«

[TheChosen]

You all remember Castlevania? If not, it was something like this!



Now, cast those happy memories of casual gaming aside, because they just revealed the main plot of the upcoming Castlevania movie. Appearantly, someone had the look of the script, and felt like he wanted to cry. I wanted to cry too.

Castlevania by Paul W. S. Anderson

If you dont want to read for the whole article or youre just passing by, here's some quotes from the article, pointing out why this will suck.

Instead for some reason we are introduced to Castlevania through the eyes of German soldiers during World War II, who seek to use it as a temporary stronghold but are quickly dispatched by its sinister inhabitants.

The script describes a lot of things moving unseen in the dark and expressions of growing terror on the faces of the soldiers as they are killed,

introduced to a clan of Belmonts we meet the last two surviving brothers of the family: Christopher and Simon. Both are lords of a small contingent of Romanian knights sworn to fight the invading Turks

No sooner do we meet them scouting ahead of their party than do they encounter a gypsy carriage under attack by a pack of ravenous, gray wolves, and among them a much larger, black wolf (if you guessed this is Dracula, kudos for realizing the obvious).

Once the Belmont brothers and their recently rescued damsel-in-distress who is actually tougher and more self-reliant than she looks (no surprise there) reunite with the rest of the knights they move on and find the same village and overlooking castle we saw discovered by the German soldiers in the opening scene.

When Simon learns that the castle is inhabited not by a large garrison but by a single lord, he wishes to go and meet him. Shortly thereafter the village is attacked by a Turkish army that vastly outnumbers the Romanian knights.

oh yeah, did I mention that for a completely arbitrary reason Dracula is spelled Dracul’a throughout the script? I have no idea if that means his name should be pronounced differently but there you are – anyway, Dracul’a invites Simon, his knights, and Aurica to stay in Castlevania as his guests.

t is here that Anderson begins to borrow heavily from the traditional Dracula story.

Dracul’a claims to be the son of Dracul, The Dragon, who is based on the historical figure of Vlad Tepes AKA Vlad the Impaler with whom Simon and his followers are aware.......Maybe they can ask Mr. Coppola if they can just reuse the scenes he shot of this. It would save time and money.

By this point in the script we’ve already seen Dracul’a take the form of the large wolf, and while we don’t see him take the form of mist or a bat he does crawl along the castle walls and takes the form of a bestial man/wolf/bat hybrid, which made me immediately think of the man/wolf hybrid and man/bat hybrid seen in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Maybe the make-up and costumes for those are still lying around somewhere…

The three brides of Dracul’a make appearances and mischief in this script

Though I said Vampire Killer is gone from this script, Simon does wield what is described as a chain whip in two instances. However, it is nondescript and in one of the occasions is wielded as an off-hand weapon. So what is Simon armed with throughout the film? A fucking sword.

When Simon encounters Castlevania, he has no idea of its sinister nature, no idea who its lord is, and upon meeting him no idea of the true identity of Dracul’a. The bulk of the script deals with Simon’s knights getting picked off one-by-one by Dracul’a’s brides, Dracul’a attempting to seduce Aurica, and Simon becoming convinced at an agonizingly slow pace that things are foul.

God it’s not even close! A Simon Belmont who wields a sword and unwittingly walks into the den of the beast? No monstrous opponents standing between him and Dracula? A love interest? A brother that I’ve hinted becomes a vampire (but otherwise ignored because, really, who gives a shit)? Hell, Anderson didn’t even get the location of the climactic battle right. Anyone who’s played the game knows you ascend throughout the castle until you reach Dracula’s sanctum in one of its highest parapets, yet in the script Dracul’a’s inner lair is in the bowels beneath the castle. Fuck.

Does Anderson have any idea how fucking cool it would be to bring in some of these experts to choreograph all of the stunts and fight scenes with a similar chain whip? Obviously not because he chose to arm Castlevania’s hero with a fucking sword. Idiot.

I’ve read that this script is being re-tooled before production begins. I can only hope that’s true. But a re-tooling might not be enough. If I had my way I’d use the original for kindling and start from scratch.