June 22, 2012

“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”: Precursor to “Jimmy Carter: Space-Troll Grundle-Puncher”?

Yes.Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox ; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JimmyCarterPortrait2.jpg">Department of Defense</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
20th Century Fox
105 minutes

If you don’t appreciate Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter then you don’t appreciate what makes America great.

It’s exuberant and obscenely fun, plugging away at one big, fat, giddy premise. The vamp-loaded 3D action sequences (orchestrated with a honed shamelessness by director Timur Bekmambetov) are sublime, mainly due to the fact that you get to see the Great Emancipator balletically wreck legions of blood-suckers through the art of ax-twirling and kung fu. The movie also has the greatest stampede scene since Simba got his life ruined in The Gorge; one that involves the vampire who murdered Lincoln’s mom throwing full-grown horses at a young and vengeful Abe.

But aside from being a wild kick of escapist, blood-mottled fun (tepid critical reception be damned), the film opens up a world of possibilities: A movie franchise in which Hollywood would honor every single American president with a gore-soaked retelling:

1. George Washington: Acid-Pterosaur Poacher. He resigns his commission in 1783…while fighting off flying reptiles that spew acid at the behest of a bitter British elite. 

2. John Adams: Mummy Shanker. Launches an undeclared naval war against the French Republic. Unbeknowst to his cabinet, Adams stabs mummified demons in his spare hours.

3. Thomas Jefferson: Big-Pimpin’ Zombie Drop-Kicker. Completely dominates Islamist bandits centuries before it was cool. (Spoiler: The bandits all turn out to be zombies.)

4. James Madison: Nunchuck Crusader. Successfully beats back British advances during the War of 1812 with political savvy. And barbwire-covered nunchucks.

5. James Monroe: Cthulhu Pile-Driver. Shepherds the country through the Panic of 1819, which, as it turns out, was actually started by Cthulhu (a Federalist supporter).

6. – 27. [TBD, folks.]

28. Woodrow Wilson: Werecat Quasher. Pushes through the Sedition Act of 1918 as a means to crack down on the werecat insurgency. (The move is however widely misinterpreted as an effort to crush anti-war dissent.)

29. Warren G. Harding: The Man Who Tamed The Hulk. Goes down in history as America’s first black president. Also, Warren challenges The Hulk to a cage match. Just cuz.

30. Calvin Coolidge: Ghost Killah. Neutralizes brutish ghouls while not talking to anybody, ever.

31. Herbert Hoover: Shark Wrestler. Spends the first years of the Great Depression wrestling sharks, thus becoming a tragic and hated hero.

32. Franklin Roosevelt: Chupacabra Dominator. Teams up with Churchill and Stalin in order to trounce chupacabra incursions into Western Europe and the Far East.

33. Harry Truman: Giant-Preying-Mantis Exterminator. Simply put: The bug stops here.

34. Dwight Eisenhower: Leviathan Conquerer. Threatens to drop nuclear bombs on Leviathan-harboring Asia.

35. John Kennedy: Cyborg Enabler. Uses the Central Intelligence Agency to install the ultimate Arab nationalist cyborg, S.A.D.D.A.M.

36. Lyndon Johnson: Gorgon Subjugator. Bullies gorgons into voting for legislation he wants passed.

37. Richard Nixon: Ogre Blaster. Violates the Logan Act, betrays America, and prolongs the Vietnam War, all in a desperate attemp to vanquish ogres.

38. Gerald Ford: Griffin Exploder. Wakes up, signs the Helsinki Accords, kills griffins with dynamite, falls back asleep.

39. Jimmy Carter: Villainous Space-Troll Grundle-Puncher. Deregulates the beer industry, nut-punches space trolls. Basically the best president ever.

40. Ronald Reagan: Warlock Devourer. When he’s not eliminating some nuclear missiles or murdering El Salvadoran families, he eats male witches for sport.

41. George H. W. Bush: Dragon Aggravator. Invades Panama in order to blast Van Halen songs at a pissed off, drug-trafficking dragon.

42. Bill Clinton: Medusa Punisher. You know what this is.

43. George W. Bush: Minotaur Tickler. He fucking ruins fucking everything. Luckily, “everything” includes jihadist minotaurs.

44. Barack Obama: Kraken Strangler. Somali pirates, Bin Laden, Qaddafi, yet more Somali pirates, Kraken.

But for now, I guess we’ll all just have to make due with just this one:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter gets a wide release on Friday, June 22. The film is rated R for violence throughout and brief sexuality. Click here to get local showtimes and tickets.

Click here for more movie and TV features from Mother Jones. To read more of Asawin’s reviews, click here.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate