MovieChat Forums > Van Helsing (2016) Discussion > You really can't blame a show for not be...

You really can't blame a show for not being what you want it to be

posted 8 years ago by P-K-One
5 replies | jump to latest

but I never let people or common sense tell me what to do.

WTF? Did we really need another "Walking dead" clone? Yeah, right, it is not a zombie show. Right. It is just about a group of people fleeing flesh eating creatures during the apocalypse. Also, whenever they encounter other humans backstabbing ensues because nobody can be trusted...and black people are the worst and die early. No similarities whatsoever.

I stopped watching "Walking dead" 2 seasons ago because the constant "end of the world, humans suck"-depression was starting to bring me down. And then I saw the posters for this show. I mean this one:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5197820/mediaviewer/rm3822260224

A woman in torn, skin tight pants walking down the streets with a sword and a shotgun ready to kick some vampire ass. Or this one:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5197820/mediaviewer/rm4210234624

Shotgun and a flaming skull? Count me in.

I really thought this would be a horror show you could enjoy. "Buffy in Zombieland" meets "Resident army of darkness". But instead I get this piece of crap that seems to be an active attempt to root out happiness in the universe. I have seen 6 episodes on netflix and there was not one happy or funny moment in this show. I think the inspiration for this show might have been Sam Harris' TED talk about morality where he postulated the theoretical worst possible world where "every living creature suffers as much as possible for as long as possible."

And one more thing about that, when exactly did somebody decide that "mature themes" on TV meant "depressing the hell out of the audience"? "Deadpool" had a hard R rating and was entertaining and funny. So they do manage to do it right on the big screen. "Firefly" had the reapers who would "Rape you to death, eat your flesh and make clothing out of your skin"...and if you were very lucky they would do it in that order. And it was one of the funniest and most quoted TV shows in history with an obsessive cult following. Obviously it can be done on the small screen, too. So why exactly does it seem that today's TV landscape offers only two choices: "Modern Family" or "Game of Thornes". Either you watch light hearted PG comedy or you watch something that is so depressing that you just want all the main characters to die just so it will be over (They are going to die anyway. And the sooner it happens, the sooner they are out of their (and my) misery.)

\End rant

[–] jcaashby-1 8 years ago

I guess we will get the tight pants and sword and shotgun toting in season 2.

Because Vanessa got her ass kicked more often then not in season one.

I do feel what your saying on the show being depressing.

I do still watch TWD but dang not one person seems to try and have a laugh or a good time. Unlike another show I feel is better in some regards...Z Nation.

They are always on the move...so you see a new location almost every episode and there are some funny situations they get into...like Doc caught in the air shaft with a zombie and getting it high from contact smoke.

[–] P-K-One 8 years ago

I don't really care about the outfit. I just wanted to express that it suggested a different type of show. Because when you have women wielding shotguns and swords that suggest an entirely less serious approach.

It's like George Clooney in "From Dusk till Dawn" with the jack-hammer stake. Or Woody Harellson's cowboy hat in Zombieland.

[–] district-23105 8 years ago

BUT you CAN blame it for being generally (arguably) terrible in just about every area from writing to characters to direction to - well - just about everything about this show is dire.

And yet the premise is just so terrific. You can blame the producers for taking the show down a rather pointless and utterly unimaginative direction.

[–] arckilian 8 years ago

I agree with you P-K-One, we can't blame a show for not being what we expected it to be. In my case, seeing the promotional posters of VH, I was expecting something like Underworld meets Dominion (the main stucture, not the repetitive subplots).
It's not specific to VH, that's how it works when you start a new show : you'll never know until you watch.

My main surprise with Van Helsing is that I didn't expect we would start from scratch. From the synopsis, we knew we would be following the 'I Am Who ?' trope concerning the main character (what I usually enjoy) but I expected the other powers at play to be already in place : the Human Resistance and the Vamps. I couldn't imagine we would have to move Heaven and Earth to find humans genuinely willing to fight for the survival of their race or that the Vampires would be a mess of a menacing force.
All of this could have been a plesant surprise if not an enormous challenge. These 'how it all begins' type of stories tend to be cancelled before we even get to the meat of the matter.

Expectations aside, my real disspointment lie with the characters. It can be a treat to witness step by step the rise of your hero but when you are in for the long haul (especially when you are), it's plain painful to have to spend time in such bad company.
In that sense, I find TWD less depressing than VH. Thanks to the characters we are following in TWD, there's still hope as they haven't lost all of their humanity. I don't even know why I should root for mankind in VH and if the Vampires weren't a bunch of annoying losers I would be 'rooting for the Empire'.
This article http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarknessInducedAudienceApathy feels like a description of the show.

When you look back at season 1, you're left to wonder what was really accomplished. I wish someone had told me "Skip season 1, it's like a prequel and start with season 2" or something.

[–] bmallory-2 8 years ago

Personnaly I did enjoy the show (did not know anything about VH before, and actually I just binge watched it on Netflix)... I guess it's mainly because I find the main storyline useless and complete garbage. I mean, she wakes up and instincly kills the first vamp comming... we never get any real explanation as to why she knows how to fight. And the writers took huge shortcuts in order to get the plot going, to move them from one place to another like how Flesh is suffering from PTSD after being turned, but when Vanessa is prisoner from Julius and turns Susan after fighting, she is just like "okay, I'll help you out !" . I'm also unimpressed with the fighting scenes.

But I did like how the backstory and subplots like the "finger taker" was put in motion very early in the season, some deaths like Nicole's one that has no meaning and just "happens" because he/she just made a bad decision and that the group was actually afraid and did not go the "we-leave-no-one-behind" route like so many do.
I also like the episodes when they're in the bunker. It reminded me a little about the "Day of the dead" movie ( the 1985 one ). Susan's death was nice too.
I guess you just have to not expect too much of the main storyline and focus your attention on the little stories