EXCLUSIVE: AN INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN SOMMERS
Ilja Rautsi: Mr. Sommers...
Stephen Sommers: Just call me Steve, okay? My ADHD is so bad that I can't recall my full name.
IR: ...errr, okay. Steve, my man, I've just seen your newest car-crash-disguised-as-a-movie called Van Helsing. My initial thoughts are stupefaction and deep certainty that I've seen the most hard-clucking turkey since The Dreamcatcher. There is no rhyme or reason in your movie, and hardly any excitement at all. In fact, I even feel ashamed to call it a movie. It appears to be nothing but a series of ever-repeating action scenes that never manage to pick up in intensity. What's your say?
SS: Well, I dunno about turkey... ain't that a bird? I rarely see any real animals since everything can be created by using CGI anyway. But here in the Sommers Melodramatic Wonderland we sternly believe that too much is never enough... if somebody can stand, they can walk. But if somebody can walk, why wouldn't they run? And why stop there? Simple running is boring, there must be explosives around! The runner could avoid them by making somersaults and... no, now I got it! He's avoiding the explosions by jumping from trampoline to another, making triple somersaults! In the middle of the Paris World Fair while the UFOs attack! There, there is my next movie!
IR: Well, that sounds exciting, doesn't it? But what if we stick to THIS movie for now. It's funny that you mentioned the "Melodramatic Wonderland", because I think these three Drac's brides in your movie seem to live in a never-ending pantomime (soap) opera reality...
SS: Yes, yes indeed.
IR: For example, in the scene where Drac poses on the top of his castle, briefly after Van Helsing has destroyed his first herd of vampire babies, these three chicks wail and widdle on the backround as if they were in an underwater dance performance. Were you trying to ridicule something when filming this?
SS: I'm sorry, I missed the point.
IR: C'mon, Steve... one of these widdly bimbos even says that "I know what lurks in your lusty heart" in one scene. Or, actually: "I nnou vat lurks in yoor lasti haartt." Shouldn't this line be in the "Days of our Lives" or... let's say "athmospheric" gothic porn?
SS: No, that's actually a deeply charming...
IR: Don't you mean "curvy"?
SS: No, "charming"... character's intense line that reveals something crucial about the soul of Kate Beckinsale's character.
IR: Ah, Kate Beckinsale! I liked the way she is introduced in the movie. The camera spans from the ground level so that first we see her round bun in pants two sizes too tight, then her sides that are inside a corset even tighter, then lace-rounded boobs, and finally, as the cherry on top, her face in perfect make-up.
SS: Thank you, thank you. It's one of the shots I'm especially proud of. Actually, we shot it eighteen times to secure the best possible outcome.
IR: Is that the reason Beckinsale mouths her lines like she was just losing breath? Because her corset is way too tight?
SS: I'm impressed by your attentive eye. In fact, I had written a subplot that shows in flashbacks how Dr. Frankenstein removed four of her ribs so that she could fit in her clothes. It's a pity I had to cut it out. Oh well, there is always the chance for a sequel...
IR: Did that subplot also explain why Kate is hanging around in her clean court-like clothes in a shanty village among dirty paupers with bad dental care?
SS: Hmm, I knew there was a plot hole somewhere.
IR: Roger that. Then, let's move on to Hugh Jackman aka Van Helsing. In X-Men, Jackman plays a bitter and rogue outsider who doesn't remember a thing from his past. In Van Helsing, Jackman plays a bitter and rogue outsider who doesn't remember a thing from his past.
SS: And your point is?
IR: ...nothing, I guess. But I have to admit that Jackman might be the only one who surfs through this all with the least stains on his reputation. He's got the least wacky accent, the coolest costume and despite the paper-thin character, he still manages to maintain some credibility. His mystery-filled past doesn't appear all that mystery-filled after all, even if you do leave some questions unanswered in the end.
SS: What do you mean, "not-so-mystery-filled"? No one in the production company understood what was the deal with him.
IR: Not even that his first name is Gabriel and he's the "Left Hand of God"?
SS: Yes!
IR: Alrighty. Now, I'd like to ask... hypothetically, let's imagine a situation in which the audience would somehow begin to care about these cardboard statuettes rushing here and there during the movie, perhaps just by a sheer accident.
SS: I'm with you. Go on.
IR: Well, what's the point in transforming Jackman to a big CGI werewolf at the end of the movie, with not a single recognizable characteristic of Dr. Van Helsing left visible? And make him fight a CGI monster Dracula? That scene immediately brought the finale of "Mortal Kombat 2" back to my mind.
SS: Now I'm not with you any more. CGI is cool!
IR: But who cares about watching two piles of GIF images roll around the screen in an absurd-looking ball. It's hard to feel any kind of sympathy for them, on any level.
SS: Sympathy? That's just a plain exciting scene!
IR: Yeah, the excitement. The scene in which a horse cart jumps over a big ravine would have sought a rival in improbability, but by then you had already managed to maul probability into a shape its own mommy couldn't recognize. To deal with the movie's credibility problems we'd need another interview, and we don't have time for that now.
SS: It's okay, somehow I think I wouldn't even have patience for another. I don't think that the audience bothers to think about what's actually happening on the screen. You don't think while you're in movies! And I'm doing my best to stop this nasty thinking thing by bringing them a thrilling scene after another.
IR: Doesn't that just make your senses numb?
SS: ...
IR: Okay, let's move on. Going back to Jackman... I'd like to point out that he's doing way more rope-swinging than Tarzan does by average in one of his movies, so it was kinda cute to see him wearing nothing but a torn cloth over his family heirlooms. Was this intentional?
SS: Of course. Another reason for this was to make the female viewer's hearts flutter - after all Hugh is a hairy macho man.
