{"id":17397,"date":"2020-01-09T03:00:25","date_gmt":"2020-01-09T09:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/?p=17397"},"modified":"2020-01-08T19:53:51","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T01:53:51","slug":"the-new-dracula-is-imaginative-but-ultimately-fails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2020\/01\/the-new-dracula-is-imaginative-but-ultimately-fails.html","title":{"rendered":"The New Dracula Is Imaginative But Ultimately Fails"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Here\u2019s the bottom line on the new Netflix \/ BBC Dracula<\/em><\/a> miniseries: it tries to do too many things and ends up doing few of them well. If you\u2019re a Dracula<\/em> completist, or if you\u2019re just looking for something to fill four and a half hours of your time, by all means give it try. It\u2019s not boring, and some parts of it \u2013 mainly Sister Agatha \u2013 are quite good.<\/p>\n

But ultimately it\u2019s unsatisfying, and it falls well short of the standard set by the four major film Draculas: Bela Lugosi in 1931, Christopher Lee in 1958, Frank Langella in 1979, and Gary Oldman in 1992.<\/p>\n

Beyond here are spoilers. I think they\u2019re mild spoilers, but read at your own risk.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Image from Netflix<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The challenge of a new Dracula<\/em><\/h1>\n

How many Dracula<\/em> movies are there? Google\u2019s answer is \u201cat least 62.\u201d I haven\u2019t seen them all, but I\u2019ve seen plenty, and I\u2019ve read Bram Stoker\u2019s 1897 novel multiple times. None of the films are entirely faithful to the book \u2013 the 1977 BBC version starting Louis Jourdan is generally considered the closest.<\/p>\n

Most filmmakers condense the story \u2013 the 1931 version by Tod Browning runs only an hour and 15 minutes. The novel doesn\u2019t lend itself to sequels (Dracula dies in the end) but that hasn\u2019t stopped people from either finding imaginative ways to bring the Count back from the dead (as with the many Hammer films from the 1960s and 70s), or simply writing new stories using existing characters and themes. Fan fiction, anyone?<\/p>\n

This new version takes a unique approach. It devotes the first two of its three 90-minute episodes to a deep exploration of scenes that Stoker only mentioned in passing. And that started out rather well.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Harker in the convent<\/h1>\n

When Jonathan Harker escapes Dracula\u2019s castle, he takes refuge in a convent. Sister Agatha writes to Mina in England (page 105 in my copy of the book), telling her that Jonathan is safe but very sick. The first episode imagines what happened in the convent.<\/p>\n

And it gives Sister Agatha a last name: Van Helsing.<\/p>\n

Dolly Wells makes Sister Agatha the best character in the series. She combines some of the eccentricity of Anthony Hopkins\u2019 Van Helsing in the 1992 film with her own take on being a strong woman in a male-dominated society. Sister Agatha is a student of vampirism, not an old professor like Abraham Van Helsing. She\u2019s brought in to interview Harker about his experiences with Dracula and see what she can learn in the process. We follow along as Jonathan tells his story to Sister Agatha.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure what\u2019s behind the recent trend for non-linear storytelling. It worked in Atomic Blonde<\/em>\u00a0 because they clearly labeled when and where everything was taking place. It was a real problem for me in Netflix\u2019s The Witcher<\/a><\/em>, though less so for those who had read the books or played the games.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m very familiar with the Dracula<\/em> story. I was able to keep up with the jumping back and forth, but I still found it annoying.<\/p>\n

Danish actor Claes Bang plays Dracula as a supervillain. He\u2019s clearly evil, but he\u2019s so over the top it\u2019s entertaining. You know he has to be stopped, but you don\u2019t want to stop watching him.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t thrilled with some of what went on in Dracula\u2019s castle. The Brides were mentioned but only one was briefly shown \u2013 where\u2019s Monica Bellucci when you need her? The creatures in crates seemed to be borrowed from The Hunger<\/em> \u2013 why some of Dracula\u2019s victims turned out OK and others didn\u2019t was never explained.<\/p>\n

Still, the first episode was new and different, and rather promising.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Claes Bang as Dracula. Image from Netflix<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Voyage of the Demeter<\/em><\/h1>\n

In the book and in most of the movies, Dracula books passage on the sailing ship Demeter<\/em> to take him and his boxes of Transylvanian soil to England. Little is said about the journey, other than that the ship arrived with all the crew dead.<\/p>\n

The second episode begins with a conversation \u2013 and a chess game \u2013 between Dracula and Sister Agatha. That allows the Count to tell the story of his sea journey\u2026 for a while, anyway.<\/p>\n

This brings in new characters for both passengers and crew, characters not mentioned in the book but that surely would have existed. All of them have their own stories, in addition to the story of what happens when they realize they\u2019re being killed one at a time.<\/p>\n

As with the first episode, this was unevenly done but imaginative and entertaining.<\/p>\n

Until the final scene of episode 2.<\/p>\n

Dracula arrives in England<\/h1>\n

The 1979 Frank Langella Dracula<\/em> opens with the arrival of the Demeter<\/em> in Whitby. By the time this Dracula sets foot on English soil, the new miniseries is two thirds done.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t say much about the third episode without giving away a major plot twist and I don\u2019t want to do that. Instead, I\u2019ll repeat the old clich\u00e9 that just because you can<\/em> do something doesn\u2019t mean you should<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The imaginativeness of the first two episodes is gone in the third. Many of the scenes are forced, the plot points are implausible, and the whole thing is rushed \u2013 despite having more time for this episode than the entire films of 1931 or 1958. I don\u2019t think I would have cared about Lucy, Jack Seward, or Quincey Morris if I hadn\u2019t already known who they were.<\/p>\n

The ending is entirely unsatisfying. Sister Agatha figures out what he\u2019s really afraid of and all of sudden sunlight doesn\u2019t hurt him? And then he\u2019s no longer evil and performs a sacrificial act of compassion? It\u2019s completely inconsistent with what the series has shown us about Dracula, and therefore it\u2019s completely unbelievable.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Who is Dracula, anyway?<\/h1>\n

Bram Stoker wrote Dracula as a monster. Many people believe Dracula<\/em> was (among other things) a racist warning against Eastern European immigrants.<\/p>\n

But then Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee made him attractive. Frank Langella oozed sexiness \u2013 I\u2019m straight, but I might make an exception for Langella\u2019s Dracula. Gary Oldman\u2019s Dracula was extremely sympathetic \u2013 the subtitle of the movie is \u201clove never dies.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would be unfair to blame the inconsistency of this Dracula on Claes Bang. That fault lies with writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. They made him a supervillain, and supervillains can\u2019t be redeemed. They have to be defeated, preferably in the most melodramatic way possible \u2013 like Peter Cushing\u2019s Van Helsing turning a windmill to form a giant cross and kill Baron Meinster with its shadow in Brides of Dracula<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Since 1992 I\u2019ve been waiting for the fifth Great Dracula. Dracula 2000<\/em> started out promising, but the big reveal (Dracula is really Judas Iscariot) ruined it for me. Dracula Untold<\/em> (2014) used the historical Dracula<\/a> to create a plausible backstory for the vampire, but failed to make a viable connection to the Stoker storyline. Other Draculas of the past 28 years have been mostly forgettable.<\/p>\n

I had high hopes for the Netflix \/ BBC version, but alas, it was not to be. The concept was intriguing, the effects and other budget-related items were good enough, and the acting was excellent.<\/p>\n

But the writing killed it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hadn\u2019t planned on reviewing the new Dracula miniseries, but my Facebook comment got a little long, so I turned it into a blog post. The bottom line is that it tries to do too many things and ends up doing few of them well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":17406,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2895,2898,2901,219,2889,2892,329],"class_list":["post-17397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bbc-dracula","tag-claes-bang","tag-dolly-wells","tag-dracula","tag-netflix","tag-netflix-dracula","tag-vampires"],"yoast_head":"\nThe New Dracula Is Imaginative But Ultimately Fails<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I hadn\u2019t planned on reviewing the new Dracula miniseries, but my Facebook comment got a little long, so I turned it into a blog post. 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