Werewolf by Night Director Reveals Importance of the MCU’s New Monsters Mythos

Monsters have technically been a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since its earliest days. While the space-traveling antics of Thor Odinson (Chris Hemsworth) in Thor showed fans different alien species that could be construed as monsters, the realm of characters will get a refresh when Werewolf by Night hits Disney+ on Friday. Thanks to the MCU debut of characters like Jack Russell (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Man-Thing, traditional monsters will finally arrive in the franchise.

According to Michael Giacchino, it was always his goal to tell a very human story when tackling Marvel’s first creature feature, adding depth to the monster types not previously available.

 “Too often, even in Marvel movies, a lot of times monsters are just used as something to kill, something to defeat. And I’m like, no, monsters are nothing but a person with a problem, who can’t solve it and needs help solving it,” the filmmaker said in an interview with Fandom. “Everything that I loved as a kid about these [monster] films is that they were allegories for people with afflictions that need help. And I felt like that’s the point of view we need to take with this. It cannot just be about ‘Oh, there’s something different, let’s destroy it!’ There’s too much of that going on in our world these days.”

Giacchino then pulled his best Shrek impression, comparing monsters to onions whose layers have to be peeled back during their character development.

“I wanted to do something that was about, no, let’s peel back the layers of the onion and understand what’s behind this thing being a monster. Why is it happening? None of these monsters want to be monsters,” Giacchino continued. “They don’t want to go around indiscriminately killing people and destroying things. It’s just, that’s their lot in life. Everyone has a lot in life, we all have some struggles, some sort of thing that we’re struggling to solve or deal with within our own selves. And that’s where I want it to go with this story.”

Marvel’s official synopsis for the special can be found below:

“On a dark and somber night, a secret cabal of monster hunters emerge from the shadows and gather at the foreboding Bloodstone Temple following the death of their leader,” the synopsis reads. “In a strange and macabre memorial to the leader’s life, the attendees are thrust into a mysterious and deadly competition for a powerful relic—a hunt that will ultimately bring them face to face with a dangerous monster.”

Werewolf by Night hits Disney+ on October 7th. What other characters do you hope to see appear in the upcoming special? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @AdamBarnhardt up on Twitter to chat all things MCU!