• Cartoon and Animation Studies
• /
• s.22
• /
• pp.17-30
• /
• 2011

This paper analyzes Blood: the Last Vampire (2009) in comparison with the original Blood: the Last Vampire (2000). This digital movie, released in 2009, faithfully re-presents the visual of the original animation using more budget and more developed technology. Though these two movies share very similar visual style, they have slightly different modes of expression that can be easily detected in their opening scenes. The original Blood chooses to tell its story in more indirect way. Some shots are intentionally vague and forcefully separated by black credit screen, leaving audience guessing exactly what happened. The remake version of Blood provides faster, more diverse, and more sophisticated images. It also uses invisible and slick editing, leaving no room to guess. These differences comes mainly from the difference of media. However, since the differences between two movies lie mainly in their narratives, we can ascribe the box office slump of the digital movie version of Blood: the Last Vampire to its narrative flaws. The heroin's inner conflicts were not convincing enough, supporting roles were not probable enough, and the whole story was not unique enough. As a result, the new Blood: the Last Vampire became another bad example that shows the importance of narrative in films.