I just saw this for the first time today. I enjoyed it- by no means was it the greatest but I think it's been unfairly bashed. The plot was extremely weak but the action was very enjoyable and the accents and monsters was good fun. Now if you wanna bash, bash 'Punisher'.

Sorry if this has been answered already but theres several threads on this movie and i dont wanna wade thorugh them all:

I was wondering what was the origin of van helsing. Maybe this was addressed in the movie but the movie really does move a mile a minute and perhaps i couldn't follow everything. and the accents make it a bit harder too

this is what i gather so far:

SPOILERS

van helsing murdered dracula when Dracula was a mortal man. That was some 400 years ago. Now van helsing exists in the present and he has had his memory wiped. How did he live 400 years? why is his memory gone? Also why did Van Helsing murder Dracula and why did Dracula make a pact with the devil that turns him into a vampire?? Is there any reason why Van Helsing works for that holy order? Did he work for that order before he murdered Dracula?

Hmm, I'd look around and see if there's any more available info besides that found in the movie Van Helsing. The character of Van Helsing has been around for quite some time before this movie, although, I think his first name is something other than Gabriel. Anyway, sorry I couldn't provide more info. Check out www.wikipedia.org, searching for Van Helsing. They've got a lot of plot info that may help out.

Am I right when I say that The Van Helsing in the "Van Helsing" movie is NOT the Van Helsing from Coppola's Dracula movie. Didn't they say he was that Van Helsing's younger brother or something like that? Wiki has nothing about his but I know I heard this.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Helsing#Notes

I guess I am weird because I loved The Punisher and absolutely dispised Van Helsing.

I found them both very enjoyable. I love the score for Van Helsing. Sorry I haven't got any answers to questions, but as an aside, there was a comic by Dark Horse Comics (something about the Rue Morge) as well as the animated short on DVD that served as a prelude to the movie.

What's wrong with The Punisher? It was actually a lot better than I expected it to be, count me in as someone who likes it.

From IMDB trivia on Van Helsing:

I loved Van Helsing. I think a lot of people who didn't like it were expecting something else. It was exactly what I thought it would be from the trailer. Somebody should come up with a name for this genre that combines horror/action/comic book/videogame(Resident Evil, Underworld, Blade, Doom, etc.) . I'm almost 50 years old and think they're a hoot.

I thought Van Helsing was a blast until it tried to get too serious in the last ten minutes or so.
In terms of your question, I think Van Helsing and Dracula had battled for many years and something drew Gabriel to the Vatican or a church doorstep in a disoriented state and amnesia about his past.

i enjoyed van helsing until the end. making gabriel right hand of god was dumb and totally unnecessary. and i did not like the ending it went on forever and changing into werewolf and the two fighting as animals dumb. the fun part of the movie was a man against a vampire, dracula. not animal against animal. too many monsters, 2 werewolves, vampires, frankenstein. it was a little bit of an overload.

I wasn't really that impressed with "Van Helsing". Not from a plot or technical POV, but i was kind of expecting the same cheezy-funny/serious tone as "The Mummy".

Punisher was totally fun.

The B&W intro to Van Helsing alone makes the flick worth watching IMO.
Even if you don't like the movie as a whole, that intro is cool.

Just watched this in HD-DVD and it looks awesome!

It delievered for me on all those counts.

I was stoked to see this movie. Then I watched it and felt that Dracula was a little too flamboyent, Kate Beckinsale's makeup managed to actually make her unattractive (not even mentioning her stupid costume), and the special effects just had this unfinished feel to them, especially the scene with where he is chasing down the horses w/ the carriage and does his jumping thing... To me, it was just a complete letdown. My brother-in-law loved it though. Every time I see it for $7.50 at Wal-Mart I think I might want to watch it again.

Amen! One of my favourite scores in recent memory...better than the film in fact...

Kate Beckinsale made Van Helsing bearable.

Don't forget The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V for Vendetta. Actually, they're called comicbook-related action pictures, or CRAP for short.

Nicely done!

The part I like about VanHelsing was his Friar sidekick. And Frankenstein's monster. He was the most sympathetic character in the movie.

I don't know. I saw this twice, once on a DVD rental and once on TV. Between the omnipresent CGI, the murky, claustrophobic skies, the fish-eye-on-a-string photography, the industrial-grade art direction, the orgy of gratuitous and pneumatic cleavage, the videogame-type action violence, the comicbook disregard for realism and historical fact, the lack of character development, the fake tacked-on bargain-basement mysticism, the unrelenting EXTREMELY LOUD soundtrack, the needlessly convoluted recycling of public domain horror film icons, the lack of humour, the pervasive "more is more" aesthetic, and the simple callousness of borrowing the title from a famous Dracula character and then making the hero the younger brother of the famous vampire hunter for purely copyright reasons, I needed a vomit bucket both times. As the girl in Married With Children used to say: "The mind wobbles."

I found the movie to be mind-numbingly bad as well, and didn't care for the soundtrack (may of just been how it was used, it was repetitive and overbearing).

But I think the OP got his answer .

The intro was the only part of the movie I liked.

Except V was excellent. LoEG on the other hand, was worse than crap.

I have seen both good and bad movies over the many years. I must say that van helsing takes the cake as the worse movie I have ever seen in my life. It actually make other bad movies look very good.. say pearl harbor, episode 2 of star wars, batman and robin, superman 4 etc... when I saw VH in the theatre.. when it was over.. someone yelled out that it was a peice of shit.. I never had that happen before and it was worth the pain of watching that movie.

I have no problem with jackman, and kate. they both have been in other better movies like x2 and click.. but director stephen sommers is the worse director out there. and even makes michael bay look good.

my two cents worth on the movie.

Jacob

I did like the punisher remake and v for vendetta.