Saturday, June 30, 2012

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

As mentioned earlier
ever since I heard about Abe Lincoln and vampires being mixed together I had to check it out. 
And now 3 months after listening to the audiobook, I finally got the chance to see the film.
SPOILERS below about the film and book.

The beginning of the film including his childhood felt rushed in comparison to the book. It does include his father being in debt to a vampire and the death of his mother but then skips ahead, missing 1/3 or more of the book. 
I can't say these were my favorite parts of the book, with his drunk father and moving around. But in the book he avenges his mother as a child, staking his first kill.

In general the film chops out a lot of character development, personal connections, and motivations. Abe's father explaining the truth about vampires is replaced with a rushed version by Henry.
There is no slave friend in the book to push Abe to fight slavery. Instead he sees the truth of slavery with his own eyes, seeing vampires kill slaves on a plantation after an auction.
Actually, there's not much of a link between slavery and vampires in the film. And the film is also missing examples like vampires snatching children as reasons to kill them.
I don't remember silver having any big signifigance in the book, but it is the primary/only weaspon against vampires in the film. For example, although the emancipation proclamation is shown in the film, it is not the cause for winning the war, but instead silver wins the war.

In the end, the biggest missing piece for me in the film is Abe and Henry's relationship.
The film treats Abe like just another vampire hunter to do Henry's bidding. There is no reason given for Henry to save Abe's life or train him. He doesn't even appear to like him in the movie.
And then there is the ending, which was another huge disappointment compared to the book. We don't see anything about Abe's death: we have no backstory on Boothe as a vampire, we don't see Henry fighting Boothe to avenge Abe, we don't see Abe as a vampire in current times.
Instead, we see Henry in current times, but it has no real meaning. To me, it seems like this film should fit into a larger series of vampire hunter films, where Henry goes to recruit famous people from history.

I walked into this movie knowing the Rotten Tomatoes rating of 35% and expecting the critics to be wrong. But this ended up being the percent of the book in the film (small snipets from the the middle), which is strange since it was written by the author of the book.
I personally didn't like the overuse of CG for vampire faces and the chase over horses during a stampede.
My hopes were just too high for this film and it didn't live up to the book.

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