Van (What The...?) Helsing.
Jan. 20th, 2005 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ldhensonHuh. While working on "The Ballad of the Second Son," I was ambushed by a sudden urge to finally go watch Van Helsing. VH's trailer had put it on my list of "must watch" movies a couple months before it came out (flashy period costumes and locales, monster-killing, cool weaponry--how could I resist?), until word-of-mouth took it right off.
Well, blame bagginses.com for putting up a shot of Carl, thus reminding me (once I figured out where the shot came from) that David Wenham's in VH, and that I want to see the movie right now.
Which meant running out to the local video place at 10 p.m. and grabbing a copy, rather than waiting a mere 11 hours (and getting some decent sleep) and picking it up from my library the next morning at a quarter of the rental cost. A quarter! I paid four times the cost just so I could disrupt my sleep schedule. Stupid sexy David Wenham.
Richard Roxburgh was the other draw, as I'm a big Moulin Rouge fan. That Wenham is in that film as well is just a bonus.
Well, I'll say this about VH: This is one of those movies that I really, really want to like.
The opening sequence is fabulous. It positively revels in its genre in much the same way that Sky Captain does (one of the major reasons I fell so in love with SC&WOT). Village mob with torches and sharp farming inmplements, thunderbolts and lightning, Dr. Frankenstein, Dracula, the Monster, the Brides, the windmill...all beautifully-reimagined, backed with an intense score, and shot in glorious black and white. What's not to love?
Unfortunately, the movie just can't keep it up. Despite the irresistable mix of Dracula, his Brides, Frankenstien's Monster, the Wolf-Man (men, really), and Jekyll/Hyde all thrown into the same movie, the script doesn't tie them together effectively enough. Having the Monster be a commissioned project of Dracula's is a novel idea, as is the intention behind it, but the Wolf-Men are an uneasy fit. I'm no vampire expert and I'm aware there is no "one" version of vampire lore, but the script aggravatingly doesn't give a clear idea of what its own rules are.
For instance, are VH and co. meant to have encountered vampires before? They load up on garlic (which is never used), crucifixes, holy water and the like, which seems to indicate that in that universe the Vatican knows, or thinks it knows, how vampires work. And yet VH talks of shooting vampires instead, which seems to indicate his unfamiliarity with them. Perhaps the Vatican is operating on conjecture and VH's just the field test.
Well, okay, this bit of murkiness is a slightly shaky start to build the rest of the plot on, but far from a fatal one. I admit I was more gleeful than dismayed when most of the usual methods didn't work on Dracula, and laying out too many of the movie's rules beforehand would've ruined the surprises. Still, it couldn't have hurt for VH & co. to have laid out what they know beforehand; their scattershot methods don't inspire confidence and makes the big shootout in the square much more muddled than it needs to be.
The "werewolf is the only thing that can kill Dracula" is a neat twist, but something so out of left field as this needs to be introduced carefully, which the movie unfortunately fails to do. Accidentally leaning on something and triggering a hidden mechanism is practically de rigueur in movies like this, but using it and a wad of exposition (albeit wonderfully filmed in a single take) to put forth your plot twist isn't likely to sway too many viewers. Propping your entire resolution on these two fragile storytelling techniques just makes the whole thing come crumbling down.
To add insult to injury, Dracula keeps his potentially life-saving werewolf cure in a jar of acid in some side room? What, if a werewolf turns on him he plans on sprinting through a maze of hallways, fishing the syringe out of vampire-burning acid, and then taking out his foe? Not making this look any less like a plot contrivance is the fact that not once does Dracula make a break for the Syringe Room after VH wolfs out (the syringe's been stolen of course, but Dracula doesn't know that). Oh good one, Count. Set up an elaborate defense mechanism and then ignore it, merely letting the protagonist use it for his own redemption. Good one, movie.
It's not helped by the continual need for suspension of disbelief--and I'm not talking flying monsters and creatures pieced together from the bodies of the dead. I'm talking VH firing crossbow bolts willy-nilly at Brides flying two feet off the ground in a crowded village square and striking only inanimate objects. I'm talking villagers being dropped from two stories up by exploding baby vampires with apparently no consequences. I'm talking a family that has hunted evil for nine generations and maintains a vast arsenal of weapons but that hasn't yet figured out that bringing more than one werewolf-killing gun to a werewolf fight might possibly be a good idea. C'mon, help us out, movie.
Too bad, because the cast is more than up to a good script, if a good script were to be had. Not only is this one of the most uniformly-stunning casts I've seen in a long time (who do I try to peel my eyes from next? Dracula? His Brides? Velkan? VH? Anna? Carl?) but they're capable of acting the heck out of it. I mourn for Roxburgh's performance the most--his Dracula is absolutely riveting, a pitch-perfect flamboyant performance that reminded me of Geoffrey Rush's similarly-delicious role in POTC, and deserves to be seen in a much better movie than this one. Plus, you have someone like David Wenham as your comic relief and you ask him to...fall backwards over a couch? Sheeesh.
The bloopers were funny, though. And I did sit through the commentaries. Both of them. Because I'm a DVD-commentary dweeb.
Well, blame bagginses.com for putting up a shot of Carl, thus reminding me (once I figured out where the shot came from) that David Wenham's in VH, and that I want to see the movie right now.
Which meant running out to the local video place at 10 p.m. and grabbing a copy, rather than waiting a mere 11 hours (and getting some decent sleep) and picking it up from my library the next morning at a quarter of the rental cost. A quarter! I paid four times the cost just so I could disrupt my sleep schedule. Stupid sexy David Wenham.
Richard Roxburgh was the other draw, as I'm a big Moulin Rouge fan. That Wenham is in that film as well is just a bonus.
Well, I'll say this about VH: This is one of those movies that I really, really want to like.
The opening sequence is fabulous. It positively revels in its genre in much the same way that Sky Captain does (one of the major reasons I fell so in love with SC&WOT). Village mob with torches and sharp farming inmplements, thunderbolts and lightning, Dr. Frankenstein, Dracula, the Monster, the Brides, the windmill...all beautifully-reimagined, backed with an intense score, and shot in glorious black and white. What's not to love?
Unfortunately, the movie just can't keep it up. Despite the irresistable mix of Dracula, his Brides, Frankenstien's Monster, the Wolf-Man (men, really), and Jekyll/Hyde all thrown into the same movie, the script doesn't tie them together effectively enough. Having the Monster be a commissioned project of Dracula's is a novel idea, as is the intention behind it, but the Wolf-Men are an uneasy fit. I'm no vampire expert and I'm aware there is no "one" version of vampire lore, but the script aggravatingly doesn't give a clear idea of what its own rules are.
For instance, are VH and co. meant to have encountered vampires before? They load up on garlic (which is never used), crucifixes, holy water and the like, which seems to indicate that in that universe the Vatican knows, or thinks it knows, how vampires work. And yet VH talks of shooting vampires instead, which seems to indicate his unfamiliarity with them. Perhaps the Vatican is operating on conjecture and VH's just the field test.
Well, okay, this bit of murkiness is a slightly shaky start to build the rest of the plot on, but far from a fatal one. I admit I was more gleeful than dismayed when most of the usual methods didn't work on Dracula, and laying out too many of the movie's rules beforehand would've ruined the surprises. Still, it couldn't have hurt for VH & co. to have laid out what they know beforehand; their scattershot methods don't inspire confidence and makes the big shootout in the square much more muddled than it needs to be.
The "werewolf is the only thing that can kill Dracula" is a neat twist, but something so out of left field as this needs to be introduced carefully, which the movie unfortunately fails to do. Accidentally leaning on something and triggering a hidden mechanism is practically de rigueur in movies like this, but using it and a wad of exposition (albeit wonderfully filmed in a single take) to put forth your plot twist isn't likely to sway too many viewers. Propping your entire resolution on these two fragile storytelling techniques just makes the whole thing come crumbling down.
To add insult to injury, Dracula keeps his potentially life-saving werewolf cure in a jar of acid in some side room? What, if a werewolf turns on him he plans on sprinting through a maze of hallways, fishing the syringe out of vampire-burning acid, and then taking out his foe? Not making this look any less like a plot contrivance is the fact that not once does Dracula make a break for the Syringe Room after VH wolfs out (the syringe's been stolen of course, but Dracula doesn't know that). Oh good one, Count. Set up an elaborate defense mechanism and then ignore it, merely letting the protagonist use it for his own redemption. Good one, movie.
It's not helped by the continual need for suspension of disbelief--and I'm not talking flying monsters and creatures pieced together from the bodies of the dead. I'm talking VH firing crossbow bolts willy-nilly at Brides flying two feet off the ground in a crowded village square and striking only inanimate objects. I'm talking villagers being dropped from two stories up by exploding baby vampires with apparently no consequences. I'm talking a family that has hunted evil for nine generations and maintains a vast arsenal of weapons but that hasn't yet figured out that bringing more than one werewolf-killing gun to a werewolf fight might possibly be a good idea. C'mon, help us out, movie.
Too bad, because the cast is more than up to a good script, if a good script were to be had. Not only is this one of the most uniformly-stunning casts I've seen in a long time (who do I try to peel my eyes from next? Dracula? His Brides? Velkan? VH? Anna? Carl?) but they're capable of acting the heck out of it. I mourn for Roxburgh's performance the most--his Dracula is absolutely riveting, a pitch-perfect flamboyant performance that reminded me of Geoffrey Rush's similarly-delicious role in POTC, and deserves to be seen in a much better movie than this one. Plus, you have someone like David Wenham as your comic relief and you ask him to...fall backwards over a couch? Sheeesh.
The bloopers were funny, though. And I did sit through the commentaries. Both of them. Because I'm a DVD-commentary dweeb.
