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Dracula Untold: I Wield the Fist of Bats!
Oct. 14th, 2014 11:51 amEven before I saw this 300ed-up version of Vlad Tsepes's back-story, the part I couldn't quite get over had to be each trailer's implication that the only way "Lord Impaler" could ever possibly have hoped to pit his tiny country's might against that of the Ottoman Empire was by agreeing to let himself be turned into a vampire. I mean, let's simply disregard the fact that Transylvania/Wallachia, much like the rest of the Balkans, had been fighting that particular war in guerilla-style skirmishes since roughly the Byzantine era; let's pretend that Mehmet II (here played by tiny, wide-set, liquid-eyed Dominic West [better known as Howard Stark, from Captain America: The First Avenger], who seems to have become Hollywood's current faux-Muslim of choice) would lead his own army into battle just to chastise his former janissary/friend Vlad instead of doing the truly smart thing he really did, which was A) to stay at home and B) to send Vlad's little brother and fellow royal hostage instead, the far more willingly Islamicized Radu Dracula, who had a claim to the throne which made him look like a slightly more positive alternative to crazy-ass zealot and sadist Vlad.
(I also love the implication that Vlad only started impaling people in order to make the Christians he was sent against as a war leader capitulate to the Turks more easily, killing "one village to save ten," and certainly didn't continue to do that when he went home, oh no no no! 'Cause that would make him look less like a morally-conflicted returning hero and more like...um, what he was, basically: the long-absent heir to the throne, already distrusted for his co-habitation with the Ottomans, re-claiming his slot by sticking every person who questioned his right to on an ever-higher forest of stakes.)
So okay, if you go into this thinking you're going to get even a vague approximation of the "true" story of Dracula then basically, your head's going to explode about five minutes in. Yet once/if you accept that its narrative has about as much to do with history as (again) 300: Rise of an Empire's does, you can instead enjoy it for what it is--a fast, cracky, PG-rated fantasy A/U with horror trappings pitting a country so small you can apparently fit its entire population into one monastery against an evil empire so overkill-obsessed that they send every damn janissary and foot-soldier they have against them. Oh yeah, and a version of the world in which Wallachia is somehow the all-important gateway to a Muslim invasion of Europe in general, but lay that by.;)
Luke Evans plays Vlad as a reluctant former killer trying to live down the spectre of his own actions, the legend of "Lord Impaler." He's a prince who wants to be able to promise his people peace and change, to have faith that these promises he makes won't be inevitably overturned one day...I mean, it's been ten years thus far, which should surely count for something. In his heart, however, he knows better, and his scar-covered body reminds him every day that one day, he'll be forced to return to his old ways: "Men do not fear sword," he tells his wife, Malena (Sarah Gadon), sadly. "They fear monsters."
Luckily, however--the very same day the Turks do return, as it happens--he trips across a secret weapon which make actually turn the tide in his favour: Broken-tooth Mountain, where a certain cave full of piled skulls and paved with crushed bone contains the undead creature who was once another man who sold his soul to Satan in order to gain power, only to find himself trapped forever in darkness. This nameless master vampire, as a portrait on the scroll which tells his story reveals, is played by Charles Dance, who offers Vlad a challenge: drink his tainted blood, gain the vampire's powers, and if he can make it to the end of this exclusive three-day trial without giving in to his own fierce thirst for human blood, then he'll return to life with soul intact. Fail, and not only does Vlad stay a vampire forever, but his malign mentor will also be released from the cave, finally free to prey his way across the world.
Naturally, Vlad takes the challenge, knowing that if he doesn't then Mehmet will demand his son Ingeres also become a royal hostage/janissary trainee. And as we all come in knowing, he fails...quite spectacularly.
This is where the fun comes in, of course, since the mechanics of vampirism in Dracula Untold are at least as CGI-intensive and whackadoodle as one could predict. There's the scene in which Vlad discovers he can turn into a flock of bats, then scatters himself back and forth across an entire field full of Turks until they're dead, before making a skewer-forest of the bodies. By the time he and his have retreated to the aforementioned monastery, where the revelation of his current nature creates a momentary morale snag that ends in a sullen Transylvanian stand-off ("You're a monster!" "Yeah, well, you still can't kill me, so just do what I say and shut the hell up!"), Vlad switches to puppeting every bat in the area long-distance, which is pretty impressive, up until the point he realizes that the guy he thinks is Mehmet is just some dude wearing his armor (sneaky!), and that janissaries have snuck into the monastery while he wasn't looking to slaughter everybody. Ingeres is captured, Malena plummets from the tower Princess River-style and hits the ground in Vlad's arms just as te sun starts to rise, begging him to sacrifice his humanity by drinking her blood so he can finally have the full Satanic spread he'll need to rescue their son. And thus it happens: apotheosis, in reverse.
The climactic battle which follows is pretty rad, from the artificial eclipse created through weather manipulation--"Shouldn't the sun be coming up?" one guy says; "What's that?" another adds; Mehmet, squinting: "It is the prince, coming to us." And there he is in the distance, stomping along alone, wreathed in black cloud and lightning--to the influx of dying Transylvanians Vlad's just made into his personal vamp corps, all of whom can also do the eddy-of-bats trick. Vlad duels Mehmet in a tent stuffed top-to-bottom with tribute silver that drains his inhuman powers (hey, did you know that the touch of a wooden stake apparently causes flesh and even armor to degrade on contact? 'Cause I myself did not know that, but here it does), only to gain victory through his remaining inherent stubborn savagery. And then, when his "subjects" want to kill or turn Ingeres because he's now "the enemy," he lets the storm dissipate, allowing the sun to kill everybody...even himself. (This is then undone by a crazy proto-Renfield Magyar dude who feeds Vlad his blood, but hey, man...you tried.)
Overall, therefore, I would agree with Time film critic Richard Corliss that Dracula Untold is "not nearly as awful, or offal, as its critical odor." It's a sombre cartoon, operatic to a high degree, full of weird costume design, minimal blood-splatter and thrusts that only do offscreen damage. And by the end, it's done its level best to turn Vlad Tsepes into literal zombie Jesus, a slightly-less-redwashing of truly epic proportions. Blah!
(I also love the implication that Vlad only started impaling people in order to make the Christians he was sent against as a war leader capitulate to the Turks more easily, killing "one village to save ten," and certainly didn't continue to do that when he went home, oh no no no! 'Cause that would make him look less like a morally-conflicted returning hero and more like...um, what he was, basically: the long-absent heir to the throne, already distrusted for his co-habitation with the Ottomans, re-claiming his slot by sticking every person who questioned his right to on an ever-higher forest of stakes.)
So okay, if you go into this thinking you're going to get even a vague approximation of the "true" story of Dracula then basically, your head's going to explode about five minutes in. Yet once/if you accept that its narrative has about as much to do with history as (again) 300: Rise of an Empire's does, you can instead enjoy it for what it is--a fast, cracky, PG-rated fantasy A/U with horror trappings pitting a country so small you can apparently fit its entire population into one monastery against an evil empire so overkill-obsessed that they send every damn janissary and foot-soldier they have against them. Oh yeah, and a version of the world in which Wallachia is somehow the all-important gateway to a Muslim invasion of Europe in general, but lay that by.;)
Luke Evans plays Vlad as a reluctant former killer trying to live down the spectre of his own actions, the legend of "Lord Impaler." He's a prince who wants to be able to promise his people peace and change, to have faith that these promises he makes won't be inevitably overturned one day...I mean, it's been ten years thus far, which should surely count for something. In his heart, however, he knows better, and his scar-covered body reminds him every day that one day, he'll be forced to return to his old ways: "Men do not fear sword," he tells his wife, Malena (Sarah Gadon), sadly. "They fear monsters."
Luckily, however--the very same day the Turks do return, as it happens--he trips across a secret weapon which make actually turn the tide in his favour: Broken-tooth Mountain, where a certain cave full of piled skulls and paved with crushed bone contains the undead creature who was once another man who sold his soul to Satan in order to gain power, only to find himself trapped forever in darkness. This nameless master vampire, as a portrait on the scroll which tells his story reveals, is played by Charles Dance, who offers Vlad a challenge: drink his tainted blood, gain the vampire's powers, and if he can make it to the end of this exclusive three-day trial without giving in to his own fierce thirst for human blood, then he'll return to life with soul intact. Fail, and not only does Vlad stay a vampire forever, but his malign mentor will also be released from the cave, finally free to prey his way across the world.
Naturally, Vlad takes the challenge, knowing that if he doesn't then Mehmet will demand his son Ingeres also become a royal hostage/janissary trainee. And as we all come in knowing, he fails...quite spectacularly.
This is where the fun comes in, of course, since the mechanics of vampirism in Dracula Untold are at least as CGI-intensive and whackadoodle as one could predict. There's the scene in which Vlad discovers he can turn into a flock of bats, then scatters himself back and forth across an entire field full of Turks until they're dead, before making a skewer-forest of the bodies. By the time he and his have retreated to the aforementioned monastery, where the revelation of his current nature creates a momentary morale snag that ends in a sullen Transylvanian stand-off ("You're a monster!" "Yeah, well, you still can't kill me, so just do what I say and shut the hell up!"), Vlad switches to puppeting every bat in the area long-distance, which is pretty impressive, up until the point he realizes that the guy he thinks is Mehmet is just some dude wearing his armor (sneaky!), and that janissaries have snuck into the monastery while he wasn't looking to slaughter everybody. Ingeres is captured, Malena plummets from the tower Princess River-style and hits the ground in Vlad's arms just as te sun starts to rise, begging him to sacrifice his humanity by drinking her blood so he can finally have the full Satanic spread he'll need to rescue their son. And thus it happens: apotheosis, in reverse.
The climactic battle which follows is pretty rad, from the artificial eclipse created through weather manipulation--"Shouldn't the sun be coming up?" one guy says; "What's that?" another adds; Mehmet, squinting: "It is the prince, coming to us." And there he is in the distance, stomping along alone, wreathed in black cloud and lightning--to the influx of dying Transylvanians Vlad's just made into his personal vamp corps, all of whom can also do the eddy-of-bats trick. Vlad duels Mehmet in a tent stuffed top-to-bottom with tribute silver that drains his inhuman powers (hey, did you know that the touch of a wooden stake apparently causes flesh and even armor to degrade on contact? 'Cause I myself did not know that, but here it does), only to gain victory through his remaining inherent stubborn savagery. And then, when his "subjects" want to kill or turn Ingeres because he's now "the enemy," he lets the storm dissipate, allowing the sun to kill everybody...even himself. (This is then undone by a crazy proto-Renfield Magyar dude who feeds Vlad his blood, but hey, man...you tried.)
Overall, therefore, I would agree with Time film critic Richard Corliss that Dracula Untold is "not nearly as awful, or offal, as its critical odor." It's a sombre cartoon, operatic to a high degree, full of weird costume design, minimal blood-splatter and thrusts that only do offscreen damage. And by the end, it's done its level best to turn Vlad Tsepes into literal zombie Jesus, a slightly-less-redwashing of truly epic proportions. Blah!
