BBC Dracula

I'm not sure of this. Like the King Kong franchise - I'll always watch a new one. However, I kind of wish I hadn't bothered.

Why do remakes have to divert so far from the original? I don't understand the concept of taking a brilliant book and rewriting it in this manner. It's like the BBC have to have an "agenda" with everything.

1. Jonathan Harker was not undead. He escapes the castle to the convent - completely alive.
2. What is it with the BBC and this need to rewrite male characters as "Strong Female leads". Van Helsing (Abraham) named after the writer was not female (Agatha). This is perhaps the biggest disservice to the novel - removing the character that bore the writer's first name. How f**king pc do the BBC have to be?
3. The Demeter did not get blown up, it ran aground at East Cliff, Whitby.
4. And then bringing it forward 100 years? why? Is that a touch of Hammer's Dracula AD1972?
5. Is it a horror? Is it a black comedy? is it a Carry On? The BBC cannot be all things to everyone - doing so creates more misses than hits.

They (the BBC) haven't made it bad: They've taken a brilliant novel and made it ordinary.
Time to do a reset - so am going to read the novel again this weekend. Hopefully, this will expunge from my memory this mess.

I'm a little more hopeful for "The Last Voyage of the Demeter" - if/when it gets finished.

See, I made a decision a few years back - if an adaptation contains race bending or gender bending, or let's say "sexual orientation bending", or if it takes place in a completely different place or time, I'm out. If you can't adapt something properly, I'm not interested. Dracula is a brilliant novel, just like Marry Shelley's Frankenstein, but most of the adaptations nowadays suck

[QUOTE] [b]pittrek wrote:[/b]

See, I made a decision a few years back - if an adaptation contains race bending or gender bending, or let's say "sexual orientation bending", or if it takes place in a completely different place or time, I'm out. If you can't adapt something properly, I'm not interested. Dracula is a brilliant novel, just like Marry Shelley's Frankenstein, but most of the adaptations nowadays suck[/QUOTE]

Fucking with things for sake of fucking with them is criminal.

agreed. another great novel : Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus".
Like Stoker, Swift, Shaw, Yeats, Wilde and Joyce...another great writer from Irish roots.

I loved the first 2 episodes but thought the 3rd one was a bit of a mess.

Why do writers update stories, change plots, use women instead of men etc? To keep the story fresh for modern audiences. Who would want to watch the same exact story repeated over and over, only with different actors? It's ironic on another thread that Brian May is being criticised for playing the same guitar solo that way ...

As for women instead of men, the female Van Helsing character was great -- far and away the best thing about this new adaptation. More generally, women didn't just appear after the 1960s, they've been present throughout history but due to societal constraints (the idea in 19thC UK that men and women should occupy separate spheres) women generally don't tend to be 'action hero' lead characters is stories like Dracula, Frankenstein. But of course women have been kicking ass throughout history and their under-representation in literature in those particular roles was due to constraints (bias, misogyny, power relationships) that no longer exist, so I'm glad writers now don't feel the need to follow them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but I'm glad for the attempt.

But, surely the BBC's pursuit of pc box-ticking with a "Strong Female Lead" should've left Van Helsing untouched. Pick another character, Harker for example.
Changing the sex (and name) of the character that bears the writer's Christian name is crossing a line that shouldn't be crossed.

As soon as I see Mark Gatiss' name in the writing credits I know to instantly avoid.

[QUOTE] [b]pittrek wrote:[/b]

See, I made a decision a few years back - if an adaptation contains race bending or gender bending, or let's say "sexual orientation bending", or if it takes place in a completely different place or time, I'm out. If you can't adapt something properly, I'm not interested. Dracula is a brilliant novel, just like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but most of the adaptations nowadays suck[/QUOTE]

I agree 100% with all of this.

[QUOTE] [b]Dr Magus wrote:[/b]As soon as I see Mark Gatiss' name in the writing credits I know to instantly avoid.[/QUOTE]

Admitted you have a point. But everyone has one "Bo Rhap" in them...League of Gentlemen was his.
Gatiss, Shearsmith and Pemberton's piece of genius.

Sherasmith and Pemberton continue to produce this kind of quality.

Psychoville - darkly brilliant
Inside No 9 - exceptional writing - "12 Days of Christine" and "Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room" are the two finest half-hour's TV I can recall.

I quite enjoyed Dracula, and the interesting documentary that followed.
I also enjoyed the BBC adaptation of A Christmas Carol.
I've never seen the Bohemian Rhapsody film "adaptation" though, got to draw the line somewhere.

Well at least people will get to see one of our most beautiful castles (Orava castle), one of the castles I visit every summer.

[QUOTE] [b]brENsKi wrote:[/b]

[QUOTE] [b]Dr Magus wrote:[/b]As soon as I see Mark Gatiss' name in the writing credits I know to instantly avoid.[/QUOTE]

Admitted you have a point. But everyone has one "Bo Rhap" in them...League of Gentlemen was his.
Gatiss, Shearsmith and Pemberton's piece of genius.

Sherasmith and Pemberton continue to produce this kind of quality.

Psychoville - darkly brilliant
Inside No 9 - exceptional writing - "12 Days of Christine" and "Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room" are the two finest half-hour's TV I can recall.


[/QUOTE]

Yep LOG wasn't really my thing but I appreciated the great writing, characters etc. I'm more on about his 'adaptations' of other works over the last few years that make me cringe.

I quite liked it.

What needs to be remembered is that it's "based on" the book. It doesn't have to be an exact copy, scene for scene or verbatim. Dracula is one of my favourite stories ever, but I liked the freshening up, as we've seen the same old thing several times.

Aesthetically, it was brilliant. The actors were fantastic, and I really enjoyed the injection of humour too. It made the characters even more endearing. Just because Dracula is an undead, blood-thirsty hunter and killer doesn't mean he can't have a wicked sense of humour as well.. Really loved that aspect, as well as the witty one-liners between he and Van Helsing (didn't bother me that they made Van Helsing female, either)

I respect the criticism, and understand the points made here, but it certainly didn't detract from my enjoyment.

I've never seen a Dracula-film that wasn't a, more or less, loose adaptation of the book. Some of my favorites stray very far from the novel - the 1931 version elevated Renfield to essentially the central character, the 1958 Christopher Lee version departs from the novel countless times, and I don't know where to start with Nosferatu. Quite simply, I don't think it's possible to make a precise and accurate film out of a book that is presented in the form of a series of letters and journal entries.

I think the book has a very interesting plot and some undoubted high points, but I also think it's marred by stylistic problems (to name two that really stick out for me: the epistolary format works horribly, taking the pace out of the story and seriously harming the build-up of tension, IMHO; many of the characters are very flat and poorly developed) and very poor research (the supposedly Dutch Abraham Van Helsing-character is associated with that nationality by a seemingly endless stream of GERMAN attributes, Stoker refers to Transylvania when he clearly means Wallachia, the supposedly historical research about vampires, to the extent that it is actually discussed rather than implied, doesn't match actual old writings on the subject, etc.).

If the story is good and the characters work, then I don't mind loose adaptations - otherwise, it'd get more than a little boring if you've read the book. I don't get agitated over 'gender bending', 'race bending' and the likes and feel kinda sorry for people who let minor details like that ruin a story for them.

[QUOTE] [b]thomasquinn 32989 wrote:[/b]I don't get agitated over 'gender bending', 'race bending' and the likes and feel kinda sorry for people who let minor details like that ruin a story for them. [/QUOTE]
I'm not hung up on gender/race changes. My own point was that the ONE character bearing the writer's own Christian name, should not have been changed.
If there was an absolute need to change a lead character's gender then why not have a Joanne Harker?

and, this adaptation really did not feel like it belonged in any genre, be it comedy, thriller or horror.

The "blowing up" of the Demeter also didn't work for a number of reasons - apart from the obvious. But one that really would not have worked: Drac and his box of soil being on the seabed for 100 years...no no no. Fisheries, Fuel exploration etc would've disturbed Drac's one "resting place" - with the soil dispersed from Whitby to Amsterdam.

[QUOTE] [b]thomasquinn 32989 wrote:[/b]

I don't get agitated over 'gender bending', 'race bending' and the likes and feel kinda sorry for people who let minor details like that ruin a story for them. [/QUOTE]

I've enjoyed many adaptations that stray wildly from the original novel, but I utterly despair at those who deem it necessary to alter minor details in order to tick politically correct boxes that satisfy the loony-left driven agenda of forced diversity that the BBC especially likes to force down the our throats.