Round 2: Twilight VS Bram Stoker's Dracula

Ding ding ding....Round 2

Twilight VS Dracula

So here are two completely different aspects of vampirism.  Dracula is more of an adult film in comparison, more of a dark film.  The cast of this 1992 adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel is composed of Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing; Keanu Reeves as Harker; Gary Oldman as Dracula; and Winonna Ryder as Mina.  I found it interesting that Dracula was coproduced by Francis Ford Copolla, who as many of you know was in line to produce Breaking Dawn parts 1 and 2, the final book in the Twilight series.  Let's start with the summary of Dracula....

The movie begins by a little backstory of Dracula being away when his wife Elisabeta commits suicide.  Feeling her soul was damned, Dracula renounces God and vows to live for the dark side.  Years later, looking like an old man, he meets a man named Harker (Reeves) who is a solicitor.  He believes that Harker's fiance, Mina (Ryder), is the reincarnated Elisabeta and vows to have her.  He leaves Harker to be seduced by his brides and moves to London to take up real estate at the notorious Carfax Abbey.  He finds Mina living with another woman, Lucy, while Harker is still away.  Dracula abducts Lucy and rapes and bites her.  After finding Lucy barely alive, Dr. Seward, the head of the insane asylum neighboring Carfax Abbey, recommends to contact Van Helsing (Hopkins), the legendary vampire slayer.  Looking younger, Dracula meets and attempts to seduce Mina.  Harker, having escaped the wives of Dracula, finally reemerges and beckons Mina to marry him.  Furious, Dracula turns Lucy into a vampire, forcing Van Helsing and Dr. Seward to kill her.  A hunting party of Van Helsing, Harker, Dr. Seward and many more chase Dracula, where he goes to Mina and confesses.  She admits still loving him and remembers her life as Elisabeta.  He makes her his bride and after much insisting by Mina, begins to change her into a vampire.  The hunters burst into the room but Dracula escapes.  Mina is hypnotized by Van Helsing and they get information out of her of Dracula's whereabouts.  Dracula evades them by reading Mina's thoughts, to travel by box with gypsies.  Dracula's brides show up and convince Mina to attack Van Helsing.  Mina attempts to seduce him, but Van Helsing places a communion wafer on her head, burning it.  He then creates a ring of fire around the two of them to protect them from the looming brides.  He later decapitates them.  Dracula arrives via carriage and emerges from his box.  He is stabbed by Harker and stumbles.  Mina goes to his side.  Dying in the same church in which he denounced God, Dracula asks Mina to make him at peace.  They share a kiss and Mina shoved a knife into Dracula's heart.  The mark on Mina's head, the curse, and the soul of Elisabeta are lifted and disappear. 

Ok so if anyone has not seen Dracula, they are missing out on the most common vampire film ever made.  Just as predicted in any other vampire film other than Twilight, the usual vampiric things happen:  garlic and silver are used to kill; vampires do not go outside during the day; blah blah blah.  This is one thing that I really appreciate about Stephanie Meyer's view on vampires.  It is very different from what you may have thought about vampires.  It gives a different take on the living, feeding, killing of vampires.  Dracula, like Edward, believes that vampire souls are damned.  He also believes in true love.  Everyone has one true love.  Dracula's was Elisabeta and Edward's is Bella.  Fate is fate.  On the Dracula movie poster it says Love Never Dies.  Dracula is a horror/romance/thriller.  It drives home the fact that vampires still have human feelings and love is the most powerful.  I did not read the book that lead up to this movie as I did for the Twilight films but I'm sure, as with most movie adaptations from a book, there is more feeling and information in the novel.