"Strange is Relative"

The title for this post is the slogan for the new movie Dark Shadows, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp. The movie premieres on May 11th, and I must admit that I am stoked. After all, I have been waiting for this movie for a grand total of . . . 5 years! (Almost.)

I have been a fan of the 1960s soap opera Dark Shadows for almost 5 years now, as I described in my first post. For even longer, I have been a fan of Johnny Depp.

When I first heard that Depp was starring as the vampire Barnabas Collins in a movie called Dark Shadows, my mother mentioned that she had watched the original soap opera as a girl, and the rest is history.

Needless to say, I was thrilled last week when Dark Shadows' trailer finally premiered. I watched the trailer very closely several times before I decided how I felt.


There are a few changes to Dark Shadows for the movie that get on my nerves. It bothers me that Barnabas Collins, a tried and true vampire, goes out in the daylight in the movie. He also appears to divulge his vampirism to everyone in the Collins family.

Neither of these situations would ever have occurred in the soap opera. I cannot count the number of plots that revolve around Barnabas' restricted existence as a vampire; an important part of this existence is that Barnabas cannot leave his coffin during the day.

There are an equally innumerable number of plotlines that revolve around the need to keep Barnabas' vampirism a secret. These are some of the juiciest plotlines that Dark Shadows has to offer! It seems such a shame to throw away the possibilities that come with this secret, as they appear to do in the new movie.

I find it amusing how defensive I get of the original Dark Shadows when I think about a movie that has not even been released yet. If not for this movie, after all, I would never have even heard of the show!

I already know that I will always like the original soap opera better than the movie, even if the movie is great.

The show has so much more breadth due to its 1,225-episode run. There are countless plotlines, characters, places, and even dimensions and periods of time from the soap opera that viewers of the new Dark Shadows will never get to know.

In the end, however, I am glad that my favorite show, which has been off the air for over 40 years, is being resurrected in film.

The movie will bring a fresh outlook to Dark Shadows and maybe even introduce new fans to the original show.

I understand that the movie will be and needs to be different, because soap operas and their over-the-top tones are a dying breed. It seems that the movie will have a comic slant that was not present (on purpose, anyway) in the soap opera. I will thoroughly enjoy watching some of my favorite fictional characters whoop it up on the big screen.