Netflix's Castlevania

Just do like a four-episode thing with Simon Belmont. New set of characters.

I don't get why does Death need a magic mirror? He's Death! If he needed to go to Dracula's castle, just go to Dracula's castle. They knew where it was.

They were all in Eastern Europe, were they not? Wallachia/Romania/Transylvania, right?

All using the teleport mirror did is bring Trevor and Sypha to Dracula's castle.

Now yeah, Powerhouse Animation definitely created some great visuals and eye candy for some of this season. I have little complaints in terms of the animation and action. But I can't call this season a masterpiece when looking at Warren Ellis' immature, obnoxious and juvenile writing.

Characters talk like edge-lord 13 year olds who just discovered cursing. Characters also tend to repeat the same things over and over.
 
Saying that this season was better than Season 3 honestly doesn't mean much when almost nothing happened that season and I wish I could give it more credit than that because I wanted to love it, but despite there being more action it still felt just as all over the place and messy as Season 3 did.

I'm glad someone else noticed the amount of tedious monologues though because those really got on my nerves, especially from Ratko and man what a waste of someone like Titus Welliver who already has a great voice and they don't utilize him well at all except give him a fake Russian accent.

Also, they did jack squat with FlysEyes who is a pretty damn interesting character IMO, but he was given nothing to do after all that build-up last season with the night creature army. Almost everything with Isaac this season just felt aimless/pointless to me and a waste of time.
 
I'm very curious what the point of Taka and Sumi thing with Alucard was. He got over that whole incident relatively quickly.

We literally waited 10 episodes for the twins to sex up Alucard, then tie him up and attempt to kill him...why? The twins were scared and thought Alucard wasn't telling them the truth or something?

Morana and Striga also yeet themselves out of this whole show. What was the point of their subplot?
 
For all the flaws of the last two seasons I actually do like how the show ended and as a whole I think it's a successful video game adaptation.

I hope Netflix centers the spinoff on Simon or maybe adapt Symphony of the Night.

My biggest gripe with the show is that in the entire series we only get ONE song from the games.
 
I'm assuming getting the rights to the game music would be too expensive.

Instead the show used that keyboard, synth electronic stuff. Though they did use that short opening like gothic orchestral theme I think as fight music in Episode 9.
 
TheVileOne said:
I'm assuming getting the rights to the game music would be too expensive.

Instead the show used that keyboard, synth electronic stuff. Though they did use that short opening like gothic orchestral theme I think as fight music in Episode 9.
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You're probably not wrong but man would I have geeked out with some game music in the fight scenes like I did with Bloody Tears.
 
No argument here. The classic game music for Castlevania is iconic and some of the best game music ever.
 
TheVileOne said:
No argument here. The classic game music for Castlevania is iconic and some of the best game music ever.
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SOTN is up there as one of my favourite pieces of music, and I mean that. Maybe my tastes are simplistic but easily the best soundtrack I have heard in a game alone. Beats half the OSTs you would hear as well.

I'm not really up on the rights, is there anything to stop Netflix doing another Castlevania adaptation?
 
INTERVIEW: Castlevania Producer Talks Ending the Series & Expanding the Animated Universe

I know there's not much you can talk about but, with reports of a planned spinoff from the main series, how do you envision the future of Castlevania?

We're not talking about what I would specifically call a spinoff, because we're taking from the characters or spinning directly from this series. We're looking at another series in the Castlevania universe. I can't tell you any real specifics at this point; we can certainly talk about it once those details are solidified; right now, it's really about finishing this [series] up. As you know, there's a lot of great games, great storylines, great characters in the Castlevania world going back, prior to Trevor's story, and going on into the future with Soma Cruz and things like that. There's plenty there to play with -- I'm not going to tell you where we're going to play -- but those details will come out soon enough. [Laughs] I think Castlevania fans will be thrilled.
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When going back to Season 1, what really strikes me is how much better it is. Yes, it's very short, but like there wasn't really time for Ellis to screw it up, lol.

But it's so much tighter in terms of writing. Less extraneous characters. The dialogue and writing are even stronger.

I feel like whatever happened between seasons, giving Ellis too much creative control and possibly not editing his scripts more was a mistake.
 
That first season did feel more like a movie that was broken up at weird parts. So I’m assuming that plays into it feeling tighter versus an episodic TV show.
 
Lencho01 said:
That first season did feel more like a movie that was broken up at weird parts. So I’m assuming that plays into it feeling tighter versus an episodic TV show.
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My understanding is the show was originally conceived as a series of three 90 minute movies before it became an episodic TV show. The first season does feel almost like a prequel movie. But I do feel like the plotting and storytelling is a lot better at only 4 episodes.

I guess Ellis just didn't know how to effectively stretch all this out into 10 episode seasons. I just feel like if they had a strong story editor or executive producer they could've fixed a lot of these problems and cut a lot of the fat.

Whereas the Transformers seasons feel like they could use more time each seasons, not to mention a bigger budget so the Autobots and Decepticons can actually TRANSFORM!

EDIT:

Not sure if he has any interest in it, but if they do another show/series, I'd like Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes co-creator Josh Fine to be the writer/showrunner.
 
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TheVileOne said:
My understanding is the show was originally conceived as a series of three 90 minute movies before it became an episodic TV show. The first season does feel almost like a prequel movie. But I do feel like the plotting and storytelling is a lot better at only 4 episodes.

I guess Ellis just didn't know how to effectively stretch all this out into 10 episode seasons. I just feel like if they had a strong story editor or executive producer they could've fixed a lot of these problems and cut a lot of the fat.

Whereas the Transformers seasons feel like they could use more time each seasons, not to mention a bigger budget so the Autobots and Decepticons can actually TRANSFORM!

EDIT:

Not sure if he has any interest in it, but if they do another show/series, I'd like Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes co-creator Josh Fine to be the writer/showrunner.
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Oh, I see.

I just remember the first season really feeling like a film and each episode was ending in weird places that affected the flow of things. So, I had assumed it started out as a film and someone(s) decided to just cut it up. But, overall, it did feel tighter than the seasons that came after.
 
Lencho01 said:
Oh, I see.

I just remember the first season really feeling like a film and each episode was ending in weird places that affected the flow of things. So, I had assumed it started out as a film and someone(s) decided to just cut it up. But, overall, it did feel tighter than the seasons that came after.
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I think that's exactly what happened in the first season. It started as an animated DTV project in 2007 with Frederator as a single DTV animated movie. And Ellis was brought on board as early as that time. When it got repackaged as an episodic TV series for Netflix, they probably still used the existing script(s) for Season 1.

Around that time, we were getting more animated DTV movie releases. We were getting those ones from Marvel Lionsgate and also from DC post-Justice League Unlimited. There were some gaming ones as well in production at that time. Like Dead Space and Dante's Inferno all got animated DTV movies. Heck, even Turok the Dinosaur Hunter got one in the 00s. So, it was something that was sort of happening experimentally throughout that decade.
 
Finally got around to finishing this. Overall I liked season 4 and I dug the mega happy ending but so much of it was just messy. It seemed like every character was just trying to bring Dracula back. Varney was an okay villain but he doesn’t really become interesting until the end. Ratko was meh and a waste of Titus Welliver like others have said. St. Germain’s heel turn also wasn’t handled very well; it was like Ellis suddenly realized that St. Germain in fiction and folklore is typically thought of as a bad guy and so he had to course correct since the character helped out the heroes last time.

Carmila, Hector, Isaac and the other characters related to them ultimately amount to nothing when you look at the greater plot. Nothing involving them impacts our trio of heroes and all they end up doing is sucking up time that would have been better spent on Trevor, Sypha and Alucard. I think Carmila might have made a great antagonist and I loved her last stand, but sadly we never even get to see her interact with our heroes because her story revolves around these two ***hole forgemasters who REALLY just deserve to die and so of course they don’t.

Trevor, Sypha and Alucard remain the best parts of the show (with Greta being a cool new addition) and they saved what was mostly a meandering season for me. Don’t get me wrong; this show is still leaps and bounds above any other video game adaption I’ve seen and I’m thankful for that because I’ve been a Castlevania stan since the 1980s. But they really needed to tighten up the story here. Castlevania doesn’t need to be Game of Thrones and have a bunch of morally ambiguous characters engaging in their own little subplots that ultimately lead nowhere. This show would have been better served if it hadn’t taken the focus off of its main characters.
 
Deck Rickard said:
Finally got around to finishing this. Overall I liked season 4 and I dug the mega happy ending but so much of it was just messy. It seemed like every character was just trying to bring Dracula back. Varney was an okay villain but he doesn’t really become interesting until the end. Ratko was meh and a waste of Titus Welliver like others have said. St. Germain’s heel turn also wasn’t handled very well; it was like Ellis suddenly realized that St. Germain in fiction and folklore is typically thought of as a bad guy and so he had to course correct since the character helped out the heroes last time.

Carmila, Hector, Isaac and the other characters related to them ultimately amount to nothing when you look at the greater plot. Nothing involving them impacts our trio of heroes and all they end up doing is sucking up time that would have been better spent on Trevor, Sypha and Alucard. I think Carmila might have made a great antagonist and I loved her last stand, but sadly we never even get to see her interact with our heroes because her story revolves around these two ***hole forgemasters who REALLY just deserve to die and so of course they don’t.

Trevor, Sypha and Alucard remain the best parts of the show (with Greta being a cool new addition) and they saved what was mostly a meandering season for me. Don’t get me wrong; this show is still leaps and bounds above any other video game adaption I’ve seen and I’m thankful for that because I’ve been a Castlevania stan since the 1980s. But they really needed to tighten up the story here. Castlevania doesn’t need to be Game of Thrones and have a bunch of morally ambiguous characters engaging in their own little subplots that ultimately lead nowhere. This show would have been better served if it hadn’t taken the focus off of its main characters.
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It was a big issue to me that the main heroes are never even aware of what Carmila and her sisters are doing. Arguably, Carmilla is the greater threat. You know, that's arguably the graver and more immediate threat.

I still think Morana and Striga peacing out was hilarious, "Sorry sis, you're on your own. Yeet!"

But seriously, what was even the point of dedicating all that time to Carmilla's group, Isaac, Hector, Striga, and Morana if they're not even going to figure into the final act? And then they just disappear in the second half?

OK Striga and Morana actually don't seem like bad people. They love and care for one another, and they aren't really as obsessed to taking over the world. They just want to live for themselves. They don't want to conquer and rule. What if Trevor was confronted with the idea of not all vampires being evil and bad? Maybe some can just be left alone as long as they aren't trying to cause harm?

What if Striga and Morana turned on their sister to help Trevor and Sypha? That could've been interesting.

So like there were some interesting characters and material here, but everything happens and unfolds in such a disjointed way. I think if they had like a true story editor, they could've really gotten all these things to eventually collide and work in tandem in a more satisfying way.
 
TheVileOne said:
It was a big issue to me that the main heroes are never even aware of what Carmila and her sisters are doing. Arguably, Carmilla is the greater threat. You know, that's arguably the graver and more immediate threat.

I still think Morana and Striga peacing out was hilarious, "Sorry sis, you're on your own. Yeet!"

But seriously, what was even the point of dedicating all that time to Carmilla's group, Isaac, Hector, Striga, and Morana if they're not even going to figure into the final act? And then they just disappear in the second half?

OK Striga and Morana actually don't seem like bad people. They love and care for one another, and they aren't really as obsessed to taking over the world. They just want to live for themselves. They don't want to conquer and rule. What if Trevor was confronted with the idea of not all vampires being evil and bad? Maybe some can just be left alone as long as they aren't trying to cause harm?

What if Striga and Morana turned on their sister to help Trevor and Sypha? That could've been interesting.

So like there were some interesting characters and material here, but everything happens and unfolds in such a disjointed way. I think if they had like a true story editor, they could've really gotten all these things to eventually collide and work in tandem in a more satisfying way.
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Yep, all of this. I couldn’t believe that they never connected the two main storylines. It makes everything Carmila did seem insignificant because Trevor & Co. apparently weren’t even aware of it. Also, Carmila went out like a boss but I couldn’t believe they had her do her whole final battle in heels. Like, really?

They also needed to bring Trevor, Sypha and Alucard back together sooner. The last two episodes had a “Rise of Skywalker” feel to them in that you could see the writers thinking, “Oh, ****, we’re almost out of time and the heroes haven’t even run into each other in forever. Better throw a magic portal in there and bring the band back together.”
 
Wait...Richter is 320 years old?

Most of the animated series was set in 1476? If Ritcher is Trevor and Sypha's son, how did he live to the 1790s?
 
Punisher_MAX said:
Isn't Richter their great grandson or am I getting the timelines confused?
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I mean considering Richter lived in the 1790s, and Trevor and Sypha sired a child in 1476 in the animated series...I don't understand how they are saying he's theirs on?
 
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