Previously: I, Frankenstein.
11. There’s an actual scene where two actual characters say “What if it’s so obvious [these two characters are the villains] that it’s not obvious at all?”
10. The titular academic vampires regularly attend vampire church. Vampire church. THEY GO TO VAMPIRE CHURCH ON SUNDAY NIGHTS. They are literally attending MIDNIGHT SABBATS, which is like the canonical, medieval definition of satanic but it’s supposed to be a good thing.
I — look, I don’t even have a particularly vested interest in vampire mythology, but I feel like we have to agree as a race that certain vampiric characteristics are immutable lest we devolve into total vampire relativism. It’s a slippery slope! Vampires that go to church and walk on holy ground? I don’t want to wake up in ten years and have to see a movie about werewolves who are for all intents and purposes Cylons, or whatever. You cannot be both a vampire and a regular churchgoer. I must draw the line, and I draw it here.
Also, their vampire priest stands in an Episcopalian-style pulpit while wearing Greek Orthodox vestments. Their Christ figure appears to be St. Vladimir, which is fine except for what is he a saint of? Is he a Catholic saint? Is this like, a post-Vatican II thing? What religion was he? Are they that religion too, or do they just worship Vladimir?
9. The following exchange takes place:
Christian: I’ll fire magic you into ash.
Mia: I’ll just water magic myself before you can do it.
8. Also, these vampires are mortal, and they can walk in the sun, and they get weird diseases and die in car accidents, and they have magic powers, which makes them wizards. Not vampires. Wizards.
7. There appears to be a weird ethnic hierarchy where Russian and Romanian vampires are all royalty, followed closely by English vampires. American vampires are one step above garbage.
6. The global queen of the vampires not once but twice visits the school in order to berate a single student for truancy and misbehavior. You know, like how Queen Elizabeth used to pop into St. Andrews and call an assembly to talk about how Prince William was getting on.
5. A VAMPIRE WHO HAS JUST BEEN SHOT TO DEATH WITH BULLETS USES HIS MIND TO SET TWO EVIL DOGS ON FIRE
4. I — okay, so there are three kinds of vampires, basically, and the half-vampires (dhampirs) are basically a permanent underclass bound to serve and protect the (RIDICULOUSLY NOT IMMORTAL) royal vampires, because they have never heard of class consciousness, and then there are evil vampires, which, fine. But there’s this just enormous taboo about drinking blood from a dhampir if you’re one of the royal vampires; people react to it in absolute shock and horror. Which: again, fine.
So obviously the two main characters violate that taboo. Which: Again: Fine. That’s kind of interesting! But within the span of an hour — about three days in-movie, I think? — their friends go from being disgusted by it to sort of “eh, it works for them” which would be like if we as a society got over our brother-sister incest taboo sometime before this Thursday.
3. One of the characters delivers the most amazing speech to the entire student body that starts out as the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V (“Blood is sustenance. Blood is family. Blood is death.”) and slowly turns into Tina Fey’s monologue from Mean Girls (“We have got to stop bullying each other”), which is amazing. She actually uses the word “slut-shaming,” which is something I have never heard outside of the internet.
2. I was the oldest person in the movie theater by a factor of about a million, and I had a legitimately amazing time.
1. At the beginning of the movie the main character describes the class schedule at Vampire Academy and there is a roughly three-second shot of a bunch of vampire teens in a laboratory holding up beakers of differently-colored Science Liquids in like, the best and most generic portrayal of Science I have ever seen. No one is doing anything other than holding up a beaker of bright blue or green fluid and looking at it intently. “Ah, yes. There’s the Science we were looking for, right here in this beaker. Tremendous,” and then taking notes.
Pompeii 3D comes out in two weeks.
Tags: apparently i am a vampire essentialist, movies, vampire academy, vampires, when did i become the comic book guy
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BUT the princess vampire uses her power of COMPULSION to convince the student body that dhampir-cest is totes cool. See? It makes sense.
ANOTHER THING the main princess spends like half an hour in an INTENSE MORAL QUANDARY just brainwashing everyone, but no one has…an ethical problem with that??
She didn’t do it to Dimitri though! And he’s like, kind of okay with it when they do it in front of him after Christian sets those dogs on fire.
Does Compulsion work on dhamphirs? Maybe it doesn’t…
Nothing about life matters except for this: “Pompeii 3D comes out in two weeks.”
I should not be this excited about this. I hope that it comes out in Holland at roughly the right time.
Oh,i can’t wait.
WHY IS THERE CODE IN YOUR COMMENTS? WHY DO YOU MAKE ME ASK THIS REPEATEDLY? IT CAUSES MALLORY TO LAUGH AT ME.
lol girl you are TOO NICE just delete those comments!
You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right.
Ahem. I actually read all of them and enjoyed them, in a YA sort of way. Also, all of the Succubus series by the same author are loanable via Kindle, and of course I bought them, so if anyone wants to borrow, let me know:)
Seconded!
Yup. They’re fluffy YA candy. With blood and stuff.
Mallory, have you ever played the fantasy card game “Once Upon a Time”? I feel like the plot line of this film is a game of that gone totally, absolutely right (or wrong, depending on how you play, a la “Apples to Apples”).
Do not mention A***** to A***** to Mallory. She doesn’t take it well.
I HATE THAT GAME
I HATE CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY
THEY ARE CONVERSATIONAL CRUTCHES FOR PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTAND NEITHER HUMAN INTERACTION NOR COMEDY
It’s so strange to me that you can marvel at objectively terrible products of pop culture such Vampire Academy with a childlike wonder, and yet you cannot focus the same lens on Cards Against Humanity.
Your stance against hummus, however, remains unimpeachable.
Le Front de libération du Québec has a card in the Canadian version though, which is handy for making already uncomfortable social situations that much worse.
As a person who does not understand human interaction, I rather enjoy them…
I am so relieved there is someone else on this planet who hates those fucking games. They are NEVER funny and always take TOO LONG.
Also I am a lesbian and someone always gives me the “women’s soccer team” card for no reason, and it makes me hate everyone.
I love that game. We once got a thread going that ended up being Conan the Barbarian.
mallory
you’re just
you’re just so great
I have got to see this movie.
I was already leaning that way, and this has totally cemented it for me. This could be the Can’t Hardly Wait of 2014!
I am going to assume that Christian is meant to be hot, because now the people writing teen movies/books/whatever all came of age in the nineties and Christian means nineties-version Slater and Bale and not Pilgrim’s Progress, which probably had significantly less influence on developing libidos.
I had a similar thought while watching that trailer…”he looks the most like Edward Cullen, so he’s probably the ‘hot’ one”
So basically what you’re saying is that they’re actually really incredibly true to the books? AWESOME.
I read all these books and legitimately enjoyed them in that fun YA escapist kind of way so, you know. Whee!
Mallory, you’ll do one of these for the Noah movie that’s coming out at the end of March, right???
can anyone explain to me why that movie is directed by Darren Aronofsky?
Can anyone explain to me why the entire cast is so very very white?
I’m going to say ‘Imperialism’ and rampant whitewashing of everything. Coz like, sure, it might be somewhere vaguely near the Middle East/Northern Africa, but also they’re not like, terrorists or anything, they’re in the *Bible*.
(****SPOILERS, said in your best River Song voice)
BY FAR my favorite part of the movie was when older male love interest of main character told her that the reason they couldn’t be together was not even really because of their like 15+ year age difference, at which point I just could not even contain myself and yelled at the screen “BUT IT SHOULD BE PRIMARILY THAT” and that was how teens everywhere came to loathe and fear me.
I WILL NEVER WARN YOU ABOUT SPOILERS
I’m replying to myself because I wanna talk about young girl-old dude phenom. We used a FUCKING SPELL to make this ok in this movie; IT’S FINE GUYS, WE WERE TRICKED, this will serve as the basis for the ok-ness of the rest of our relationship because as everyone knows, once you half-naked make out once your brain becomes biologically evolutionarily incapable of not doing it again.
I consistently love the things the media does to excuse completely horrifying inaprop relationships.
lol RIGHT??? ALSO! ALSO! you could KIND OF argue it’s “okay” if both characters are immortal, but they decided to make vampires REGULAR MORTALS in this universe! So it’s not even like, “he’s 25 and she’s 17 but they’re both REALLY 2000,” SHE’S REALLY 17.
my friend was arguing they’re trying to use the “alternate universe rules” since they have an entirely different form of government and morality and maybe the age of consent is lower, but also he’s still her teacher and also this is still written by Americans who clearly think this is fine.
My other favorite American media example of this is Pretty Little Liars, in which statutory rape and consistent pedophilia by a teacher are fine but WE DRAW THE LINE at one intense of stress-induced Adderall use to help you study!
Jessie-Lane Metz is right there with you: http://the-toast.net/2013/09/12/pretty-little-lia…
it took me 27 years of life to realize that “young girls old dudes” abbreviates to YGOD, or “WHY GOD?!?”
I could be convinced by a different age of consent argument, different social norms, etc. in a fantasy piece that is set in a different world. The “alternate universe” argument doesn’t work when you’re just like: THIS UNIVERSE IS DIFFERENT BECAUSE VAMPIRES EXCEPT ALL THE REST OF THE WORLD IS THE SAME. Still too creepy!
The most frustrating thing about Pretty Little Liars (which, full disclosure, is my favorite show) is that when SPOILERS the rapey teacher is revealed to be legit evil people were genuinely surprised. I had assumed the whole ‘creeping on his students’ thing was a setup, sort of like how we know Ravenswood is creepy because it’s filmed in sepia tones. Even my 16 and 14 year old cousins saw that coming, why was is so shocking that the creepy teacher has creeped on more than one student!!??!
NO I’M SURE IT’S JUST A RED HERRING IS THE THING the problem is we’re in the middle of the season and we’re not ending the series here and I bet this’ll be an “Ezra was protecting Ali” thing instead of this turning out to be truth, which will not be but should be that SHOCKINGLY (like you said) the creepy teacher is a creeper. This crushing realization that somehow Ezra will probably be vindicated is killing me slowly and repeatedly.
Petition for more Pretty Little Liars posts from The Toast!
If Ezra turns out to be the ‘good guy’ I think I’ll throw my tv out the window. I have been waiting seasons to find out that he’s actually an evil mastermind and then the liars will team up and murder him and bury him in Ali’s grave.
But the teacher is turning out to be evil now!! In the past few episodes he is mad creepy.
I introduced a friend to PLL this weekend and then we went to see Vampire Academy which made for a very interesting double pedophilia feature.
and then you can read the Woody Allen op-ed on the Times for some additional types of media into your “young girls old dudes” binge weekend!
Don’t forget to vomit afterwards!
*Dies laughing at post-Vatican-II crack*
notsotinytext: I would totally watch a movie about Cylon werewolves.
Hi. Long-time lurker. I adore you all. I have made an account solely to tell you all that Queen Elizabeth did, in fact, get involved in a truancy matter at Cambridge for none other than Christopher Marlowe.
Ok, it was the Privy Council but it was pretty much the Queen.
Please continue to pop in with historically-relevant trivia whenever you feel so moved! 🙂 (Or anything, really. But this comment is especially delightful.)
I live to please. Although this may be common knowledge to many Toasters/ees/ettes, I love to talk about it, so:
Christopher Marlowe, born a lowly cobbler’s son, received a highly selective scholarship to Cambridge, where he finished his Bachelor’s in record time. He began work on his Master’s, but ceased to attend classes. Thus, when time came for his graduation, the university was, perhaps understandably, reluctant to confer it unto him. Then! A letter from the Privy Council arrived, instructing the university that Marlowe was to be granted his degree, in exchange for exceptional service to the Queen.
By which I mean to say, he was absolutely a spy (probably), and maybe a double agent (maaaybe), and was eventually killed in a bar fight “over the tab” with another probable government spy. But not before he made blank verse the hip thing on the Renaissance stage.
And possibly wrote a bunch of the plays we attribute to Shakespeare? Is there any truth to that bit?
Also, the fact that you went with QE1 rather than QE2 on this was part of the charm, I promise.
Ehhhh, probably not. What we know of Marlowe is pretty distinct from Shakespeare (see: “Marlowe’s mighty line”). However, the idea of ‘authorship’ was not so much a thing, and they all stole from one another shamelessly, added onto one another’s plays and re-produced them, collaborated with one another, parodied, etc. Ben Jonson is really the playwright who starts to think about having control over the text of his plays when he publishes them under his name in 1616, well after Marlowe’s death. Shakespeare’s first folio appears in 1623, after his death, compiled by others.
hi i love you
I have learned, since my original post, that you were referring to the second Queen Elizabeth. As far as I know, QE2 has never done such a thing. I believe people say, in this scenario, “my bad.” (I refuse.)
you cannot adore us more than we adore you right now but we invite you to try
If you like generic science montages, I HIGHLY recommend the superb film Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus starring Debbie Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas. Better yet, there are TWO generic science montages and they book-end a surprise sex scene.
IT’S THE BEST.
IIRC, Deep Blue Sea has some epic fake science to go with its excellent theme song.
I am deciding whether “surprise sex scene” means:
1) there is a scene in which sexual intercourse takes place, but that scene is a surprise to the viewer, or
2) during the scene in question, sexual intercourse is had by two people who are surprised that it is occurring.
You know, it’s kind of both!
Is that the one where there’s the Japanese sub filled with various science/military type dudes, all with varying degrees of accents? Or is that Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus?
Again, I think it’s both? My favourite franchise, hands down.
yesss!!! the best part about the generic science montages is they are literally just pouring colored liquid back and forth between test tubes and nodding knowingly. I also love how every time Debbie Gibson and her love interest are interacting, the older science dude is lurking behind/near them.
…I own this on DVD.
OF COURSE, THE ANSWER IS PHEROMONES.
[cut to intense study of “pheromones” aka Kool-Aid in beakers]
RELEVANT PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: One time my Chemistry class was involved in the open night for my high school (Oz HS here, so we’re talking all of the 11 and 12 yr olds milling around with their parents). My job was to ‘do science’ by pouring acid into a beaker with a buffer solution, aka the ol’ ‘water into wine’ trick.
IT IS MOST CERTAINLY THE BEST. I held a movie night with about half my biology graduate cohort and we spent that entire movie yelling at the screen.
Mallory, thank you for reporting on these issues, to save me the rage I would have endured if I had accidentally gone to watch this movie. If we cannot agree on how vampires are, how can we ever hope to get along??
which would be like if we as a society got over our brother-sister incest taboo sometime before this Thursday.
Yet another thing we, as a society, can blame on Game of Thrones.
Blame? Or thank?
*Sorry not sorry, I watched the 15 minute featurette for season 4 last night, my GoT feels are HIGH.
HOW DID I FORGET TO MENTION THIS PART:
A VAMPIRE
WHO HAS JUST BEEN SHOT
WITH BULLETS
AND IS DYING
SETS TWO DOGS ON FIRE WITH HIS MIND
eff it I’m editing this piece to add that
Were they regular dogs or hot dogs? V. important.
Water magic and fire magic? Was there an Avatar crossover I missed with this thing?
THAT I would watch
So, wait, is this the *only* vampire academy? Because then it would totally make sense for the ruler to go to the one place where young vampires grow up.
Also, do they just live till 70 or so like humans? Because that is a bad deal.
I didn’t know Science was that easy! I’m going to print my own Graduate Doctoral of Stuffs Degree in Orange Liquid with a minor in Screwdrivers tonight! Then all you bitches can call me Dr. Woodhull, hic!
I am like breathless with excitement to watch this in a few moments on my laptop with a bottle of wine to hand.
I watched The Eagle last night. VERY NEAT.
Next weekend I’m watching that Mortal Instruments thing.
Seriously, read the Mortal Instruments. Excellent YA fluff, highly recommend.
oh! I kind of assumed they were bad because they had a Stephenie Meyer quote on them.
Hey, Meyer’s writing is, let’s say, not for everyone, but she wrote books inspired by Pride and Prejudice, Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights, and Anne’s House of Dreams. The lady knows how to pick a book with appeal.
I also just watched The Eagle. It was quality.
It warms my heart to see that new people are discovering the joy and wonder that is ‘The Eagle’.
read The Mortal Instruments, they are awesome. So many sweet fight scenes, so much ulcer-causing drama, I am in love with that series. Also read The Infernal Devices. Maybe don’t bother watching TMI movies; it’s a little dumb.
Sorry to comment late on this but I must disagree: Interrobanged you should definitely watch the TMI movie if you enjoy watching Vampire Academy. I read TMI and watched City of Bones and it was dumb but in the most amazing way.
I guess I’m a vampire purist, if those two words can ever be used together, but vampires can NOT go to church because a crucifix is one of the tried and true vampire repellents. I guess I’m Old Testament Vampire, these newfangled vampires are ALL WRONG.
Hear hear! So wrong. Damn sparkling was bad enough. Now churching?! No.
I don’t understand vampire church 🙁 Clearly I’ll have to watch this movi-I MEAN DO RESEARCH, for SCIENCE.
And like THE ENTIRE PREMISE of vampirism is that they are UNHOLY!!!
Also what’s this I hear about Vampires dying ? Vampires are called the undead for a reason. Undead=not dead
If it is this easy to pitch a movie nowadays I need to get working on my script about Real Vampires.
OK, look, why has no one yet mentioned that in a world containing both vampires and smartphones, the dark-haired, smart-ass guardian heroine’s sole contact with her mother is in the form of TELEGRAMS?
Multiple telegrams containing messages of 140 characters or fewer! She could have tweeted her!
YOU CAN’T EVEN SEND TELEGRAMS ANYMORE, WESTERN UNION STOPPED DOING THAT
Maybe vampires can’t use smartphones. Smartphones have a plus sign and that’s a cross. There. I solved that plot hole for them. They can send my check c/o The Toast.
Huh. So, with no context beyond this post, my guess is that the St Vladimir they’re venerating is probz the founder of the Eastern Orthodox Church (well, the first ruler to embrace Christianity in the area that was the progenitor of Ukraine and Russia) which is weird because no, sharing the name of Vladimir the Impaler doesn’t make him the same figure. LE SIGH. That would , on the other hand, support the hierarchy where Romanians and Russians (both Orthodox) are at the top of the vampire pyramid.
I think this comment section will not be complete until Cleolinda weighs in as the Internet’s Foremost Authority on Vampire-Related Ridiculousness.
Also I have always/will always read the word ‘dhampir’ as ‘damp hair’ and I feel that has greatly informed my visualization of dhampirs.
Vampire Science is all about recognizing substances that are not blood. Is it green? Not blood. Is it yellow? Not blood. Etc.
But what if there are some sneaky Vulcans around? (absolutely not apologising for crossing fandoms)
I know it’s early in the year still but pretty sure this movie is a shoo-in for a Vampire Academy Award.
Pomepii! I was introducing my nephew to the horrid wonders of historical Pompeii, only to find out there is a 3D spectacle about to be released!
I’m so excited for that train wreck.
IT’S A GLADIATOR LOVE STORY. GLADIATOR. LOVE. STORY. IN POMPEII.
I can’t wait I really can’t.
Mallory. READ THE GODDAMN BOOKS. They explain everything. Like, really, I think we might be in a fight. (See also my comment in your yorkshire terrier article. WHAT DO YOU HAVE AGAINST THE BEAUTIFUL THING THAT IS VAMPIRE ACADEMY!?)
Do the books explain why no one knows what the Spirit magic is and think Lissa is an unmagical reject, but then suddenly everyone is like “Oh yeah, St. Vladimir, who we *worship*, had that!”
Yep! All this is making me think that the movie might be terrible, and I should reserve my judgment of people who judge the movie. (REALLY THOUGH, who goes to see a YA movie without checking to see if there’s a book first!? We all know that the book is always better. Possible exception for the Hunger Games? I’m torn.)
I didn’t know any of these things existed until I heard a radio ad for something called ‘VAMPIRE ACADEMY’ last week and I refuse to apologize for that
fauxpology!!
(I’m not actually infuriated, it was just that reading two articles one after the other about how stupid you think Vampire Academy is made me sad.)
(I’m 27, I feel like that needs to be clarified, because this series of comments makes me look like a 15 year old.)
“There appears to be a weird ethnic hierarchy where Russian and Romanian vampires are all royalty, followed closely by English vampires. American vampires are one step above garbage.”
That seems right to me, though.
“They may call Dimitri a god… but I’m an atheist. An atheist with a big-ass gun.”
I literally went to go see this tonight so I could read this post. PERFECT MOVIE!!!!!!!
The movie had some weird-ass shit going on, I’ll grant you that, but I’ve got to say as a fan of the book series that I could watch Rose Hathaway kicking ass and cracking one liners ALL DAY LONG.
It’s St. Vladimir because they’re either referencing Vlad Tepes himself or his patron saint (St. Vladimir of Kiev). I feel like they’re just implying that Vlad Tepes is a vampire saint rather than the latter, because I have my doubts that they thought this hard about it. Also, Christian vampires are the best thing ever. Seriously, Edward Cullen can’t have sex until he gets married because of the Ten Commandments? EVERYTHING.
LET THIS NEW TROPE LIVE FOREVER, UNDEAD OR WHATEVER.
Romanian orthodox-church had many attempts to sanctify Vlad the Impaler, but other eastern-orthodox clerics opose because it’s not very ok to sanctify a mass murderer, even if he done that in the name of Christ.
Everything written here is pure gold, but I'm astounded to see that no one has even touched the entire ongoing lesbian subtext of this totally sapphic movie. Seriously, every time Lissa Dragomir bites Rose Hathaway's tender subservient neck both of them come as close to an orgasm as Hollywood has ever allowed a woman.
And let's not forget the beautiful butch Dhampir with the alternative lifestyle haircut who almost dies but then doesn't (several times)!
And the fact that one of these two girls who are "just friends" with an "intense emotional connection" is regularly referred to as her best friend's "blood whore."