Van Helsing/Headscratchers

• Anna's high heels. Her outfit rocks. Those goth hooker boots rock. But they're just not logical to wear when running around fighting monsters.
  • Running around in the woods no less.
  • The corset really isn't any more practical, either.
• The grave-digger of Anna's little semi-creepy village claims that vampires don't kill more than they need to survive, "maybe 1 or 2 people a month." But before that, 4 people died within the scope of 10 minutes.
  • Presumably the pursuit of Anna or the unexpected resistance changes the rules for the moment.
  • This is explicitly explained in the movie, that they attacked that one time in retaliation to try and kill Anna. It's made clear that it's not a regular thing in the exact same dialogue where the grave-digger says that...In fact, he says it specifically to illustrate that that attack was unusual. How did you miss that?
• How did they get back out of that little wintery area? When they first enter it, Carl learns the hard way that they couldn't waltz back through the mirror.
  • I always assumed the mirror only opened after "in the name of God, open this door" was spoken.
• Why does it take the clock 10 minutes to strike 12 during the final battle? That completely broke my Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
  • This troper had hers broken after Val Helsing was bitten on the full moon and then told it would be three days until the next full moon.
• Why did Dracula have a cure for lycanthropy when he could have just had, you know, a gun loaded with silver bullets? Seems easier than trying to shove a syringe into the neck of an angry werewolf.
  • Dracula was looking for a power conduit for which to animate his undead offspring and after Frankenstein's monster, a werewolf seemed like the next best candidate. It's possible that the cure was used as bait to lure desperate werewolves to Dracula's castle so that he could capture one for his goal. Presumably Velkan tried to seek it out after he got bitten which is how Dracula got ahold of him.
• What the hell is Frankenstein doing at the end? I know on the official summary it says hes going out to try and live his life, but he's going on a tiny raft through the ocean. WHAT.
• If the Valerious bloodline is going to end... why not just have more kids?! Are Anna and Velkan both infertile? Is there a time limit we're not being told about, that it had to be done in nine generations? If that's the case, then they don't spell it out in the film. All Anna and/or Velkan have to do is have kids of their own, and they can put off the curse for another generation. They could use that time to train said kids to kill vampires. Plus, that's two individual sub-bloodlines capable of taking down Dracula.
  • Who's going to agree to have kids that will spend the rest of their lives fighting an immortal demon? The only people who might agree to procreating with Anna and Velkan are Anna and Velkan. Even considering that the time setting probably would've allowed it, they were too busy trying to beat Dracula to take nine months off for a pregnancy.
  • Plus, do you think Dracula's gonna sit around and wait for Anna to have kids? He's already attacking her--making herself vulnerable by getting knocked up is a bad idea. And those kids have to grow up--again, you think Drac's gonna just sit and wait?
• Anna and Velkan have a whole group of people helping them fight the werewolf at the start. Who are these people and why are they not seen again? Anna could have used all the help she could get.
  • For a Friar/Tinkerer/Comic Relief character, Friar Carl proves to be damn good at making improbably difficult throws. Wooden bucket to a bat in the air? Check. Syringe to someone swinging quickly on a rope well over 20 feet away? Check. Stake to the same person on a castle from an even greater distance? Check! Why is this guy Van Helsing's supply guy instead of kicking ass alongside him?
  • If you realize that Anna is a woman in Victorian Europe as another troper noted above, the villagers might of been willing to help Velkan because they thought he was their last hope and the hero. When he failed not only do they think his sister isn't as capable, their spirits are broken and would rather live under the thumb of a tyrant than risk their lives following a princess.
• The big reveal of Van Helsing is that only a werewolf can kill Dracula, which is oddly convenient considering Van Helsing just became one himself. After all, why would Dracula have a servant that was lethal to him? Wouldn't it be in his best interest to kill them all off? This may be a bit of a stretch, but I came to the conclusion that the werewolves in Van Helsing were originally servants of good that at some point became corrupted or enslaved by either Dracula himself, or some other form of evil. It's really the only explanation he found that makes any sense beyond plain and simple Deus Ex Machina.
  • This troper chalked it up to one of two possibilities: the first was that Dracula followed the "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" school of thought (that is, keeping all werewolves where he could keep an eye on them was safer, plus he got some killer bodyguards to boot). The second is that Van Helsing was just supposed to be a Darker and Edgier adaptation of the Universal monster movies. In those, mythology didn't usually matter - anything went! So of course there were convenient connections between all of the monsters. They were following the Universal way.
  • There actually was someone in the Middle Ages-Rennaisance sort of time that suggested the exact same thing. He got whipped for such a suggestion, but its still an interesting idea.
  • The movie would still make sense - perhaps moreso - if it was a Deus Ex Machina, because Van Helsing is quite explicitly referred to as a servant of God. We know that Satan helped Dracula rise to power in the movie, so it's just as plausible to assume that Van Helsing received some supernatural help of his own through all of the coincidences that helped him defeat Dracula. Especially the antidote tossing scene.
  • Now that you mention it, I just realized the whole only-a-werewolf-can-kill-Dracula thing is a reference to Universal's older Monster Mash movies (which featured reluctant werewolves) along with the original Dracula novel (which gave Dracula the power to control wolves). The Wolf Man had Larry Talbot get bitten by a gypsy werewolf played by Bela Lugosi. Abbott and Constello Meet Frankenstein had Larry Talbot kill Dracula (also played by Lugosi). So that means that Van Helsing has Dracula killed by a werewolf bitten by a gypsy werewolf controlled by Dracula, while the older stories has Dracula killed by a werewolf who was bitten by a gypsy werewolf played by Dracula. It's a massive continuity joke. The only thing to make it perfect would have been if Igor or the Monster had turned out to be vampires, too. - Polly Nim.
  • Taken from the Our Werewolves Are Different page. "An interesting variation was the Hounds of God. In the Baltic regions, it was believed that Werewolves were given their powers not by the Devil, but by God to battle the forces of the devil". If that's the case then a werewolf being the only one who can kill Dracula, who was raised by the devil, makes sense. Why he kept them around I can't say.
• Hey, anybody miss that Van Helsing's given name in the movie is Gabriel? If he's a servant of God... you do the math. -- Manu.
• Almost certainly reading too much into it, but Dracula's being a Large Ham despite claiming to be incapable of feeling emotion does make sense if you assume he's deliberately overacting in the hope of Becoming the Mask and regaining the ability to feel.
• Why don't any of the Villagers carry bows to deter the Vampires? It'd work a lot better than having lame pitchforks and hatchets... and one guy looks to be carrying a rake. Whats he going to do? Create an impenetrable barrier of leaves?
• Why did Dracula kill Dr. Frankenstein? They only realise later that they can't make it work, and he was the only one who knew how... well, duh?
  • Vampires have a long history of being complete jerks to the living.
  • The reason they can't make it work is because they don't have the monster--the machine worked fine, they just didn't have the power source. It was only after Drac kills the Doc that he loses the Monster--at that point, he figured he had everything he needed. Also, Dr. Frankenstein did just run Dracula through with a sword. Sure, it didn't do anything more than put a hole in his suit, but it was pretty clear the good Doctor wasn't planning to cooperate.