i was super stoked for it and it was kind of just there. damn shame.

i'm fully aware this movie will totally get it WRONG, and i think i'm old enough to not care. i'll always have the memories of gameplay in my head. truth is, the story is very vague and needs alot of filler. don't think anderson is the guy to do it, but whatever, it's done.

pwa ha

it's all wrong and i DO care.

quick someone please get deltoro on this one. hell the elf prince was pretty much alucard already. this movie needs practical creature effects, a whip,holy water, great sets, action, booby traps, an elegantly evil dracula, and one tough and very human simon.

and if someone can make finding a porkchop in a brick work, all the better.

does that mean no one should ever make a movie with vampires because it's influenced by the original vampire (debateable).

the only other influences i see are CONAN in the NES box art, some D&D, and maybe some greek journey myth.

unless they jump forward even more and say that life started to come back on earth...but strangely mutated...and zombies are now breeding. of course, that would require a budget.

this ancestor can even be a knight on a mission, carrying a sword and seeking shelter. okay.

but at some point, if you don't introduce the whip- it's just wrong.

the whip is supposed to be leather (and soaked with the blood of dracula, or something). But for a twist- how about this knight, who is being held in dracula's dungeon, being tortured daily(say, whipped) by one of drac's minions,kept alive just to entertain but our plucky hero escapes his dungeon and grabs the first thing he can get his hands on- in effect, turning the weapon of his own torture against the monsters and dracula. the whip is now infused with his own sainted(?) blood as well, and there is something in it that hurts dracula. faith? whatever. that's just one way to introduce and make the whip plausible.

2 is odd. if dracula is resurrected every 100 years, why is the same simon at it again? if it's 100 years, what does the middle belmont sit around and do (supposing a grandfather fights drac, and then 100 years later, a grandson does)? it was long and hard, most people can't beat it without cheatcodes. it expects you to know to do things like crouching somewhere for 30 seconds- to proceed with the game. buying and upgrading items was it's strong suit. also the switch from night to day was annoying as fuck.

3 went back to the boldness of #1, with new characters that actually had different fight styles, different paths that stimulated replaying, and more music. it also introduced alucard, although he had joker-style ducktailed hair.

super castlevania (IV) for SNES was one of the most law bending games of the system. sometimes too colorful, but employing visual gimmicks that stretched what he snes could do.

symphony of the night kicked all kinds of ass. nuff said.

then just wipe your memory of any nintendo 64 or camecube castlevania, from what i hear.

aliens and predator, castlevania, and resident evil as well as zombie law.

and the icing on the cake is sleeping with milla.

god i hate using thos AICN catchphrases.sorry.

and homage- how's this for homage- upon entering the castle, simon is dressed in the knightlier garb from simon's quest, but by the end, after an escape from months of dungeon captivity with the very whip used to beat him, his clothes have become the tattered yellow and brown loincloth and tunic look, circa the original game (though that was more of a barbarian look)

With that said, best games that could make awesome films are: Grimm Fandango (this in the hands of the Pixar dudes would be pure gold), Monkey Island, Sanitarium and the good old Fallout.

that noise was probably the most human in all of NES.

Aside from the decent Silent Hill movie (or the quite funny and endlessly quotable Doom), the video games adaptations have proven unwatchable past 14 years old. Been fooled before, so I won't pay a dime to see this. Too bad, just replayed Symphony of the Night and it rocks. Now, bring on Christophe Gans' Onimusha, that one at least sounds both faithful AND ambitious.

I'm not the kind of talkbacker to diss others' tastes, what I'm trying to say is that I was a former Gans naysayer (the guy is a notorious blowhard in interviews, and his past work failed to impress me) who had his ass handed back to him by Silent Hill: not a great movie but a decent horror flick with a solid cast, direction, visuals, quite faithful to the game (albeit the director's more a fan of the second game and unfortunately it shows) and overall a miraculous display of craftmanship and integrity, unheard of when it comes to the recent wave of horror flicks and/or video game adaptations.

I truly ate crows that day and watched the news about Gans' projects with a renewed interest. So as long as he doesn't cast Jean Reno to match the game but focuses on Takeshi Kaneshiro, I'm onboard. Give the man $80 million for his crazy samurai fantasy, instead of financing that phony Paul "Evil Namesake" Anderson. And keep the latter off the Metal Gear movie, as well!!!

and are real fans in some way they can also see the potential and not dumb it down to crap as "another video game movie" or as another pay check or something.

I don't think Castlevania's plot was that complicated so there is plenty of room for fleshing it out. If done well it could be a great boost to the horror monster genre.

I have to admit when I played symphony of the night the first thing I though was What? I'm not a Belmont?" But the game grew on me so much that i started to wonder if the ones after didn't suffer from lack of Alucard.

I can easily imagine him in the movie without having to be the focus. The best part of that game was the incredibly gross monster bosses in it like The lord of the flies. He was awesome.

BTW- the train thing is from RE:2. Which just goes to show what a colossal dick he is.