YMMV / Dracula Untold

• Ass Pull: Seeing how Dracula spends the entire movie as a vampire yet retains his original, sympathetic personality with only occasional moments of blood thirst, even after being forced to drink human blood, seeing his sired people go Always Chaotic Evil at the end really came out of nowhere. Potentially justified given the differing circumstances of their transformations, with Vlad accepting the change out of a desire to protect his country where everyone else who changed immediately sought revenge against their 'killers'.
• Complete Monster: In the Blu-ray version, Mehmed II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, inherits a dark legacy of conquest and cruelty with brutal enthusiasm. Demanding 1000 Wallachian boys to become Janissaries in his armies, he then demands the son of Prince Vlad when Vlad offers himself in place of the children. Upon refusal, Mehmed rides through Wallachia, slaughtering every village he finds and abducting the boys to become his abused soldiers. Upon fooling Vlad, Mehmed proceeds to butcher almost everyone Vlad has ever known upon breaching the fortress, while kidnapping Vlad's son to join his army.
• Creepy Awesome: The Elder Vampire, with his long fingernails, ghastly pale skin, and being played by Charles Dance to boot.
• Ending Fatigue: The film seems to end five times.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Elder Vampire has quite the fan following despite only appearing in a few scenes, courtesy of Charles Dance's charismatic performance.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In Victor Vran, the title character has a backstory similar to Dracula's in Dracula Untold^note Victor Vran is a former Royal Who Actually Does Something, who got cursed after making a Deal with the Devil in desperation to defend against a vastly more powerful invading army (Victor Vran isn't a vampire, though). What makes it a true example of Hilarious in Hindsight is the fact that, beside his background, Victor Vran isn't supposed to be an expy of Dracula or Vlad the Impaler... He is a Gabriel Van Helsing-esque monster hunter.
  • The second season of Rise of Empires: Ottoman also covers the clash between Vlad Dracula and his stepbrother/arch-enemy Sultan Mehmet while also improving on a lot of the They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot complaints that were directed at this film. Dispensing with the supernatural angle entirely, it's instead a protracted battle of wits between two of the best strategic masterminds of their time. Mehmet is also Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, having already spent an entire season building up his character during the Siege of Constantinople before Vlad is introduced. For extra irony points, Charles Dance, who played the Elder Vampire, is the narrator for Rise.
• Magnificent Bastard: The vampire elder is a mysterious creature sealed away in a cave whose strength Prince Vlad seeks. Seeing a way to freedom and determining the hidden darkness in Vlad, the elder sways him to vampirism for a hidden pact while suspecting that Vlad will succumb to bloodlust and free the elder. Keeping tabs on Vlad centuries after, the elder finally makes his move centuries later when Vlad meets his wife's apparent reincarnation.
• Narm:
  • The notion of a vampire's clothes being part of him purely as a Hand Wave for why Dracula isn't nude when he turns back from bats to human.
  • The Sultan's entire army being blindfolded.
  • Vlad's wife waking up and saying a few final words after FALLING OFF OF A MOUNTAIN.
• Older Than They Think: Despite comparisons to Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, the film might have more in common with the Dracula: Vlad the Impaler comic book series published by Topps in 1993 (see here), detailing the life of the historical Vlad before he became a vampire.
• Retroactive Recognition: Hamza Bey is played by Ferdinand Kingsley before he would become known for appearing in Victoria and The Sandman (2022).
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • The closest we'll get to a Castlevania: Lords of Shadow movie. The fact that Dracula's vampire mode here is portrayed very similarly to his portrayal in those games helps.
  • The closest we'd ever get to a live action Hellsing prequel.
  • This also feels like a loose prequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula, stretching that movie's prologue to an entire movie by itself.
  • The story (historic prince gains magical powers from ancient being which he uses to defeat his enemies) bears some similarities to the origin of Black Adam.
• Squick: The Elder Vampire's Overly-Long Tongue, which has to be at least three times as long as a human one.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Elder Vampire, for all that he's an Ensemble Dark Horse, really could have stood to be featured in the film for more than a few scenes.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Combining Vlad the Impaler and the Dracula of Stoker/pop culture for an Origin Story is a cool idea (albeit not exactly original), but the movie takes too many liberties with the historical Vlad's life and character even before the vampire stuff kicks in.
  • The film would've been a great character study of Count Dracula's Start of Darkness, but wastes it by keeping Vlad's character heroic throughout, as well as making his decision to remain a vampire a noble sacrifice rather than a selfish choice that would lead to him becoming one of fiction's most famous villains.
  • Going the other way, what if they'd gone the other way? Instead trying to rewrite history, use the historical facts: Don't villianize the Ottomans, don't cut out Vlad's very real flaws. Let the literal hunger for blood make him slowly realize what a monster he already was. Historically Accurate Vlad clawing his way to Ascended Demon-hood *because* he becomes a vampire? How cool would that have been?
  • They could also have stuck more closely to the original novel and made Dracula a completely separate person from Vlad Tepes, freeing them to make up whatever they wanted without having to worry too much about historical accuracy. Bram Stoker likely drew inspiration from the historical figure Vlad (particularly the sobriquet Dracul or Dracula) but the novel never states or indicates that Dracula is actually supposed to be Vlad, with that being a more recent embellishment.
• The Un-Twist: Boy, I sure hope nothing happens to somehow force Dracula to stay a vampire! Then again, it is a bit of a twist how he chose to stay a vampire rather than merely succumbing to the thirst for blood.

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