, a secretive organization devoted to investigation and, if necessary, eradication of the supernatural. Jekyll welcomes the other characters, and by extension the audience, to "a new world of gods and monsters" in what is supposed to be a grand gesture of interconnectivity, a kind of S.H.I.E.L.D. for the monster universe.

Here's the problem, though: We've barely been given time to care about any of the characters in the Dark Universe at that point, be they human or monster. The story's only just started rolling, and while the notion seemed to be that Prodigium could offer both relevant plot information and a sense of a greater world in one swift stroke, its introduction serves as a bit of a derailment. What's more, the idea that all of these future monster characters will be connected not through weird encounters out in the world but through some shadow organization that happens to have files on all of them is just not as interesting as it should be, particularly so early on. So, if you're going to try to rebuild the Dark Universe, take your time with the interconnectivity, and get us to care about the new monsters first.