Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animations are a lot more realistic-looking than the CGI "characters" in Van Helsing, so I'd say 7th Voyage of Sinbad is about a million times more interesting than Van Helsing.
"Note to filmmakers: as soon as you have one CGI character start fighting another I lose interest."
Like Legoals vs. the War Elephant...
Van Helsing is a tongue-in-jowl comic book, with no pretentions towards art whatsoever. It reminded me quite a bit of The Mask of Zorro, only a bit more over-plotted, over-stuffed, and a wee bit sillier. I must confess that I was disappointed that the film was nowhere near as bad as Dungeons and Dragons, but I had a good time anyway.
But, other than the music cues (could the music possibly be any more in your face?), it really fails to capture what's truly baaaaaad about the film.
Sure, the plot is pretty corny, and it doesn't make sense in a few places, and there is absolutely no character development other than the fact that Van Helsing considers himself a murderer and ends up killing the chick he digs (I don't count the stupid "sea" moment - him killing her is the coolest thing in the film) - all things I went in willing to forgive.
But, what's REALLY bad about the film is that Sommers has no nuance, no mystery, no subtlety in any bone in his body. Every chance he gets, he goes SO FAR over the top, it drills you into submission. He and McG are blood brothers. The excess CGI, the Phantom of the Opera ball, the swinging, the....it goes on and on (maybe the journal summary DOES get it). And, the biggest exclamation point? The one cool moment in the film - killing Anna - and he can't even let that alone. He has to "top it off" with the Jedi/Lion King "spirit in the clouds" crap.
I just wanna see Kevin J. O'Connor as Igor. He's a sorta stock player in most of Sommers' movies, starting with Deep Rising (one of my guilty pleasures) and really hitting stride as Benny in The Mummy. Him playing Igor is enough to get me to go see VH.
While the Indiana Jones films are true greats they also require quite a bit of suspension of disbelief, I think.
I think we've all seen Das Boot and are familiar with german subs--how did Indie manage to sneak aboard without a German Uniform and hide out on the sub until the ark was unloaded??? How about all those thousand year old booby traps with shiny new 8' stainless steel sawblades?? And my all time favorite--the FW-190 with it's wings shorn off passing Indy and his dad's car inside the tunnel in Holy Grail??
It depends on the context- if its a CGI character (or stop motion) all along like Yoda in AOTC or Gollum then that's one thing. But when you have a character that has been portrayed by a live actor the entire movie then I want to see that actor in the climactic fight. Some CGI/stunt doubles will likely still be used but there still should be plenty of shots showing the real actor. After two hours of some minimal effort by Hugh Jackman and Richard Roxburgh to craft their characters I felt cheated by seeing them replaced by some werewolf and werebat CGI models that had no resembelence to the actors they were standing in for.
Sommers had a similar problem in the finale to the Mummy Returns with the Scorpion King CGI model. Even if the model had been 500% improved, the finale would have been more effective if had been the Rock himself doing the fighting. At least with TMR, we had the real Brenden Frasier and Arnold Vosloo battling the Scorpion King model.
I really enjoyed "The Mummy". I thought it was a lot of fun. The sequel wasn't quite as good though.
But honestly I found Van Helsing to be boring flat out. The louder it got, the duller it became.
That Dracula has to be one of the most boring versions of the character ever.
I think Sommers was really stretching it to get Dracula, Frankenstein, and Wolf Man into one storyline. It just gets a bit too ridiculous even if you are willing to suspend your belief.
OK, I just saw this movie yesterday... and while I agree with just about every last negative review (I didnt like it at all) I feel the need to clear the air in the exploding carriage. I had to explain this to my buddy I saw it with as well becaus it happens really fast.
It wasnt a remote control on the bomb if you will recall the friar scientist had created some nitro like compound, the stuff he flicks off his finger in the lab, which detonates when it is shocked... now why it explodes at the bottom of the canyon and not on the far wall when they leap the bridge (which is one of my all time most eye rolling moments, cmon people... no more bridge jumps!) I cant tell you, but at least there is a plausable reason why it explodes when it hits the bottom of the canyon.
Yeah, my brain was about explode too, but then I got worried about the mess.
And what about The Last Days of Disco and Laurel Canyon -- Kate Beckinsale is an excellent actress when she wants to be. In VH her accent was laughably bad.
BTW, Cold Comfort Farm is available separately for under $10.
FWIW, I actually enjoyed VH -- I have no idea what anyone else was expecting, but I got Kate in a tight outfit running through the Transylvanian mud in high heels and a gloriously cheesy Dracula -- OK, so it wasn't Young Frankenstein, but up until the unbelievably lame ending, it was a pleasant diversion.
Actually, Underworld nearly kept me out of Van Helsing, what with it proving to me that Kate Beckinsale in black leather was not, in fact, enough to make me enjoy a movie. I wound up seeing it based on it being the next thing to start I hadn't seen, a selection process which really hasn't done me any favors, historically. Big thumbs up to Last Days of Disco, too (I liked Laurel Canyon, but not as much as her other movies).
When did that seperate Cold Comfort Farm come out? Ah, well, I guess the parasite DVD is still a funny anecdote.
Well obviously the models are real, so they didn't have to worry about making the shadows right and the fur move the right way and stuff like that. But they also weren't trying to make the motions as dynamic. I thought the worst looking thing was Van Helsing jumping on the horses back onto carriage.
Same here. The only CGI that I had issue with was whenever they tried to animate an actual person. I thought all the CGI creatures were very well done.
I caught some of the "Ebert and Roeper" review for VH this past week, and I about fell off the couch after Roeper gave it a thumbs down and then Ebert gave it a thumbs up. Roeper was squealing and said "Are YOU KIDDING me?" Roeper's body language was the funniest part of his reaction to Ebert's thumbs up.
After wasting my Friday morning (opening day) seeing this film all I can say is that I wanted my Van Money back. It felt like I watching someone play a video game. It could have been so much better if they made it more schlocky. As it is, it felt like it took itself too seriously at moments that it should have had cheesier lines.
Don't get me started on the CGI. A personal low for me was watching the ship sail in a straight line without being effected by the physics of the sea.
"A personal low for me was watching the ship sail in a straight line without being effected by the physics of the sea."
Physics? You're looking for scientific realism in a tongue-in-cheek, campy, comic book romp?
No wonder so many of you didn't like it. The filmmakers were goofing around making a campy monster movie and the rest of you were expecting or demanding realism.
I don't expect realism when I see a monster movie (or, really, any movie), but I expect believability. The two aren't the same thing; the latter requires the filmmakers to sell what they're showing on screen to me, so that it doesn't set off alarm bells in my head. If a ship plowing through the sea without apparently interacting with its environment is jarring, calling attention to its unlikeliness to the point where someone in the audience says, hmm, that doesn't look right, then the filmmakers probably fell short of their goals with that shot.
There was a lot in Van Helsing that was less than it could, and should, have been. Often far less than what I was expecting. That's what's at the heart of my not much liking Van Helsing, not some set of conditions that nothing in its genre can possibly meet.