05-14-2012, 03:45 PM
I think it's about the time that Depp murders a second group of innocent people in cold blood that I started to wonder "uhm... who's the protagonist in this movie?" It's really amazing how unlikable they made him.
Off the top of my head:
[spoiler]
- Murders a crew of 11 construction workers who were the ones who dug up his coffin and freed him.
- Mindrapes the well-meaning if drunk family groundskeeper into becoming his dutiful servant.
- When he can't get fishing boat captains to sign back on with his family's cannery by offering a better deal - because, as their leader says, there is such a thing as 'loyalty' - mindrapes the leader into betraying those loyalties.
- Seeks love advice (don't ask) from a group of flower children that we had seen earlier in the movie giving the female love interest a lift ... and after learning some trite but good stuff, announces that he's going to kill them. And then does. You could make the argument that murdering the construction workers was a craze brought on by being locked in a box and unable to feed for two centuries, but this?
- After promising that he wouldn't use his powers on anyone under his roof, murders the doctor when he finds out that, while she's been giving him transfusions of human blood to attempt to cure him, she's been putting the vampire blood she's taken from him (which he no longer needs/wants) into herself. It's established earlier in the movie that she's afraid of getting old, and she's actually kind of sympathetic (if somewhat pathetic), so the scene is just all kinds of horrible. Then he has the mindraped groundskeeper help dump her body in the ocean.
- Proclaims his first love was his one true love again and again, then falls for .. .. I guess what is supposed to be her spiritual successor. That's not the bad part; the bad part is that, even though he has these feelings for this new girl, he happily lets the female doctor he's eventually going to murder give him a blowjob and fucks the witch that cursed him in the first place. You might think these incidents would come back to bite him in the ass when he's trying to woo the romantic interest, but no. They're never mentioned again.
Ending spoiler:
[spoiler]- After learning that his romantic interest was put in a mental hospital as a child for seeing ghosts, that she spent her entire life until her escape wishing for the warmth of the sun, that she could never be with him because he's a creature of the night ... Turns her into a vampire rather than let her die.[/spoiler][/spoiler]
There's more parts than that, I'm sure. There was a point where I was wondering if they were going to take this corruption and work it into the story - his zealous desire to protect his family would lead him to take extreme actions that would eventually lead to their destruction/his undoing. Wrong again. He's never made to answer for ANY of this, nor does he show any guilt or regret. It becomes hard to make the case that Depp's character, Barnabus, is not just as evil if not worse than the villain.
There are some funny parts, but you see most of them in the trailer. They're few and far between, and almost vanish completely after the first act. The climax is - I literally face-palmed at it. I detailed some of the alleged protagonist's deeds above, but that's certainly not all that's wrong here. So many plot threads left hanging, so many points raised and then dropped, so many pointless scenes and logical holes...
Maybe if the story was completely farcical, it could get away with it, but that's definitely NOT the tone the movie strikes. In the end, I left the theater confused instead of satisfied.
Seriously, don't see this movie. Just go watch the Avengers again. It's what I wish I'd done.
Off the top of my head:
[spoiler]
- Murders a crew of 11 construction workers who were the ones who dug up his coffin and freed him.
- Mindrapes the well-meaning if drunk family groundskeeper into becoming his dutiful servant.
- When he can't get fishing boat captains to sign back on with his family's cannery by offering a better deal - because, as their leader says, there is such a thing as 'loyalty' - mindrapes the leader into betraying those loyalties.
- Seeks love advice (don't ask) from a group of flower children that we had seen earlier in the movie giving the female love interest a lift ... and after learning some trite but good stuff, announces that he's going to kill them. And then does. You could make the argument that murdering the construction workers was a craze brought on by being locked in a box and unable to feed for two centuries, but this?
- After promising that he wouldn't use his powers on anyone under his roof, murders the doctor when he finds out that, while she's been giving him transfusions of human blood to attempt to cure him, she's been putting the vampire blood she's taken from him (which he no longer needs/wants) into herself. It's established earlier in the movie that she's afraid of getting old, and she's actually kind of sympathetic (if somewhat pathetic), so the scene is just all kinds of horrible. Then he has the mindraped groundskeeper help dump her body in the ocean.
- Proclaims his first love was his one true love again and again, then falls for .. .. I guess what is supposed to be her spiritual successor. That's not the bad part; the bad part is that, even though he has these feelings for this new girl, he happily lets the female doctor he's eventually going to murder give him a blowjob and fucks the witch that cursed him in the first place. You might think these incidents would come back to bite him in the ass when he's trying to woo the romantic interest, but no. They're never mentioned again.
Ending spoiler:
[spoiler]- After learning that his romantic interest was put in a mental hospital as a child for seeing ghosts, that she spent her entire life until her escape wishing for the warmth of the sun, that she could never be with him because he's a creature of the night ... Turns her into a vampire rather than let her die.[/spoiler][/spoiler]
There's more parts than that, I'm sure. There was a point where I was wondering if they were going to take this corruption and work it into the story - his zealous desire to protect his family would lead him to take extreme actions that would eventually lead to their destruction/his undoing. Wrong again. He's never made to answer for ANY of this, nor does he show any guilt or regret. It becomes hard to make the case that Depp's character, Barnabus, is not just as evil if not worse than the villain.
There are some funny parts, but you see most of them in the trailer. They're few and far between, and almost vanish completely after the first act. The climax is - I literally face-palmed at it. I detailed some of the alleged protagonist's deeds above, but that's certainly not all that's wrong here. So many plot threads left hanging, so many points raised and then dropped, so many pointless scenes and logical holes...
Maybe if the story was completely farcical, it could get away with it, but that's definitely NOT the tone the movie strikes. In the end, I left the theater confused instead of satisfied.
Seriously, don't see this movie. Just go watch the Avengers again. It's what I wish I'd done.
![[Image: Bellesig6-1.jpg]](http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff137/catseye543/Bellesig6-1.jpg)