Dracula Untold Trailer... Tells. About Dracula.

[MovieBob]

Dracula Untold Trailer... Tells. About Dracula.

"So what's this guy's power?" "He turns into a bat." "Boring. Do better." "...he turns into MANY bats?"

By now most everyone knows that Bram Stoker based his genre-defining vampire story Dracula loosely on Wallachian ruler Vlad Tepes III, aka "Vlad the Impaler," a 15th Century Romanian prince renowned for his cruelty and elaborate methods of torture. Universal's Dracula Untold, the first trailer for which is now online, looks to put a superhero-flavored spin on Prince Vlad's (somewhat murky) backstory: think Maleficent: Testosterone Edition.

Judging by the historical figures in the cast, the film appears to be set around the 1460s during the Ottoman Empire's attempted invasion of Wallachia under Sultan Mehmed II (aka "Mehmed The Conquerer," here played by Dominic Cooper) which was (temporarily) halted by the famously brutal Night Attack [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Attack] wherein Tepes made a name for himself after refusing to pay tribute to the Ottomans, who claimed dominion over that part of Europe at the time.

In the film, Vlad (Luke Evans), angered at the Sultan for demanding that Wallachian children be drafted as Ottoman soldiers, seeks out an ancient mystery-man (Charles Dance) in order to acquire vampire super-powers he can use to fight for his people. Presumably, there are consequences to this he was not intending. There is also a character on hand named "Van Helsen," while Les Miserables' Samantha Barks is Baba Yaga. [http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/news/a502109/les-miserables-star-samantha-barks-joins-luke-evans-in-dracula.html#~oIs4biQSpQRfuI]

The project originally began as Dracula: Year Zero as a star vehicle for Sam Worthington and director Alex Proyas; but will now be the feature debut for director Gary Shore. The film is set for an October 17th release in the U.S.


Source: Universal [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSUCMGJXHtY]

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[Canadamus Prime]

I'm guessing we're going to be seeing a lot of this now. Villains reimagined as sympathetic anti-heroes.

 

[Rutskarn]

I'm guessing we're going to be seeing a lot of this now. Villains reimagined as sympathetic anti-heroes.

It's funny, because this is basically exactly the formula they were using back when Dracula was written. There were crappy pulp magazines turning everyone from mythical monsters like Springheel Jack to actual, honest-to-goodness bastards like Dick Turpin into misunderstood gothic heroes.

The trend seemed to die down for a bit. Now it's coming full circle.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I'm guessing we're going to be seeing a lot of this now. Villains reimagined as sympathetic anti-heroes.

It's funny, because this is basically exactly the formula they were using back when Dracula was written. There were crappy pulp magazines turning everyone from mythical monsters like Springheel Jack to actual, honest-to-goodness bastards like Dick Turpin into misunderstood gothic heroes.

The trend seemed to die down for a bit. Now it's coming full circle.

But wasn't Dracula always an irredeemable bastard? Or am I just thinking of that one movie?

 

[Remus]

So, Tywin, as a vampire, again. He looks a little bored. Probably been in that mountain for too long. Other than that, I like the visuals, kinda like Castlevania Lord of Shadows 2, with the Dark Prince fully realizing his powers as an army is set to lay siege. Luke Evans needed a star vehicle - he's played secondary roles in more movies than I can count. Now I gotta find that version of "Everybody Wants to Rule The World". It sounds appropriately gothic for my taste.

 

[animeh1star1a]

This looks to be a good dumb movie, a dumb good movie, or a bad movie. I can't see this being as having anything to say in the way Maleficent did, which only leaves visceral action to fall back on.... unless they decide to abuse the meaning behind the original Dracula (Dracula was meant to represent lust, more or less... Kind of an old way to look at it in this day and age, but it could work). Actually, i wonder how well a rape metaphor from the prospective of the rapist would sit with movie goers...

 

[RealRT]

So, we have a guy who wants to save the day and in order to do that he gets all those powers and eventually becomes vampire Dracula and the humanity turns on him and there's also Baba Yaga in it.
Looks like the scriptwriters for this one played a lot of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.
Oh well. I hope this time the part when he's actually the vampire won't suck.

 

[Exterminas]

Looks pretty dull to me. I don't like the fact that they turned becomming a vampire into a deal with the devil.

A much greater movie would have been, if he just gradually slipped into cruelty, partially due to the pressure of defending against the ottomans and his need to build up a reputation for ruthlessness. You know, like a real person would have? And eventually, that change to his personality manifests in his body and he becomes something other than human.

But they, at least we get CGI-Bats punching turks. Never seen that before.

 

[PunkRex]

Let's turn one of the most fucked up psychopaths in history into a sympathetic anti-hero, because vampires...

Oh hey, Baba Yaga's in this.

 

[Burchy22]

Can't we just get a live action movie of the Hellsing Anime? Its one of very few anime that could actually work as a live action and Alucard is the definitive Vampire as far as I am concerned.

Now the movie..... looked boring until the last 20 seconds or so, he's going to do some cool stuff with his powers but nothing else of interest. There is nothing sympathetic about Dracula, he's an asshole.

 

[KaZuYa]

I always though the canon origin of Dracula was Cain, brother of Abel, son's of Adam and Eve who was cursed by god and his children to walk the earth in eternal darkness for murdering his brother out of jealousy or was that just the origin of vampires not Dracula =)

 

[Pseudonym2]

So, we have a guy who wants to save the day and in order to do that he gets all those powers and eventually becomes vampire Dracula and the humanity turns on him and there's also Baba Yaga in it.
Looks like the scriptwriters for this one played a lot of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.
Oh well. I hope this time the part when he's actually the vampire won't suck.

In both cases I have no clue what Babba Yaga is doing there. I thought she was from the 1600's to the 1700's. According to Wikipedia, the first reference to her was in 1755 with similar characters being older. It's like if Sherlock Holmes just showed up in the crusades.

 

[SKBPinkie]

Vampires are not meant to be characters you sympathize with. They're bastards, through and through.

Alucard from Hellsing is a perfect example of this.

 

[RealRT]

So, we have a guy who wants to save the day and in order to do that he gets all those powers and eventually becomes vampire Dracula and the humanity turns on him and there's also Baba Yaga in it.
Looks like the scriptwriters for this one played a lot of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.
Oh well. I hope this time the part when he's actually the vampire won't suck.

In both cases I have no clue what Babba Yaga is doing there. I thought she was from the 1600's to the 1700's. According to Wikipedia, the first reference to her was in 1755 with similar characters being older. It's like if Sherlock Holmes just showed up in the crusades.

First of all, it was the first textual reference that was found. She was a character in oral lore for centuries. Said oral lore was exclusive to simple folk, none of which were literate. Said reference belongs to Mikhail Lomonosov, a scientist and literator (and a brilliant one) who grew up in a peasant family. So when he was young, he was exposed to those tales and myths and thus he referenced them. Second, she's a fairy tale character, you can put her whenever you want.

 

[kuolonen]

Vampires are not meant to be characters you sympathize with. They're bastards, through and through.

Alucard from Hellsing is a perfect example of this.

"Are not meant" why not? I personally like it more when there's more to villain character than "he is x, therefore he is villain and you can assume he picks his teeth with baby bones after eating a full meal of puppies". It is not like it some holy lawn written down by Bram that henceforth all vampires are chaotic evil. Heck, if we thought that newer version can never differ from the original, Warcraft would not have orcs who are capable of negotiation.

That being said, can Hollywood at some point move away from the Idea that best way to make character sympathetic is to stick a wife and kid on him and say: "He needs to protect these plot devices."?

Despite this I am slightly optimistic about this film, though I fear there is going to be some heavily moralizing ending about how some means just don't justify the cause.

 

[RJ 17]

Looks pretty dull to me. I don't like the fact that they turned becomming a vampire into a deal with the devil.

Actually that's been part of Dracula's lore for a very long time, ever since he was considered to be something more than human. The name "Dracula" means "Son of the Dragon", which back then was another way of saying "Son of the Devil". So yeah, it's always been part of his mythos that he's in some way connected to Satan, be it because he was a warlord who cursed the name of God to the point where Satan "blessed" him with vampirism or, as this movie implies, that he willingly sold his soul to become what he is.

Of course, in real life he earned that nickname because of the horrific atrocities he committed, such as terrifying the invading army by lining the road to his castle with rotting, festering corpses impaled on spears. However for the purposes of fiction, there's nothing wrong or out of place by depicting a "deal with the devil" scenario regarding Dracula.

On another note, seeing a couple of people compare this to Lords of Shadow actually makes me wonder how a live action Castlevania movie would turn out.

 

[otakon17]

Welp that looked cheesy as hell. But the good kind of guilty pleasure cheesy, just something you can sit back and watch with a tub of popcorn and friends and just laugh at. The soundtrack didn't help either.

 

[Makabriel]

So, Tywin, as a vampire, again. He looks a little bored. Probably been in that mountain for too long. Other than that, I like the visuals, kinda like Castlevania Lord of Shadows 2, with the Dark Prince fully realizing his powers as an army is set to lay siege. Luke Evans needed a star vehicle - he's played secondary roles in more movies than I can count. Now I gotta find that version of "Everybody Wants to Rule The World". It sounds appropriately gothic for my taste.

Thank you! That was starting to drive me nuts figuring out what song that was..