Burton to rescue vampire genre?
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Date Posted:
June-2-2010 22:19
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When
Alice in Wonderland director Tim Burton announced his plans at Comic Con last year to helm an upcoming film adaptation of 1960s vampire TV show
Dark Shadows, fans of the bloodsucker genre all over the globe breathed a collective sigh of relief.
For vampire enthusiasts fond of the many awesome and varied film, TV and literary depictions of the fanged miscreants of the night, the last few years have been a barren wasteland populated by zombie-esque teen girls, clinging desperately to copies of the various
Twilight novels and moaning heatedly about the “beautiful Edward Cullen”. Thank Christ there’s a traditionally dark, gore-filled vampire flick on the horizon.
Twilight is giving vampires a bad name. There, we said it. The vampire myth is one of the most time-tested and beloved legends in pop culture history, and while we’ll allow for cool examples of experimentation with said myth (
Blade was a human-vampire hybrid who waged war on his own kind,
Daybreakers depicted a future where vampires were the majority and humans the minority), we won’t stand for the liberties
Twilight has taken with it.
At no point were vampires intended to be used as a platform for sexually repressed religious drivel. No, they can’t walk around during the day and no, their skin doesn’t sparkle like a diamond when exposed to the sun. At least
Twilight got the vampires’ traditional rivalry with werewolves right, but since when were all lycanthropes perennially shirtless goons who look like they just stepped out of an informercial for the Ab King Pro?
With the announcement of his upcoming project, Tim Burton has thrown bloodsucker fans a buoy to rescue them from this sea of vampire mediocrity.
Dark Shadows was an eerily gothic vampire yarn and the unhinged Burton is just the man to bring it to the big screen. With mostly-successful collaborator Johnny Depp on board too, this could finally be the stake through
Twilight’s heart we’ve been waiting for.
Can you think of any other great/experimental examples of the vampire myth? Tell us about them below!
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