Stay GFTuned #9: Van Helsing
Greetings, Ticketholders and clickbait enthusiasts!
The new season of Van Helsing is starting on SyFy tonight (see your local cable provider for time and channel).
On August 5, 2017, I finished binge-watching Season 1 of the Van Helsing TV series, and had planned to be farther along in the Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective before posting the following review, but as we know, plans are like pigeons: they fly out the window and shit on your head. So with Season 2 starting soon, the time is now.
SyFy Original Series: Van Helsing
Before the series could even get past the opening exposition cards, however, it was disappointingly clear that Van Helsing had at most a split hair’s worth to do with the material that “inspired” it. And show information on Wikipedia felled said hair down to a buzz-cut’s length. Basically, America’s national parks become volcanic (because SyFy Channel), spreading a massive ash cloud over the US, if not the entire world, blotting out the sun and making the human race fair game for vampires. This event is referred to as “the Rising,” the series’ only honest connection to its source material. In the comics, the Rising was an impending “end of days” scenario thwarted by Liesel Van Helsing, Robyn Hood, and her circle of friends. Rather than being caused by environmental factors and just affecting vampires, the comic book version of the Rising was magical in nature, and would have brought out every monster living and undying in New York City.
In the show, there’s some crap about a prophecy of a woman whose blood can cure vampirism and a fairy tale nod to Sleeping Beauty and Snow White (said woman is in a coma in a hospital and seven US Marines are sent to recover her). The sole remaining Marine, Axel, is still watching over her in the hospital--and feeding his blood to the woman’s doctor, who was bitten and turned at some point--three years later, when a vampire breaks in, bites the woman, and wakes her up. Amnesia, lost time, kick ass leading character who doesn’t want to be a leader even though she has to (because instinct and writing). Volatile social politics ensue, as do commentary on questions of the soul, mortality, immortality, and everything zombie movies have been a commentary on since George A. Romero--may he Rest In Peace--made social commentary a necessary trope of anything even remotely zombie-tangential. So it’s basically The Walking Dead with smarter zombies and more spiritual stuff.
As I have related to you previously regarding the comics, Liesel Van Helsing is a sexy, quick-witted, British steampunk inventor and the daughter of Abraham Van Helsing. After being trapped in a sort of monster purgatory for several hundred years, she is released in modern times and teams up with some of Zenescope’s most kick-ass characters (Sela, Masumi, and Robyn Hood among them), falls in love with Hades, and kills Dracula, a Frankenstein-like monster, a mummy, a werewolf, and several hundreds of other various kinds of supernatural creatures before accidentally screwing up history and time-traveling to a Nazi-run dystopian Earth, where her story, for now, is in perpetual cliffhanger territory.
In the Van Helsing TV series, however, the heroine is not British, not a trained fighter (though she does more than fine on instinct), has little personality or ingenuity, spends the majority of the season in an environment nearly devoid of sex appeal, and (most infuriating of all for some reason that makes words inadequate) is named Vanessa “Van” Helsing, like it’s a nickname instead of an eastern European surname. Hell, for most of the season, Van Helsing isn’t even her last name. She has another last name, but it’s only mentioned twice in twelve episodes so I can’t even remember what it is.
Rather than strategize and tinker behind the scenes and let her gadgets and pistol of a mouth do the talking like Liesel does, Vanessa seems to operate entirely on brute force and instinct, which worked okay in every combat situation she found herself in, but has minuscule value in a leadership position--*cough* Trump! *cough* political jabbing complete.
Aimless, too, is Vanessa’s romantic life. This is understandable in an environment where survival is a priority, but gives the impression of unfocused writing. One moment, she has a bland will-they/won’t-they with Axel (who is a useless lunk for most of his run on the show), the next she’s doing the obligatory, passionately “accidental” lesbian kiss thing, and when both of those options fail to be options because [omitted spoilers], she throws herself at the next hot guy on camera. It’s desperate and doesn’t fit at all with the character I was expecting.
None of Zenescope’s other Grimm Universe characters make an appearance in the series, either. I gained hope when a little girl named Calie was introduced, but she didn’t last very long, and my hope sprang even less eternal than before.
It’s like the cheap version of watching the Defenders universe on Netflix, where the characters can vaguely reference MCU events and only mention the Avengers descriptively (ie: “the big green guy”) because they don’t have direct licensing rights to those characters--aka: they can’t afford them. And if you have enough money to put out five Sharknado movies and keep adding heads and parts of other animals to sharks and pitting different shark hybrids against each other in every possible Photoshop-able environment, but you can’t afford to pay Zenescope-level money, you’ve got some priority issues to work out, SyFy.
Now for the show’s saving graces. Putting aside its almost insulting disregard for inspiration and the fact that the people who created Liesel Van Helsing put their stamp of approval on said insult, Van Helsing is a good enough show on its own. It’s structured passably, has plenty of human interest, has respect for its villains and their motivations, and keeps just enough loose threads hanging around to take the plot in new directions without bogging down the viewer with anticipation or making the proceedings feel overly directionless. Kelly Overton (probably best known as Rikki Naylor on True Blood) puts her previous experience to good use here as Vanessa, tapping into her beast mode on several occasions and (for lack of a term that I haven’t used twice already) kicks much ass. Christopher Heyerdahl (another True Blood alum, also known for playing the third Alistair on Supernatural, among numerous other villain roles in TV and film) is refreshing here as an unassuming deaf man named Sam who is more than he appears; if he hasn’t already won an award of some kind for this role, he should. Side note: though he doesn’t use it here, his Marlon-Brando- doing-Hannibal-Lecter voice is awesomely creepy. His friend, Mohammad (sort of the George to his Lenny, played by newcomer Trezzo Mahoro), and Flesh (the aptly named vampire who bit Vanessa in the first episode and later turned human from it, played by SyFy Channel and Supernatural alum Vincent Gale) are also interesting characters, though not with nearly as much gravity as Heyerdahl’s Sam. I hope to see more from them in Season Two.
Without spoiling too much, the series does try to rectify its infidelity in the series finale by revealing that Abraham Van Helsing is Vanessa’s grandfather. That means that Liesel Van Helsing could potentially be her mother. Perhaps the series takes place in an alternate timeline to that of the comics; one where Liesel was bitten while pregnant with Vanessa (or something like that), and circumstances transpired over the intervening centuries that landed Vanessa in the hands of the US government, who experimented on her in an effort to exploit her unique condition (that of surviving being birthed by a vampire) to turn her human. I am only speculating here. Whether or not I turn out to be right is something that only future seasons can tell, and I am damn stoked (or Bram Stoker-ed, as the case may be) to find out.
Rather than strategize and tinker behind the scenes and let her gadgets and pistol of a mouth do the talking like Liesel does, Vanessa seems to operate entirely on brute force and instinct, which worked okay in every combat situation she found herself in, but has minuscule value in a leadership position--*cough* Trump! *cough* political jabbing complete.
Aimless, too, is Vanessa’s romantic life. This is understandable in an environment where survival is a priority, but gives the impression of unfocused writing. One moment, she has a bland will-they/won’t-they with Axel (who is a useless lunk for most of his run on the show), the next she’s doing the obligatory, passionately “accidental” lesbian kiss thing, and when both of those options fail to be options because [omitted spoilers], she throws herself at the next hot guy on camera. It’s desperate and doesn’t fit at all with the character I was expecting.
None of Zenescope’s other Grimm Universe characters make an appearance in the series, either. I gained hope when a little girl named Calie was introduced, but she didn’t last very long, and my hope sprang even less eternal than before.
It’s like the cheap version of watching the Defenders universe on Netflix, where the characters can vaguely reference MCU events and only mention the Avengers descriptively (ie: “the big green guy”) because they don’t have direct licensing rights to those characters--aka: they can’t afford them. And if you have enough money to put out five Sharknado movies and keep adding heads and parts of other animals to sharks and pitting different shark hybrids against each other in every possible Photoshop-able environment, but you can’t afford to pay Zenescope-level money, you’ve got some priority issues to work out, SyFy.
Now for the show’s saving graces. Putting aside its almost insulting disregard for inspiration and the fact that the people who created Liesel Van Helsing put their stamp of approval on said insult, Van Helsing is a good enough show on its own. It’s structured passably, has plenty of human interest, has respect for its villains and their motivations, and keeps just enough loose threads hanging around to take the plot in new directions without bogging down the viewer with anticipation or making the proceedings feel overly directionless. Kelly Overton (probably best known as Rikki Naylor on True Blood) puts her previous experience to good use here as Vanessa, tapping into her beast mode on several occasions and (for lack of a term that I haven’t used twice already) kicks much ass. Christopher Heyerdahl (another True Blood alum, also known for playing the third Alistair on Supernatural, among numerous other villain roles in TV and film) is refreshing here as an unassuming deaf man named Sam who is more than he appears; if he hasn’t already won an award of some kind for this role, he should. Side note: though he doesn’t use it here, his Marlon-Brando- doing-Hannibal-Lecter voice is awesomely creepy. His friend, Mohammad (sort of the George to his Lenny, played by newcomer Trezzo Mahoro), and Flesh (the aptly named vampire who bit Vanessa in the first episode and later turned human from it, played by SyFy Channel and Supernatural alum Vincent Gale) are also interesting characters, though not with nearly as much gravity as Heyerdahl’s Sam. I hope to see more from them in Season Two.
Without spoiling too much, the series does try to rectify its infidelity in the series finale by revealing that Abraham Van Helsing is Vanessa’s grandfather. That means that Liesel Van Helsing could potentially be her mother. Perhaps the series takes place in an alternate timeline to that of the comics; one where Liesel was bitten while pregnant with Vanessa (or something like that), and circumstances transpired over the intervening centuries that landed Vanessa in the hands of the US government, who experimented on her in an effort to exploit her unique condition (that of surviving being birthed by a vampire) to turn her human. I am only speculating here. Whether or not I turn out to be right is something that only future seasons can tell, and I am damn stoked (or Bram Stoker-ed, as the case may be) to find out.
Adaptation: F
Characters: B+
Plot: C
Production: B-
Adaptation Average: C-
Standalone Average: B+
You can binge Season 1 on Netflix, and tune in tonight to SyFy for the premiere of Season 2. Also Stay Tuned for the return of the GFT Retrospective and some Tales From Wonderland.
Ticketmaster Van Helsing,
out.
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