are Vampires the "Next Big Thing" for '08? Twilight, Tru Calling...

[V]

Are "Vampires" the "Next Big Thing"?

That is, the Next Big Cultural Thing for the next year to perhaps two or three years.

When X-Men 1 came out there was a big comic-book superhero craze. This really hit rock bottom with (ugh) Spiderman 3, but was rejuvenated by Iron Man and The Dark Knight, etc.

Or in the early 2000's, there was this great big shock at the NEWness of Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series. LOTR has already finished, and Harry Potter while still a successful franchise now doesn't quite catch the "it's on the front page of every magazine" and the FAST pace of HP film #2 coming out in 2002, then book #5 coming out in 2003, then film #4 coming out in 2004. HP is still doing well but its what "catches the public attention"

and before that, I would say "Heroes" captured public attention pretty much on TV, inspiring a lot of knockoffs. And before Heroes, was Lost, and the Lost-clones.

The pre-teen fangirl-legion aimed "Twilight" DOMINATED Comic-Con this year, and now we hear that Harry Potter 6 has been pushed back to next summer, so the "Twilight" film pushed up its release date 3 weeks to now come out the weekend HP 6 *would* have come out, Thanksgiving weekend. So for this christmas season, going into fall/winter, the big movie experience will be the vampire-themed Twilight.Meanwhile, "Tru Blood" is premiering on HBO, starring Anna Paquin (like Twilight it is also adapted from a long and successful book series). "True Blood" isn't just about vampires though there's all sorts of supernatural creatures it just starts with vampires (check out this fake documentary video)

Granted, not as much exposure on HBO, but then again being on HBO assures that it will be of "arthouse" quality, and non of that pandering-for-ratings-by-dropping-the-running-storylines
-to-tell-a-season-of-standalone-episodes like in Battlestar Galactica season 3 (ugh)

So, are "Vampire movies and TV series" the "Next Big Thing"?

Are you a fan of either of these series? If not, do you think they hold promise?

And ***this a sign, that if these succeed, we will soon see a whole new wave of vampire-themed cinema and TV series?

Is there perhaps some other Vampire-story that you think deserves a new TV series/movie?

 

[V]

Re: are Vampires the "Next Big Thing" for '08? Twilight, Tru Calling.

Because I for one, literally more than I could care for a human baby, want to see a live-action "Hellsing" TV series based on the manga/anime/OVA series (though I'd call it just "Alucard", Hellsing is kind of a generic name)

who's bloody with me?!

Hellsing: "throwing-knife-wielding vampire-hunting priest vs Alucard: the King of Vampires" played out on epic scale

for those of you who don't know, a brief synopsis of the plot of "Hellsing":

Vampires, Ghouls, and Demons are real. The paramilitary "Hellsing Organization" is a top secret organization of the British government that helps track down and destroy these monsters. Their greatest agent is Alucard, who is actually himself a vampire. However, "this isn't Buffy": Alucard is arguably the strongest vampire who ever lived, and (after being defeated 100 years ago) he's been cursed to serve the Hellsing Organization; however, he's not "good" and not trying to get redemption or anything, he just does it because he's forced. Still....Alucard gleefully slaughters other modern-day vampires for Hellsing.

The idea is that by the present day, most Vampires have been "watered down" after many "Generations" of vampires turning humans into new vampires. Alucard, however, is one of the *original*Vampires from hundreds of years ago. Modern-day, watered-down Vampires are basically just "punks with guns that hide behind human weapons", morons like from the Buffy series that are just stronger and faster versions of humans. The *Original* Vampires, however, are a lot more like super-powerful demons with immense command of dark magic; they're a lot more like Bram Stoker-style classical vampires; demonically powerful and refined.

So Alucard, basically a Bram Stoker-style Vampire who remembers the "good old days" when Vampires had class and refinement, runs around slaughtering the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" moron modern-day vampires because he feels they aren't "worthy" of the dignity of being Immortals. Though there aren't really many of these powerful original Vampires left (it's down to just Alucard and a few others)

Alucard's "master" is Integra Hellsing, leader of the Hellsing Organization (it's an inherited position she got from her father). The plot of the tv series begins when a small rural British village is overrun by a Vampire: one of the rules of the Hellsing-verse is that only "the pure" i.e. virgins turn into Vampires when a Vampire bites them; non-virgins that get bit turn into mindless "Ghouls"; they are slaves to the will of the vampire that created them and basically just zombies, though they can use guns. A normal British police SWAT special forces team is sent in to the village, but they too are wiped out and then turned into Ghouls, except for one survivor, Seras. After the SWAT team fails, Alucard is called in by Hellsing to exterminate the Ghouls and the Vampire that created them.

Seras gets mortally wounded in the crossfire, and in an odd moment of pity, Alucard asks the dying Seras if she'd like to live: she will die from her injuries as a human, but if she lets him bite her, she'll become an immortal Vampire and live. She accepts his offer, becomes a Vampire, and joins the Hellsing Organization.

Episode 1 - "This is where you're supposed to close your eyes"

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

The thing is..."The Hellsing Organization" is a secret branch of the British government but also directly answerable to the Crown and the Church of England, and thus they're Protestants...the formal name of the Hellsing Organization is actually "The Royal Order of Protestant Knights". The Catholic Church, meanwhile, has their *own* vampire-hunting organization. They can't stand each other: the difference is that Hellsing is willing to recruit vampires to use to hunt other vampires, which the Vatican's vampire-hunting organization thinks is disgusting and they just kill vampires on site. The two groups hate each other and beyond some barely honored treaties, the irony is they hate *each other* more than they do the vampires and usually end up killing each other. Just as Alucard is Hellsing's trump card and ultimate weapon against the Undead, the Vatican's vampire-hunting group's trump-card is Father Alexander Anderson, a warrior-priest who's been upgraded with nanobots so he can regenerate body damage, just like vampires (though Alucard thinks this makes him neither man nor monster, but just an abomination). The thing is, Anderson's a pretty nice guy, runs an orphanage, etc. but he zealously slaughters even human agents of Hellsing he comes across as they're just "filthy heretics" to him and he's kind of nutty; he's armed with "baptized throwing bayonets" which can actually hurt Vampires.


Next time, on "Hellsing": they...are...the Valentine Brothers!

The overarcing plot of Hellsing is that why only virgins ("the pure") *someone* has been using a mix of genetic engineering and implanted microchips to create "artificial vampires" (granting vampire-status to non-virgins, thus "cheating") aka "insta-vampires". So they've got to figure out who's doing this; whoever it is wants to wipe out Hellsing, which includes mounting an attack on Hellsing HQ led by a pair of insta-vampires, the Valentine Bros., in which:

Jan Valentine brings Death-By-Konami-Code! and

Luke Valentine utterly pwns some Hellsing commandos, on his way to a head-to-head duel with Alucard....because there's always *someone* trying to be Number One, Luke wants to take down Alucard (its the classic Young Lion vs the Old Lion)

So its "smartly-dressed Vampires with high-powered weapons fighting other smartly-dressed vampires with high-powered weapons"

Most of the series if following Seras' entry in the world of being a vampire; i.e. she is disgusted with the concept of drinking blood (even donor-blood from hospitals) but she *needs* blood to survive and will get weak without it. So she's this sweet innocent person draw into the incredibly dark world of Hellsing and she's struggling to adjust: she's Hellsing's Living Dead Girl

and of course, Alucard and Anderson get a rematch, with Ghouls and Hellsing commandos caught in the crossfire in a brutal subway battle (see why Psalm 2:10 has replaced Ezekiel 25:17 in my lexicon)

oh, I guess you really want to know who's behind the insta-vampires' creation?

really?

hold on...

hold on...

EVIL. VAMPIRE. NAZIS. (Not EVIL ALIEN NAZIS, EVIL *VAMPIRE* NAZIS)

They're the "Millennium" organization: the Last Battalion. The idea is that the Nazi Third Reich was supposed to be "The Milliennium Empire", an empire to last a thousand years. The Nazis were conducting medical research on vampires and monsters and how to create their own, so when the war started going bad they sent the research project overseas to hide in south america, a holdout "last battalion" of 1,000 elite Nazi troops and scientists who over the decades have perfected the science of creating vampires and super-powered monsters. And now they're back.

They're Evil Vampire Nazis, they've got a command-blimp, and their first open move is to hijack a British aircraft carrier in the name of the Nazi empire....sending in their agent, a twisted female Nazi vampire codenamed "Rip Van Winkle" (aka Rip the Huntress; notice how she paints the new "flag" on the ship), to lead the assault.Oh, and Rip sings while she works....

all of this of course is a direct challenge to make Alucard come out and attack them on the aircraft carrier. So Rip camps out on the flight deck (with a drug-store umbrella to shield her from the sun, she is a vampire after all) and waits for Alucard to arrive. And the Huntress waits...


But Alucard takes it all in stride; after all, he's been around for a long-long year, and he's a man of wealth and taste!

 

[Messianni]

Re: are Vampires the "Next Big Thing" for '08? Twilight, Tru Calling.

Um... why did you start another thread?

 

[V]

Re: are Vampires the "Next Big Thing" for '08? Twilight, Tru Calling.

because this is a tangent

 

[V]

Re: are Vampires the "Next Big Thing" for '08? Twilight, Tru Calling.

oh wait.....I must have double-posted this thread by accident;

well people replied to the OTHER one, so please DELETE this one