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Queen of the Damned (2002)
In a effort to sort out my own thoughts of this movie I've been following the making of for over a year, I've decided to write a review to TNMC, which I frequently visit for info.
First of all, I have read all the books, and soon you will find out why this is so important to a viewer's enjoyment (or lack, thereof) of this film. I must first say that I have never seen less character development in a movie that I can think of.
Anne Rice's books are biographical in nature, and without writing a novel here, I can say there are many characters that have entirely NO introduction in the movie, yet serve a "function" (destroy Akasha, the Queen). I can deal with a brunette Lestat, a shorthaired Marius, and even with the idea of Marius making Lestat (which he didn't)... but... The Ancients, the oldest vampires and Rice's most beloved characters, actually arrive, do a bit of acting and are destroyed in a matter of minutes without half their names even being spoken by anyone. Who was that? Who are those two? Hmm, that female vampire was just incinerated by Akasha, should I care? I don't even know who she was.
If you're confused, don't worry, no matter how incoherent this review may seem, the movie made even less sense. Here we go. Lestat awakes to the sound of rock music after sleeping for a century and decides to break all the vampire "rules" by going public as what he is: a vampire. He grabs a junkie goth band, becomes their singer, and plans a debut concert in the desert after an album and music videos saturate MTV to develop a fan base. In one of the few good scenes, we see Lestat made in a flashback and his first experience with the Queen when he stirs her from sleep with his violin playing.
Back to the present, he once again wakes her with his music (heavy metal this time), and she begins a rampage of her own, killing vampires and humans left and right. Aaliyah has a great presence on screen.... an hour into the film when she finally appears. Probably a total of less than 10 minutes on screen, the Queen seduces Lestat with her ancient, powerful blood, shows him how he can now walk in (?) daylight (?), and then he turns on her a few minutes later when the films completely falls apart at the "end". In the meantime, other Ancients are shown talking about Akasha and how they must "settle an old score" and must destroy her, blah blah blah... What score? And who are you, anyway?
I knew who these Ancients were supposed to be, but I had read the books. Now IF I had NOT read anything about them, I would have been completely clueless and without care regarding them. Maybe that would have been a better way to view the movie, but you can't unread something.. Khayman, Maharet, Mael, Pandora, and Armand appear, say a line, and then half of them die. The strange thing is, I saw about a dozen video clips online from the movie before it opened, and NONE of these clips were in the final cut, but these clips had what the film needed: character introductions! Dialog scenes where the fact that all these ancients have histories, struggles, romances, and grudges among them that date back 6,000 years, were cut from the movie!
Before I write anymore, I better wrap this up. I give this two stars for Stuart Townsend's, Aaliyah's, and Vincent Perez's performance as Lestat, the Queen, and Marius. Two stars for some good scenes like the flashback, the high-energy desert concert, and the Queen destroying a vampire club. I damn Warner Brothers for deciding to make film this literally WEEKS before all movie rights were to revert back to Anne Rice and she would be able to have control and make her movies right. Now the rights will be WB's for another decade, and we have this poor effort at storytelling to deal with.
And like I said before, no matter how incoherent this review may seem, the movie made even less sense.
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