The Man Behind The Castlevania Movie

Yes, there’s going to be a Castlevania movie and yes, we’ll let you know everything about the man behind it, but first we’ll start with the news that prompted this little article. In a recent interview with horror movie enthusiast website Bloody Disgusting, the man at the helm of the planned Castlevania flick, Paul W.S. Anderson let the following be known about the films plot:

“It will integrate Dracula‘s origin story with the story of the Belmonts,[There are] a fair amount of references [to the original NES games].” He continues, “[This will be] a whole new spin to ‘Castlevania’,” and the best part, “The whip is still in it.”

So at least we know Dracula’s in the movie, and we know we’ll see the Belmonts, and whip, calming stuff. What’s a little alarming is where he Anderson remarks that “This will be a whole new spin to Castlevania.” Without getting too worked up over a simple comment, it’s always a scary proposition when a Hollywood filmmaker decides to put a new spin on cherished time honored material, mario-bros/2427″ id=”tag” title=””>Super Mario Bros. The Movie anyone?  Paul W.S. Anderson has made a career of directing videogame movie adaptations, and while he’s hardly a remarkable film maker he’s had some reasonable success… and his name doesn’t end in Boll. With that said, let’s have a look at Anderson’s relevant filmography, judge how closely the movies followed the subject matter, decide how successful they were and see if we can map a course of prediction for Castlevania: The Movie, shall we?

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Yes, there’s going to be a Castlevania movie and yes, we’ll let you know everything about the man behind it, but first we’ll start with the news that prompted this little article. In a recent interview with horror movie enthusiast website Bloody Disgusting, the man at the helm of the planned Castlevania flick, Paul W.S. Anderson let the following be known about the films plot:

“It will integrate Dracula‘s origin story with the story of the Belmonts,[There are] a fair amount of references [to the original NES games].” He continues, “[This will be] a whole new spin to ‘Castlevania’,” and the best part, “The whip is still in it.”

So at least we know Dracula’s in the movie, and we know we’ll see the Belmonts, and whip, calming stuff. What’s a little alarming is where he Anderson remarks that “This will be a whole new spin to Castlevania.” Without getting too worked up over a simple comment, it’s always a scary proposition when a Hollywood filmmaker decides to put a new spin on cherished time honored material, Super Mario Bros. The Movie anyone?  Paul W.S. Anderson has made a career of directing videogame movie adaptations, and while he’s hardly a remarkable film maker he’s had some reasonable success… and his name doesn’t end in Boll. With that said, let’s have a look at Anderson’s relevant filmography, judge how closely the movies followed the subject matter, decide how successful they were and see if we can map a course of prediction for Castlevania: The Movie, shall we?

Mortal Kombat: Ah Mortal Kombat, a movie just about any self respecting cinema-goer would go out of their way to avoid, but back when int came out in 1995, gamers dragged their dads, mums, uncles, cousins, anyone they could convince to go see the stylishly shot action packed, real life incarnation of one of the worlds most violent videogames. Of course the movie had hardly any blood and it was rated “PG:13” instead of “R”, but it was still highly faithful in many other ways. Sure it was goofy, hokey and had dodgy CG, but the martial arts were pretty darn amazing, costumes and characters for the most part matched those of their digital counterparts, and most importantly, Anderson respected the mythology enough to leave it largely intact.

Faithfulness To Source Material: [B+] Anderson went so far as to include sound bytes from the game in the scene where Reptile fights Liu Kang, and we get to hear Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon yell “GET OVER HERE!” as the voice of Scorpion.

Movie Grade: [A-] (if you’re a gamer). WTF? (if you’re anything else)

Resident Evil: While in many ways a “better” movie than Mortal Kombat, it would appear that Anderson either didn’t have as much faith in his source material this time around, or he was under studio pressure to make the movie appeal to a broader audience. Whatever the case, the move worked in some ways and not in others. Genre fans and the general movie going populace seemed satisfied, but most gamers are irked that the film takes a number of liberties, most noticeably by starring a lead protagonist that doesn’t feature in any of the games. Listening to the commentary on the DVD reveals the fact that Anderson’s actually a really huge geek, he just doesn’t seem to be all that talented, either that or there’s far too much interference from the studios putting up the cash. In the end it’s probably a little bit of both. That Resident Evil goes down as one of the better videogame movie adaptations speaks well of neither the film nor the entire sub-genre. For what it’s worth, the sequel’s more fun, mainly because you don’t have high hopes and that long haired dude from the Mummy movies is in it.

Faithfulness To Source Material: [C+] The movie eschews the creepy, haunted house-esque environments found in the games in favor of a cleaner more sterile lab facility which is decidedly non-threatening. Jill? Chris? Where are you? Oh, that’s right, you don’t show up till the sequel, which Anderson wrote but didn’t direct. Bonus points for including the zombie dogs and the Licker though.

Movie Grade: [C+] Quite simply this movie had very little ambition, and subsequently didn’t get very far. It’s extremely by the numbers stuff, and very middle of the road. However, it is mildly entertaining and it’s always good to see some of your favorite monsters from the game pop up here and there.

Aliens VS Predator: This movie gets panned a whole lot, mainly because of the iconic status of the Alien and Predator series respectively. For me it lies somewhere between Alien 3 and the horrible, horrible Predator 2. Anderson, as noted earlier is a huge geek, and he loves both mythologies so it comes as no surprise that this is probably his best work (Event Horizon was sorta nifty though). Based more on the Dark Horse comic of the same name than the moody first person shooters, AVP (since all movies and videogames become acronyms sooner rather than later) was destined to not be a great movie from the start. The theory of seeing the two greatest hunters in the known worlds going at each other is one to get the geek adrenal glands a gushin’, but in practice it turns into a somewhat crappy CG/Man In Suit bore-a-thon.

Faithfulness To Source: [B+] I’m not an aficionado on either of the mythologies in question, all I know is what I’ve seen in the movies and the videogames and it seemed to me that Anderson stuck pretty close to what makes up the creatures mythologies.

Movie Grade: [B-] I know I said it was his best work and yet it’s rated lower than Mortal Kombat, but that’s because while it may be a better movie, it is by no means more fun than MK.

The Prognosis for Castlevania: Surprisingly good. We aren’t going to be getting Lord of The Rings, but if history is indeed a good teacher we can expect something reasonably close to the source material. At a guess I’d say it’ll probably fall in somewhere between Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat in terms of it’s faithfulness. As far as quality goes, Anderson’s still a young director, and the quality of his work has been steadily creeping upward, so lets cross our fingers and hope for the best, it could be worse.