What Went Wrong: Van Helsing
By Shalimar Sahota
January 20, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Writer and director Stephen Sommers made Universal very happy with the success of The Mummy in 1999. On the very weekend that it surprised everyone by opening to $43 million (at the time, the ninth highest opening weekend ever), the president of Universal, Ron Meyer, actually called up Sommers asking for a sequel. He delivered with The Mummy Returns in 2001, opening to an even bigger $68 million.
The opposite happened during the weekend Sommers’ Van Helsing was released on May 7, 2004 (the same date The Mummy opened five years previously). After opening to $51 million, all plans for a sequel and a TV series spin-off were soon dropped. Carrying a high production budget pegged at around $160 million, Universal considered the opening total to be below their expectations.
Reinvigorating Van Helsing and having him go up against classic movie monsters is a fantastic concept. It was after The Mummy Returns that Sommers thought, “What else can I do in this vein? Frankenstein? Dracula? They’d both been done, and I couldn’t spend two years of my life just working on The Wolf Man. But then I realized, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if I could put them all together somehow?’ And that’s how I pitched it. I think everyone assumes the studio came to me.”
Universal had high hopes for the film, and was pretty serious when it came to the marketing. A short animated prequel, Van Helsing: The London Assignment, was released on DVD, offering some additional back-story as to why Helsing is chasing Mr. Hyde in the film. Jakks Pacific Toys created a whole line of action figures. Clothing licensee NTD Apparel produced some gothic Van Helsing fashion. Dark Horse Comics published a Van Helsing comic (there was only ever the one issue). Vivendi Interactive Games released a Van Helsing video game. Jackman himself appeared in American Red Cross adverts telling Americans to be heroes by donating blood! I myself recall promoters in certain cities across the UK taking to the streets handing out garlic clovers and Van Helsing business cards! Lastly, there were even Van Helsing breath mints! This was clearly a franchise in the making.
The simpleton story involves Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) as a demon slayer who works for the Vatican. His next assignment has him sent to Transylvania to locate and kill Dracula (Richard Roxburgh). While there he finds himself having to deal with Frankenstein's monster (Shuler Hensley), a big hairy werewolf (Will Kemp) and then there’s also Dracula's three brides. Obviously too much for one man to deal with, so he has a little help in the way of clever sidekick Carl (David Wenham) and the feisty Anna (Kate Beckinsale). Together, the three of them all get jiggy with it.
To have such iconic characters all together, the film depicts Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and werewolves with large doses of inaccuracy. Basically, it’s really, REALLY stupid, choosing to make up its own rules. Even before the film was released, teaser posters were released of the characters, and Frankenstein’s Monster was simply called Frankenstein. The teaser trailer also made this mistake, though it is rectified in the film. Dracula seems to be incapable of dying in this film, since all conventional methods such as a stake, a crucifix, and burning have no effect. Neither does "artificial" sunlight (a whole other segment of stupidity that deserves its own paragraph). Instead, the only thing that can kill him here is a werewolf.
Werewolf folklore is also slightly reinvented. Those bitten by a werewolf will transform into one during the night of a full moon, but will remain one permanently after the 12th stroke of midnight. In this film, after Van Helsing transforms into a werewolf, a clock chiming down those twelve strokes lasts approximately six minutes. That those bitten can remain a werewolf would also explain the unusual occurrence when Anna and her brother Velkan lead a bunch of villagers in trying to kill one that is out in broad daylight. They set a perfect trap, but bizarrely also consider it convenient to have Velkan’s gun be the only one loaded with silver bullets.
The film made for Hugh Jackman’s first lead role with his name above the title (Beckinsale also received the same treatment). Looking positively badass as Van Helsing, Jackman unfortunately doesn’t get enough time to develop his character, who is more action and less talk. When Anna questions him on why he does what he does, his response is, “I don’t know. Maybe some self-realization?” This shows Sommers’ approach in a script that devotes more time to action set pieces above anything else.
The film does allude to Van Helsing’s lost memories and former life, but fails to fully explore this sub plot; something I feel was being saved for a sequel. Strangely Sommers does offer Roxburgh’s Dracula a bit of background, explaining how he is trying to propagate his own kind. He needs Frankenstein’s Monster, because for some reason his dead parts brought to life holds the key to bringing his dead offspring to life.
The masquerade ball sequence is where things look like they're about to pick up. With the help of a mirror, Anna realises that she’s in the presence of hundreds of vampires. As they all start to eye Van Helsing, you begin to wonder, just how in the hell is he going to get out of this one? It’s a brilliant set up designed to lead to a great action set piece, which unfortunately doesn’t arrive. Instead of seeing Van Helsing and Anna fighting vampires, he gets out via the use of an unbelievably bad cop-out that should never have happened.
Mentioned briefly at the beginning of the film, when Van Helsing loads up on supplies, his sidekick Carl just so happens to have a bomb shaped device, containing compressed magma mixed with pure alkaline, capable of emitting light equal to the sun. It conveniently crops up right at the point it’s needed, with its use at the ball killing all the vampires, except for Dracula of course (you see, it’s stupid). We only witness Van Helsing killing two vampires throughout the whole film. To have an iconic character known for slaying vampires, only to rarely show him doing such an action, is a major oversight.
The eventual climactic battle may revel in its “look-what-we-can-do” special effects, and its geekgasm shot of a werewolf’s arm around the neck of vampire bat, but Van Helsing’s fight against Dracula is a God-awful mess. As the characters transform into their CG counterparts, the sudden (and rather jarring) lack of any human element offers little to care about. CG characters fighting in live action films rarely ever work, as is the unfortunate case with the conclusion of Van Helsing. Given the effects at the time, it just stands out more when watching what looks like cartoon characters suddenly appearing in an environment they shouldn’t be in.
Word-of-mouth was toxic and the stupidity came across in reviews, as critics described the film with words such as dumb, inept and cacophonous. After opening, the film suffered heavy drops every weekend till it was out of the top ten, its lowest being a 49% drop on its third week. Earning $120 million in the US, with an additional $180 million internationally, it was enough for Universal to scrape back what they had spent, but they wisely chose to leave Van Helsing as a franchise non-starter.
A TV series spin-off, Transylvania, was to be in the works for NBC, with Sommers producing and writing some episodes (Universal had merged with NBC the same month that the film opened). Supposedly canceled because of the box office, the then-president of NBC Entertainment, Jeffrey Zucker said, “The box office has no bearing whatsoever on our plans to move forward or not. It’s a creative decision based on content and concept.” Although it never went ahead on NBC, other networks were said to be interested.
I remember Van Helsing being one of the films I was most looking forward to in 2004, and was left disappointed after viewing it upon its opening night. In the looks department there are great costumes, reasonably good effects and a gothic production design. Alan Silvestri’s bombastic musical score is probably the best thing about it; however, there's just something empty and senseless about the film. Even at over two hours, the film moves quickly, with rushed explanations making way for extravagant set pieces.
Van Helsing still has some untapped potential and I would watch a sequel if it ever went ahead. The other problem, which might explain why there isn’t one, was that Sommers had already used up all the iconic monsters. If there is some creativity left, it’s possible to make one up (Blade II invented Reaper vampires), but it would obviously pale in comparison when you’ve already used the big bad that is Dracula. With TV schedules and multiplexes already over-saturated with vampires, and Joe Johnston’s big budget reworking of The Wolfman also failing to deliver the goods for Universal, we probably won’t be seeing any more gothic action blockbusters set centuries in the past, unless a Castlevania movie ever gets into production.