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Paul Anderson to Head Castlevania Film
Via 1up, the news on the Coming Soon site is not good. Paul W.S. Anderson is to film a Castlevania movie, beginning next year. From the article: "Anderson's script spans many time periods but mostly takes place in 15th century Transylvania. It represents a fresh take on the much-filmed Dracula legend, mining back to its genesis in the story of the Romanian prince Vlad the Impaler. 'You could almost call this movie Dracula Begins,' Anderson said. 'It's an action/horror project in the vein of Underworld and Blade, and hopefully it will be a big franchise for us, Rogue co-president Andrew Rona said." But ... Underworld and Blade are nothing like Castlevania.
Vampire killing is vampire killing is vampire killing.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Butchering 2 franchises with one film takes a special "talent".
It was only recently confirmed that Warren Ellis is writing a Castlevania animated film.
Did the owners sell the live-action and animated movie rights to different people at the same time?
Don't you like a little good old fashioned Alien wrassling?
Who knew that Predators learned all their moves from watching Hulk Hogan?
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Flaming holy water and a whip.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0027271/
... aka Alien vs. Predator (Germany) (USA: short title)
... aka AVP (USA: promotional abbreviation)
... aka Resident Evil (France) (Germany)
Director - filmography
(In Production) (2000s) (1990s)
1. Deathrace 3000 (2008) (announced)
2. Man with the Football (2008) (announced)
3. Castlevania (2007) (announced)
4. AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004)
5. Resident Evil (2002)
6. The Sight (2000) (TV)
7. Soldier (1998/I) (as Paul Anderson)
8. Event Horizon (1997) (as Paul Anderson)
9. Mortal Kombat (1995) (as Paul Anderson)
10. Mortal Kombat: Behind the Scenes (1995) (V)
11. Shopping (1994) (as Paul Anderson)
Based on this either you will be really really excited, or really really pissed off. I am the latter.
I hope the soundtrack has some throwbacks to the video game. I love that music.
Paul Anderson produces awful movies but, in my opinion, they are mostly awful because he stays true to the original source material which is (mostly) stupid. Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat were really bad movies but they were pretty decent adaptations of the videogames which spawned the movies.
... Videogame movies suck mainly because the stories in videogames are awful; most games are written with the main focus being on getting a "hook" that will look good in a 200 word review.
I've said this before and no one listens
Are they going to incorporate the storylines from the originals? and if so whos going to play Grant DaNasty, Sypha Belnades, and Allucard
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
... it's still Vampire Killer to me. That's what happens if you memorize what's hidden behind every bloody candle and chest in the entire game.
Event Horizon, Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil were all enjoyable movies, the latter two being the best examples of video game movie adaptions done right. AvP wasn't good, I'll admit to that, but even Soldier was a fun ride, a nice throwback to 80s action movies.
Give him a chance, he may not be the most talented director around but hes far from the worst.
it's perfect! ;-)
So what the fuck happened? The movie is so bad that most gamers prefer to not even mention it and instead talk about Doom and Tombraider as examples of bad game movies despite the fact that both were at least financial successes.
WC the movie wasn't. A financial and critical failure. But why? Hell, it can't even blame failure on the director not understanding the source material because the game designer and the director were the same guy.
So why the fuck did he fuck with his own design so much.
I think it is simply an ego thing. The moment anyone gets involved in the movie industry they get an ego and that ego must be fed by putting their mark on whatever they produce. Somehow they will take whatever they started out with and "improve" it. It rarely works.
In WC we got a pilgrim element added that sounds like a cheap "force" addition but added to a universe that never had any such crap. So instead of the WC characters being normal people doing extraordinary things all of sudden we got destined childeren saving the day. Yuch.
Combat is changed presumably to get some of the thrills of a submarine battle including silent running despite the sheer illogic of silent running in space (I remember a bad star trek book that made similar mistakes in just not getting the difference between space and naval manouvres).
Even more silly, we had established successfull actors for the cutscenes in game 3 and 4. So why the fuck were all of them replaced with a new cast most of whom totally did not fit the established background of the characters they were playing. Yes I know ST:TNG might have made all americans believe the french speak with an english accent but still.
hell, they didn't just cast the wrong actors, they didn't even get the right makeup for the baddies. What does the enemy in WC 1 2 and 3 look like? Big tigers right? So what the fuck were these things in the movie?
If you then read tim's comments on the why of these changes he spouts some George Lucas crap about how this was what he had originally intended and the movie is the ultimate vision not the 4 games and seveal expansions that came before.
but what I really get is a HUGE ego that wanted to make a mark for himself. Star Wars (phantom menace was about to be released at the time) had the force, so he added Pilgrims. Big cats for enemies, nah, I am going to make them really scary. Shave them!
Each and every time you see someone talk about making a movie out of a game they can never resist adding on to the material. It must be an ego thing and it never ever works. It upsets the existing fans and new fans. Well, who are going to get their word of mouth advertising from?
Basically we need to appoint a UN overwatcher who sits with a cattle prod behind any director trying to sell his vision of a new game movie. Anytime the director uses the words "change" or "add" or "leave out" he gets the cattle prod up the ass.
if you make a game movie, you take everything from the game and add nothing new. I got a cattle prod and I am not afraid to use it.
that Warren Ellis is supposedly writing this.
...but is it art?
>>So you want Uwe Boll instead?
I don't think I've seen a movie about killing him yet... but it would be entertaining. (No, not REALLY killing him. Sicko.)
This scares the crap out of me. Granted its one of the few video game franchises that could translate into a cool movie, and the first Mortal Kombat was actually not too awful, but this could also be so easy to totally screw up. I will squeel like a fanboy though if just once Simon uses his whip to knock down a lantern. I expect it to be really bad, but I so want this to be good.
As long as they stick mostly to vampire killing and have a good action director they will be fine. Having played a few of these games, I don't think that plot development was ever the key.
IANA*
In real life, Vlad the Impaler - Vlad ?epe? in Romanian (pronounced TSE-pesh) - was a prince who unified (sort of) Romania. He was horribly gruesome and tortured thousands of enemies and ordinary people. His favorite method was obviously impaling, but he had others, of course. The irony about Bram Stoker having set a story about vampires in Romania is that although most Eastern European countries had folktales about vampires before Dracula popularized them, Romanian mythology did not. He was also called Vlad Dr?culea after his father, and dracul is a cognate of dragon, but has nothing to do with vampires.
It's bullshit when they say the game will be drawing on elements of real life - there was absolutely nothing actually in Vlad the Impaler's life that has anything to fighting things in castles, unless the things he's fighting happen to be Turkish soldiers.
For a second there I thought that said Wes Anderson.
My first thought was, wow, that's a bit out of his milieu. My second thought was, wow, that's is gonna be the best movie ever.
Ah well, I can dream.
Can't you tell the Queen is remeniscent of Butter-Bean and the Undertaker?
And the hero, Rippley, is the Ultimate Warrior with a vagina. Yea! Hit me baby!