Monday, December 7, 2015

Dracula Untold (2014)

After Marvel had success with their cinematic universe everyone wanted to have their own cinematic universes. Dracula Untold launches Universal Monsters Universe if they happen to make other movies. This would make interesting universe with I Frankenstein (2015) if I Frankenstein was part of Universal Monsters Universe which it is not. Neither is Victor Frankenstein (2015) which is currently on theaters.

Dracula Untold mixes stories of real person Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler) and fictive character of Dracula. It shows Dracula as good person who is forced to do some evil things. He has utilitarian philosophy which made him do horrible things for greater good. This time Turkish sultan wants Dracula's and sons of Dracula's subjects for his army. This starts war between Dracula and Sultan.

Sultan's forces are much stronger than Dracula's. Dracula takes curse from old vampire. He gets vampire's powers and hunger for blood. If he don't drink blood for three days he will return to human. We are talking about Dracula, most famous vampire of all time. Only question is why and how he will drink blood.

If you expect nothing but dark, good looking gothic power fantasy you probably like Dracula Untold. Movie looks good but is boring before Dracula takes the curse. After taking the curse movie becomes power fantasy and works better. At least if you don't think too much how characters' actions make sense.

Dracula has three days to beat Sultan's forces if he wants to get back to human. He attacks Sultan's forces first night and spends rest of three days taking his people to safer castle which turned out not to be as safe as one they left behind. If he had limited time he should have used it attacking Sultan's force as much as he could. Not waiting to have the big battle at the end of his curse when he could lose his powers during the battle.

Movie is full of similar plot holes and stupid actions. If you can get past them you can enjoy the movie. Script had interesting idea of telling origin story of Dracula and mixing it with real historic person of same name but trying to portray Dracula as a good guy didn't work this time. He was made good guy for Universal Monsters Universe. Are we getting good Mummy and Frankenstein monster next?

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