GI JOE RISE OF COBRA WAS ALMOST AS MUCH OF A CAREER KILLER AS VAN HELSING.ODD THOMAS IS A BETTER FILM.BUT ITS SMALL AND MUCCH LESSER KNOWN.

Van Helsing was on FXM this weekend and was rewatching it for a bit..I remember having HIGH expectations and looking forward to this movie back in the day. I even had a full size poster on my wall! The Mummy was one of my favorite recent movies leading into that (perfect blend of horror & Indiana Jones) & here Sommers was, redoing ALL the Classic Universal Monsters with none other then Wolverine being a Vampire Killer/Monster Hunter...but unfortunately, what followed was a discombobulated mess of a story with WAY too much CGI and a messy story equivalent to the latter Transformers sequels!

I was so dissappointed..and sad! Sounds like Universal was too as any further Mummy or Van Helsing sequels were removed from his resume. Definitely a super quick rise & fall of a talented director! I also think Stephen himself lost his edge, his confidence as a director..he DEFINITELY phoned it in with G.I.Joe and Odd Thomas, though good, was nowhere near the caliber he's capable of.

He's got a remake project in the works where he's producer and director...When Worlds Collide! Based off of an early 1950s Atomic Age movie..this may be right up his alley! Here's hoping he finds his mojo and knocked it out of the park with that one! Its a shame to see his talent go to waste!

@jorgito2001 said:

Van Helsing was on FXM this weekend and was rewatching it for a bit..I remember having HIGH expectations and looking forward to this movie back in the day. I even had a full size poster on my wall! The Mummy was one of my favorite recent movies leading into that (perfect blend of horror & Indiana Jones) & here Sommers was, redoing ALL the Classic Universal Monsters with none other then Wolverine being a Vampire Killer/Monster Hunter...but unfortunately, what followed was a discombobulated mess of a story with WAY too much CGI and a messy story equivalent to the latter Transformers sequels!

I was so dissappointed..and sad! Sounds like Universal was too as any further Mummy or Van Helsing sequels were removed from his resume. Definitely a super quick rise & fall of a talented director! I also think Stephen himself lost his edge, his confidence as a director..he DEFINITELY phoned it in with G.I.Joe and Odd Thomas, though good, was nowhere near the caliber he's capable of.

He's got a remake project in the works where he's producer and director...When Worlds Collide! Based off of an early 1950s Atomic Age movie..this may be right up his alley! Here's hoping he finds his mojo and knocked it out of the park with that one! Its a shame to see his talent go to waste!

Yeah, I also remember buying it shortly after it came out on DVD thinking it was going to be a fun adventure movie like the Mummy or something. Instead you get this embarrassingly bad movie with really bad and campy acting. It's like actors asked Sommers how should they act in the scenes and Sommer told them :"I want you to act like you were in the Batman series from the 60's, but dial it up a notch". "A notch???" "No, screw that. Ten notches!".

Interestingly enough, even though this movie probably had some effect on the amount of directing jobs presented to Sommers, it does not seem to have had much of an effect on the actor who played Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) who gave in the worst performance, and has been acting steadily even after this movie, but I suppose it's the director who takes most of the criticism in failures like this.

@VHS-VANDAL said:

GI JOE RISE OF COBRA WAS ALMOST AS MUCH OF A CAREER KILLER AS VAN HELSING.ODD THOMAS IS A BETTER FILM.BUT ITS SMALL AND MUCCH LESSER KNOWN.

I liked The Rise of Cobra much better than the crapfest with the Rock & Bored Willis that followed it.

Van Helsing was a bad cartoon.

Deep Rising is still Steve's best!

I LIKE GI JOE TOO BUT IT STINKS..MARLON WAYANS..ENOUGH SAID.YOU NAILED IT THOUGH..DEEP RISING IS AWESOME AND EASILY HIS BEST WORK.

Deep Rising is likely what put him on the map & got him the job to do The Mummy! Great little horror/action movie & a great precursor to what we see in The Mummy!