Dracula Untold (spoilers)

[Da Boat]

I've always thought that Anne Rice introduced that.
Seems to me that before that, people bitten by vampires turned into vampires, or die.

She definitely tried to create a "process" so to speak on to create a vampire. Although it's been a while since I've read Dracula the Novel so I don't remember how the change took place in that book.

[MichaelC]

I've always thought that Anne Rice introduced that.
Seems to me that before that, people bitten by vampires turned into vampires, or die.

Not really. It's actually kind of vague. Dracula drinks several people in the novel who don't become vampires. And he feeds Mina his blood. It's not spelled out that Dracula needs to feed you his blood to cause a transformation, but does seem implied. Varney drinks people all the time without transforming them, and his own transformation is not caused by being bitten.

It really appears to be Hollywood that decided to simplify things and make it straight up a bite, before recently starting to use the more complex versions from various books.

[Ghost]

Was there actually an actor cast, or scene filmed, for Baba Yaga and Van Helsing?

And I don't know about others, but I sort of feel around the 50s would be a good time for the Dracula V Helsing thing to start. To be around back then would be a bit disconcerting, but could have different Helsing after him later, or something like that.

Samantha Barks was cast as Baba Yaga, and had apparently already shot some scenes. From her wikipedia "She portrayed Baba Yaga, an angelic woman who turns into an atrocious evil witch; however, her scenes were cut from the film." Maybe in a directors cut? And I believe Charlie Cox was to be Van Helsing, as his role is now undisclosed.

The 40s-50s could work out. Romania was a member of the Axis powers during WW2. Might be a reason for someone with a German sounding name like Van Helsing to be there. Could even work in a Frankenstein monster story in the same era, some kindof sick attempt by the Nazis at creating a wunderwaffe/ perfect Arian soldier or whatever.

I've always thought that Anne Rice introduced that.
Seems to me that before that, people bitten by vampires turned into vampires, or die.

Yeah. I was kindof expecting Mina to turn into a vampire after Vlad bit her when she fell lol.. was a little confused.

[Legato]

I can picture the sequel having him be more on the side of grey and less heroic.

[VolcanikTiger86]

Hey Guys I kinda liked the film it was a nice 90 mins of action but could it have improved yeah sure if it had been expanded.

What I would ask is how bad should Dracula be should he slaughtrer a room full of people because he feels there are flirting with his girlfriend or because of an insult he preserves as disrespectful (which is any BTW) would that be too much for the anti hero. For me the way I would write him is quite simple, he's picky he doesn’t trust a lot of people for his own reasons but if he does then you become his family and as such he will kill anyone who hurts or marks you (wither it’s a punch or just grabbing someone sharply) there are no warnings or anything no three strikes you f**k with him he kill you but at the same time he does care for those select few (cast for me would be Mireena, Mina, Lucy, the Brides and maybe Jack) anyone else he is demanding, egotistical on a hair trigger. He isn’t heroic he is selfish and wouldn’t go out of his way to hunt vampires unless he had no choice but to do it. All he does is look after his own things (his thirst, his people, quality time with his family).

[Da Boat]

Not really. It's actually kind of vague. Dracula drinks several people in the novel who don't become vampires. And he feeds Mina his blood. It's not spelled out that Dracula needs to feed you his blood to cause a transformation, but does seem implied. Varney drinks people all the time without transforming them, and his own transformation is not caused by being bitten.

It really appears to be Hollywood that decided to simplify things and make it straight up a bite, before recently starting to use the more complex versions from various books.

Seems to same thing happened with werewolves in movies with the bite thing. In the old Legends, people usually turned into werewolves cause they were damned, not cause of a bite.

Samantha Barks was cast as Baba Yaga, and had apparently already shot some scenes. From her wikipedia "She portrayed Baba Yaga, an angelic woman who turns into an atrocious evil witch; however, her scenes were cut from the film." Maybe in a directors cut? And I believe Charlie Cox was to be Van Helsing, as his role is now undisclosed.

The 40s-50s could work out. Romania was a member of the Axis powers during WW2. Might be a reason for someone with a German sounding name like Van Helsing to be there. Could even work in a Frankenstein monster story in the same era, some kindof sick attempt by the Nazis at creating a wunderwaffe/ perfect Arian soldier or whatever.



Yeah. I was kindof expecting Mina to turn into a vampire after Vlad bit her when she fell lol.. was a little confused.

In my opinion the Frank Monster and Drac should probably meet around when the Monster was created was it the 18th century, maybe? Cause if we go by the known continuity, when Reinfeld met Dracula in the Castle he seems far weaker to be the warrior of old and seemed to be stuck in that castle. Remember he needed a human to bring him to England and he needed to bring back some of the Transylvanian ground with him for him to move. Something must have happened for him prior. Maybe he faced a powerful wizard at some point.

[Surtur]

My problem is why did they make a rated PG-13 Dracula movie? I don't know. I mean, I do know..it is so they could make more money, but Dracula always seemed like something that should be rated R.

[MikeP]

My problem is why did they make a rated PG-13 Dracula movie? I don't know. I mean, I do know..it is so they could make more money, but Dracula always seemed like something that should be rated R.

It probably would have been if they were going for horror. But this is the monster version of the MCU.

[Crimson Knight]

It probably would have been if they were going for horror. But this is the monster version of the MCU.

Well, we KNOW The Mummy in 2016 is the beginning, but we don't know if Dracula Untold is actually part of that same universe.

But, it COULD be.

[Angilasman]

Exactly. A lot of you guys (and most folks on the internet) are taking this as the beginning of the shared Universal Monsters universe, but it probably won't be. The plan to start the series begins with the new Mummy in 2016, and Dracula Untold is a long in-development film essentially left over from before the planned shared universe.

They did reshoot a few scenes so that it could possibly fit into the shared universe if it was a big hit, but since that seems unlikely I think we'll be seeing a very different version of Dracula in three or four years.

[Da Boat]

I think Universal are probably throwing **** on the wall to see what sticks with their Universal Monsters properties. I think for them the success of The Mummy flicks came as a surprise and they did not probably think of branching out of(other than Scorpion King). And it's probably years later where they thought "we should probably try that with our other monsters". Which lead to Van Helsing. That didn't work. Wolf Man was probably another attempt. But then when they saw the bucks generated for the super-hero movies, esp. in a shared Universe they decided they should re-cast their monsters in a more heroic light and then came Dracula Untold.

Maybe they could do that with Brendan Fraser, Hugh Jackman and Hugo Weaving/Wolf Man 2 acting as Monsters Hunters.

[Ghost]

It probably would have been if they were going for horror. But this is the monster version of the MCU.

Now that you mention it, Marvel has a few monster comics of their own. I wonder if they..? Nah.

[MikeP]

Well, we KNOW The Mummy in 2016 is the beginning, but we don't know if Dracula Untold is actually part of that same universe.

But, it COULD be.

Well either way, they were trying to set something up from the ending. Thats why I'm ok with this version of Dracula. Sure, he's not a bastard like this novel origins, but he still impales people who piss him off. Thats just dark enough for me.

[Jared]

spoilers: (but you can guess the main story beats of the movie from the trailers)

It's considerably better than Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, which is probably the film it's most similar to, conceptually. This has better action (you can actually see it!) and is better executed overall. Or perhaps, one might view this as a darker, masculine take on Maleficent's concept.

I think some stuff may have been cut to get to the action quicker. Most of the supporting cast isn't fleshed out at all. Dracula's best friend, his adviser, the weird guy who for some reason wants serve a vampire, they flit in and out of the movie and we have barely any reason to even remember who they are.

For that matter, the movie's sub boss of sorts is the Sultan's top henchman (who I thought was Taylor Kitch), this would have been perfect to make him Radu Dracula, Vlad's turncoat brother who stayed with the Turks. It would also explain neatly why the Sultan knows about vampire lore later; Radu remembers the myths from his childhood.

There also seems to be a scene or two missing in the third act, as some people who show up when it wasn't clear they were still alive earlier.

The dragon armor looks cool, I wish we'd gotten more of a sense of its significance to Vlad. He kept it locked up in a closet in a monastery miles from his castle, after all. Just because he did nasty things for (or to? not clear on that) the Turks last time he wore it? Who did he fight when he was with the Turks? Why keep it at all?

Charles Dance really was born to play an elder vampire.

Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee both wore a ring. Luke Evans has one as, I'm presuming, the Prince's signet, if that's the proper term. Nice touch.

I would have liked to see him turn into a wolf at some point. Maybe he can but didn't learn it yet, we only see the bat-swarm. The swarm (flock?) seems to roughly correspond to his own size, which I liked.

The vampire-vision is a pretty cool here. I've seen a lot of movies just lazily make it infra-red. But here, it's like echo-location combined with infra-red or some kind of blood-highlighter.

There's one part where I was totally hearing the Batman Begins theme in my head.

I'd say it's hardly a spoiler to reveal that Dracula isn't destroyed in his 15th century origin story. I didn't mind the epilogue. I might have preferred them setting it in 19th Century London, but then, THAT story has been told, and retold a hundred times by now. Also, given how Vlad didn't seem all that shocked to be meeting his wife's apparent reincarnation, I think we can assume that the original story's events already happened. Nevermind that in the *original* story, Mina is never so much as hinted at being Drac's lost love, in fact, his only interest in her at all comes about as a means to strike at band of heroes that are hounding him.

Anyway, the one thing really missing from that scene was a modern song of some sort, ideally something classic rockish. 'Sympathy for the Devil' would have worked, except Interview with the Vampire and Fallen already did that. 'Maybe Time On My Side' or 'Paint it Black', or 'Time has Come Today' by the Chamber Brothers. See it, and see if you don't agree that the soundtrack just needs something at the very end. Hell, maybe Lorde's cover of 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World', even. It works in the trailer.

http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news...acula-untold-2
Interesting article, apparently the Master Vampire was originally going to be Caligula...yes, THAT Caligula. On looking at the trailer again, I noticed scenes that were not in the final movie, like Vlad apparently in a temple inside the cave, and drinking the blood from a chalice rather than a skull.
I will say, given that Caligula is famed for being totally bat-**** (no pun intended) crazy, it's hard to imagine how that's who Charles Dance was supposed to be playing. They could have picked almost any other Roman figure, in my opinion.


Anyway, I'd like to restate and summarize a revelation I had elsewhere:

Dracula Untold is set in the same universe as Peter Jackson's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films. (And it's a better movie when you view it that way.)
Consider:
-Middle-Earth is ancient Europe during a lost age of antediluvian history, as we know. Therefore,
- The Carpathian Mountains were the Mountains of Shadow.
- Transylvania was once Mordor.
- Broken Tooth Mountain was once Mount Doom. (In the full-shots, Broken Tooth looks jagged, and half-destroyed) Naturally, such a place remains an nexus of evil across the ages.
- Human reincarnation is obviously a thing in the Dracula verse. Vlad Dracula of House Basarab is in fact Bard of Laketown, reborn. It's not an accident that his soul would be strongly associated with the motif of the Dragon, and that he would be forced into decisive action to defend his family and his people.
-In Tolkien's work, good guys often wear silver, which is associated with goodness, while dragons and greedy characters horde gold. Vampires, as beings of demonic evil, are weak against silver because of its holy properties.
-Dracula's army-wrecking power level is unlike most other adaptions of the character. But it's not so far removed fromwhat the Dark Lord Sauron could do. Or the wraith-warrior Talion. (Shadows of Mordor is obviously based in the movie world, from the designs, the tone, to the incredible Andy Serkis soundalike they got for Gollum. )


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[Da Boat]

Jared you're quite mad, you know.

No doubt The Sultan' henchman was the best part of the movie. They should have beefed up his role.

As far as Caligula, if he would have been "it" they should have cast Malcom McDowell.