Movie Review of Queen of the Damned (2002)

After centuries in the shadows, the Vampire Lestat saw an opening to take center-stage - literally. In a world of Korn and Marilyn Manson, a rock-star who claims to be a vampire fitted in just fine. Legions of fans could flock to the show without anyone seriously believing that he was telling the truth.

But the vampires knew.  They heard and saw the gauntlet thrown at their feet, illuminated in neon lights and fireworks. 

Millenniums of secrecy and caution were exploded in the spotlight and the unflinching gaze of the media. Even the very ancient undead would stir to answer that call.  Some very ancient vampires indeed.

Most want him dead.  Some just want to watch, but they are in the minority.  His actions threaten the safety of them all.

But there is one vampire, so aged that her whole body had turned to stone in repose, who still hears that call.  Dangerous and powerful beyond the scope of any living vampire.  Ruthless and utterly without regard for the world in which they all must live.

Akasha likes what she hears. She warms to his boldness and will awake to take her rightful place at the very top of the food-chain.  She wants Lestat as her consort.  His recklessness holds the promise that she'll not be bored.

In the midst of a burgeoning vampire world war, Lestat has stirred the very Queen of the Damned.

All vampire movies are about outcasts. In fiction, this generally takes the form of a powerful elite, represented famously by Count Dracula and here by Queen Akasha.  But in reality, the vampire sub-culture has traditionally served to bring together loners.

Those living on the margin of society are either its losers or its innovators.  No progress was ever made by trudging through the well-worn grooves left by those who went before.  But fashionistas will fall like the Bacchae upon anyone who doesn't follow the latest trends. Many a High School student has been beaten up for not wearing the correct trainers.

Queen of the Damned explores these themes.  Lestat has been told how to live. Vampires have a code of existence, which has seen them right for their entire history.  He has kicked against it since he was first transformed, but now he's smashed convention into shards.

My favorite scenes in the whole movie concern Lestat and Marius.  The latter will punish him relentlessly for his indiscretions and for stepping out of the groove.  But when the bullies cluster to destroy him, will Marius stand by and let it happen?

Rebels are not supposed to be insecure.  They're supposed to flash the birdie at all who would force them to conform, whatever the latest fad may be.  Lestat proves the lie of that.  Rebels want acceptance and approval, just like everyone else.  They just want the whole world to be different and aren't prepared to lie down waiting for that to occur naturally.

We're all waiting for Marius to offer a hand.  We're all terrified that he won't.  But the waiting to find out is what pushes Lestat into recklessness beyond even a vampire's imagining.

I'm not going to go through every single criticism that I've seen and heard leveled against this movie.  Some of them are frankly ludicrous and can be dismissed as solely people jumping on the bandwagon.

For example, I've read hate piled upon the casting of Matthew Newton as Armand. He's barely in the movie. There are a couple of scenes where he's part of a crowd of ancients. He only speaks once or twice.

Yet he's reviled as being a terrible Armand, with Antonio Banderas's portrayal held up as more faithful to the books.  Have these people actually read the books?

Armand is a beardless boy of around seventeen years old.  Ukrainian with hair like 'something spun from amber', he's 'sweet, boylike and pretty as a girl' (The Vampire Armand p 16).  Elsewhere he's described as looking like a Botticelli angel or the 'vagabond angel child of Satan'.

Look at Matthew Newton.  Reddish-blond - tick.  Young - tick.  Childlike - tick.  Beardless - tick. Angelic - yes, I could buy that.  Girlish - he could pass for a female. 

Could the same be said of Antonio Banderas's aspect?  Absolutely not.  Physically, he failed on all counts, give or take the face of an angel. Yet Armand in Interview with the Vampire is acceptable, Armand in Queen of the Damned is not. 

I state this solely to illustrate the lengths of pettiness to which the backlash against the movie has reached.  Yet not all are without credence and there is a strongly political cause at the root.  Come with me into the dark and murky world of the Anne Rice fandom.

After the huge success of Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, everyone expected that The Vampire Lestat would be the next to hit our theater screens.  We were disappointed.

Queen of the Damned is actually the third in The Vampire Chronicles.  The second and third novels are incredibly complex story-lines, adding in a lot of background information and weaving together the lives of multiple vampires.  It's all an incredible feat of story-telling, which I would recommend unreservedly.

The movie Queen of the Damned strips away much of that.  It rifles through both books and picks out bits and pieces, like someone randomly nibbling through a chocolate box.

Much of the richness of the narrative is lost in the retelling.  There are just two interlinked tales - Lestat and Jesse - melded together.  Facts and situations had to be altered to make it happen.  So it wasn't just a pick and mix, but a downright rewriting in part.

In truth, as a great fan of the novels, I gave up even trying to link it back to the stories that I'd read.  Ordinarily, I'd be the first to sniff at a tale not being faithful to the canon, but this wasn't even close.

At best, we can say that Queen of the Damned is loosely based upon the second and third books. It's in no way a substitute for reading them.

I was appeased because what appeared on the silver screen was practically a different story entirely.  I enjoyed it for what it was, rather than what it purported to be.

As a relatively unknown writer, Anne Rice had sold the film-making rights to her novels to a company called Lorimar Productions.  In 1988, they were bought out by Warner Bros, who acquired the rights that way.

Interview with the Vampire was a box-office success, so everyone seemed keen to see filming begin on the sequel.  Everyone except, it appeared, Warner Bros themselves. Nothing much happened at all between 1994 and 1998.

By now, Anne Rice could see the deadline approaching.  At the end of 2000, all rights would revert to her.  She was enthusiastic and ready for this to happen.  She'd written the screenplay of the first book and she was willing to do the same for The Vampire Lestat.  She also spoke with a director, who was already on the Warner Bros pay-roll. They believed it would happen.

It did not.  But to stop the rights reverting back to the author, meetings began on another project.  Movie executives did not involve Anne Rice.  She wrote to fans, 'I felt snubbed and hurt and have not bothered to approach them since. The young director is supposed to be developing THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED which I think is a bad idea, and basically a doomed project.'

The backlash pretty much began right there.  Anne didn't like it, so the fans didn't like it.  When it became clear that the studio were not only filming the books out of order, but substantially changing the storyline, then all Hell broke lose.

Later on, after filming had begun, the studio belatedly realized that Anne should be someone kept on side for this.  They dispatched Stuart Townsend, who would play Lestat, probably to head off the troubles in the first movie, when Anne had publicly turned against the casting of Tom Cruise for the same role.

She'd later relented - once she'd seen him on the screen - and apologized.  Stuart Townsend charmed her from the first, so she never spoke up against him at all.

With a veritable storm raging, Anne Rice was allowed a private viewing of the movie shortly before its general release.  She changed her tune immediately, allowing her name to be associated with it and declaring herself pleased.  But the damage was long since done.

A year later, Anne back-tracked again.  Now she tried hard to dissociate herself from the publicity, repeatedly telling fans that she hated the movie.  It had, she said, 'mutilated' her work.  There were few who'd disagree with that statement.

I don't know any fan, now or in the late 90s, who didn't want to see another movie adaptation from The Vampire Chronicles.  The problem was that we didn't want this one.

As you may have gathered, I'm not only fine with it, but I love the movie.  Even I'd like to see it done properly though.  I'd keep the same cast, but I'd be first in the door at the theater, if Anne Rice had written the screenplay.

Much resentment has come from what might have been.  She was going to do it, but Warner Bros stopped her by making Queen of the Damned.  There should have been two movies (or a television mini-series, as Anne Rice herself thought more appropriate).  They should have followed all of the twists and turns in the original novels.  Canon details should not have been changed.

We'll never know what that unmade movie would have looked like.  But that shouldn't take away from what was made.  I, for one (and probably the only one), really love this version of Queen of the Damned.  I'm glad that it was made.