| Van Helsing | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Stephen Sommers |
| Written by | Stephen Sommers |
| Based on | Dracula byBram Stoker Frankenstein byMary Shelley The Wolf Man byGeorge Waggner |
| Produced by |
|
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Allen Daviau |
| Edited by |
|
| Music by | Alan Silvestri |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 131 minutes |
| Countries | United States[2] Czech Republic[1] |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $160–170 million[3][4] |
| Box office | $300.2 million[3] |
Van Helsing is a 2004action horror film written and directed byStephen Sommers. It starsHugh Jackman as monster hunterVan Helsing andKate Beckinsale as Anna Valerious.Van Helsing is an homage to theUniversal Horror Monster films from the 1930s and 1940s (also produced byUniversal Pictures which were in turn partially based on novels byBram Stoker andMary 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 novelDracula. Distributed by Universal Pictures, the film includes a number of monsters such asCount Dracula (and othervampires),Frankenstein's monster,Duergar,Mr. Hyde andwerewolves in a way similar to the multi-monster movies that Universal produced in the 1940s, such asFrankenstein Meets the Wolf Man,House of Frankenstein andHouse of Dracula. The film grossed $300.2 million worldwide against a budget of $160–170 million but was not well received by critics.
In 1887Transylvania, DoctorVictor Frankenstein, aided by his assistantIgor andCount Dracula, creates amonster. 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 a mob storms the castle, the monster flees to awindmill with Frankenstein's body. The mob burns down the windmill, seemingly killing the monster. A year later,Gabriel Van Helsing, a monster hunter who works for the Knights of the Holy Order, an organization that protects mankind, travels toNotre-Dame de Paris and killsDr. Jekyll after a brawl with Mr. Hyde. Van Helsing remembers nothing before he was found on the steps of a church nearly dead, and hopes to earn pardon for his forgotten sins and regain his memory.
At the Order'sVatican City headquarters, Van Helsing is tasked with traveling 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 inPurgatory. In Transylvania, Anna and Velkan attempt to kill awerewolf controlled by Dracula, but it falls with Velkan into a gorge, biting him as Velkan shoots it with asilver bullet.
Van Helsing andfriar Carl, a weapons inventor, arrive at a village and join Anna's fight with Dracula'sbrides – 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 toFrankenstein'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 spawns come to life before dying due to the lack of Frankenstein's original formula. Van Helsing and Anna escape and, at the windmill, stumble upon Frankenstein's monster, 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.
While attempting to bring the monster toRome, Van Helsing and his crew are ambushed by the brides and Velkan, nearBudapest. 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 amasquerade ball. Van Helsing locks the monster in a crypt, but Dracula's allies retrieve him. Van Helsing and Carl rescue Anna and escape from the masquerade guests, who are revealed to be vampires.
At Anna's castle, Carl explains that Dracula is the son of Valerious the Elder. When Dracula 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 of a painting, which theCardinal 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 forlycanthropy because only a werewolf can kill him. Van Helsing, fighting the curse, sends Anna and Carl to retrieve the cure, killing Igor 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 Aleera. Anna then kills Aleera with Carl's help. Whilst both return to their human forms, Dracula reveals that Van Helsing is the reincarnation of the archangel Gabriel who killed him and offers to restore his memory. Van Helsing refuses and kills Dracula after reverting to his werewolf form, triggering his brood's deaths. Anna injects the cure into Van Helsing but is killed by him in the process.
Van Helsing and Carl cremate Anna's body on a cliff overlooking the sea. Frankenstein's monster leaves town, and Van Helsing sees Anna's spirit reuniting with her family inHeaven. Van Helsing and Carl ride off into the sunset.
Universal Pictures wanted to reinvent their iconic movie monsters and wanted to replicate the formula that had worked for bothThe Mummy (1999) andThe Mummy Returns (2001). This was not only attempted by bringing onStephen Sommers as the director but also with the release date of May 7, 2004, which was five years to the date afterThe Mummy opened in 1999.The Mummy took the classic monster in an action-adventure tone, so it made sense to do the same withVan Helsing. WhileThe Mummy was much inspired byIndiana Jones,Van Helsing drew heavily fromJames Bond films.[5]
Richard Roxburgh, who was cast asDracula, said that he loved the old Universal monster films,Klaus Kinski's Nosferatu andGary Oldman's Dracula and in general likes "the dark, sad, kind of naïve, 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]
Thefilm's original soundtrack was composed byAlan Silvestri.
Vivendi Universal Games published aVan Helsing video game forPlayStation 2,Xbox, andGame Boy Advance. The game follows a similar plot to the film, has gameplay similar toDevil May Cry, and the PS2 and Xbox versions feature the voice talent of many of the actors includingHugh Jackman.
Van Helsing also features in aslot game produced byInternational 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.
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]
Van Helsing received mostly negative reviews from critics.[7]Rotten Tomatoes, areview 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 byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[10]James Berardinelli ofReelViews gave an extremely negative review, rating the film half a star out of four and calling it "the worst would-be summer blockbuster sinceBattlefield 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]Bill Muller ofThe Arizona Republic gave it a rating of two out of five, explaining that the film "looks like a movie assembled by a room full of computer geeks munchingDoritos and playing Wolfenstein in between stints of designing Dracula's fangs".[12] Bob Longino ofThe Atlanta Constitution gave the film a C−, describing it as "stuffed with enough over-the-top computer effects to chokeGeorge Lucas".[13]
Mick LaSalle of theSan 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".[14]Roger Ebert of theChicago 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".[15]
| Award | Subject | Nominee | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saturn Awards | Best Horror Film | Nominated[16] | |
| Best Costume Design | Gabriella Pescucci, Carlo Poggioli | ||
| Best Make-Up | Greg Cannom,Steve LaPorte | ||
| Best Special Effects | Scott Squires,Ben Snow, Daniel Jeannette, Syd Dutton | ||
| Best Music | Alan Silvestri | Won[17] | |
| Teen Choice Awards | Choice Action Movie | Nominated[18] | |
| Choice Thriller Movie | |||
| Choice Movie Actor: Drama/Action Adventure | Hugh Jackman | ||
| Choice Movie Actress: Drama/Action Adventure | Kate Beckinsale (also forUnderworld) | ||
| Choice Movie Fight/Action Sequence | Hugh Jackman vs.Richard Roxburgh | ||
| Visual Effects Society | Outstanding Special Effects in Service to Visual Effects in a Motion Picture | Geoff Heron, Chad Taylor | Nominated[19] |
| Stinkers Bad Movie Awards | Worst Film | Nominated | |
| Worst Actress | Kate Beckinsale | ||
| Worst Female Fake Accent | |||
| Worst Male Fake Accent | Richard Roxburgh | Won[20] |
Sommers expanded the story ofVan Helsing in two direct spin-offs:
Universal Pictures was confident thatVan Helsing would be a hit at the box office, and they began development on a sequel before the first film opened. They even paid to keep the original Transylvania sets, as they figured they would need to come back for it and other projects. Despite the film was a moderate success, it didn’t meet expectations which caused any plans for a sequel to be scrapped.[5]
In May 2012, Universal Pictures announced areboot of the film withAlex Kurtzman andRoberto Orci to produce a modern reimagining andTom Cruise to star as the title character and also produce the film.[21][22] In October,Rupert Sanders entered early negotiations to direct the film.[23] By November 2015,Jon Spaihts andEric Heisserer signed onto the project as co-screenwriters, though Cruise left his role with the film.[24] In the following year, Cruise was cast to appear in Kurtzman'sThe Mummy, which was released in theaters on June 9, 2017.[25] Following the poor critical and financial reception to the film, Universal restructured their plan for rebooted adaptations of their Classic Monsters to be standalone in nature.[26]
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 byEric Pearson.James Wan was attached to serve as producer. The project is a joint production venture between Universal Pictures andAtomic Monster.[27]
