Has everyone seen the trailer for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter yet? No? Go, now, watch, then come back. These things are so much more important that my silly little blog posts.
Everyone back? Okay, good. I’ve got to say that looks like a hell of a lot more fun than I anticipated, like there’s actual some budget behind the movie and they’re not just banking on people coming out for the ridiculous concept behind it. But did you see the same thing I did? Watch it again, see if something stands out. Or, since this post is rather short and you can already see the screenshot I’m about to post, just look at it and tell me what’s wrong.
That’s Washington, DC. I live in the burbs of that city, and it’s a fantastic part of the country to live in. That’s the Washington Monument in the middle, to the left, past the Reflecting Pool, is the Lincoln Memorial. I don’t know exactly what this shot is doing in the trailer, whether that shot is just an establishment of place and time before a major flashback, or a flashforward at the end, or if it’s even in the movie at all. What I do know is that the Washington Monument wasn’t completed until the 1870s. The Lincoln Memorial was certainly not even in planning stage’s during the president’s life. Seeing both immediately ripped me out of the trailer, no matter how beautiful of a shot it is.
I’ll give the movie makers a break. They’re probably not behind the content of the trailer, and there are other scenes in the trailer that show a much more era-appropriate DC. Here we see the second Capitol Dome still under construction, as it was when Lincoln was inaugurated.
So I’m not here to crucify the movie, I’m here to make a quick and easy point. One I’ve made before, and one I’ll make again. Get the little things right. This can be especially true in Alternate History, you need to get the things that don’t change right, or people won’t be with you for the things you do change. At no point in this trailer did I rebel against the much larger historical inaccuracy of Abraham Lincoln fighting vampires. It was only the small thing, the one second shot of a completed Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial in a trailer that’s otherwise set during Lincoln’s adulthood.
Want some other things that Alternate History often does wrong? Head on over to a fantastic Daily 10 about just that on io9. And do remember: most Steampunk (which several of us on this blog write) is just another form of AH.
About the author
DL Thurston is a writer of novels, screenplays, and the occasional short story. He has short stories due out soon in the Steam Works anthology from Hydra Publications and in The Memory Eater. When he's not writing, he also brews beer and even drinks it sometimes. Check out his exploits either on his blog or on Twitter.
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