At the turn of the century, the young lord Vlad and his family live a peaceful life ruling over their small kingdom, but when a Turk warlord demands from Vlad a thousand boys and his son to create an army Vlad seeks a terrible power that will allow him to protect his kingdom and family from the Turks at a terrible cost. As his kingdom is being threatened by the Turks, young prince Vlad Tepes must become a monster feared by his own people in order to obtain the power needed to protect his own family, and the families of his kingdom. I love this movie! First of all, I am super-stoked about the Universal "Dark Universe" franchise getting the kick-off with The Mummy. So I have been going over my excellent, classic Universal Monster movies (I am only missing TIM and TCFTBL compilation DVDs, which I will get) and I am going full-immersion with the genre again! While this film does not attempt to "reboot" the 1931 Dracula film, it is a fun, action- packed, fantasy-type thriller. It reminds me of a cross between a Vampire film and The Lord of The Rings (or The Last Samurai). Luke Evans is the man, truly. The guy was born to play these "period"- epics (like his role in The Hobbit films and in The Raven and The Three Musketeers) and I loved him as Gaston in the new BATB. The only reason I couldn't give it an unqualified 10-stars is due to the regrettable reliance on CGI- effects. Ah, I guess it's to be expected, these days. They serve the story and I just have to work on "suspending disbelief" a bit more than I would otherwise. But, that aside, the film does work with action, horror-elements and pathos. It is a good story, along the lines of "Game of Thrones" and films of that ilk. It rocks! See it! I don't mind that much that the movie has little to do with history(Vlad wasn't a vampire, he was born in Transylvania but he ruled Wallachia, he fought the Turks for more than 3 days, the Sultan never died etc.) but this movie doesn't have much logic to it: he turns against the Turks on a whim(because, apparently, his wife would rather see a war with the Ottoman empire, than her son be taken hostage) then thinking he can't win, without even trying, he instantly tries to cheat his way out by going to the vampire(not knowing if he will insta-kill him or not, like it almost happened the last time), without making any defense preparations in his leave. During this time, the Turks magically summon an army and are already attacking Vlad's Castle, although the border distance from Transylvania and the Ottoman Empire, at that time, was over 200km(that would make Erich von Manstein and Heinz Guderian, the architects of Blitzkrieg via Armored Warfare, jelly), not to mention that the Turks would have to attack fortified mountain passes to even get into Transylvania…and that neither Transylvania or Wallachia payed tribute to the Ottoman empire at that time. It would make me think the Turks have supernatural powers that include premonition and super-fast travel speed, which they make use again to send an army over the border and catch up with the Transylvanians(moving away to another castle where "they would be safer") although they take precautions and move fast, in less than 1 day(my guess is that the Turks were using hax). Anyway, Vlad catches up to this 2nd Turkish army and destroys it, then the next day the Turks again pull a Flash and start attacking the castle, but this time they make use of another hax, they went through the castle walls as Vlad was busy killing their 3rd army, get to Vlad's wife and push her over into a massive fall from the castle, Vlad tries to help, fails, and the wife, instead of thanking Vlad for the sacrifices he made and realizing how stupid she was, she again asks Vlad to do something stupid, and drink her blood(to permanently become a vampire), which he does… the end disappoints me the most, it took 600 years for the Master Vampire to call for Vlad's aid, but, although the movie makes it undeniable that it uses the Christian dogma, and that there is heaven and hell, demons and vampires, apparently Buddhism is also there, as Vlad's wife magically reincarnates… facepalm material. The story is poorly written, it always feels that a lot of the plot elements are missing, I'm thinking they cut a lot of scenes out, which would have made it a more decent movie, but because that it has nothing to do with history(even less than Bram Stoker's Book), Bram Stoker's Book(at least it's a story about a Vampire named Dracula, which relates the two), logic and that the characters themselves seemed to be plagued by emotions and stupidity, I can't rate this higher than 4 out of 10. You gain nothing and lose nothing by watching or not watching it. It's a story arc that wouldn't be out of place on Game of Thrones, except it lacks for the HBO program's dense and surprising dramatic reflexes.
Desisar replied
362 weeks ago