I just watched all three last night and I think the 3rd is the best also. I'm not gonna dock it for ripping other vampire movies when the firs two rip off all kinds of flicks too, especially Indy movies.
I think this one had the best pacing and was really helped by being able to go on location in NOLA so that they didnt have to use a lot of blatant green screens.
The FX in the first were laughable even for the time and it really took me out of it, especially on the bridge scene where wood was falling off all over the place in areas where they hadnt even walked on and it was clearly a looped computer graphic rather than one long shot. It looked on the level of stuff from Xena which is like 10 years older. What was annoying was if could have shot around using as much green screen as they did. The part at the temple should have been an establishing shot and then mostly over the shoulder shots, not a wide showing everyone b/c it just made us have to look at the bad backround more than we needed to. The action scenes were shot and edited very poorly in the first as well. The part where he falls off the mountain and she catches him with a rope... Come on. We already know she is a badass. This was pointless. The final battle especially was bad with the way it was shot and edited and was very jarring the way it flipped back and forth.
The second was just too predictable in parts for its own good. It was pretty clear that his dads friend was gonna end up being a bad dude. The bits in Africa were borderline racist and insulting at times. Noah Wyle came off like a moron too many times in it as well. It was too jumpy with the editing much like the first. Characters would suddenly appear without any explanation or reason. The bats were terrible and made it look cheap. The fights were an improvement over the first but still poorly shot.
Of course the third had issues too. Again, there were many moments where if characters would just tell each other what they knew, things would be much easier to accomplish. Hitting a high note to break the glass to escape was lame and I think they could have come up with something better. While I thought Dracula and Simone's fight was interesting and moderately well done, the other vampires looking like zombies was well... not so good. Killing the one with a grenade made little sense. The opening montage using bits from the first two movies felt like they were padding time and couldn't come up with a real opening.
Now I know I've done some bashing here but I di like these flicks and want to see more of them. I think Noah Wyle has a ton of charisma and really carries them well. Bob Newhart and Jane Curtain have improved in each one IMO. Olympia Dukakis makes me laugh with the way she treat him. Its a fun and quirky turn your brain off type show and I like that about them.
I agree with the poster that said it seems like this might work better as a tv series. Perhaps as a serial type thing where each movie is maybe like a 3 to 5 episode mini series? That way they could go more in depth with whats going on and it it wouldn't jump from place to place so fast.
The one thing that I can't figure out really is who is the audience they are going for? At times it seems like its for little kids but at others its as if its for teens and young adults. You certainly would have to know a decent amount of history to get some of the jokes like when he is drying his face on the Shroud of Turin but the goofy bits with Excalibur basically being a pet or the pan pipes playing is very kiddie. Yet he jumps in the sack with the ladies in a way that I cant see it being for kids under, oh I dunno, 12ish.
Anyways, enough of my blathering. I put them in this order w/how much I liked them. 3, 1, 2.
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