Jonathan Rhys Meyers might be the most perfect person on earth to play Dracula. He's absolutely killing the competition (har har), as he manages to portray the world's most famous monster with the proper air of sexiness mixed with unsettling menace. The way he stares--yes, it's sex on a stick, but it also makes one wonder whether they will be enjoying the attraction or be served on a platter for dinner.
One of the highlights in the Dracula preview is its cinematic stylings. The snippets of action have the same grandiose slow-motion style of every Zack Snyder movie. Usually that's a deterrent for me, but here it works. Instead of operating as a drag on screentime and a distraction from the story, the slow-motion is just adding to the theatrical nature of the show. If played correctly, the action scenes could boost the intensity and add to the drama of Drac's monstrous deeds. This is helped by the apparent overplay of violence in the trailer. I'm actually a fan or the blood spatters and toothy hissings. The story of Dracula is violent. Vampires are dark hell beasts, driven by an insatiable lust for destruction, and it would be foolhardy to downplay that.
Which is something the inane love angle might be doing all on its own. I am a purist when it comes to the source material, and making Mina an epic love for Drac, destined through space and time, is utterly nauseating. It's drifting towards an uncomfortable neutering of Dracula as a persona. Dracula doesn't need to be relatable. We do not need to be spoonfed some semblance of humanity so that we can identify with him and care about his trials. If that is the goal in telling the Dracula story, you are telling it wrong.
Dracula's legend, and vampiric lore as a thrillingly terrifying concept, rests in the ruthlessness of vampire nature, the greed and desire to consume all. It's the very otherness of Dracula that makes him so terrifying. The fact that he looks like us is reason enough to fear and be fascinated by him. It's the what makes him unnerving--the fact that a creature with our face and our mannerisms can be so dark and ruthless.
When Dracula is made human through some lovestruck desire to make an exception for Mina, hinting that his vampiric form and that turning in to such is an abomination, it veers uncomfortably close to Twilight levels of self-loathing. No self-respecting vampire should care if they are good or evil. The closest vampire to pulling that stunt was Angel, and the price he paid for it was that he was terribly boring. If a vampire cares about the consequences of his actions, or at least if the greatest vampire of them all does, it's a castration of character. It completely unmans him, and suddenly defeating the beast is not that difficult. A chink in the emotional armor--loving a woman more than anything--is what leaves him vulnerable, but also what makes him uninteresting as a villain.
Dracula has been preying on audience's fears and nightmares for over a century. He's past the point of an image reboot. He is not a tragic hero, he is the worst parts of humanity manifest. Please, please let him act that way.
One of the highlights in the Dracula preview is its cinematic stylings. The snippets of action have the same grandiose slow-motion style of every Zack Snyder movie. Usually that's a deterrent for me, but here it works. Instead of operating as a drag on screentime and a distraction from the story, the slow-motion is just adding to the theatrical nature of the show. If played correctly, the action scenes could boost the intensity and add to the drama of Drac's monstrous deeds. This is helped by the apparent overplay of violence in the trailer. I'm actually a fan or the blood spatters and toothy hissings. The story of Dracula is violent. Vampires are dark hell beasts, driven by an insatiable lust for destruction, and it would be foolhardy to downplay that.
Which is something the inane love angle might be doing all on its own. I am a purist when it comes to the source material, and making Mina an epic love for Drac, destined through space and time, is utterly nauseating. It's drifting towards an uncomfortable neutering of Dracula as a persona. Dracula doesn't need to be relatable. We do not need to be spoonfed some semblance of humanity so that we can identify with him and care about his trials. If that is the goal in telling the Dracula story, you are telling it wrong.
Dracula's legend, and vampiric lore as a thrillingly terrifying concept, rests in the ruthlessness of vampire nature, the greed and desire to consume all. It's the very otherness of Dracula that makes him so terrifying. The fact that he looks like us is reason enough to fear and be fascinated by him. It's the what makes him unnerving--the fact that a creature with our face and our mannerisms can be so dark and ruthless.
When Dracula is made human through some lovestruck desire to make an exception for Mina, hinting that his vampiric form and that turning in to such is an abomination, it veers uncomfortably close to Twilight levels of self-loathing. No self-respecting vampire should care if they are good or evil. The closest vampire to pulling that stunt was Angel, and the price he paid for it was that he was terribly boring. If a vampire cares about the consequences of his actions, or at least if the greatest vampire of them all does, it's a castration of character. It completely unmans him, and suddenly defeating the beast is not that difficult. A chink in the emotional armor--loving a woman more than anything--is what leaves him vulnerable, but also what makes him uninteresting as a villain.
Dracula has been preying on audience's fears and nightmares for over a century. He's past the point of an image reboot. He is not a tragic hero, he is the worst parts of humanity manifest. Please, please let him act that way.
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