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n the sloppy summer blockbuster Van Helsing, the Vatican-sponsored monster hunter of the title is first introduced as he tracks the monstrous Mr. Hyde through Paris, far from the British stomping grounds of Hyde's literary origins. Confronting Hyde in the famed Notre Dame cathedral, Van Helsing says, "I missed you in London." "No you bloody did not," the grinning Hyde answers, showing off a neat, round bullet hole in his arm, apparently the artifact of a previous clash between the characters. The encounter implies a backstory that isn't addressed again throughout the subsequent violent confrontation, but all is revealed in the half-hour animated prequel Van Helsing: The London Assignment.
The London Assignment reunites some members of the movie's cast—Hugh Jackman as Van Helsing, Harry Potter's Robbie Coltrane as Hyde, David Wenham as Van Helsing's hapless friar sidekick Carl, and Alun Armstrong as Cardinal Jinette, Van Helsing's Vatican superior. The story begins as Hyde brutally murders a woman in Victorian London. After pinning her to a wall and slashing her throat, he holds a small vial to her face, and a bright glow exits her mouth and is trapped in the container. Shortly thereafter, Van Helsing is dispatched to investigate what appears to be a supernatural serial killer—the murderer could almost be Jack the Ripper, except that the corpses he leaves behind are shriveled and almost mummified, as though they were long dead.
After forcing Carl to act as bait by dressing in drag, Van Helsing encounters and fights Hyde, then tracks him to his cavernous, fiery lair, which for some reason is guarded by evil animated corpses. After dealing with them, Van Helsing learns, to his surprise, that Hyde—or, rather, his only slightly more civilized other half, Dr. Jekyll—is actually killing for love. And his intended bride is none other than Queen Victoria herself.
The London Assignment itself is fairly brief, but the DVD compensates with other programs—a three-minute interview with Jackman, commercial-like featurettes about the Van Helsing live-action movie and video game, and an animatics-to-animation comparison feature.
A generic marketing exercise
Initially, The London Assignment's animation seems fairly impressive. There are some fantastic early renderings of clouds and puddles, shadowy alleys and crows, dark London vistas and an eerie full moon. A CGI trainwreck scene doesn't fit with the style of the rest of the piece, but it's still impressively executed. Still, Assignment only shines in its environments and backgrounds. The characters themselves are simple, flat and blandly undistinctive, and their range of motion is limited. Whenever actual humans are onscreen, the piece looks like a sub-par episode of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?
The plot, at least, is mildly innovative, though it's packed with oversights and ridiculous illogic. No one ever noticed that there was a multistory, flame-filled, hell-like cavern under Buckingham Palace? Why does Van Helsing regularly drag the hapless and useless Carl along on his missions, and if he's done it before, then why, in the movie, does Carl protest as though it's the first time? How did Jekyll come to have vampires and an army of strangely lava-proof undead Beefeaters in his employ? And what happens to the crowd of innocent humans on the train that Van Helsing deliberately crashes in order to slow Hyde down?
But then, Assignment doesn't seem to have been meant as a groundbreaking or even particularly impressive standalone work. It reveals nothing new or interesting about the movie's characters or its setting, and it doesn't particularly draw on their personalities; they're all written so generically that they could be any hero-sidekick-and-villain grouping. Ultimately, the lack of depth makes Assignment feel like a vague excuse for selling fans a handful of commercials, like the lavish 13-minute ad for the Van Helsing video game, or the movie featurette, Behind the Screams—which is only a minute or so shorter than Assignment, though far more awkward. Packed with empty boosterage by Van Helsing crew and cast members, and scarred by unbelievably stiff, overblown, amateurish narration from Van Helsing Bride of Dracula Josie Maran, Behind the Screams is tough to sit through. The London Assignment is enjoyable by comparison—but only barely.
If nothing else, it was worth watching this for the featurette interview where Van Helsing director Stephen Sommers explains how after directing The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, he just wanted to do something smaller and simpler, the kind of movie that could feature two characters quietly talking on a beach. But then he thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a werewolf there? And wouldn't it be cool if there were vampires there, too?" Apparently things just spiraled out of control from there. — Tasha
Also in this issue: Around the World in 80 Days and Teknolust DVD
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