Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust Ending Question (Spoiler)

Cafe Society
1

Just saw the movie – I’m lucky, there was one theater in my area showing it. It was heads-and-shoulders above the original, IMHO, and I really liked it. It had a great score, incredible visuals, and all the badassitude you would expect from D, plus an unexpected climax.

My friend and I had a dispute about the ending, though.

I thought that Charlotte had been “changed” by Carmila’s bite, and that D was willing to let her go now because no new Dunpeal could be born, and also that she really loved him, which touched D’s human nature.

My friend thought that she was dead, just like D said, and that for some sentimental reason D let Meier take her body into space to brood over it for all eternity.

Anyone know the actual answer, or just have some guesses?

2

She was dead, so D felt sorry for the vampire and let him go into outer space.

The film is technically light years ahead of the original, which now seems somewhat prosaic visually. But the older film had a much better story and sense of narrative drive. The new one is very much like a bad American remake – take the old one and hype up the action and visuals as much as possible, adding lots of effects.

I wanted to love it, but I just felt a sinking feeling inside me as it unfolded in the theatre. I left feeling tremendously disappointed (although the funeral scene at the end did leave a knot in my throat).

steve biodrowski
http://www.thescriptanalyst.com

3

I enjoyed it.

The girl did die.

And, while I agree that the script was not as strong as the original, it was still good, and the improved art easily made up for any minor reduction in script quality.

4

Thanks for clearing that up. Hmph, I guess it would have been kinder for D to just off the guy, then. Oh well. That’s not what he was getting paid for.

I thought that the visuals made up for any lack in the screenplay. Bloodlust had more of a Western feel to it, I thought; the original VHD was good, but it had a lot of random stuff that just appeared out of nowhere. I would be hesitant to say which one was “better” – they’re pretty different critters.

5

The script for the original wasn’t all that strong to begin with. I’m an anime fan but I never understood the appeal Vampire Hunter D has with so many people.

Marc

6

The original Vampire Hunter D has one of the worst dubs I have ever witnessed. Important plot points were changed or left out, character voices were completely wrong for the characters, music was added to scenes that didn’t have it, hell, whole speeches were added to scenes that didn’t have them, the sound mix was messed up, 0and they even changed the sounds some of the monsters made. Before I saw the subtitled version Vampire Hunter D was a guilty pleasure, I still enjoyed it, mostly because it was so cheesey and over-the-top. When I saw the dub it was a whole different movie.

I haven’t seen the new one yet, but the preview looks interesting.

7

I too hate the dubbed version of the original VAMPIRE HUNTER D. This is one of those strange cases where the film was shown with subtitles in its limited theatrical screenings in the US, while the video release was dubbed; fortunately, I saw the subtitled version first and fell in love with it, and later the film came out on DVD with subtitles.

As for the story, while the original may not have been brilliant, it was more strongly constructed than the remake, which relied on action set-pieces to boost the excitment of a lackluster scenario. More important, the most interesting thing about the original was D’s conflicted nature – half-human and half-vampire, trying to repress the vampire half but needing those powers in order to combat vampires. In the remake, that conflict has been shifted onto the full vampire, who resists biting the girl he’s kidnapped (as D resisted biting the girl he was protecting in the first film). This reduces D’s character and weakens the movie.

The new version is not bad, just disappointing. The people involved have given us visually stunning films in the past that worked as fully developed movies, not a string of big sceens loosely tied together.

steve biodrowski
http://www.thescriptanalyst.com

8

And it didn’t help that D’s hand thing became a whiny little bitch in the Bloodlust dub. And though it’s been a while since I saw the original, didn’t it look a lot less “wrinkly old manish” than it did in Bloodlust?

9

This is an interesting thread because I have asked the same question of other people, but, because of Leila. At the end of the whole fight sequence when D walks off she seems wholly dissappointed. Like it only for the money after all. No Fight the Good Fight to Rid the World of Monsters, just money.

Plus, why leave a perfectly Bad Vampire alive? Sure, he SAYS he’s going to space…but he is a Bad Vampire. Which is why I think D has heard everything Meier has said and just feels a little bit sorry for him. Still, I like the movie.

10

Except, I don’t think he was really letting them go. I assumed that wreckage they showed in the beginning was the remains of the City of Night, though D probably didn’t know it. (Though I did turn to my friend and say. “Whatever. I blew it up already.”)

I’m not sure ‘in it for the money’ is the right way of looking at it. Once the girl was dead, he couldn’t fulfill his contract anymore, so he had no reason to kill the vampire, who he obviously identified with a bit.

Actually, the biggest problem I saw was design-wise. The bright, Image-inspired costumes and comic book personalities of the rival team of vampire hunters clashed so badly with the rest of the movie it caused me physical pain.

I was actually a bit disappointed; I thought they were going to have the human girl manipulating the vampire to get vampiric immortality. Actually, the whole Camile angle seemed dropped in at the last minute . . . Likewise, the overheating thing seemed like a kludge. Not that it couldn’t have been integrated well, but it wasn’t.

As for the original, a lot of older anime fans have a special fondness for it, because it was either the first or one of the first ones we saw, and it was very ‘serious,’ in a way that American cartoons arn’t and much of the other anime available at the time weren’t. And while it contained a lot of anime cleche’s, most of us didn’t know them yet. :slight_smile:

It’s popular with a few more recent fans because the character designs were done by Yoshitaka Amano, the guy who did the concept art for the vast majority of the Final Fantasy games.

In any case, I thought the first (even dubwise) was a better movie than the second, though the second was awful pretty. And after the amusing experience I had with Blood: The Last Vampire I’m glad they actually got native speaking voice actors this time. (Though actually, the ‘dub’ of Bloodlust wasn’t really that great, considering. A lot of actual dubs over the last year or two have been better. That may have been because they were using Urban Vision’s stable of actors, whose dubs really aren’t that good. (Or they might not have been, I haven’t checked)

I think you guys are being a bit harsh on the original dub, (Though that might be because I actually like the hand better as an annoying jerk. :slight_smile: ) It wasn’t very accurate, true, but like most of the Streamline dubs, it was more or less competently made. Check out some of the Animiego or U.S. Manga Corps dubs from the time (actually, even the current USMC dubs are pretty terrible) by way of comparison . . .

Though this might just be a case of the ‘Ranma rule.’ I saw the dub years before I saw the sub, and had time to get used to it. Usually, I’ve found people set the voices they hear first as the ‘right’ voices.

Still, D’ed take down that Blade poser in about 30 seconds. Ogre Slayer, I’m not so sure of.

–
“I am Rikanzee, Vampire Hunter, and killing men like you is my greatest pleasure.” C’mon, you didn’t even like Rikanzee? (AKA Rei Ginsei) Everybody liked him.

11

"Actually, the whole Camile angle seemed dropped in at the last minute . . . "

Yup. That’s a good example of the bad writing in the sequel. Once the main vampire has been turned sympathetic (because he loves the girl), that leaves the film without a full-on villain. So Carmilla is introduced at the last minute, in order to provide the wicked, evil vampire that the film otherwise lacks.

steve biodrowski
www.thescriptanalyst.com

12

Wow, did this thread get resurrected? I figured it had been lost forever in the Diaspora.

In the six months since I started this, I’ve re-viewed both Bloodlust and D Classic. D Classic is mostly a Clint Eastwood western with vampires and horrible glam mutants in the place of the local thugs. He rides in, takes care of business, and gets out.

The Carmilla bit was some sloppy writing, I agree, but I was pretty amused at the thought of Elisabeth Bathory being in a movie. Also, there was some foreshadowing as to who was protecting Link, but the answer did come out of left field. I did sort of enjoy the moral ambiguity, but mostly it was pretty and didn’t bore me.

Ura-Maru, I think you’re right about the dub with the exception of Link himself. I’m not sure why, but I loved John Rafter Lee’s Eurotrash interpretation. He made the word “Charlotte” just stretch interminably.

13

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ura-Maru *
**Except, I don’t think he was really letting them go. I assumed that wreckage they showed in the beginning was the remains of the City of Night, though D probably didn’t know it. (Though I did turn to my friend and say. “Whatever. I blew it up already.”)

I’m not sure ‘in it for the money’ is the right way of looking at it. Once the girl was dead, he couldn’t fulfill his contract anymore, so he had no reason to kill the vampire, who he obviously identified with a bit.

But, D got paid for bringing back broof of Charlotte’s death. He still got the 20 million.

But I agree, he did identify a bit with Meier.:slight_smile:

14

I thought that Carmilla wasn’t that tacked on. She’s mentioned earlier, and it seems to make sense that she’s there. If we accept that starships are rare, then it makes sense that Link would be willing to deal with someone of her reputation for a chance to reach the stars.

I’ve seen the original film, and for whatever reason, it didn’t do anything for me. There didn’t seem to be a lot of connection between the characters, some parts I found annoyingly juvenile, although a lot of the critters were nice and ugly.

Bloodlust, in my opinion, is a better movie because it almost resists the urge to create an evil villain character. The Barbaroi are bound, partly by honor, although they do seem to revel in combat, to protect thier charge, the carriage. Link is more of an anti-hero than a villain, and the scenes where he fights his thirst I find powerful.

It seemed to me that D, rather than struggling with the curse, comes across as having accepted that he cannot become close to anyone. He avoids human contact. Link cannot help his love for Charlotte, and so his struggle is genuine. He loves her, and he must fight his nature to avoid harming her.

Carmilla is almost a concession to the audience. It’s a movie about a vampire hunter, so we want to see D kill a vampire. He could kill Link, but better to toss in another vampire, one we can watch D dispatch without any qualms.

Carmilla is, in a sense, a plot device, but at least one alluded to earlier in the film.

15

Someone here talked about the dubbing in Vampire Hunter D: BLoodlust. Didn’t you know that English was the original language? All of the audio for the movie was done in the states. The Japanese had to watch their own movie subtitled. Guess it makes it look more ‘artsy’. :confused:

16

Well, it was a cooperative effort between Japanese and American animation studios, so I guess they just called in the voice talent where they were. I did know that, BTW; I’ve still been calling it a “dub” just for legacy reasons.