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Because this movie fucking kicks about 12 different kinds of ass and is exactly the type of thing to cause a resurgence in popularity and interest in the character.
The producers took an interesting tact making this: they hired horror director Michael J. Bassett (DEATHWATCH and the criminally under-seen WILDERNESS) and tasked him with writing and directing an origin story. The hiccup? Howard never wrote an origin story. Being a pulp writer in the golden age of Science-fiction/fantasy there wasn’t much call for one. Heroes just kind of showed up. There were no rules because people like Howard, Lovecraft and Burroughs (Edgar Rice) were writing them as they went along. But this is a different age and people want to know where their heroes came from. So Bassett plunged himself into the text and pulled out every scrap of history Howard ever dropped in passing. And from that Bassett constructed a very BATMAN BEGINS kind of origin.
Remember back when you first saw the early stills of VAN HELSING and read the first whispers of the story and thought “COOL!” Well, that’s because Sommers was ripping off some of the best elements of Solomon Kane for his own asstastic, juvenile, Universal monster fanfic opus. Everything VAN HELSING had going for it (save the monster choices) was plucked from the pages of Howard, and it isn’t until you see James Purefoy’s rendition of Kane that you can look at Hugh Jackman in that hat and realize what a fucking imposter he was. Once the clothes are on and the hat is firmly in place, there is no question: Purefoy is the reigning king of Puritan Chic.
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