2017 is proving to be an especially significant year for television. Marvel is kicking things into high gear with a whole host of new series, including The Inhumans, Cloak & Dagger, The Gifted and The Defenders. Both Bill Nye and Mystery Science Theater 3000 have had revivals on Netflix. And even The Handmaid’s Tale is getting a proper release.
Although news of if came and went without causing that much of a stir, there is another series debuting of particular note later this year. Castlevania — a renowned video game series about a bloodline of vampire slayers trying to kill Dracula — is getting its own Netflix series, to be released on July 7th. And if its first trailer is any indication of what we can expect from the show, we’re in for a real treat.
The scene opens on an old NES system: a red-stained Castlevania cartridge resting on top of it. An unseen figure blows lightly into it and starts the game up. A flickering menu shows a several popular Netflix series —Stranger Things, House of Cards — before Castlevania is ultimately selected.
We cut to late Seventeenth Century Europe, where a towering, gothic castle stands at the end of a skeleton-lined road. Simon Belmont — the latest in a long line of Vampire Slayers — cracks his trademark whip, loosing a thick spray of blood into the air. He proclaims that “There is a darkness upon the land. A savior is needed.”
There’s a flurry of action. Fire rains from the sky. A blond figure rises from an ornate casket and thrusts a sword toward an unseen enemy. A cloaked woman conjures arcane magic. A hunched figure lets fly a flock of screaming daggers.
The great doorway to the castle opens. An unseen woman asks “who are you?”
Belmont enters. “The man who will kill Dracula.”
As promised, the series looks to be a mix between the first and third games, released on the NES in the late 1980s. Simon Belmont is the whip-wielding protagonist from the first installment, while the supporting characters from the third game can be seen throughout the trailer. These include Sypha Belnade, a Romanian witch seeking salvation, Alucard, Dracula’s patricidal son and Grant DaNasty, a pirate cursed by Dracula into a hunchbacked monster.
Castlevania has already been commissioned for a two season run, with the option of being picked up for additional seasons if the series does well. It’s an R-rated action-horror series that supposedly takes after Game of Thrones, presumably by emphasizing the generational feud between Dracula and the Belmonts and the particulars of early Georgian Europe.
Although I am shocked to find out that this is going to be an animated series — a detail that had been heretofore under wraps — it’s a welcome surprise. Animation’s ability to warp the physical space and natural proportions of its characters is perfectly suited for a genre where contorted bodies and exaggerated features are already mainstays.
It also allows for the modestly-budgeted series to be set in Dracula’s palatial seat of power: something that would be impossible in live-action for anything other than a blockbuster Hollywood production. It’s the same reason why we never saw anything substantive of K’un-Lun in Iron Fist or why every Marvel series can’t seem to afford both stuntmen and lighting in the same scene: you simply can’t do those things on the meager budgets that debuting on Netflix affords you.
I for one am stoked about this series. The animation is astoundingly good. The showrunners have pulled the best elements from the best games in the series (sorry Symphony of the Night). And it looks like they’re going to use their R-rating to its fullest. If it’s even half as good as it looks, it will doubtless be the first genuinely good video game adaptation in… well… ever.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=z0kaYs8SbMs%22+frameborder%3D%220%22+allow%3D%22accelerometer%3B+encrypted-media%3B+gyroscope%3B+picture-in-picture%22+allowfullscreen%3E%3C
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