FX, Evans and Dance's performances are the only things to save in this movie.
If you think Dracula becoming a hero and a martyr is a good idea, you will like it. Otherwise, like in my case, you will think that it was the worst idea in quite some time.
So, Dracula is not the most evil creature in the world any more ... :(
That the so called “critics” at Rotten Tomatoes screws this movie over is not really a surprise. Said “critics” are usually out of sync with both my opinions and the opinions of most of the viewers which can be seen again from the fact that these people give this movie a 23% rating whereas the actual viewers give it a 60% rating. At lot of “purists” also seem to take a disliking to this movie. Well, the movie is named Dracula Untold so it should be no surprise that the story would be a new one.
Personally I found this movie quite enjoyable. Yes it is not the original Dracula story but it is no... read the rest.
RELEASED IN 2014 and directed by Gary Shore, "Dracula Untold” tells the origin of Dracula: In the 15th century Prince Vlad the Impaler (Luke Evans) must protect his small kingdom of Wallachia (in modern-day Romania) from a Turk warlord (Dominic Cooper) who demands a thousand boys from Wallachia & Transylvania, including Vlad’s son. Threatened by the unsurmountable Turk army, Vlad desperately makes a dubious pact with a formidable caged vampire in order to acquire its dark powers and save his family & kingdom. Sarah Gadon plays Vlad’s winsome wife.
Bram Stoker's Count Dracula is textbook example of my Evil Iceberg Theory (the less you see of and know about a villain, the better). In an epistolary novel, the title character is the only one who doesn’t set his thoughts down in letters or in a diary (or, like Dr. Seward, a phonograph recording).
If, as Lovecraft wrote, "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown," then Dracula is the embodiment of this fear; inscrutable, unknowable, unreachable, impossible to negotiate or reason with.