Dracula Untold

So I saw Dracula Untold, and it was pretty meh. I'm always willing to watch a movie based on an old-school movie monster-I'm one of the only people to have seen I, Frankenstein earlier this year for instance-and from the trailer I was pretty excited for a big special effects movie with giant bat fists and so on. So it's kind of a disappointment when all the big effects are the ones that are in trailer, and the "untold" story of Dracula is your run-of-the-mill superhero origin story.

It's disappointing because there's some promise at the start of the movie. There's some Game of Thrones elements dealing with internal politics of the Ottoman Empire and a whole cast of Prince Vlad's advisers and lieutenants, but it's all quickly over once he gains his vampire powers. Then it's the standard "learning to use your powers" and "hiding your powers from others" montages. After that every other character sort of fades to the background as we focus on the inevitable showdown with the big bad guy.

I love superhero movies, but at this point in history the origin story is the weakest superhero story you can tell.  This is the monster movie version of The Legend of Hercules, and that is a sad thing indeed.