Monday, March 27, 2017

Van Helsing (2004)

I remembered Van Helsing to be 90 minute stupid fun steampunkish action movie. I remembered wrong. This is over two hours. I only remembered one scene. Everything else I had forgotten. Why I had forgotten almost everything? Van Helsing is what you can almost call painfully bad. I had to watch the movie in two sessions because I had enough after first hour.

Van Helsing is a mess because it has too many ideas stuffed into one movie. There is too much of everything. You have Dracula, Frankenstein, werewolves, Mr Hyde, secret vatican organisation and too much of effects and near escapes. Movie doesn't know what it wants to be. Story feels different than what the movie looks. Story wants to be serious, characters look like they are in comedy. Dracula feels more like sitcom character than evil villain.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Underworld did everything Van Helsing tried to achieve better previous year. Neither is great movie but both are better than Van Helsing. I wonder why League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is considered as really bad movie when we have similar but worse movie in Van Helsing.

Van Helsing just have too many ideas for one movie. Penny Dreadful showed how different characters from literature can be added to one story. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen wasn't as successful but it made more sense then Van Helsing. Van Helsing should has dropped at least half hour of length and werewolves, Frankenstein and Mr. Hyde and had shorter action scenes. Then it might have worked.

No comments:

Post a Comment