The premise of Dracula Untold is “What if Dracula was just a really good dad, you guys?” and that is more than enough premise for me. I am a very simple woman, and always have been, ever since I was a very simple child. I like movies set in vaguely medieval castle-towns. I like movies about guys who all they want to do is go back to their farms and wives a la Cincinnatus but dammit the world just won’t let them. I like movies about guys who impale a lot of people on pikes, and then there’s fog, and I like movies where enemies have to have a lot of meetings in each other’s war tents while drinking coffee and acting civilized, and Dracula Untold delivered. If you think that you are too good for a movie where a man turns into very many bats and then punches a lot of guys with his giant bat-fists, then I don’t know what you’re doing on this website or in my life. You’re not too good for it, I can assure you.
Some people have been saying that the advertisements for Dracula Untold, with their cape-and-bat motifs, have been biting [YEP] Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, and MAY I REMIND YOU THAT THE CONCEPT OF DRACULA AND BATS AND CAPES PREDATES THE DARK KNIGHT RISES BY A FEW HUNDRED YEARS.
Some stray observations
1. This must have been such a fun and supportive filming environment, because I feel like at the table read the director must have said yes to everyone’s different idea for what accent to use. There was no accent that was off-limits in this movie.
“I’d like to say all my v’s as w’s, but the rest of it’s going to be Received Pronunciation.”
“Absolutely. Yes. I love the energy you’re bringing to this. Anyone else?”
“Well…I know I’m supposed to be Turkish, but I’d really like to use a Transylvanian accent.”
“Why not? Guys, there are no bad ideas here.”
“Hi, um, so I know my character is named “Gypsy King,” and what I’d really like to do is dress exactly like Jack Sparrow and talk like no one has ever talked in the entire world.”
“I LOVE IT.”
2. There is a character who I swear to God is named “Gypsy King” in the script who is essentially Renfield and he has about three scenes; he dresses exactly like Jack Sparrow. There are no new ideas left in the world.
3. Dominic Cooper, WHO PLAYED THE BOYFRIEND IN MAMMA MIA, is Sultan Mehmet the Second in this movie. This is the second time in two years that he has been called upon to play a villainous, vaguely Middle Eastern character (NEVER FORGET THAT HE PLAYED UDAY HUSSEIN IN THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE), and it is inexplicable.
He graduated from Evil Brown Guy Casting Academy in the same class as Xerxes from the 300. I can’t help but love his scenes because it feels like the set designer spent about fourteen minutes Wikipedia-ing the Ottoman Empire and was just like “coffee, croissants, pointy hats, lots of hair gel, let’s do this.”
I have nothing else to say about this portrayal of Mehmet II other than I highly doubt one of the most brilliant tacticians since Alexander the Great was really willing to waste 100,000 troops to take one child away from a minor European vassal, but whatever.
4. The entire premise of this movie, right, is that Dracula (I’m not going to sit around here calling him VLAD like we didn’t both spend the whole movie waiting for him to say CALL ME DRACULA) is such a good dad that he’s willing to turn himself into pretty much the actual devil for the sake of his son. And yet! At the end of the movie, Dracula is alive and well and there’s pretty much nothing stopping him from going back to see his son? Everyone who hated or resisted him is dead. His son is terrified, orphaned and nine but now he’s the king of Transylvania, and he would probably find the occasional visit from his loving father enormously helpful. But he just sets off, like, “Welp, time to start my Rime-of-the-Ancient-Mariner phase.”
5. During the movie I kept leaning over to my friend Alicia whenever the original vampire appeared on screen and whispering “That’s Gary Oldman, I swear to God that’s Gary Oldman,” to which she always replied “That’s definitely not Gary Oldman,” to which I always replied, “Well, it’s definitely someone,” which means I am turning into both of my parents right on schedule. (It was Charles Dance.)
6. Charles Dance’s character was named Caligula in the script. No one ever called him that, and it was unclear if he was supposed to be related to the real Caligula, and if so how did he get to a Wallachian cave from Rome, or just named something creepy.
7. So the basic premise is that Charles Dance would give his Dracula-ing powers to Dracula for three days to fight off the Turks, and if he could resist drinking human blood for that time, he’d go back to his normal self; if not, Charles Dance would finally be allowed to leave his cave and was going to exact revenge upon the demon(?) who turned him into a vampire.
8. So Dracula ends up drinking blood, obviously, and Charles Dance leaves the cave, and then nothing else happens.
9. BUT THEN, flash forward 500 years and Dracula runs into the reincarnation of his dead wife in a flower market and they stroll off happily together, and Charles Dance (who looks better now, like he has a human face and is wearing a suit, and why does he look healthier now 500 years after looking like a melted candle) follows them off-screen, muttering “Let the games begin.”
10. WHAT GAMES
11. WHY DO YOU CARE ABOUT THIS WOMAN CHARLES DANCE WHY AREN’T YOU OFF GETTING REVENGE ON THE GUY THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS EXERCISE WAS TO GET REVENGE ON
12. Don’t get mad at me for telling you the wife dies; the wife always dies in origin stories. She might as well have been played by a big skull and crossbones, look at how IMMINENTLY DEAD she looks:
She’s BLONDE, which is never a good sign, and she’s constantly wearing linen shifts that are slipping off her shoulder while laughing merrily, and her only character traits are “I really love my husband with his sad, sad eyes” and “I’m English for some reason.” She is the purest and fairest blossom of Aryan Womanhood, which is an entirely fatal condition in movies about sad white men.
13. To her credit, Dead Wife is enormously supportive of Dracula’s decision to Dracula, which I really appreciate in a movie like this. Obviously his own people turn on him about fourteen seconds in for no reason, even though all he’s done is turn into bats and help them, and he gets to deliver a great The Reason You Suck speech, and she’s just there to stare adoringly at him and then get real fierce-eyed when she dies and say “Drink all of my blood and just kill everybody.” That’s teamwork.
14. There’s a scene that gets really built up where Dracula’s son asks what he keeps in this secret room and Dracula says “something I hope I never have to use” and you think it’s maybe Charles Dance or a bunch of spikes (from all the times he used to spike people) but it’s just a suit of armor. He wears it. It’s not a big deal.
15. I loved this movie.
Tags: dracula untold, movies, sad dad eyes, vampires
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I’m sorry, what? This can’t be real.
Well I just looked it up…I am so sorry for doubting you.
My working theory is that brownface is still happening in movies because they have plausible deniability that the actor just went a little overboard with their spray tan.
“What could we do? He came in brown as a nut so we just changed his character from a Duke to a Sultan.”
Mallory I think one of my favorite things about you is that you will see literally any movie and declare it your FAVORITE MOVIE until the next weekend when you see a different movie about angsty dystopian youths or Frankenstein/mummy romances or gladiators vs. brown people or whatever the hell Hollywood is shitting out right now.
I
CAN’T
WAIT FOR THIS
I was pleasantly shocked the wife didn’t immediately go hysterical villager on dracula and, no lie, kind of hoped that he’d turn her and they’d conquer all of europe together. with dominic cooper. think of the coffee. their totally normal son could be their public face to the world!!
ALSO: DRACULA, WHO COULD TURN INTO A BAT TORNADO AT WILL, AND MAKE THAT BAT TORNADO INTO A FIST THAT SHOOK THE MOUNTAINS, WAS ALMOST DEFEATED BY DOMINIC COOPER WRESTLING HIM ON A FLOOR COVERED WITH SILVER COINS. i completely accepted that vision into my heart.
do you feel like the ending implied he was going to turn her into a vampire, or watch her die of old age?
I am hoping this is a set-up for a real serious, gritty remake of Monster Squad.
This is actually, 100% for real what they want to do and it is GLORIOUS. Movie sites are all upset that Universal is so clearly just trying to rip off the Avengers by rebooting all the monster franchises and then throwing them into a big movie together. But to the people upset by that plan I can say only this: shut up nerds. I’m trying to watch Gritty Dracula and Gritty Frankenstein gain a begrudging respect for each other.
ALSO WOLF-MAN
Wolfman has nards!
There’s little that makes a 12-year old boy happier than the realization that “kick him in the nards” is a legitimate technique to be used against monsters.
Monster Squad is great and it’s a shame that it’s been largely overlooked in the great wave of 80’s kid/teen movie nostalgia.
Well, a shame? Or one treasure yet to be plundered by the relentless drive for profit?
Dominic Cooper is so white that he played Mr. Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility.
WHY IS THIS THE MAN WE’RE CASTING AS “VAGUELY MIDDLE EASTERN”
Because he was not quite white enough to play Edward Ferrars?
Oh God, can you imagine Dan Stevens trying to play off being vaguely brown.
I don’t know whether to laugh hysterically or be afraid that they might try that sometime.
It’s not even good make-up. He very much looks like a white guy in way too much bronzer.
He looks like Jeremy Renner.
I thought it was Jeremy Renner in the picture and was confused why Mallory was talking about Dominic Cooper. Is he somewhere in the background?
dominic cooper originated the role of Dakin, one of the boys in The History Boys who were all from SHEFFIELD.
dominic cooper is YOUNG HOWARD STARK
are we sure dominic cooper wasn’t the one who visited charles dance in the cave
To be fair, one of the boys in The History Boys was both from Sheffield *and* brown. Not Dakin, though.
You make this movie sound better than it must be. I almost want to care enough to think about remembering to Netflix it later.
There’s a scene that gets really built up where Dracula’s son asks what he keeps in this secret room and Dracula says “something I hope I never have to use”…but it’s just a suit of armor. He wears it. It’s not a big deal.
To be fair, it’s a pretty cool suit of armor. Dracula was probably reluctant to get it all dinged up in actual combat.
The best part of this movie is when Dracula is running through the woods, trips, and accidentally turns into bats.
okay, that’s it, I am seeing this movie TONIGHT that is just too perfect to be true.
I have to watch it for that alone.
this is kind of unrelated — and let me be clear, I am hell of going to watch this movie, because Dracula of course, and also bat-tornado and Charles Dance — but I always get a little weirded out when people do Dracula origin stories and go back to Vlad Tepes and turn him into a Romantic Hero Who Died for Love and Also Protected Transylvania.
That dude was a fucking psychopath. Like, yeah, sure, I get killing an entire Turkish sortie party to defend Transylvania and I KIND OF even get impaling them on spikes to scare the fuck out of the rest of the Turks, but he ate his meals in the forest of impaled people. Some of them weren’t even dead! He listened to them groan in agony while he dipped his bread in their blood! Vlad Tepes once had a man’s hat nailed to his head because he didn’t take it off fast enough! When he was in prison and there was no one for him to murder, Vlad Tepes whiled the time by catching rats and impaling them to death!
Man. Ugh.
Yeah, but weren’t those the stories told about him by his foes? Or am I mis-remembering that? I’m skeptical of psychopath stories as described by their vanquished victims.
Well, most of the stories about him being terrible were from German and Russian sources. So, certainly it’s no good to just assume that everything written at that time was true, and definitely the Germans and Russians had some ideas about how terrible Romanians were, but they weren’t specifically enemies of Vlad Tepes per se.
There are some Romanian and Bulgarian sources, but even those guys suggest that he used capital punishment for basically every crime.
Well, yeah, but a lot of those people are themselves Romanian. And Romania hasn’t got much else to brag about.
Kind of like what Mongolians are doing with Genghis Khan.
Yeah. I am real sympathetic to the Mongolians, who have been through some tough times and maybe haven’t got a lot going on right now.
But man. Don’t…don’t idolize Genghis Khan. He was not a good guy.
Also, don’t date people who idolise Genghis Khan…
Yeah, probably don’t do that either!
This was purely hypothetical advice, of course. >.>
When I was in 7th grade I had a just-older-enough penpal from Romania who was all “Have you heard of Dracula? Well, he was a real person and was really just an amazing leader who protected Romania.” She included some story about him putting a gold tin can in the street and no one took it because he was so harsh but fair? Or something? That was her first letter. Her second letter was more “I’m actually looking for an older penpal because I am just super mature and whatnot”.
Okay, I don’t really have a point, that’s what I’ve got on the topic.
I was totally obsessed with Vlad Tepes when I was in middle school– I’m a little bit worried about myself, now that I think about it! I think my moral development must have been a little stunted, but not so much that I didn’t realize that the “people in the Middle Ages expected their rulers to be brutal psychopaths; it was considered a mark of lordly spirit, and also they were sheep who respected nothing but force” argument put forward in one of the scholarly biographies I made my dad check out for me was a pretty terrible one.
Also, did anyone else read that YA novel of the 90’s about a Danish medical student who finds Dracula’s diary and falls in love with him? But he is actually Vlad Tepes and gives her visions of his brutal rule and she is super turned on, I think? And they go off together int the sunset to be impaling-happy vampires together? That was a weird book.
That sounds like the most amazingly bad thing in history. I need it.
Welp, that’s it. Now I have to watch it.
best case scenario: they have like 10 minutes of being together before charles dance threatens them, Circumstances give her the bat tornado powers, they defeat him together, and then they live in overcast climes together forever.
(ps: that’s actually how the novel abraham lincoln: vampire hunter ended!! dominic cooper’s eternal vampire character resurrects HIS DEAREST FRIEND, ABRAHAM, from the grave, makes him eternally youthful, and they hunt evil vampires together forever.)
When I went to see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (in theatres) (DON’T JUDGE ME) the entire audience burst out laughing when Dominic Cooperpire offered to turn Lincoln, but was interrupted by his wife calling “Abraham! We’re going to be late for the theatre!”
I laughed too. It was a good moment.
I appreciate a lot of the wording in this review because I feel it’s important that people understand that there are vampires, and that there are Draculas. All Draculas are vampires, but all vampires are not Draculas. I am emboldened in this stance by Mallory’s use of “Dracula” as a verb.
That is true, according to the official Hierarchy of Monsters — which is perfect and accurate! — Draculas are a distinct category from vampires, and much, much better, superior to Frakenstein’s Creature, and second to Malphas (a prince of hell) &al and the Cosmological monstrosities.
They totally are.
Like you would not call a blood sucking creature wearing Uggs, sweatpants, and a t-shirt that says “I (heart) Ryan Gosling”? a Dracula! Vampire, sure, but not a Dracula.
Exactly. Dracula made himself into a vampire through the use of sorcerous powers that he learned about at Scholomance. That is completely different from some punk kid who got vampired and then hung around in high school for two hundred years so he could creep on teenaged girls, all putting gel in his hair and listening to the Smiths every day or something.
Late book recommendation: Covenant with the Vampire: The Diaries of the Family Dracul. You don’t get to the Scholomance until the third book of the trilogy, but it’s an awesome read.
Where do Choculas fall in this scheme?
There is a parallel hierarchy for candy and cereal related monsters. Choculas outrank Frankenberry’s Creature, though in a departure from the traditional hierarchy, are below Fruit Brutes.
FRUIT BRUTES. Oh my god, marry me.
Verbing weirds language.
I think we need some Venn diagrams here
So I should go see this? And enjoy the sight of Luke Evans’s face? (wait, I’m forgetting 9th grade English, how do I apostrophe) the face of Luke Evans?
“turning into both of my parents”
I used to think this didn’t actually happen (teenagers are silly) even though I could name ways in which my parents were turning into their parents.
Then I realized that I’m turning into my mother. My closet is full of blue and brown clothing, with the occasional bit of teal or hot pink, just like my mom. I moved to Wisconsin for a job as software developer, and my mom grew up in Wisconsin and moved away to be a software engineer.
I swear I arrived at all these life choices of my own independent free will, but here I am, my mother’s daughter.
HELL YES YOU SHOULD
My handwriting keeps trying to turn into my mother’s. Considering that I made a conscious decision to model my handwriting on my seventh grade choir teacher’s elegantly spiky script, Mom’s more generously curved capitals are vaguely alarming. Perhaps subconscious is still trying to forge her signature long after any need was gone.
Dang, I totally have my mom’s handwriting too, now that I think about it. Except when I’m writing really fast: then it turns into my dad’s handwriting. He’s a doctor, and lemme tell you, all the jokes you’ve ever heard about doctors’ handwriting are entirely true.
he is topless in it a fair bit, so there is more than face to enjoy.
I think this is why my bf wants to see it, just for the jaw of Luke Evans. I can’t get on board with a good Vlad and bf can’t understand my point. Luke Evans has got nothin on me.
For some reason I’ve seen the TV commercial for this movie approximately 1 million times, so much so that “I’m made of bats!” has become a catchphrase in my household. I’m glad this is as entertainingly bonkers as it looks and I will for sure watch it when it’s out to rent/stream and is either free or less than $4.
“2. There is a character who I swear to God is named “Gypsy King” in the script who is essentially Renfield and he has about three scenes; he dresses exactly like Jack Sparrow. There are no new ideas left in the world.”
Don’t they have to pay Johnny Depp $1,000,000 every time an actor channels Jack Sparrow?
cue troy from community:
Troy: Well, I’m a sexy Dracula.
Abed: You mean vampire?
Troy: I don’t need to know which Dracula I am to be a Dracula.
(edit: ugh these comments. this is @Ialdagorth)
HA!! YES! It’s DIFFERENT!
<3 <3 thank you for commenting with this so I didn’t have to
I felt this way about The Historian. I mean, not that I wanted anyone in the story to get impaled on a spike or even to see a skeleton impaled on a spike. But for the first half of the book I got super nervous whenever anyone so much as heard a spooky whisper, and by the second half I was just flipping pages, no worries, folks can get kidnapped by a serial killer but they’ll be fine! Nothing really bad happens to anyone.
The ending to that book was perhaps the most anti-climactic ending to a story ever. At first it was TERRIFYING and then it just kind of…dribbled off into a let-down.
It makes me so sad. The author is actually a kinda-sorta-friend-from-ages-ago but you can tell literally the very page when it got picked up by a publisher and she started phoning it in.
I got a little less than halfway through one of her other books, The Swan Thieves, and put it down one day and never picked it back up, partly because I’m afraid it’s not actually going anywhere and it’s going to be The Historian all over again. Which is sad, because there’s so much good in there, grrrl, push through to the eeeeeeeeennnddd!!!
Right?! And she and her husband are so awesome and nice and pretty and interesting and have sooooo much to say, and it makes me want her books to be as awesome and interesting as she is. 🙁
I’m really sad that this won’t be in theaters any more come December when I go home because this is exactly the kind of movie I want to see with my mom.
In case I die before the gf, I am 100% inserting “Drink all of my blood and just kill everybody” in my will as my last request. I think she’ll be game.
(I think I’ll probably have to go with, “Drink all of my blood and just kill fucking everybody,” though. If I don’t swear in it, she could well decide it’s a forgery.)
I can’t wait to reach my Rime-of-the-Ancient-Mariner phase. Just stopping randoms on their way to weddings, telling them long stories that ruin their day. What bliss!
I loved Mrs. Dracula. If an accessory could be cross-shaped, it would be cross-shaped.
Every time I saw a trailer for this movie, I was like, “So THAT’S where Rickon Stark went.” (His son is played by that weird little cherub who plays Rickon Stark.)
RICKON WATCH 2014!
It’s really distracting in the movie, because I kept thinking of how much better Arya would be handling the Dracula situation.
Someone needs to write that!
Rickon who?
OH MALLORY maybe the wife is the demon who turned Charles Dance into a vampire??
WHAT
COME ONNNN
NO WAYYYY
WHOA I LIKE THIS A LOT
I am willing to watch this movie because it is about Dracula, but also I CAN’T GET OVER the “Vlad the Impaler actually just has Sad Dad Syndrome” plot twist. I DON’T BELIEVE YOU VLAD ORLANDO-BLOOM-LOOK-A-LIKE PSYCHOPATH.
But afterwards I will go watch Dracula: Dead and Loving It and it will be the grand completion of the story circle. “Games” = “Now you are Leslie Nelson. Checkmate.”
Speaking of Mr. Orlando-Bloom-Look-A-Like Psychopath, he is REALLY throwing me off in the Hobbit movies. WHAT IS WILL TURNER DOING IN LAKE TOWN WHEN HE IS CLEARLY ALREADY LEGOLAS.
I cannot tell you how glad I am that it isn’t just me. I spent the entire second Hobbit movie going ‘wait, have they got Orlando Bloom playing two characters in this movie? That seems kinda unnecessary?’
I saw this on Sunday and I am really, really, really hoping that the weird ending means SEQUEL.
IT DOES I SAW AN ANNOUNCEMENT
I have to say I also love that the PROMOTED link at the bottom of this story is “How to Make A Perfect Steak”
hmm would you agree that Van Helsing was a terrible movie even though it had a Dracula and a some bats though? I want to trust you on this I just have to calibrate
“There are no new ideas left in the world”
not true, I have a couple
i never saw van helsing!
“It’s what would have happened if classical Universal Studios horror and the James Bond franchise had a bastard love child, which they then abandoned to be raised by The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.”
Richard Roxburgh and Hugh Jackman trying to out-camp each other, and a full on Dracula vs. Wolfman showdown at the end: GOLD.
AND like five full moons in a two-week timespan, as should be required of all werewolf movies.
I haven’t watched the movie or played the game, but this is Castlevania: Lords of Shadow the movie, right?
Bonus points for the fact that the name “Caligula” means “Little Boots” C’mon, that’s ADORABLE. I almost named my snowshoe siamese cat Caligula because of that.
For the full Caligula effect, Charles Dance really should have been fired and replaced with John Hurt:
But…but Charles Dance! You can’t fire Charles Dance!
Draculas gonna Dracula, y’all.
I enjoyed the movie immensely! The graphics (contrast between the light and dark, red and black) were stunning, music was crafted artfully with the scenes, and Luke Evans displayed an array of emotions, fierceness and artistic intensity with prowess! As far as I am concerned the movie did not disappoint; I walked away from the movie theater thoroughly entertained and looking forward to watching it again on DVD!
good god I can’t wait to see this movie, it looks like it might even be better than POMPEII, last year’s favorite.
but NOT better than francis ford coppola’s bram stoker’s dracula.
I went on Sunday morning. Loved it as well!
But then Bloom would get 2 paychecks that way! (like the late Lunchlady Doris)
Fantastic
De-lurking to let you know Van Helsing is a fabulous movie and should be enjoyed by all.
I will never forget Dominic Cooper in The Devil’s Double, and my first reaction to this post with his huge melty cinnamon face is to squawk, “Again?” Maybe they thought it was the black beard. My Dad gets this a lot and he’s Scot/Spanish.
I will never forget Dominic Cooper in The Devil's Double, and my first reaction to this post with his huge melty cinnamon face is to squawk, "Again?" Maybe they thought it was the black beard. My Dad gets this a lot and he's Scot/Spanish.
hahaha Dominic Cooper is a Vampire in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter hahaha…
I really enjoyed the movie 😛 it was good for a 2 hour distractor =) Your review was instructive and fun… i may try to do it myself sometime =)
I definitely spent most of The Hobbit 2: The Search for More Money wondering if Bloom had some kind of "Lunchlady Doris" scam going on where he gets 2 paychecks this way.
Brilliant. Laughing all the way home from the theater while reading this. Loved this movie, your observations are so on point it’s terrifying. Just be my friend. Do it.