Sacred Cows

I love movies. Horror movies are my favorite kind of movies. I'd like to think I take horror movies pretty seriously - at least seriously enough to offer an informed opinion about a particular film (and, at the end of the day, what matters is whether or not the movie is scary, right?) When I saw the trailer for Van Helsing I thought, cool, a movie where they take the three classic Universal monsters and mix them with a Vampire Hunter D type character for an action flick. Nice premise.

I participate in a regular discussion on a movie and DVD site and those guys are savaging Van Helsing already. I mean, they are being really harsh, in the same way many of them hated Cabin Fever, which I enjoyed. I didn't understand that, and I don't understand this either.

They are treating the three monsters (Wolfman, Dracula, and Frankenstein) like these sacred cows that you'll royally fuck up if, heaven forbid, you try to re-interpret them. I've never understood this about people. I like song covers (Madonna's take on "American Pie" was pretty good). I like watching re-interpretations of Shakespeare - I saw an amazing version of "Troilus and Cressida" when I was in London - and I have no problem with revisiting classic monsters in a new way. I just do not understand the desperate, grasping way in which these people cling to these old conceptions. I think this same attitude is what's been dooming the Star Wars pre-quels, In a way, fans have built up the Triology to this almost mystic entity that no one could ever hope to reach ever again, no matter how many slick effects they use. And in so doing they have built the foundations for their own disappointment because they have created a meaningless sacred cow and they cling to it needlessly.

I'm sure there's some kind of deep message in all this, but I'll be damned if I can figure it out. But it still makes me scratch my head.