10 Film Sequels And Spin-Offs That Should Never Have Happened
2. Van Helsing
When The Mummy Returns made $430 million worldwide, Universal asked director Stephen Sommers to create another franchise based on their classic monster movies which hed clearly never seen. Sommers Mummy films owe more to Indiana Jones than Boris Karloff (or even Lon Chaney Jr in bandages), but with Van Helsing, he turns the monsters into comic book villains.
Seen briefly early on, Mr Hyde is the same ridiculous Hulk-like character we saw in The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, while Dracula and Frankensteins monster have become so nonthreatening that they may as well be advertising breakfast cereal. Then theres Van Helsing himself, who in this version becomes a monster hunter employed by the Vatican. He gets corny one-liners and a ton of gadgets, so Hugh Jackman plays him like a suave secret agent, not a bad idea when hes acting against Kate Beckinsales glorified Bond girl.
Sommers is a director from the Michael Bay school of filmmaking who thinks that more is more and you can never have too much of .well, everything. The film quickly becomes interminable as Sommers piles one noisy, repetitive action sequence on top of another and, for bad measure, gives the material a camp attitude.
When Dracula gets a comic relief sidekick, you know youre watching a movie on the level of Scooby Doo Where are You?