Do you consider Orlok an original character or a variation of Dracula?

[deleted]

I do not consider him a version of Dracula(that would be Lugosi, Langella, Lee) but rather an original character inspired by Dracula.

Orlok is based on Dracula, yet he is drasticly different. Yet in a way he's the same. Think about it. Dracula (in the novel) is a talkative, charming character that could almost pass for human. Yet on the inside, behind the deception, he is a horrible, hideous monster. Orlok is on the ouside what he and Dracula are internally. He doesn't hide what he truely is behind a human face. He is as ugly externally as internally. If you could look into Dracula's soul, you would see a creature much like Orlok.

Well it was a pretty faithful adaptation of dracula, but they had to change the name because they couldn't get the rights from stoker's estate. So yes, I see him as the most authentic adaptation of stoker's dracula, who if you read the book had not a disimilar look to orlock.

The widow's peak look was a hollywood interpretation, not stoker.

All the film Dracula's differ from the character of the book quite a lot (many more so than "Orlok"). The closest Dracula was probably Christopher Lee's "other Dracula"; the one that appeared in Jess Franco's version of Dracula though he was still far too handsome.

I do think of Orlok as a version of Dracula (as that is what he is) however I think of him as a different sub-class of Dracula in many ways. I think there are about six different types in my opinion: Orloks, Magyar Draculas (due to Lugosi), Sexual Predator Draculas (Christopher Lee and co.), Romantic "Goth" Draculas (such as Oldman), Mustached Old Men (probably the closest, Lee and Carradine played Dracula in this way) and then silly modern variants.

"Nothings gonna change my world!"

I consider Orlok to be his own character. In my eyes he is just not Dracula at all. Dracula is a subtle monster - one capable of making people feel comfortable when it suits him only to either kill or manipulate them later. He uses a combination of charisma and hypnotic power to satisfy his own ends. In contrast, Orlok is not someone people would feel comfortable having a conversation with, for example. He's the kind of monster that people want to get away from - and quick.

And this brings me to another point. Watching this for the first time, I couldn't help but notice a few missed opportunities. Murnau had to deviate from Stoker's novel to a significant degree to avoid a lawsuit since the rights to adapt the novel had been refused. Yet a successful lawsuit was still brought about by Stoker's widow a few years after production was complete and distributed to some countries.

In deviating from Stoker's story, he made the monster very different from the one he was trying to base his character on, which was great even if unintentional. But he also brought into this movie a few interesting ideas that could have been developed further. One was the idea that the supposed vampire bites could have been done by mosquitos. This could have been developed to leave open the possibility that something else might have caused them (perhaps under Orlok's control). Second was the "Black Death" plague concept.

The bottom line is this - I believe Orlok would have been an even more fascinating and memorable character had he been portrayed as a sort of Grim Reaper who brings about death in the scale of a plague, with vampirism being perhaps just one of the ways of doing so. Even more interesting, vampirism could have been used as a red herring to cover the real cause of death of Orlok's victims. Now that would have been great in my opinion.

I know that I think of them as two diferent characters.

It's dificult though, technically he IS a variant of dracula as the movie is adapted from the book, however Dracula in the novel is quite radically different in appearence compared to Orlok, hairy palms, long white hair, moustache.
The story also differs too, some characters are all but removed, others combined, roles reversed etc, to a point where I think they could e considered different entities.

The ending is the main factor between the two. dracula is staked through the heart and Orlok burned alive by sunlight. We all know that the film is where we get that myth in the first place, it shows up nowhere in the book, quite the opposite, Dracula walks about freely during the day and is only slightly weakened by the sun.
Seeing as so many movies use the nosferatu ending it might be a more appropriate question to ask if these movie draculas are actually alternate versions of Orlok.

Basically I think of them as two different characters, the script and story were changed to differ it from the book, had they used the original script then maybe we could say yes he is dracula but there are too many differences. I don't know if I've ever seen a movie that portrays him as he is in the book, can anybody recomend one?

The differences do exist, but that applies to pretty much all of the adapted Draculas. Take Bela Lugosi's character. He's archetypal, but is he really the same guy as in the book? How about Gary Oldman or Jack Palance? They all have their specific sets of differences and similarities. Orlok is just the only one who has a different name.