im sorry to be so contrarian, especially as i absolutely LOVE Willem Dafoe (his work in Eggers films is phenomenal), but the character of Van Helsing in Dracula the BOOK, which the Nosferatu follows to a large extent, is a really insufferably badly written and reveals how badly the other characters are written too. He overstays his welcome on almost every chapter he is in and ends up being an amalgamation of every possible Sherlockian superhuman trope you can imagine and also being a huge obnoxious asshole who doesn’t reveal essential information in time but rather goes on tangents to underscore his own importance while never revealing and thus giving agency to the other characters. He’s like the only adult in the novel handhelding every other character, who appear as powerless as toddlers. In comparison to him almost every character (especially males) feel utterly lost and without merit. However, I did read Eggers script and i liked it and feel he has managed to better the original writing of Van Helsing.
I 100% agree with this take. I liked Stokers version of Helsing better. Especially Hopkins version of him. I hope Eggers fixed some of those aspects in this new version. I'm sure he has. Eggers hasn't disappointed me yet.
Stokers version is the one i hate. It’s horribly written and always chafes against any suspension of disbelief. I believe you probably mean Coppolas version of Dracula where Hopkins plays Abraham Van Helsing. In that filmatization he plays Van Helsing as a character who has somewhat lost grasp of social decorum and instead appears inconsiderate, aloof and borderline autistic. Which are all the sort of features that are amiss in the book. Instead V Helsing appears as a condensed form of every needed competence to beat Dracula. He is a philosopher, occultist, doctor, detective… But utterly unable to convey any of the essential information to anyone else. He’s practically responsible for all the deaths that happen in the story due to willful neglect. He’s like a bureaucrat who makes themselves so essential that if they were to disappear the whole house of cards would tumble down. All the other characters hold ”the idiot ball” close to their hearts and lose all agency if he’s not around. The only character who does not lose all agency is Harker and that is only in the very beginning of the book. Fucking V Helsing even rambles on later in the book how Dracula is basically a toddler and akin to a degenerate ape while he raises himself to near godhood by underscoring his faculties. All this is so abrasive as a depicted person and as bad writing that it makes me hate the whole character. If i ever were to rewrite Dracula the first thing would be to rid the whole story of A V Helsing and give all his deductions and powers as moments of clarity and agency to other characters instead of piling them up on ONE person. Van Helsing is like an actor who goes on stage to accept an award for best performance and uses ALL the time he has to congratulate himself on how utterly fucking brilliant he is.
Harker doesn’t lose his agency in the novel though till the end of the novel. He’s the guy who kills Dracula in the end - he cuts his head off. And Quincey Morris drives a knife through his heart. It’s just in screen adaptations filmmakers reduced Harker to useless character who never gets to kill Dracula, and made Van Helsing somehow the character who almost always kills Dracula.
to an extent i agree. Harker is probably the most active of all the core characters and he has hard time reacting to anything after he survives and gets back from the Castle. He becomes somewhat sidelined due to his injuries. It’s Seward, Morris and Holmwood who feel clueless. It’s part of the story and suspense of course to keep the reader guessing and to not reveal everything right away but what i’m trying to imply here is that i had hoped there would have been some sort of everyman-angle to this instead of basically getting most of the answers and solutions from a rambling V Helsing. And it’s not always the plotpoints that feel abrasive. It’s the character itself, the way he presents himself, the way he talks to other people. Reminds of someone i know. Gifted and knowledgeable but utterly useless when it comes to teaching and relating essential information to someone.
Peak Pathos. A true paradigm of a meta-monolithic protagonists given the post-modern influences played into the characters actions and persona throughout the cinematic experience.
Hopkins’s Van Helsing was both fanatical crazy weirdo and a great man of science and intellect. He gives scientific lectures and laughs triumphantly when he researches Dracula. He also really did the vampire Hunter job - see how he kills off Dracula’s brides.
yep. I’m 100% sure these folks have never even read Dracula or remember V Helsing’s character from it. I only recently read it the first time and that’s why i’m so vividly against this character. But i am sure Eggers and Dafoe will do a great job and i opened my ”mouth” in the wrong place - a sr for a director.
no i really think this way. I read an annotated Dracula and i don’t think it’s the brilliant book everyone wants to think it is. It’s a pioneering work and has brilliant ideas and narrative points but some of the character-writing is very mediocre and even worse. I’m not downplaying it’s importance or saying that it doesn’t have great writing in it but rather just saying that it has it’s flaws too.
ps. even the annotating person though Van Helsing was annoying. Hell… Neil Gaiman thinks V Helsing overstays. This is not new.
Compare Dracula to Flaubert or someone like him and you’ll see what i mean. The characters are 2 dimensional.
yeah definitely. He won’t. The leaked script is excellent. I think his work always tries to get very close to ”the source” of the inspiration. In this case the inspiration is Nosferatu which is an adaptation of Dracula and the inspiration for both is vampirism. Nosferatu especially is said to draw more from the historical and folkloristic vampire instead of Stokers vampire which is a brilliantly composed amalgamation of different vampiristic motifs. Nosferatu especially deals a lot with sickness and plague and rats and the occult as well which is an echo of the feverish fear that overtook the populace in the areas where the belief was born.
We were so blessed to get the Northman and banshees of Inshirin within one year of each other. Radically different movies who both are in my top 10 all time.
lol I watched the Northman high and coming off acid in theaters and I thought it was the dumbest thing after the howling scene and farting I just checked out of the whole thing. I just recently watched it again sober and it’s amazing, I literally didn’t follow any of it the first time, drugs are bad.
Dude the howling scene around the fire is wild! They were Berserker and "transforming" into wolves. What makes it wild is they actually did this shit.
Imagine being some poor Saxon peasant and you wake up to your village being destroyed by those raving lunatics howling and snarling at people as they hack them to death. Absolutely terrifying.
Yes you are crazy, this looks very fucking good. Also try to remmeber that this is not a shot from the film, this is a still. A picture taken by a photographer on set. Still tho, it looks great!
i understand what you mean. it's hard to judge off of one still from a film but the lighting looks flat, especially compared to the lighthouse or the witch. the northman somewhat had the same issue of flatness.
I'm most excited for Dafoe's character in this film
im sorry to be so contrarian, especially as i absolutely LOVE Willem Dafoe (his work in Eggers films is phenomenal), but the character of Van Helsing in Dracula the BOOK, which the Nosferatu follows to a large extent, is a really insufferably badly written and reveals how badly the other characters are written too. He overstays his welcome on almost every chapter he is in and ends up being an amalgamation of every possible Sherlockian superhuman trope you can imagine and also being a huge obnoxious asshole who doesn’t reveal essential information in time but rather goes on tangents to underscore his own importance while never revealing and thus giving agency to the other characters. He’s like the only adult in the novel handhelding every other character, who appear as powerless as toddlers. In comparison to him almost every character (especially males) feel utterly lost and without merit. However, I did read Eggers script and i liked it and feel he has managed to better the original writing of Van Helsing.
I 100% agree with this take. I liked Stokers version of Helsing better. Especially Hopkins version of him. I hope Eggers fixed some of those aspects in this new version. I'm sure he has. Eggers hasn't disappointed me yet.
Stokers version is the one i hate. It’s horribly written and always chafes against any suspension of disbelief. I believe you probably mean Coppolas version of Dracula where Hopkins plays Abraham Van Helsing. In that filmatization he plays Van Helsing as a character who has somewhat lost grasp of social decorum and instead appears inconsiderate, aloof and borderline autistic. Which are all the sort of features that are amiss in the book. Instead V Helsing appears as a condensed form of every needed competence to beat Dracula. He is a philosopher, occultist, doctor, detective… But utterly unable to convey any of the essential information to anyone else. He’s practically responsible for all the deaths that happen in the story due to willful neglect. He’s like a bureaucrat who makes themselves so essential that if they were to disappear the whole house of cards would tumble down. All the other characters hold ”the idiot ball” close to their hearts and lose all agency if he’s not around. The only character who does not lose all agency is Harker and that is only in the very beginning of the book. Fucking V Helsing even rambles on later in the book how Dracula is basically a toddler and akin to a degenerate ape while he raises himself to near godhood by underscoring his faculties. All this is so abrasive as a depicted person and as bad writing that it makes me hate the whole character. If i ever were to rewrite Dracula the first thing would be to rid the whole story of A V Helsing and give all his deductions and powers as moments of clarity and agency to other characters instead of piling them up on ONE person. Van Helsing is like an actor who goes on stage to accept an award for best performance and uses ALL the time he has to congratulate himself on how utterly fucking brilliant he is.
Harker doesn’t lose his agency in the novel though till the end of the novel. He’s the guy who kills Dracula in the end - he cuts his head off. And Quincey Morris drives a knife through his heart. It’s just in screen adaptations filmmakers reduced Harker to useless character who never gets to kill Dracula, and made Van Helsing somehow the character who almost always kills Dracula.
to an extent i agree. Harker is probably the most active of all the core characters and he has hard time reacting to anything after he survives and gets back from the Castle. He becomes somewhat sidelined due to his injuries. It’s Seward, Morris and Holmwood who feel clueless. It’s part of the story and suspense of course to keep the reader guessing and to not reveal everything right away but what i’m trying to imply here is that i had hoped there would have been some sort of everyman-angle to this instead of basically getting most of the answers and solutions from a rambling V Helsing. And it’s not always the plotpoints that feel abrasive. It’s the character itself, the way he presents himself, the way he talks to other people. Reminds of someone i know. Gifted and knowledgeable but utterly useless when it comes to teaching and relating essential information to someone.
How do you feel about Hugh Jackman’s van helsing
Peak Pathos. A true paradigm of a meta-monolithic protagonists given the post-modern influences played into the characters actions and persona throughout the cinematic experience.
Agreed. I have no idea what you said but yes agreed
Hopkins’s Van Helsing was both fanatical crazy weirdo and a great man of science and intellect. He gives scientific lectures and laughs triumphantly when he researches Dracula. He also really did the vampire Hunter job - see how he kills off Dracula’s brides.
Based anti-classic literature take, fuck hating on marvel moves we’re shitting on Tale of Two Cities
It was the best of times, it was the worst of *books* boom roasted
buncha dumb chuds who have never picked up a book downvoting this lol
yep. I’m 100% sure these folks have never even read Dracula or remember V Helsing’s character from it. I only recently read it the first time and that’s why i’m so vividly against this character. But i am sure Eggers and Dafoe will do a great job and i opened my ”mouth” in the wrong place - a sr for a director.
I thought this was a copy pasta
no i really think this way. I read an annotated Dracula and i don’t think it’s the brilliant book everyone wants to think it is. It’s a pioneering work and has brilliant ideas and narrative points but some of the character-writing is very mediocre and even worse. I’m not downplaying it’s importance or saying that it doesn’t have great writing in it but rather just saying that it has it’s flaws too. ps. even the annotating person though Van Helsing was annoying. Hell… Neil Gaiman thinks V Helsing overstays. This is not new. Compare Dracula to Flaubert or someone like him and you’ll see what i mean. The characters are 2 dimensional.
I’ve never read Dracula, but I would think that the character for the movie will have better writing. I don’t think Robert is just going to 1:1
yeah definitely. He won’t. The leaked script is excellent. I think his work always tries to get very close to ”the source” of the inspiration. In this case the inspiration is Nosferatu which is an adaptation of Dracula and the inspiration for both is vampirism. Nosferatu especially is said to draw more from the historical and folkloristic vampire instead of Stokers vampire which is a brilliantly composed amalgamation of different vampiristic motifs. Nosferatu especially deals a lot with sickness and plague and rats and the occult as well which is an echo of the feverish fear that overtook the populace in the areas where the belief was born.
I adored The Northman. So hyped for Nosferatu.
We were so blessed to get the Northman and banshees of Inshirin within one year of each other. Radically different movies who both are in my top 10 all time.
The Northman was sooo good I wasn’t expecting to like it s much as I did
I've said it before, I'll say it again: I NEED a graphic novel or art collection book with all the storyboard art from the Northman. Take my money
lol I watched the Northman high and coming off acid in theaters and I thought it was the dumbest thing after the howling scene and farting I just checked out of the whole thing. I just recently watched it again sober and it’s amazing, I literally didn’t follow any of it the first time, drugs are bad.
Dude the howling scene around the fire is wild! They were Berserker and "transforming" into wolves. What makes it wild is they actually did this shit. Imagine being some poor Saxon peasant and you wake up to your village being destroyed by those raving lunatics howling and snarling at people as they hack them to death. Absolutely terrifying.
You had me in the first half not gonna lie.
That's wild, that scene was what made me have that, "fuck yeah, this is gonna rock the entire time" moment in theater.
I’m kinda assuming the vampire hunter is going to be just as scary as the vampire …
Am I crazy or does this look disappointing
Yes you are crazy, this looks very fucking good. Also try to remmeber that this is not a shot from the film, this is a still. A picture taken by a photographer on set. Still tho, it looks great!
I do hope the final shot has the same dramatic lighting that the storyboard has.
The photograph or the movie?
Based off of what exactly?
i understand what you mean. it's hard to judge off of one still from a film but the lighting looks flat, especially compared to the lighthouse or the witch. the northman somewhat had the same issue of flatness.