Dracula Untold Trailer... Tells. About Dracula.

[Lupine]

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.

Dracula means not "Son of the Devil" but Son of the Dragon. And considering his father was called Dracul or The Dragon, it has nothing to do with the devil. His father was a part of a group known as The Order of The Dragon and thus he was Dracul.

Just for the record...

The name "Dracula" means "Son of the Dragon",

I said that it meant Son of the Dragon.

As for "Son of the Devil"...

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/dracula1.html

The Order of the Dragon
Vlad, or Dracula, was born in 1431 in Transylvania into a noble family. His father was called "Dracul," meaning "dragon" or "devil" in Romanian because he belonged to the Order of the Dragon, which fought the Muslim Ottoman Empire.

"Dracula" means "son of Dracul" in Romanian. Therefore young Vlad was "son of the dragon" or "son of the devil." Scholars believe this was the beginning of the legend that Dracula was a vampire.

Need some more?

The noun drac "dragon" itself continues Latin draco. Thus, Dracula literally means "Son of the Dragon". In Modern Romanian, the word drac has adopted the meaning of "devil" (the term for "dragon" now being balaur or dragon).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler

As such, it's just as I said: his name can mean either Son of the Dragon or Son of the Devil.

Edit: One more link just for fun. http://www.behindthename.com/name/vlad/comments

Okay, some of those links I think you need to cross check with other sources, plus they didn't actually disprove anything I said or even change anything except for the whole "dragon" came to eventually mean evil and be used synonymously with devil in Romania. Which again I'd question mostly because Wallachia was Vlad II's kingdom and Romania didn't exist until the 1850s. As for the Order of the Dragon, it was created as an order to protect Christianity in Western Europe.

They are a reference to St. George and while the dragon was their emblem, the dragon was also marked with the red cross of St. George and while I'll admit this part is more or less speculation here...the concept of the dragon here is probably a reference to slaying the dragon of Islam. Dracul was named such after joining the order, but again the Order has nothing to do with the devil. If you want to argue that his father's nickname also means the devil, I'd go with maybe, but even then it isn't a reference to him being some how related to Christianity's devil.

 

[Nieroshai]

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?

In truth, the only real accounts of Vlad's cruelty came from those who wanted him deposed in the first place. Some accounts point to the Ottoman (and exclusively Ottoman) impalement victims having been already dead, pointing towards grisly shows of dominance rather than over-the-top torture. History is history, and there's little we know for sure, but I personally see Vlad as what you would call a "hero" of the Crusades, keeping his enemy from expanding westward at all costs. Did he do anything remotely dark though? Well, sure. Just about every nation implemented torture back then, I doubt he was special.

I wasn't talking about Vlad though. I was talking about Dracula, the entirely fictional character who's loosely based on Vlad. However much of an irredeemable bastard Vlad may or may not have been is not what I was asking about.

Separating the two makes Dracula Just Another Vampire though, and in most tellings of the story (barring Castlevania: Lords of Shadow), he is clearly that Evil Bastard Vlad Dracula come back from the dead to drink our blood and seduce our women. The film bearing Bram Stoker's name, with Gary Oldman in it, did try to make Dracula sympathetic and spin a sort of love story though.

 

[Lhianon]

Who came actually up with the fact that vampires are burned by the sun? Bram Stoker was not it. In the original book Dracula wore a straw hat to protect himself from the sun that was enough, no burning, no sparkling.

It was Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau in the german movie "Nosferatu" from 1922. He allegedly did it to avoid a copyright infringement claim by the family of Bram Stoker, but to no avail since said family sued anyway and won the court case, leaving us with only one copy surviving.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu

 

[RJ 17]

Snip.

You're missing the point, my friend. I wasn't trying to disprove what you said, I was trying to illustrate what I said: that Son of the Dragon and Son of the Devil are interchangeable...which they are. I never said that "Son of the Devil" had meant that Vlad's peers thought of him as satanic or demonic. No, that was for the invading armies that saw the rotting corpses of their comrades impaled as road-side decorations leading up to Vlad's castle. Ask the Moors if they thought that Vlad was a noble defender of his faith or if they felt the atrocities he committed likened him to a great and sinister evil...a devil, if you will. Not necessarily THE Devil, but a devil none the less.

In short, I'm not saying that you're wrong, I'm just saying that you're only half right.

 

[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?

In truth, the only real accounts of Vlad's cruelty came from those who wanted him deposed in the first place. Some accounts point to the Ottoman (and exclusively Ottoman) impalement victims having been already dead, pointing towards grisly shows of dominance rather than over-the-top torture. History is history, and there's little we know for sure, but I personally see Vlad as what you would call a "hero" of the Crusades, keeping his enemy from expanding westward at all costs. Did he do anything remotely dark though? Well, sure. Just about every nation implemented torture back then, I doubt he was special.

I wasn't talking about Vlad though. I was talking about Dracula, the entirely fictional character who's loosely based on Vlad. However much of an irredeemable bastard Vlad may or may not have been is not what I was asking about.

Separating the two makes Dracula Just Another Vampire though, and in most tellings of the story (barring Castlevania: Lords of Shadow), he is clearly that Evil Bastard Vlad Dracula come back from the dead to drink our blood and seduce our women. The film bearing Bram Stoker's name, with Gary Oldman in it, did try to make Dracula sympathetic and spin a sort of love story though.

Well I thought Dracula was supposed to be Lord of vampires, but thank you; that clears that up.

 

[Poisonteeth]

You know a lot of people don't get this but absolute certainty in history is incredibly rare, because in the end individuals like Vlad will have historians inflate his worst attributes. And the title character of Dracula doesn't help much either in that regards.

But in terms of a Dracula movie? this looks like all kinds of fun, The big D has been re-imagined in almost every single way at this point and deviations from Bram Stoker's work are to expected. However I wish the damned film writer would actually research the source material for once, sunlight was Never a weakness for vampires until the silent film Nosferatu used it as a form of censorship.

To touch on the topic of more sympathetic villain reboots, I think people are having a hard time letting go of the absolutist morality commonly aped by & in Tolkien style works and that more people would rather turn there brains off and gleefully crunch there favourite snacks to the sound of gratuitous cinematic violence than examine a character motivation in depth. Outside of the scope of such works there really is no such thing as an "evil" character only those that do not share the moral codes of the person experiencing the story. "evil" is just an easy word, a way lazy writers and religious cults bring people to there side without having to provide a real reason for doing so. And when Hollywood gets the motivation to delve into a character's deeper motivations rather then staying shackled to tired worn out out tropes I for one applaud the effort.

 

[Aramis Night]

To touch on the topic of more sympathetic villain reboots, I think people are having a hard time letting go of the absolutist morality commonly aped by & in Tolkien style works and that more people would rather turn there brains off and gleefully crunch there favourite snacks to the sound of gratuitous cinematic violence than examine a character motivation in depth. Outside of the scope of such works there really is no such thing as an "evil" character only those that do not share the moral codes of the person experiencing the story. "evil" is just an easy word, a way lazy writers and religious cults bring people to there side without having to provide a real reason for doing so. And when Hollywood gets the motivation to delve into a character's deeper motivations rather then staying shackled to tired worn out out tropes I for one applaud the effort.

I agree with this. I think it is this tendency that people have to want to believe in some great evil because everyone wants to be the hero of their own story. You can't be a hero without having a villain. So people look for villains to justify themselves as the good and noble hero. It is actually very impressive to see how far people will go to demonize others to satisfy this need. I suspect this may be why people are somewhat less enthused with mediums that do not feature clear cut bad and good guys such as the recent grumblings over Game of Thrones and Maleficent.

This isn't to say that genuinely evil people don't exist. They absolutely do. But they rarely wear indications of that nature so blatantly. I'm a guy who wears black and has pale skin and long black hair. Consequently people look at me as though I am evil and feel justified in treating me poorly for that. People assume that I take part in all manner of vices and bad behaviors that I have no interest in. I understand why people treat me the way I do. I would make an excellent villain stereotype. People want to believe that they can recognize evil because the alternative no matter how true is a little scary to consider for most people. However the truth is that you cannot tell evil so easily from the rest of us. Most genuinely evil people would never choose to look like me. I'm too obvious. They want to blend in and be easily able to obtain people's trust so they can betray it later. I on the other hand have to constantly contend with everyone's instinctive distrust. Outside of fiction, that would not work for a real villain.

This topic kind of reminds me of something I have always wondered. Why is King Arthur regarded as a hero, while Vlad Tempes is regarded as a villain? Sure Vlad Tempes impaled his enemies and thieves. King Arthur on the other hand not only killed his enemies, he also set an entire boat full of infants out to sea to die. They were innocent of everything except for the crime of being born at the wrong time.

 

[Poisonteeth]

To touch on the topic of more sympathetic villain reboots, I think people are having a hard time letting go of the absolutist morality commonly aped by & in Tolkien style works and that more people would rather turn there brains off and gleefully crunch there favourite snacks to the sound of gratuitous cinematic violence than examine a character motivation in depth. Outside of the scope of such works there really is no such thing as an "evil" character only those that do not share the moral codes of the person experiencing the story. "evil" is just an easy word, a way lazy writers and religious cults bring people to there side without having to provide a real reason for doing so. And when Hollywood gets the motivation to delve into a character's deeper motivations rather then staying shackled to tired worn out out tropes I for one applaud the effort.

I agree with this. I think it is this tendency that people have to want to believe in some great evil because everyone wants to be the hero of their own story. You can't be a hero without having a villain. So people look for villains to justify themselves as the good and noble hero. It is actually very impressive to see how far people will go to demonize others to satisfy this need. I suspect this may be why people are somewhat less enthused with mediums that do not feature clear cut bad and good guys such as the recent grumblings over Game of Thrones and Maleficent.

This isn't to say that genuinely evil people don't exist. They absolutely do. But they rarely wear indications of that nature so blatantly. I'm a guy who wears black and has pale skin and long black hair. Consequently people look at me as though I am evil and feel justified in treating me poorly for that. People assume that I take part in all manner of vices and bad behaviors that I have no interest in. I understand why people treat me the way I do. I would make an excellent villain stereotype. People want to believe that they can recognize evil because the alternative no matter how true is a little scary to consider for most people. However the truth is that you cannot tell evil so easily from the rest of us. Most genuinely evil people would never choose to look like me. I'm too obvious. They want to blend in and be easily able to obtain people's trust so they can betray it later. I on the other hand have to constantly contend with everyone's instinctive distrust. Outside of fiction, that would not work for a real villain.

This topic kind of reminds me of something I have always wondered. Why is King Arthur regarded as a hero, while Vlad Tempes is regarded as a villain? Sure Vlad Tempes impaled his enemies and thieves. King Arthur on the other hand not only killed his enemies, he also set an entire boat full of infants out to sea to die. They were innocent of everything except for the crime of being born at the wrong time.

I think you have a good point about the perspective of the common person, and as a card carrying member of the mono black wearing trench coat crowd myself I can understand were you are coming from. However (and not to hijack the topic) I think that good & evil are relative human concepts with no bearing on reality, and the lack of these concepts are what causes such backlash in media recently.

Also great example with Game of Thrones, I'm surprised I didn't my that connection.