2004 film by Stephen Sommers
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Van Helsing
is a 2004
action horror
film written and directed by
Stephen Sommers
. It stars
Hugh Jackman
as monster hunter
Van Helsing
and
Kate Beckinsale
as Anna Valerious.
Van Helsing
is both an homage and tribute to the
Universal Horror Monster
films from the 1930s and 1940s (also produced by
Universal Pictures
which were in turn partially based on novels by
Bram Stoker
and
Mary Shelley
), of which Sommers is a fan.
The eponymous character was inspired by the Dutch vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing from Irish author Bram Stoker's novel
Dracula
. Distributed by
Universal Pictures
, the film includes a number of monsters such as
Count Dracula
(and other
vampires
),
Frankenstein's monster
,
Duergar
,
Mr. Hyde
and
werewolves
in a way similar to the multi-monster movies that Universal produced in the 1940s, such as
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
,
House of Frankenstein
and
House of Dracula
. The film received generally negative reviews but grossed $300.2 million worldwide against a budget of $160?170 million.
Plot
[
edit
]
In
1887
Transylvania
, Doctor
Victor Frankenstein
, aided by his assistant
Igor
and
Count Dracula
, creates a
monster
. Dracula kills Frankenstein when he refuses to go along with the vampire's designs for the creature as Igor, revealed to be under Dracula's pay, watches impassively. As an angry mob storms the castle, the monster flees to a
windmill
with Frankenstein's body. The mob burns down the windmill, seemingly killing the monster. A year later, monster hunter
Gabriel Van Helsing
travels to
Notre-Dame de Paris
and kills
Dr. Jekyll
after a brawl with Mr. Hyde. Van Helsing pursues evil on behalf of the Knights of the Holy Order, which has protected mankind "since time immemorial". Van Helsing, who remembers nothing before he was found crawling up the steps of a church nearly dead, hopes to earn pardon for his forgotten sins and regain his memory.
At the Order's
Vatican City
headquarters, Van Helsing is tasked with travelling to Transylvania, destroying Dracula and protecting Anna and Velkan Valerious, the last of an ancient Romanian family. Their ancestor vowed that his descendants would kill Dracula or spend eternity in
Purgatory
. In Transylvania, Anna and Velkan attempt to kill a
werewolf
controlled by Dracula, but it falls with Velkan into a deep river gorge, managing to bite him in the process as Velkan shoots it with a
silver bullet
.
Van Helsing and Carl, a
friar
and weapons inventor, arrive at a village and join Anna's fight with Dracula's
brides
- Verona, Marishka, and Aleera - slaying Marishka in the process. That night, Velkan visits Anna to warn her of Dracula's plans but transforms into a werewolf and escapes. Van Helsing and Anna pursue Velkan to
Frankenstein's castle
. They stumble upon Dracula's plan to duplicate Frankenstein's experiments to give life to thousands of his undead children, using Velkan as a conduit.
During the fray, Dracula confronts Van Helsing, whom he regards as an ancient rival. Dracula's spawn come to life, before dying due to lacking Frankenstein's original formula. Van Helsing and Anna escape and stumble upon Frankenstein's monster at the windmill, who reveals that he is the key to Frankenstein's machine giving life to Dracula's brood. Eavesdropping on their discussion, Velkan escapes with this new information.
In Anna's castle, Carl discovers a hidden painting of two rival knights. It comes to life, revealing the knights as a vampire and a werewolf in battle. While attempting to bring the monster to
Rome
, Van Helsing and his crew are ambushed by the brides and Velkan, near
Budapest
. Verona and Velkan are killed, but Van Helsing is bitten by the latter. Aleera kidnaps Anna and offers to trade her for the monster at a
masquerade ball
. Van Helsing locks the monster in a crypt, but the undead retrieve him for Dracula. Van Helsing and Carl rescue Anna and escape from the masquerade guests, revealed to be vampires.
At Anna's castle, Carl explains that Dracula is the son of Valerious the Elder. When he was killed in 1462 by the "
Left Hand of God
", Dracula made a pact with the
Devil
and lived again. Valerious was told to kill Dracula and gain salvation for his entire family. Unable to kill his son, he imprisoned him in an icy fortress. A fragment, which the
Cardinal
gave Van Helsing back in Vatican City, opens a path to Dracula's castle.
They find the monster, who reveals that Dracula possesses a cure for
lycanthropy
because only a werewolf can kill him. Van Helsing, fighting the curse, sends Anna and Carl to retrieve the cure, killing Igor and Aleera in the process. Van Helsing attempts to free the monster but is struck by lightning, bringing Dracula's children to life. Dracula and Van Helsing turn into their bestial forms and battle, while Frankenstein's monster helps Anna escape Dracula's brides. Whilst both briefly return to their human forms, Dracula reveals that it was Van Helsing who killed him and offers to restore his memory. Van Helsing refuses and kills Dracula after reverting back to his werewolf form, triggering his brood's deaths. Anna arrives and injects the cure into Van Helsing but is killed by him in the process.
Van Helsing and Carl
burn
Anna's body on a cliff overlooking the sea. Frankenstein's monster departs by raft, and Van Helsing sees Anna's spirit reuniting with her family in
Heaven
. Van Helsing and Carl ride off into the sunset.
Cast
[
edit
]
- Hugh Jackman
as
Gabriel Van Helsing
, a legendary hunter of monsters.
- Kate Beckinsale
as Anna Valerious, the last descendant of an ancient
Romanian
family.
- Richard Roxburgh
as
Count Vladislaus Dracula
, a powerful vampire.
- David Wenham
as Carl, a friar of the Holy Order.
- Shuler Hensley
as
Frankenstein's monster
.
- Kevin J. O'Connor
as
Igor
, a servant of Frankenstein's, now working for Dracula.
- Will Kemp
as Velkan Valerious, Anna's brother, who is turned into a werewolf.
- Elena Anaya
as Aleera, one of Dracula's brides.
- Silvia Colloca
as Verona, one of Dracula's brides.
- Josie Maran
as Marishka, one of Dracula's brides.
- Alun Armstrong
as Cardinal Jinette, Van Helsing's superior in the Holy Order.
- Tom Fisher
as the Undertaker.
- Samuel West
as
Victor Frankenstein
.
- Stephen Fisher as Dr.
Henry Jekyll
.
- Robbie Coltrane
as the voice of
Mr. Hyde
.
Production
[
edit
]
Universal Pictures wanted to reinvent their iconic movie monsters and wanted to replicate the formula that had worked for both
The Mummy
(1999) and
The Mummy Returns
(2001). This was not only attempted by bringing on
Stephen Sommers
as the director but also with the release date of May 7, 2004, which was five years to the date after The Mummy opened in 1999. The Mummy took the classic monster in an action-adventure tone, so it made sense to do the same with Van Helsing. While The Mummy was very much inspired by Indiana Jones, Van Helsing drew heavily from James Bond films.
[5]
Universal Pictures was so confident that Van Helsing would be a hit at the box office, they began development on a sequel before the first movie opened. They even paid to keep the original Transylvania sets, as they figured they would need to come back for it and other projects. However, the film's poor box office eventually resulted in the sequel being scrapped.
[5]
Richard Roxburgh, who was cast as Dracula, said that he loved the old Universal monster movies,
Klaus Kinski
's Nosferatu and
Gary Oldman
's Dracula and in general likes "the dark, sad, kind of naive, Germanic type of monster movie". About his physical transformation for the role, Roxburgh said that "it's a pretty significant physical transformation. There is obviously darker hair and I wanted a sense of a Romany king or leader, a faded aristocrat. I liked that gypsy element. So the character looks nothing like me."
[6]
Soundtrack
[
edit
]
The
film's original soundtrack
was composed by
Alan Silvestri
.
Merchandise
[
edit
]
Video game
[
edit
]
Vivendi Universal Games
published a
Van Helsing
video game
for
PlayStation 2
,
Xbox
, and
Game Boy Advance
. The game follows a similar plot to the film, has gameplay similar to
Devil May Cry
and the PS2 and Xbox versions feature the voice talent of many of the actors including
Hugh Jackman
.
Slot games
[
edit
]
Van Helsing also features in a slot game produced by
International Game Technology
. The game is available in real world casinos and online, though users in Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and the US are excluded from playing the online games.
Reception
[
edit
]
Box office
[
edit
]
The film earned $51 million at #1 during the opening weekend of May 7?9, 2004. The film eventually grossed US$300,257,475 worldwide, of which US$120,177,084 was from the US.
[3]
Critical reception
[
edit
]
Van Helsing
received generally negative reviews from critics.
[7]
Rotten Tomatoes
, a
review aggregator
, reports that 24% of 224 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 4.28/10. The site's consensus calls the film a "hollow creature feature that suffers from CGI overload".
[8]
Metacritic
rated it 35/100 based on 38 reviews.
[9]
Audiences polled by
CinemaScore
gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.
[10]
James Berardinelli
of
ReelViews
gave an extremely negative review, rating the film half a star out of four and calling it "the worst would-be summer blockbuster since
Battlefield Earth
". Furthermore, he wrote: "There are quite a few unintentionally funny moments, although the overall experience was too intensely painful for me to be able to advocate it as being "so bad, it's good". ... Some, however, will doubtless view it as such. More power to them, since sitting through this movie requires something more than a strong constitution and a capacity for self-torture".
[11]
Mick LaSalle
of the
San Francisco Chronicle
greatly disliked the film: "Writer-director Stephen Sommers (...) throws together plot strains from various horror movies and stories and tries to muscle things along with flash and dazzle. But his film just lies there, weighted down by a complete lack of wit, artfulness and internal logic. ... What Sommers tries to do here is use action as the only means of involving an audience. So story is sacrificed. Character development is nonexistent, and there are no attempts to incite emotion. Instead, Sommers tries to hold an audience for two hours with nothing up his sleeve but colored ribbons, bright sparklers and a kazoo. What he proves is that this is no way to make movies".
[12]
Roger Ebert
of the
Chicago Sun Times
gave the film 3 stars out of 4 stating that "at the outset, we may fear Sommers is simply going for f/x overkill, but by the end, he has somehow succeeded in assembling all his monsters and plot threads into a high-voltage climax.
Van Helsing
is silly, spectacular and fun".
[13]
Accolades
[
edit
]
Spin-offs
[
edit
]
Sommers expanded the story of Van Helsing in two direct spin-offs:
- The animated prequel titled
Van Helsing: The London Assignment
takes place before the main events of the film, focusing on Van Helsing's mission to try to stop
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
from terrorizing London.
- There is also a one-shot comic book, published by
Dark Horse Comics
, titled
Van Helsing: From Beneath the Rue Morgue
, that follows Van Helsing on a self-contained adventure that occurs during the events of the film, just after the death of Jekyll/Hyde in Paris but before Van Helsing returns to Rome. In the adventure, Van Helsing deals with
Doctor Moreau
and his hybrid mutants.
- In April 2004, a month before Van Helsing opened in theaters, they announced they were greenlighting a television series titled
Transylvania
. The plan was to use the set from the original film, and Universal Studios paid to maintain the structures so that they could return to film there, and the series was planned to premiere on NBC in the fall of 2004. However, just two weeks into Van Helsing's release, the studio canceled the plans for the television series.
[5]
Reboot
[
edit
]
In May 2012, Universal Pictures announced a
reboot
of the film with
Alex Kurtzman
and
Roberto Orci
to produce a modern reimagining and
Tom Cruise
to star as the title character and also produce the film.
[19]
[20]
In October,
Rupert Sanders
entered early negotiations to direct the film.
[21]
By November 2015,
Jon Spaihts
and
Eric Heisserer
signed onto the project as co-screenwriters, though Cruise left his role with the film.
[22]
However, in the following year, Cruise was cast to appear in Kurtzman's
The Mummy
, which was released in theaters on June 9, 2017.
[23]
Following the poor critical and financial reception to the film, Universal restructured their plan for rebooted adaptations of their Classic Monsters to be stand-alone in nature.
[24]
By December 2020, the reboot was back in development.
Julius Avery
was hired as director, in addition to doing a rewrite of an original script by
Eric Pearson
.
James Wan
was attached to serve as producer. The project will be a joint production venture between Universal Pictures and
Atomic Monster
.
[25]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
"Van Helsing"
.
www.filmcommission.cz
(in Czech).
Archived
from the original on 22 July 2018
. Retrieved
13 July
2017
.
- ^
"Van Helsing (2004)"
.
British Film Institute
. Archived from
the original
on 2016-09-16
. Retrieved
2016-08-07
.
- ^
a
b
c
"
Van Helsing
"
.
Box Office Mojo
.
IMDb
. Retrieved
January 1,
2022
.
- ^
"
Van Helsing
"
.
The Numbers
. Nash Information Services, LLC
. Retrieved
January 1,
2022
.
- ^
a
b
c
"Van Helsing: Universal's Plans for the Franchise That Never Was"
. 7 October 2022.
- ^
"Richard Roxburgh Interview - Q & A"
.
- ^
Wloszczyna, Susan (2004-05-10).
"Marketing goes to heroic measures"
.
USA Today
.
Archived
from the original on 2015-11-23
. Retrieved
2014-10-15
.
- ^
"Van Helsing"
.
Rotten Tomatoes
. 3 May 2004.
Archived
from the original on November 29, 2017
. Retrieved
November 19,
2019
.
- ^
"Van Helsing"
.
Metacritic
.
Archived
from the original on 2019-11-05
. Retrieved
2014-10-15
.
- ^
"CinemaScore"
.
cinemascore.com
.
Archived
from the original on 2018-01-02
. Retrieved
2018-01-22
.
- ^
Berardinelli, James.
"Van Helsing"
. ReelViews.
Archived
from the original on 2021-02-27
. Retrieved
2012-05-09
.
- ^
LaSalle, Mick (May 7, 2004).
"
'Van Helsing' a monstrosity of a movie"
. San Francisco Chronicle.
Archived
from the original on 2013-12-21
. Retrieved
2012-05-09
.
- ^
Ebert, Roger (May 7, 2004).
"Van Helsing"
. Chicago Sun-Times.
Archived
from the original on 2022-03-03
. Retrieved
2012-05-09
.
- ^
"NOMINATIONS FOR 31ST ANNUAL SATURN AWARDS ANNOUNCED"
.
Film Threat
. 10 February 2005.
Archived
from the original on 2018-01-23
. Retrieved
2018-01-22
.
- ^
"
"Spider-man 2" Big Winner at the 31st Annual Saturn Awards"
.
Saturn Awards
. Archived from
the original
on 2005-07-25
. Retrieved
2018-01-22
.
- ^
"Teen Choice Awards 2004"
. Hollywoodauditions.com
. Retrieved
June 23,
2011
.
- ^
McNary, Dave (2005-01-10).
"Spidey pic catches 6 f/x noms from VES"
.
Variety
.
Archived
from the original on 2018-01-23
. Retrieved
2018-01-22
.
- ^
"Stinkers Bad Movie Awards - 2004"
.
The Stinkers
. Archived from
the original
on 4 May 2007
. Retrieved
24 September
2019
.
- ^
Kroll, Justin (2012-05-02).
"Orci, Kurtzman sign two-year Universal deal"
.
Variety
.
Archived
from the original on 2013-08-16
. Retrieved
2012-05-02
.
- ^
"Universal Signs Kurtzman and Orci; Pair Takes On 'The Mummy' and 'Van Helsing'
"
.
deadline.com
. 1 May 2012.
Archived
from the original on 2 May 2012
. Retrieved
8 October
2018
.
- ^
"BREAKING: Rupert Sanders Circling Universal's Tom Cruise-Starring VAN HELSING"
.
Twich
. 2012-10-10. Archived from
the original
on 2013-01-18
. Retrieved
2013-01-23
.
- ^
Kroll, Justin (November 14, 2015).
"Universal's 'Van Helsing' Reboot Enlists Scribes Jon Spaihts and Eric Heisserer (EXCLUSIVE)"
. Variety.
Archived
from the original on November 30, 2017
. Retrieved
December 10,
2017
.
- ^
Kroll, Justin (November 11, 2015).
"Universal's 'Van Helsing' Reboot Enlists Scribes Jon Spaihts and Eric Heisserer (EXCLUSIVE)"
. Variety.
Archived
from the original on May 11, 2018
. Retrieved
April 28,
2018
.
- ^
Kroll, Justin (January 25, 2019).
"
'Invisible Man' Finds Director, Sets New Course for Universal's Monster Legacy (EXCLUSIVE)"
.
Archived
from the original on November 25, 2020
. Retrieved
December 1,
2020
.
- ^
Kroll, Justin (December 1, 2020).
"Universal And James Wan Tap 'Overlord' Director Julius Avery To Direct New 'Van Helsing' Movie"
.
Deadline
.
Archived
from the original on December 1, 2020
. Retrieved
December 1,
2020
.
External links
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]
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