My viewing of this was spurred solely by seeing it pop up for free on my cable and going "Huh, I forgot that movie existed." Instead of adapting the novel (crazy talk, I know), this production tries to pretend its source was written by Bram R. R. Stoker-Martin. Yup, we're going Game of Thrones on the world's most famous bloodsucker as this takes us to the Ottoman empire in the 15th century and gives us a Dracula origin story mixed with the faux history of Vlad Tepes. Handsome Vlad Draculea (Luke Evans) pines for his equally beautiful family when he isn't impaling thousands of people of stakes. With war with the Turks looming, he opts to climb into a cave to gain strength from a vampire (Charles Dance, oddly looking like Mother Teresa). Of course Vlad's wife and son soon become pawns and are kidnapped by the Sultan. Before you can scream "I will find you" like Daniel Day-Lewis, our newly minted monster must unleash his inner beast.
You can almost hear a studio exec screaming, "It's like Game of Thrones but with Dracula" as this one unfolds. The irony here is that this script predated the television adaptation of Thrones by several years, even garnering praise on The Black List in 2006 under its original (and equally unappealing) title Dracula: Year Zero. The fact that it got any compliments kind of baffles me given the dialogue during Vlad's conversion to vampirism. No joke, I had to pause the film because I wanted to jot down some of these stupefying lines, all of which - I kid you not - appear within a five minute sequence. Behold:
"Sometimes the world no longer needs a hero. Sometimes what it needs is a monster."
"I've waited an eternity for a man of your strength."
"If I am your savior, then you are mine."
"This is not a game."
"This is a game. Light versus darkness, hope versus despair."
"Let the games begin."
Absolutely stunning screenwriting. Then again, this is the kind of film where Dracula can turn into seemingly a million bats and kill thousands of soldiers, but can't catch up to his wife as she falls off a cliff to her death. The kind of film where his superhero senses can hear her scream from miles away, but also not when the plot demands it. The kind of film where the Sultan decides the best way for his army to battle this beast is to be blindfolded ("They can't fear what they can't see."). Yes, blindfolded. They march in unison over hilly terrain...BLINDFOLDED! Of course, this is explained when he says to his men, "When your generals blindfolded you, you did not think you could march without seeing. But you could!" Ah, glad the screenwriters cleared that up. Even better, it is completely pointless as they are all murdered by bat-man and his millions of bats the second Dracula sees them. Even worse is these battle scenes are so poorly executed that you can't even tell what is happening during most of it. And is there really any suspense when we see Dracula taking out full battalions over and over? Alex Proyas was attached at one point, but the eventual director is Irishman Gary Shore, who had only done two shorts prior to this. Ah, the perfect person to entrust a $70 million dollar budget to. The same Universal Studios & Legendary braintrust decided late in the game that they wanted this to be part of their planned Dark Universe horror (D. U. H.?) film series and tacked on a modern day ending where Vlad runs into Mina while Charles Dance repeats his "let the games begin" line. The games, in fact, did not begin. The whole thing is just over 90 minutes, but it felt like it was going on forever. No surprise that failing to adapt one of the world's most famous horror novels for a new generation resulted in a tepid response and the equally baffling-choice filled Mission: Impossible - The Mummy (2017) helped pour dirt on the proposed cinema universe. But not before Universal did a photo shoot promising subsequent unmade films featuring Johnny Depp as The Invisible Man and Javier Bardem as Frankenstein's monster. To quote the latter, "We belong dead."
You can almost hear a studio exec screaming, "It's like Game of Thrones but with Dracula" as this one unfolds. The irony here is that this script predated the television adaptation of Thrones by several years, even garnering praise on The Black List in 2006 under its original (and equally unappealing) title Dracula: Year Zero. The fact that it got any compliments kind of baffles me given the dialogue during Vlad's conversion to vampirism. No joke, I had to pause the film because I wanted to jot down some of these stupefying lines, all of which - I kid you not - appear within a five minute sequence. Behold:
"Sometimes the world no longer needs a hero. Sometimes what it needs is a monster."
"I've waited an eternity for a man of your strength."
"If I am your savior, then you are mine."
"This is not a game."
"This is a game. Light versus darkness, hope versus despair."
"Let the games begin."
Absolutely stunning screenwriting. Then again, this is the kind of film where Dracula can turn into seemingly a million bats and kill thousands of soldiers, but can't catch up to his wife as she falls off a cliff to her death. The kind of film where his superhero senses can hear her scream from miles away, but also not when the plot demands it. The kind of film where the Sultan decides the best way for his army to battle this beast is to be blindfolded ("They can't fear what they can't see."). Yes, blindfolded. They march in unison over hilly terrain...BLINDFOLDED! Of course, this is explained when he says to his men, "When your generals blindfolded you, you did not think you could march without seeing. But you could!" Ah, glad the screenwriters cleared that up. Even better, it is completely pointless as they are all murdered by bat-man and his millions of bats the second Dracula sees them. Even worse is these battle scenes are so poorly executed that you can't even tell what is happening during most of it. And is there really any suspense when we see Dracula taking out full battalions over and over? Alex Proyas was attached at one point, but the eventual director is Irishman Gary Shore, who had only done two shorts prior to this. Ah, the perfect person to entrust a $70 million dollar budget to. The same Universal Studios & Legendary braintrust decided late in the game that they wanted this to be part of their planned Dark Universe horror (D. U. H.?) film series and tacked on a modern day ending where Vlad runs into Mina while Charles Dance repeats his "let the games begin" line. The games, in fact, did not begin. The whole thing is just over 90 minutes, but it felt like it was going on forever. No surprise that failing to adapt one of the world's most famous horror novels for a new generation resulted in a tepid response and the equally baffling-choice filled Mission: Impossible - The Mummy (2017) helped pour dirt on the proposed cinema universe. But not before Universal did a photo shoot promising subsequent unmade films featuring Johnny Depp as The Invisible Man and Javier Bardem as Frankenstein's monster. To quote the latter, "We belong dead."