If the 1994 adaptation of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, Interview With the Vampire (IWTV) was Gothic, then the 2001 adaptation, Queen of the Damned (QOTD), is "goth." I read all the books years ago and I am a fan of the 1994 film, so I'm writing this review from that perspective. If you have no prior experience with The Chronicles, you might well be confused by QOTD. If you do have experience with The Chronicles, you might well be disappointed. I wasn't confused, nor was I entirely disappointed... so there's hope.
Here's a rundown on the movie's plot, in case you haven't read the books: Lestat de Lioncourt is a vampire who, after decades of hibernating, is awoken by modern rock music. It speaks to him, and makes him want to add his voice to humanity's song. He joins a rock band and leads them to super-stardom, which makes the vampires of the world very nervous. What if their secret gets out? Jessie Reeves, the youngest member of The Talamasca (an ancient academic order of scholars of the supernatural) and her mentor, David Talbot, read Lestat's journal from the 1700's, which explains (and shows us in a flashback), how the vampire Marius "made" Lestat. Lestat's journal also introduces us to Akasha, The Mother of All Vampires, and tells of how she sleeps, frozen in time. Jessie's aunt, Maharet, is (unbeknownst to Jessie) a vampire who is among those who wish to stop Lestat from telling the mortals about their kind. Jessie is drawn to Lestat and seeks him out. As it turns out, Lestat isn't the only music-lover... Akasha, hearing his song, wakes up and decides to make a hell on earth.
I think both movies pretty well capture the spirits of their respective books -- IWTV, seen through Louis's melancholy eyes, is introspective, pensive and darkly beautiful. QOTD, seen (mostly) through Lestat's hungry eyes, is rock 'n roll, rebellion, and destruction. The books are from different perspectives and are quite different from each other, so it's reasonable to expect that the movies will also diverge.
Much has been made of how many liberties director Michael Rymer and the screenwriters have taken. There are indeed quite a few: the story of The Twins is completely gone; Lestat is no longer the leonine blond golden boy; Louis is excised; Marius, not Magnus, creates Lestat, and so on. But remember, the director of the first film also took several liberties: Louis's younger brother is changed to a wife and child; Claudia is made about five years older; the wonderful Gabrielle character is gone; Lestat is not at the "vampire trial" that condemned Claudia, and so on. It is simply not possible to recreate such richly detailed books page by page, and each director must choose to focus on what about the story appeals to them and then bring that to life on the screen.
As a major fan of the first movie, I have to remind myself that the, er, stakes were really lowered for this version. There isn't an all-star cast, Anne Rice didn't write the screenplay, Michael Rymer isn't Neil Jordan, and Stan Winston didn't do the vampire makeup. Once you can look at it on that level, it's not bad. And certainly not as bad as it could have been... I heard Josh Hartnett was up for the role of Lestat. Thank goodness he was unable to accept it! He is so not Lestat.
Lestat, who comes second only to Count Dracula in the vampire popularity contest, is an extremely important role. A few years back, I heard that Wes Bentley had been cast. This was shortly after I saw American Beauty, and I thought, "Yes!" But then he dropped out, asserting that he was too tired to take on such a challenging role. He went on to make such tired, forgettable films as White River Kid, The Claim, and Soul Survivors. QOTD may not be a masterpiece, but it sure looks like one alongside any of those stinkers.
Heath Ledger was also taken into account as a possible Lestat, but he too had other projects lined up. The producer, Jorge Saralegui, has stated, "We considered just about every young actor, as you might imagine." What about Ryan Phillipe? He has the French-blonde-aristocratic physicality of Lestat, the sadistic playfulness (as seen in Cruel Intentions), and he's very handsome. While he has an interesting look, Townsend is not that handsome and while he does sometimes capture flashes of "The Brat Prince" persona, he does only a passable job. (He's probably better as Lestat than he would have been as Strider in Lord of the Rings -- his firing from that show freed him up to do QOTD.) Much better is the casting of Aaliyah as the title character, and Marguerite Moreau as Jessie, the Talamascan mortal who falls for Lestat.
Contrary to what the TV spots might lead you to believe, Aaliyah only has a minor role in the film. It's a pivotal role, but quite small. She was only given one dimension to work with (ancient evil), but boy, did she work it. She plays it up with heart-eating relish, flashing her preternaturally green eyes, smiling with bloody fangs, and undulating in a skimpy costume topped by an elaborate Egyptian-style headdress. I wasn't especially impressed with Aaliyah in her first film (Romeo Must Die), and I always thought she looked too sweet in her music videos to be able to play "the mother of all vampires." But she does it, and she does it well. I liked the effects used for her voice (and her brother's voice -- he did some posthumous looping for her), and I thought the ancient Egyptian accent was cool. (Was it accurate? I don't know... it's no worse than the characters in Stephen Sommers' Mummy films. I bought it.) Akasha is gorgeous, regal and a "royal pain" just like she was in the book, and Aaliyah, with great screen presence, obviously had a lot of fun playing her.
People who have not read the book will have lots of questions about Akasha. Where did she come from? How did she become the first vampire? Why does she start out as a marble statue? Why was Marius taking care of her? Why does she want to destroy the world?
The other characters, richly realized in the book, now relegated to minor roles, will also beg more questions than they answer. In QOTD, there is no "dark gift" lovingly bestowed by Lestat, no "savage garden" world of vampires. Lena Olin, who plays Maharet (her twin, Mekare, is not mentioned in the movie) is a vampire who had a daughter before she was transformed. Maharet has spent her eternity looking after her ancestors, especially her granddaughters (Jessie is really not her "niece," but a direct descendent). Armand, Mael, Pandora, and Khayman are all in the movie but they serve as nothing more than window-dressing. They have no dialog even, but at least they're better off than Louis -- he was completely cut from the story. The Marius and Talbot characters are greatly altered, but that didn't bother me too much. Paul McGann as a younged-down Talbot is as good as he can be given what he had to work with, and Vincent Perez made for a believable enough creature of the night. He's a bit of a fuddy-duddy, but he was like that in the book too (remember, this is from Lestat's perspective; Marius is trying to keep him from his fun).
Some of the dialog, and some of the humor, from the books is retained. Lestat, remarking on Marius's centuries-old taste in clothing, remarks, "How did you ever get through the 50s in red velvet?" And there's a part where Lestat says something to Jessie about not being very good at staying alive, and she shoots back, "We have that in common, don't we?"
The real star in QOTD is Marguerite Moreau as Jessie Reeves. Her beauty is, unfortunately, not treated with the same care as Aaliyah's was -- the DP, Ian Baker (The Chamber, Fierce Creatures) uses very flat, unflattering lighting most of the time. In fact, a skin color for the vampires could not seem to be decided
upon -- Lestat alone alternates between white, blue, tan and ruddy. His gothy makeup (lots of eyeshadow and lipstick) may rankle some, but I was okay with it. The person whose makeup and lighting was too neglected was certainly Moreau's -- she's a beautiful woman, but you don't see just how attractive she really is in the movie. She has some good costumes, though (I think we may be seeing her tight, push-up plaid school-girl inspired jumper on the racks this spring).
The music (written and performed by Jonathan Davis of KoRn) is pretty good and it does rock, but if Lestat has gone goth, I imagine his music would have been more Smashing Pumpkins like. The Pumpkins' music was very hard (Bullet with Butterfly Wings: "The world is a vampire..."), but lushly beautiful and melancholy (By Starlight) at the same time. The overall score doesn't have the same haunting quality as it did in IWTV, but the violin parts are quite good (that's another character I miss... Nicolas!).
The rock star worship bits are good fun, and Townsend mugs and prances with aplomb. The jaded journalists take it all in stride when Lestat announces at a press conference that he's the real deal (he looks less freakish than Alice Cooper, Kiss, or Marilyn Manson, after all). At the big Death Valley concert (a great location change from the original setting), gothy fans scream and stomp enthusiastically, unaware that they're watching not a theatrical concert but a battle to the death among the undead. Budgetary constraints probably came into play here, but I preferred how in the book, Lestat incorporated effigies of Akasha and totems of Ancient Egypt into his act. He's just a straight-ahead rocker with smoke machines in the movie.
The showdown at the end of the film takes pure artistic license, and is too pat. But, the filmmakers tried to pack too much into a too-short movie while at the same time taking out great chunks of the core story. Lestat the rock star, the vengeful Queen, the inquisitive Talamascans, the guardian Maharet, or any of the bits and pieces touched upon could have been beefed up. I think that once the rights drift back into the market, it should be made into a mini-series. It could even be a regular series, ala Dark Shadows. The Vampire Chronicles are very episodic anyway -- it's the perfect medium if you ask me.
And while you're asking me, don't ask why the film got an R-rating. I sure can't figure it out. There's no nudity, no overly repulsive gore (except when Akasha noshes on the heart of a vampire -- wet and bloody at first, it turns to dust as its owner perishes), and no profane language. "Queen of the Darned" would be more like it.
Unfortunately, there isn't any heat, R-rated or otherwise, between the characters. I still get tingles when I think of certain quietly erotic moments in IWTV, or the chemistry between Winona Ryder and Gary Oldman in Dracula, but there is none of that in QOTD. Not even when there should have been -- the stage is set for a really sizzling love scene when Lestat and Akasha share a rose-petal soak (nose-thumb to Wes Bentley here?) together, but it's as tepid as their bathwater. Lestat also doesn't have much chemistry with Jessie, and the homoerotic subtext between him and Marius is left entirely to the imagination.
As vampire movies go, how does it stack up? Well, "they don't make them like they used to," says this nostalgic fan of Dracula (1931 and 1992), The Hunger, and Interview With the Vampire. But is it better than some of these recent offerings? From Dusk Till Dawn (yes), In the Shadow of the Vampire (maybe), John Carpenter's Vampires (yes), The Forsaken (yes), Wes Craven's Dracula 2000 (yes), and Blade (no). As a vampire flick for us thirsty fans, at least it's based on Anne Rice and at least it's a cut above what we've been given lately. That's not saying it's a great film, but it works on some of levels and is certainly worth seeing at least once.
Here's a rundown on the movie's plot, in case you haven't read the books: Lestat de Lioncourt is a vampire who, after decades of hibernating, is awoken by modern rock music. It speaks to him, and makes him want to add his voice to humanity's song. He joins a rock band and leads them to super-stardom, which makes the vampires of the world very nervous. What if their secret gets out? Jessie Reeves, the youngest member of The Talamasca (an ancient academic order of scholars of the supernatural) and her mentor, David Talbot, read Lestat's journal from the 1700's, which explains (and shows us in a flashback), how the vampire Marius "made" Lestat. Lestat's journal also introduces us to Akasha, The Mother of All Vampires, and tells of how she sleeps, frozen in time. Jessie's aunt, Maharet, is (unbeknownst to Jessie) a vampire who is among those who wish to stop Lestat from telling the mortals about their kind. Jessie is drawn to Lestat and seeks him out. As it turns out, Lestat isn't the only music-lover... Akasha, hearing his song, wakes up and decides to make a hell on earth.
I think both movies pretty well capture the spirits of their respective books -- IWTV, seen through Louis's melancholy eyes, is introspective, pensive and darkly beautiful. QOTD, seen (mostly) through Lestat's hungry eyes, is rock 'n roll, rebellion, and destruction. The books are from different perspectives and are quite different from each other, so it's reasonable to expect that the movies will also diverge.
Much has been made of how many liberties director Michael Rymer and the screenwriters have taken. There are indeed quite a few: the story of The Twins is completely gone; Lestat is no longer the leonine blond golden boy; Louis is excised; Marius, not Magnus, creates Lestat, and so on. But remember, the director of the first film also took several liberties: Louis's younger brother is changed to a wife and child; Claudia is made about five years older; the wonderful Gabrielle character is gone; Lestat is not at the "vampire trial" that condemned Claudia, and so on. It is simply not possible to recreate such richly detailed books page by page, and each director must choose to focus on what about the story appeals to them and then bring that to life on the screen.
As a major fan of the first movie, I have to remind myself that the, er, stakes were really lowered for this version. There isn't an all-star cast, Anne Rice didn't write the screenplay, Michael Rymer isn't Neil Jordan, and Stan Winston didn't do the vampire makeup. Once you can look at it on that level, it's not bad. And certainly not as bad as it could have been... I heard Josh Hartnett was up for the role of Lestat. Thank goodness he was unable to accept it! He is so not Lestat.
Lestat, who comes second only to Count Dracula in the vampire popularity contest, is an extremely important role. A few years back, I heard that Wes Bentley had been cast. This was shortly after I saw American Beauty, and I thought, "Yes!" But then he dropped out, asserting that he was too tired to take on such a challenging role. He went on to make such tired, forgettable films as White River Kid, The Claim, and Soul Survivors. QOTD may not be a masterpiece, but it sure looks like one alongside any of those stinkers.
Heath Ledger was also taken into account as a possible Lestat, but he too had other projects lined up. The producer, Jorge Saralegui, has stated, "We considered just about every young actor, as you might imagine." What about Ryan Phillipe? He has the French-blonde-aristocratic physicality of Lestat, the sadistic playfulness (as seen in Cruel Intentions), and he's very handsome. While he has an interesting look, Townsend is not that handsome and while he does sometimes capture flashes of "The Brat Prince" persona, he does only a passable job. (He's probably better as Lestat than he would have been as Strider in Lord of the Rings -- his firing from that show freed him up to do QOTD.) Much better is the casting of Aaliyah as the title character, and Marguerite Moreau as Jessie, the Talamascan mortal who falls for Lestat.
Contrary to what the TV spots might lead you to believe, Aaliyah only has a minor role in the film. It's a pivotal role, but quite small. She was only given one dimension to work with (ancient evil), but boy, did she work it. She plays it up with heart-eating relish, flashing her preternaturally green eyes, smiling with bloody fangs, and undulating in a skimpy costume topped by an elaborate Egyptian-style headdress. I wasn't especially impressed with Aaliyah in her first film (Romeo Must Die), and I always thought she looked too sweet in her music videos to be able to play "the mother of all vampires." But she does it, and she does it well. I liked the effects used for her voice (and her brother's voice -- he did some posthumous looping for her), and I thought the ancient Egyptian accent was cool. (Was it accurate? I don't know... it's no worse than the characters in Stephen Sommers' Mummy films. I bought it.) Akasha is gorgeous, regal and a "royal pain" just like she was in the book, and Aaliyah, with great screen presence, obviously had a lot of fun playing her.
People who have not read the book will have lots of questions about Akasha. Where did she come from? How did she become the first vampire? Why does she start out as a marble statue? Why was Marius taking care of her? Why does she want to destroy the world?
The other characters, richly realized in the book, now relegated to minor roles, will also beg more questions than they answer. In QOTD, there is no "dark gift" lovingly bestowed by Lestat, no "savage garden" world of vampires. Lena Olin, who plays Maharet (her twin, Mekare, is not mentioned in the movie) is a vampire who had a daughter before she was transformed. Maharet has spent her eternity looking after her ancestors, especially her granddaughters (Jessie is really not her "niece," but a direct descendent). Armand, Mael, Pandora, and Khayman are all in the movie but they serve as nothing more than window-dressing. They have no dialog even, but at least they're better off than Louis -- he was completely cut from the story. The Marius and Talbot characters are greatly altered, but that didn't bother me too much. Paul McGann as a younged-down Talbot is as good as he can be given what he had to work with, and Vincent Perez made for a believable enough creature of the night. He's a bit of a fuddy-duddy, but he was like that in the book too (remember, this is from Lestat's perspective; Marius is trying to keep him from his fun).
Some of the dialog, and some of the humor, from the books is retained. Lestat, remarking on Marius's centuries-old taste in clothing, remarks, "How did you ever get through the 50s in red velvet?" And there's a part where Lestat says something to Jessie about not being very good at staying alive, and she shoots back, "We have that in common, don't we?"
The real star in QOTD is Marguerite Moreau as Jessie Reeves. Her beauty is, unfortunately, not treated with the same care as Aaliyah's was -- the DP, Ian Baker (The Chamber, Fierce Creatures) uses very flat, unflattering lighting most of the time. In fact, a skin color for the vampires could not seem to be decided
upon -- Lestat alone alternates between white, blue, tan and ruddy. His gothy makeup (lots of eyeshadow and lipstick) may rankle some, but I was okay with it. The person whose makeup and lighting was too neglected was certainly Moreau's -- she's a beautiful woman, but you don't see just how attractive she really is in the movie. She has some good costumes, though (I think we may be seeing her tight, push-up plaid school-girl inspired jumper on the racks this spring).
The music (written and performed by Jonathan Davis of KoRn) is pretty good and it does rock, but if Lestat has gone goth, I imagine his music would have been more Smashing Pumpkins like. The Pumpkins' music was very hard (Bullet with Butterfly Wings: "The world is a vampire..."), but lushly beautiful and melancholy (By Starlight) at the same time. The overall score doesn't have the same haunting quality as it did in IWTV, but the violin parts are quite good (that's another character I miss... Nicolas!).
The rock star worship bits are good fun, and Townsend mugs and prances with aplomb. The jaded journalists take it all in stride when Lestat announces at a press conference that he's the real deal (he looks less freakish than Alice Cooper, Kiss, or Marilyn Manson, after all). At the big Death Valley concert (a great location change from the original setting), gothy fans scream and stomp enthusiastically, unaware that they're watching not a theatrical concert but a battle to the death among the undead. Budgetary constraints probably came into play here, but I preferred how in the book, Lestat incorporated effigies of Akasha and totems of Ancient Egypt into his act. He's just a straight-ahead rocker with smoke machines in the movie.
The showdown at the end of the film takes pure artistic license, and is too pat. But, the filmmakers tried to pack too much into a too-short movie while at the same time taking out great chunks of the core story. Lestat the rock star, the vengeful Queen, the inquisitive Talamascans, the guardian Maharet, or any of the bits and pieces touched upon could have been beefed up. I think that once the rights drift back into the market, it should be made into a mini-series. It could even be a regular series, ala Dark Shadows. The Vampire Chronicles are very episodic anyway -- it's the perfect medium if you ask me.
And while you're asking me, don't ask why the film got an R-rating. I sure can't figure it out. There's no nudity, no overly repulsive gore (except when Akasha noshes on the heart of a vampire -- wet and bloody at first, it turns to dust as its owner perishes), and no profane language. "Queen of the Darned" would be more like it.
Unfortunately, there isn't any heat, R-rated or otherwise, between the characters. I still get tingles when I think of certain quietly erotic moments in IWTV, or the chemistry between Winona Ryder and Gary Oldman in Dracula, but there is none of that in QOTD. Not even when there should have been -- the stage is set for a really sizzling love scene when Lestat and Akasha share a rose-petal soak (nose-thumb to Wes Bentley here?) together, but it's as tepid as their bathwater. Lestat also doesn't have much chemistry with Jessie, and the homoerotic subtext between him and Marius is left entirely to the imagination.
As vampire movies go, how does it stack up? Well, "they don't make them like they used to," says this nostalgic fan of Dracula (1931 and 1992), The Hunger, and Interview With the Vampire. But is it better than some of these recent offerings? From Dusk Till Dawn (yes), In the Shadow of the Vampire (maybe), John Carpenter's Vampires (yes), The Forsaken (yes), Wes Craven's Dracula 2000 (yes), and Blade (no). As a vampire flick for us thirsty fans, at least it's based on Anne Rice and at least it's a cut above what we've been given lately. That's not saying it's a great film, but it works on some of levels and is certainly worth seeing at least once.