Interview With the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles

While I wouldn't ordinarily consider myself mean-spirited, there is something about failed movie franchises that I find extraordinarily amusing.  I'm not talking about the movies that kill a franchise (Batman and Robin), but the movies that were supposed to have sequels, but never did.  Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros., The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, Godzilla (1998) --- and that's not even counting every comic book or video game movie that never spawned a direct sequel.  While Interview With the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles was, eventually, followed by Queen of the Damned, nobody from the original film reprised their role and the film was pretty loose with its continuity; Queen was more of a reboot than a direct sequel.  Still, it's hard to believe that such a successful movie --- it grossed almost four times its budget --- with such an ambitious subtitle didn't wind up being a tent pole film.  Maybe audiences just weren't that interested in Hollywood heartthrobs wearing frilly shirts.

"Doth he besmirch our honor, bro?"

Interview With the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles is, essentially, the 200-year life story of Louis (Brad Pitt), as told to a reporter (Christian Slater) in --- you guessed it --- an interview.  In colonial New Orleans, Louis was a plantation owner who was mourning his late wife and child.  He had lost his taste for living, and spent his time tempting death; as it turns out, he got more than he bargained for.  Thanks to his deliciously suicidal tendencies and hunky good looks, Louis attracted the attention of the vampire Lestat (Tom Cruise).

Hickeys hurt so good

Lestat turned Louis into an undead creature, but Louis had more in common with the grunge scene than just his hair; he had angst, which meant that he refused to take the life of another person.  Sure, watching Louis drink the blood of rats is fun for a while, but Lestat transformed Louis to be a companion, not a novelty.  He needed something to force Louis to stop moping and get on with his un-life.  Enter Claudia (twelve year-old Kirsten Dunst).

Adorable + Horrifying = Adorrifying?

Would turning an innocent child into a natural predator be enough to keep Louis by his side?  Is giving a child the power of evil a good idea?  Will Louis ever get over his whining and start killing people?  And where the hell do vampires come from, anyway?  Most of these questions get answered as Louis tells his tale, whether explicitly or not.

Perhaps the most impressive parts of Interview With the Vampire are the productions aspects.  The sets are pretty awesome throughout, peaking with Armand's ridiculously Gothic underground catacombs.  The soundtrack is pretty good, although occasionally over-dramatic; in a movie that has so many emotional bromances, though, that can be expected.  The costumes are also excellent period pieces, although the hair and make-up for the vampires was hit-and-miss for me.  I liked that the paleness of the vampires would depend on how recently they fed, and I thought Brad Pitt's vampire eyes were pretty cool-looking.  However, I couldn't get past some of the crappy wigs and Lee Press-On Nails used by some of the cast.

"Available in Natural or Glamor lengths!"

Production values don't make a movie, though.  Since this is, essentially, a vampire biopic, it needs a compelling lead and a solid story arc.  I enjoyed Brad Pitt's performance as the eternally morose Louis, but his character was not really one of action; everything he did was a reaction, which makes him less interesting than some of the other characters.

Louis, in action

The headlining actor in this film is Tom Cruise, and it's easy to see why.  While Lestat is not the main character in this film, he is the most active character.  Whether he is playing a villain, trying to fight loneliness, or merely gazing at Louis with his jaw hanging open in a not-at-all-homoerotic fashion, Lestat is the wheel that propels this story.

It's too bad that Tom Cruise isn't very good here.  I normally don't have a problem with Tom Cruise's acting, but this just felt like a poor match.  He wasn't scary when he was being evil and his wicked laughter felt forced.  He improved dramatically after Claudia plays her trick on Lestat, but it was a little late for that improvement to matter much.  Kirsten Dunst was actually pretty good as the spoiled vampire child, which shocked me, since she's generally pretty awful.  I thought Christian Slater was fine in his small part, too, although it wasn't too demanding.  Antonio Banderas was less impressive as the mysterious Armand; he might have been mediocre if his wig wasn't ridiculous, or if his character's scenes weren't almost entirely devoted to subtext.  Stephen Rea was a little more fun as Santiago, but he should have been more terrifying.  You also might recognize Thandie Newton as Louis' main house slave; she wasn't particularly impressive, but she wasn't bad, either.

As cool as some parts of Interview With the Vampire are, they just don't add up to an entertaining or horrifying whole.  I felt that director Neil Jordan focused too much on the look of this picture (which is admittedly great) and not nearly enough on the main actors.  Brad Pitt can play tortured in his sleep, but I thought he wasn't given enough to do in this movie.  Tom Cruise, on the other hand, had a much wider range of emotions to play with, but never came close to meeting all the demands of his character.

Tom Cruise emotes

Thanks to those to flaws, the film's pacing seems extraordinarily slow.  I remembered liking this movie when I first saw it, because the tortured and moody vampire was a novelty.  This movie does a great job with that desolate loneliness, but with the current influx of vampire characters in popular culture, it no longer feels special.

Maybe my problem lies with the source material.  I remember reading the first few volumes of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles when I was younger, and I enjoyed the first couple of books (of which, Interview... was the first).  After a while, though, I realized just how annoying most of her characters are.  Take this story, for instance.  You have a wicked vampire (Lestat), a Goth-inspired depressed vamp (Louis), a bratty child (Claudia), a maybe kind of manipulative or maybe just bored blood-sucker (Armand), and another wicked vampire without a back-story (Santiago).  Who am I supposed to give a rat's ass about?  By default, it becomes Louis, but he is far from an entertaining storyteller.  Even what makes him initially special (his refusal to kill humans) is eventually brushed aside with barely a comment when he finally gives in to his nature.

Why so serious?

For all the technical prowess Interview With the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles has to offer, it's lacking in drama and interesting characters.  That's not a deal-breaker for an entertaining film, but this movie isn't much fun to watch and isn't gruesome enough to scare.  If you're a fan of Gothic horror, this might be up your alley.  I'm not, so this one definitely earns a "meh" rating from me.

2012

Director Roland Emmerich hates buildings.  I know what you're thinking.  "Whoa, whoa, whoa, Brian...Just because the guy directed 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, and Independence Day doesn't mean he hates buildings.  Maybe he just likes to direct insultingly stupid special effects movies."  Well, then, riddle me this: if he doesn't hate buildings, why did he write the screenplay for all those films?  Check and mate, Mr. Argumentative-voice-that-I-hear-in-my-head-as-I-type-this.

Now that I've got that off my chest, let's get to the movie.  Well, not so fast...did you see the poster?  The movie poster for the film has "We Were Warned" as a tag line.  Warned?  By who?  Okay, the movie is named 2012, and there is the famous Mayan Long Count calendar that starts with the date August 11, 3114 BC and ends with December 21, 2012 AD, so I'll assume that the Mayans warned us.  I have to assume this, because the movie only casually alludes to the Mayans a couple of times, never giving an in depth connection of how they knew the Mayans were warning us.  Alright, let's make that assumption.  What did they warn us about?  Presumably, since this is a disaster movie, the end of the world.  I'm not about to debate the merits of that idea (Well, maybe just for a second...my calendar ends on December 31, 2010.  Does that mean we all die on New Year's Eve?), but let's just assume that end of their calendar equals disaster.  The tag line implies that we are responsible, though.  "We Were Warned."  What?  "Don't let time continue in a linear fashion past December 20, 2012, or you'll be sorrrrrrryyyyyy!"  You'd think this preordained global event would tie in to nuclear war or global warming or dinosaur-killing asteroids, but no, not this film.  The earth just decides to go for humanity's jugular.  There are a lot of earthquakes, tidal waves (same idea, I know), and typhoons.  No tornadoes, oddly enough.  But "We Were Warned" that nothing humans did had any effect on the planet, and we were all just living on borrowed time.  We took out a loan from Mother Nature, and she's coming to collect on 12/21/2012...with interest!

Dear marketing team for 2012, I hate you so much.  Sincerely, Brian.

This movie could have also been titled "John Cusack: Faster Than Nature."  On four separate occasions, Cusack is being chased by a force of nature (an earthquake, volcano fumes twice, and a tidal wave) that tends to travel faster than a person, but apparently not John Cusack.  Don't get me wrong, I like John Cusack, but the man doesn't like being in good movies any more.  I also believe that, no matter how good a driver you are, you cannot drive a limousine through an office building that is falling down without crashing.  That's just my opinion, but I dare you to prove me wrong.


The plot to this masterpiece is pretty bare bones: the token scientist that everybody listens to (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) realizes that the world is going to end.  He and his friends have even calculated how much time we have left.  He tells the government, the government listens, and the governments of the world agree to secretly prepare some way to survive.  That's the plot. 

Reading that, you'd think this movie was 45 minutes long, but it clocks in at over two-and-a-half hours.  How do you fill all that extra time?  Well, Roland has the tried and true method of having one or two main characters, and the disaster happens, and it impacts the main characters and their loved ones.  In Independence Day, it was Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum; in The Day After Tomorrow, it was Dennis Quaid; in Godzilla, it was...um, I remember rooting for Godzilla, so she must have been the main character.  In 2012, the main characters are Ejiofor and Cusack.  How does that work out for their loved ones?  Let's see...Ejiofor fails to save his family or any of his friends, while Cusack's estranged family almost makes it through the film unscathed until his beloved replacement as husband and father (seriously, they really liked this guy) dies at the very end.  Don't feel bad for them; they just have Cusack fill in the newly vacant position.

The main idea in the film is the optimistic notion that, when all the chips are down, people are inherently good and will try to help each other because it is the right thing to do.  John Cusack's character wrote a (not terribly successful) book with that as its theme, and Ejiofor is reading the book.  The natural disasters occurring represent the tough times, and now it's time for humanity to save itself with its inherent goodness.  That's not a bad theme.  I don't necessarily disagree with it, either.  But every movie needs a villain, and in this movie it is Oliver Platt.  And nature, but nature has no dialogue.  Oliver Platt is the government guy who is trying to save the few thousand people he can in the time that Ejiofor gives him.  But Ejiofor's estimates are wrong every time (making him the worst movie scientist ever), which forces Platt's character to act aggressively to get the survival mission off the ground.  Don't get me wrong, Platt is a jerk in this film, but he's a logical jerk.  He does not try to save his 89 year-old mother because she's old and they will have to rebuild society if they survive; he allows rich people (instead of smart or genetically superior people) to pay billions of Euros for spots on the survival ships because the survival ships cost billions to make; when one of the survival ships can't be used, Platt chooses to not let them on board his ship because the final killer tidal wave will arrive in five minutes.  Is he a nice guy?  No, but his actions are understandable.  But Ejiofor has to make a swinging-for-the-fences-and-striking-out speech about how, if humanity is going to survive, it can't let go of its goodness, its...humanity.  And everyone but Platt totally agreed with him.  What?  Really?  Nobody says, "Let's try and get past this first extinction-level threat and then we can start being nice?"  Man, I must be ripe with villainy to think like that.

So how are the actors?  Well, the star of the show, Special Effects, was okay.  Buildings got destroyed.  Water rose.  Whatever.  Cusack was fine, but he needs a new agent.  Ejiofor was less good, but is generally a solid actor, so I'll give him a pass this time.  Cusack's son could be out-acted by lukewarm yogurt.  Amanda Peet and Thandie Newton are women; that's all the script really says about them.  Danny Glover looked really tired as the most depressing President of the United States ever...he's basically the anti-Bill Pullman in Independence Day; where Pullman had everyone fight back against annihilation, Glover just said "I quit, time to die."  Woody Harrelson plays a convincing crazy dirty hippie (he actually reminded me of my uncle in Montana, if my uncle was absolutely poo-flinging crazy), but it's still not a good role.  George Segal is in the movie for reasons that are never revealed.  There are some characters from China and India, too, but you're not supposed to care about them.

Really, that's the problem with this movie.  It spends so much time and effort (and did I mention time?) trying to make this feel epic, it has no room left for the characters.  And there are so many characters that just serve as cannon fodder to show how deadly the end of the world can be.  "Epic" means something with huge scope, but it always comes back to the characters.  Or, it's supposed to.

I give this film two stars for the effects, two stars for Cusack's charm, one star for Danny Glover not saying "I'm too old for this shit," and one star for killing George Segal, but I take away three stars for royally pissing me off.