Accent? Vhat accent?
One of my brothers is down visiting for the weekend, so I laid all of London bare before him and asked him to take his pick of all the entertainments on offer. From some of the finest theatre, opera, and ballet companies this land has to offer, to the artiest of art house cinemas.
So we went to see Van Helsing.
I didn't know much about the film going in, save that it was a Stephen Sommers film. This I knew because I'd seen the trailer, which positively screamed Stephen Sommers at me (not necessarily in a good way) - he's a distinctive film maker, that much I'll say about him. He's also the gent responsible for The Mummy, a film I'd actually rather enjoyed. It was loud, brash and suffered from some lapses in logic that would have been unforgivable, save for the fact that the film was so endearingly good natured, you couldn't help but smile, and be carried along in the wake of it's absurdities.
Unfortunately, since then Mr Sommers appears to have become something of a Hollywood go to guy whenever a loud, brash and illogical action film is required to fill out the summer schedules - he followed the success of The Mummy with The Mummy Returns and The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. These presented ever larger spectacles, hand in hand with even greater larger lapses in logic (like taking a submarine the size of an aircraft carrier down a Venice canal. I mean, c'mon!) . And, in my estimation, they weren't quite as good natured which made their (all too obvious) flaws all that much harder to forgive.
Which brings us to Van Helsing. As you might expect, I didn't have terribly high hopes going into the cinema, but perhaps because of this I was pleasantly surprised. It still betrays the classic trademark Sommers traits of loudness, brashness and wanton nonsensicality, and I'm quite certain it won't be picking up any Oscars (outside of the technical categories at least), but it's enjoyable fare and, within the confines of it's own skewed internal logic, everything seems reasonably self-consistent (compared to The Mummy Returns and LoEG at least). It still betrays one of Sommer's greatest plotting weaknesses, namely his over-reliance on outlandish co-incidences to resolve dangling plot threads, but as with The Mummy, the whole thing trots along at such a breathlessly ludicrous pace and applies enough of a charm offensive to enable you to over look it. That said, I still can't escape the feeling that Sommers is trying to make an Indiana Jones for modern audiences. It may never happen and it certainly hasn't happened here - after all, I know Indiana Jones, and you sir, are no Indiana Jones.
I should probably mention that the effects work is of a high standard (the cgi still looks like cgi, but I consider it discourteous to complain about such things - it's good cgi after all), with possibly the best effect the film has to offer being Kate Beckinsale's corset. I mean, that was a special effect right? People in real life don't have waists that narrow surely...?
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Now that was a really, really silly film. It had some great moments. It had some awful moments. There were maybe five lines of dialog in the whole thing, all of which were of the "we must now stop for a second while we explain the plot device which will lead to the next action sequence" variety.
Questions that particularly puzzled me:
1. Why does it take Transylanian peasants ten minutes of running back and forth to find somewhere to hide in their own village, and why do they run into dead ends while doing it ?
2. Why do carriages explode when werewolves land on their roofs ? In particular, why is this effect predictable enough that you can rely on it to set off explosive traps inside the carriage ?
3. Why don't Transylvanian horses wow the world with that 8-horse-team steeplechase technique ?
4. Why do vampires lay eggs ? and how ? I'll just try to avoid thinking about this one, I think.
5. Speaking of CG, why does the sailing boat at the beginning have no wake ? and have its sails set to go backwards ? and have its keel barely submerged ? (OK, really picky, I know).
6. How can anyone make dracula so unscary ? and the brides of dracula so unsexy ? and, for that matter, dracula so unsexy ? I mean, it was like "Dracula, son of Phil, lord of unsufficient light, slight irritant to really stupid peasants, takes nine generations to kill the most incompetent vampire slayers inn the world". Buffy would kick his butt.
And don't even get me started on the trailer for Troy, with the Greek hero with a highland accent and the hoplites standing ten feet apart and charging.
There are a few things I'd add to that list:
1) What on earth where the peasants thinking, congregating outdoors in darkness when there are vampires on the prowl? Especially when there's a nice empty church nearby...
2) If you're Dracula and the only thing that can kill you is a the bite of a werewolf, wouldn't you better off killing all werewolves you encounter, rather than recruiting them as sidekicks and spawning more werewolves?
3) Similarly, if you really must keep werewolves around, but have a nifty supersecret formula for reverting them back to humans should they ever turn on you, shouldn't you keep this formula around your person, rather than in a vault surrounded by various deathtraps so you can't get at it?
4) Classic villian error number 734 in a series of 10001: when you encounter your century old arch-nemesis, why don't you just kill him instantly? Especially when you're evil and should have no moral compunctions about such an act.
5) Why did Dr Frankestein resemble Tim Brooke-Taylor in an early episode of The Goodies?
As will come as no great surprise to those who know me, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. It was such good fun, and they clearly had fun making it. The "Q's workshop" scene was hilarious, but then I was a clear sucker for that particular spoof. (The Scottish Mr Hyde swinging in for Quasimodo in Paris was another fin sequence).
Now, allow me to tackle some of your perplexities:
1. Why does it take Transylanian peasants ten minutes of running back and forth to find somewhere to hide in their own village, and why do they run into dead ends while doing it ?
- Panic effect. Show me a film where people - when faced with an emergency - actually behave with any common sense. Besides, you've gotta remember that these are just simple peasants. These are people of the land. The common clay of the Old East. You know ... morons.
2. Why do carriages explode when werewolves land on their roofs ? In particular, why is this effect predictable enough that you can rely on it to set off explosive traps inside the carriage ?
- It didn't explode when the werewolf landed on it. It caught fire :-) Actually, it only shattered into flaming shards when it hit a rock, which would be about right. (Please don't ask me how I know that). Now the one that fell to the bottom of the canyon, that one exploded :-)
3. Why don't Transylvanian horses wow the world with that 8-horse-team steeplechase technique ?
- Because they're too busy preparing for the exhibition match against Sandra Bullock in her freeway jumping bus.
4. Why do vampires lay eggs ? and how ? I'll just try to avoid thinking about this one, I think.
- I didn't. Avoid thinking about it that is. And I came up with, well, a theory. Assume they're not eggs but, um, "internal parts" which are removed and subsequently grew back. Vampiric regeneration etc. Now stop thinking about it.
5. Speaking of CG, why does the sailing boat at the beginning have no wake ? and have its sails set to go backwards ? and have its keel barely submerged ? (OK, really picky, I know).
- a) No-one in the CG dept knows how ships should look when sailing; or
b) the boat they modelled it after was actually sailing backwards at the time and if we looked really hard we might see a wake 'in front' of it; in either case
c) for the first time in my life I get to shout "Sailing Geek!"
6. How can anyone make dracula so unscary ? and the brides of dracula so unsexy ? and, for that matter, dracula so unsexy ? I mean, it was like "Dracula, son of Phil, lord of unsufficient light, slight irritant to really stupid peasants, takes nine generations to kill the most incompetent vampire slayers inn the world". Buffy would kick his butt.
- Actually, Dracula is not really that scary in the original book. A tad ominous perhaps, but mostly just a rather genial sort of chap until you /really/ get to know him. (I believe the actor was modelling his appearance on the gypsies of the time - Dracula seemed to get on well with them). And I thought that the brides *were* rather...
- Oh, and you really have to question the IN-competence of a vampire hunter who's lived that long... the really bad ones tend to die youngish.
And don't even get me started on the trailer for Troy, with the Greek hero with a highland accent and the hoplites standing ten feet apart and charging.
- Happily I missed that. Not a bad thing. The Horse still strikes me as the most spectacular display of cunning against stupidity in the history of war. "Oh look, the entire Greek army disappeared and Oh look 2, there's a battalion-sized hollow, wooden horse sitting outside the gates! How nice!" Tell me there wasn't some poor sod jumping up and down screaming "Burn it you idiots burn it!" (The same guy whose brother is in jail for claiming the emperor was naked.) Beware of gifts bearing Greeks, that's what I say.
___________
MARK
1) What on earth where the peasants thinking, congregating outdoors in darkness when there are vampires on the prowl? Especially when there's a nice empty church nearby...
- Standing up for their rights, dammit. Not letting the villains win the day. Forgetting to carry steel umbrellas. Demonstrating a lack of basic learning skills. Um, er, something.
2) If you're Dracula and the only thing that can kill you is a the bite of a werewolf, wouldn't you better off killing all werewolves you encounter, rather than recruiting them as sidekicks and spawning more werewolves?
- Mark Mark Mark. For a man whose domain is Evil(TM) you just aren't thinking like an evil overlord. Rule of the Successful Evil Overlord #5: never give away any hints as to your one, fatal weakness. For example: Do NOT kill every werewolf you encounter, as this would cause people to wonder why:
- Are you allergic to dog hair?
- Is the lifetime supply of doggie biscuits just not viable in the current economic climate?
- Do you have a pathological fear of werewolves, which is odd given that you are *nigh* invulnerable? Hmmm, I wonder..?
Besides, we're all familiar with the old addage "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer/as a pet/snuggled up warm at the foot of your bed."
3) Similarly, if you really must keep werewolves around, but have a nifty supersecret formula for reverting them back to humans should they ever turn on you, shouldn't you keep this formula around your person, rather than in a vault surrounded by various deathtraps so you can't get at it?
- Still not thinking like an Evil Overlord, are we? Everyone knows Evil Overlords require 16 hoops, 13 jumps, and about two dozen complex somersaults to get to the secret formula or Destroy the World button or whatever. And with all due respect to your imagination, a single iron gate does not usually qualify as 'surrounded by various deathtraps' :-)
4) Classic villian error number 734 in a series of 10001: when you encounter your century old arch-nemesis, why don't you just kill him instantly? Especially when you're evil and should have no moral compunctions about such an act.
- You just don't get this Evil Overlord bit do you. For a start, they're not evil, just misunderstood. Second, they never kill their nemeses - that would be crass. It's much more fun to corrupt them. And lets face it, if you haven't seen each other for a 100 years, you're going to want to catch up, review the details of your plans for world domination, etc.
5) Why did Dr Frankestein resemble Tim Brooke-Taylor in an early episode of The Goodies?
- I thought he resembled Peter Boyle. But then I think almost all iterations of Frankenstein's monster resemble Peter Boyle since watching Young Frankenstein. Damn their eyes! (Too late)