Van Hellsing

[miko2]

So I watched Van Hellsing last night. I've had it for months. I borrowed it from Jim at work... and I felt a little bit guilty for holding onto it for 4-5 months before watching it, but not too guilty, because he still has my copies of Roger Rabbit, Porco Rosso, and Mystery Men.

Anyway, what to say about Van Hellsing? It's a pretty movie to look at, and on the level of mindless action it succeeds admirably. Because of that, it was better than I had expected. However, Tom is right: Igor and Frankenstein's Monster come off as the best two characters in the movie. And they are supporting characters, so that's a bad thing.

For those that don't know, the plot goes something like this: Dracula concieves many bat-children with the help of his three brides, but unfortunately undead children are born... well, dead. So he needs the life-giving scientific breakthrough of Dr. Frankenstein to bring his children to life (you knew that Dracula funded Frankenstein's research, didn't you?) Unfortunately, Frankenstein is now dead, and the key to making the Dracula bat-babies live permanently involves strapping Frankenstein's monster to a board and sucking out his life essence. Or something.

And Van Hellsing is a kick-ass monster killer with all kinds of nifty medieval gadgets, a friar sidekick who invents all this stuff (not named Q), and a beautiful love interest who is an equally badass monster killer.

Oh yeah -- and Dracula can only be killed by a werewolf. Yeah, that about covers it.

So the first really big logic flaw for me is this: "Obviously, when vampires have babies, they're born dead." Um... wha..? How is it that something that is dead (vampires) can concieve or bear children of any kind, alive or dead? Dead things are dead! They don't create life... or non-life, or stillborn life, whatever you want to call it. Only things that are living do that!

Okay, so it allows them to rip off Alien/Aliens for some creepy egg-sack-scary-things-coming-to-life scenes. Whatever. Only of course, the bat babies aren't at all scary looking... they look like gargoyle cherubs. I don't think Geiger would ever design gargoyle cherubs.

I also have a problem with the patent stupidity of both the main hero and the main villian in this film. First, the hero. He's calm, cool, and collected. He has all kinds of neat toys. Sorta like James Bond. But he gets beat up a lot, sort of like Indiana Jones or John McLane (Diehard). The difference is, Van Hellsing gets beat up a lot because he's a fricken moron!

In the first scene where you see him, he's hunting down Mr. Hyde. As you might guess, Mr. Hyde is a massive brute, easily 5-10 times as strong as our hero, and quite smart to boot. Well, you'd guess that if you knew that they were stealing ideas from The League of Extraordinairy Gentlemen instead of going to the original source, because the real Mr. Hyde was a skinny sniveling hunch-backed nasty little man. But I digress. Mr. Hyde is the League version of Mr. Hyde... not a person you want to mess with. But our hero walks in all calm and cool, basically announces that he's here to take Hyde down, and insults him to his face... by which I mean he's standing right in front of Hyde, not two feet away. He quite predictably gets slammed across the room.

Let me tell you something... Indiana Jones and John McLane get beat up despite shooting massive brutes like Hyde at the first opportunity. They don't dare king kong to punch them first, because they know that would lead to broken ribs and massive internal bleeding before you've even fired a shot. And while I'm on the subject, Han Solo shot Greebo first! There! And he was being smart to do so, thank you very much!

So Van Hellsing is an idiot... but so is Dracula. He fails to kill his enemies on multiple occasions when he has the opportunity. The most amazing one is in the final fight, where it turns out that Van Hellsing has become a werewolf -- one that Dracula can't bend to his will, and conveniently the one and only thing that can actually kill Dracula. He even exclaims, "No! It's impossible!" And then what? In the middle of the fight, the moon goes behind the clouds and Van Hellsing briefly becomes human again (which is in itself a really stupid way to work the werewolf curse, but I guess they had to give Van Hellsing a weakness of some kind so whatever), and what does Dracula do? Does he take this brief opportunity to kill the deadliest enemy he's faced in 400 years? Oh no, of course not, he does some monologing and farts around until Van Hellsing can turn back into a werewolf.

Oh, but let's not forget: how did Van Hellsing become a werewolf? He was bitten by another werewolf that was in Dracula's employ!

You know, I don't care how cool it might be to have a werewolf at your beck and call. If a strong-willed werewolf is the only thing on the face of the earth that could ever possibly kill you, then kill every werewolf you ever lay eyes on immediately! Heck, exterminate the race! Make werewolves extinct, and nothing can ever thwart you ever again! But especially, if for some unknown reason you absolutely must employ a werewolf, for God's sake don't send it after your enemy who happens to be the world's greatest monster slayer and who has been alive as long as you! Who, in fact, is the one that killed you back before you became undead!

And if you do employ a werewolf and send it after your not-so-mortal enemy, then don't bother exclaiming "No! Impossible!" when he later turns into a werewolf...

Am I wrong?

This Dracula lived for hundreds of years... how? Apparently he survived purely on luck.

But you know, other than a few massively gaping logic flaws upon which the whole plot is hung... it wasn't a bad movie. ^_^

We won't discuss historical accuracy, because there was none. ^_^ But the hero and heroine look cool, and that's all that matters, yes?