Superhero Media: Dracula Untold

Hey, remember the "Dark Universe" that Universal pictures tried to get going with that version of The Mummy that everyone (but me) seemed to hate? Well the first foray into the concept was with Dracula Untold, which, like The Mummy, was pretty poorly reviewed, but I found it reasonably entertaining. The concept of Dracula Untold, of casting Vlad the Impaler as a tragic hero, forced to give up his humanity to save his people is... pretty interesting? The real failing of this film is, for me, not that it's a bit crap (but what do you expect it's a film where Dracula defeats the Turkish army single-handed?) but that it can't help being a bit racist. Not that I'm accusing the cast and crew of being deliberately Islamaphoic, but it's pretty hard to not look that way when the literal text of the film is Vlad the Impaler trying to prevent a takeover from the most advanced nation on the planet at the time. Like, I know there's framing of slavery and all that, but the basic through-line is that it's better to be an undead monster and lose your family than it is to be Muslim. Gross.

What are cool are the fight scenes, with Dracula cleaving through ranks of soldiers like an act of god more so than an actual character. For players of Vampire The Masquerade, like myself, seeing what is essentially a low-generation Inconnu (probably, Dracula is pretty complicated in the World of Darkness) represented in a film the way they're discussed in the fiction. All-in Dracula Untold frames vampires really well, as monsters of folklore that aren't understood and hold such godlike power that fighting against them is essentially pointless. After seeing waves and waves of vampires mowed down in the Blade and Underworld films, it's a nice change of pace that this film only really has a couple of scenes with more than one vampire in it. The finale, where the bulk of the Transylvanian refugees are turned and Dracula has to destroy them to stop them overrunning the planet, is a little much, and the entire thing ends with more of a whimper.

Trying to frame the classic Gothic/"Universal" monsters as heroes isn't a new concept, and it has worked very well in the past, but the problem with the "Dark Universe", at least as I see it, is that it focuses more on the heroic aspect than the monstrous. Losing one's humanity for increased power has a literary tradition stretching almost as far back as Gilgamesh, but Hollywood has always struggled with the concept, as the dominating model centers the heroic over the tragic. Again, I really think the Dark Universe could have been interesting, if not reasonably good, had it had another film or two to get going. Hell, the Legendary Godzilla franchise did really well with just four films (as of time of writing), easily being the best non-Marvel Cinematic Universe, so the eventual team-up film that never happened that probably would have featured Dracula, the Mummy, Mister Hyde and Frankenstein's Monster could have least have been fun to watch.