Review: Dracula Untold (Patreon)

It's taken me a lot of years to catch up with this one, partly because the trailers, reviews and everything I read told me I would hate it and I saw no reason to inflict it on myself, partly because whenever it's been on TV and I've tried to watch it, I've decided, about 15 minutes in, that life is just too damn short. But I finally made the sacrifice so I could criticise it with a bit more knowledge. Sort of goes without saying that this is terrible and thank God it didn't give rise to the mooted franchise. I can't think of anything positive to say about it, even the use of a modicum of real history doesn't land. The big problem of course is that it wants to be Marvel, which leads me to two questions.
Firstly; Why? That's kind of an obvious question but still worth asking because Dracula is so not a superhero, yet one look at him discovering his powers tells you that's what they were trying to make him. So they keep most of the impaling off camera and give him a tragic backstory forcing him into being the bad guy. In other words; too bad to be a good guy, too tragic to be a bad guy. Tragedy works for the wolf man and Frankenstein's monster but not for Dracula. I think if he was an interesting enough character, we would be happy to watch an origin story for someone evil.
Secondly, and less obviously; if they're trying to ape Marvel then why is this no fun? Say what you like about Marvel (and find them pretty samey), they have a sense of fun. In an upcoming DC Undead we talk about bad use of comedy in action films and Marvel is sometimes guilty of this but there's a difference between fun and funny. There is a lightness to marvel that lifts you and carries you along with the fast-moving story. Dracula Untold is leaden and po-faced. Someone has been told that horror-inflected movies (you can't call it a horror movie) have to be a dirge - presumably someone who never watched the Universal movies that supposedly inspired this. Weirdly DC had the same problem with their Man of Steel and BvS:DOJ (as I'm sure everyone calls it).  I don't think a sense of humour would have saved Dracula Untold, but at least it might have made it bearable.
Now I just have to find the willpower to sit through Tom Cruise's Mummy and I'm all up to speed.