The McBournie Minute: History gets the ‘Twilight’ effect

Yesterday was Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, even though we don’t celebrate it as a national holiday. Not even President’s Day is in his honor, because Congress refused to celebrate the man who saved the Constitution while freeing the slaves, because they didn’t want to rile up the South. This was decades after his death. The holiday is legally known as Washington’s Birthday, even though it’s not on George Washington’s birthday. Abe just can’t get respect. Did you remember to get him something? No matter, Hollywood did.

The trailer for Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter was just released, and the movie looks to reboot one of America’s most-treasured action heroes, Honest Abe. (Also in the Pantheon of American Heroes Who Need Reboots: Superman, Tiger Woods, Natty Bumppo and Jesus.) It’s got everything you need for a blockbuster movie based on a book with a cult following and a vampire movie trend that just won’t die.

So why am I just not excited about this?

Before I delve into this, I’m going to get it out here in the open: I love history. When my friends were watching MTV in high school, I was watching The History Channel. Not the “History” today that has reality shows and some historical context now and then, I’m talking about The History Channel, showing marathons of “20th Century with Mike Wallace.” That’s how cool I was. I promise I’m not going to get too much into the history-nerdiness. That being said:

How has Twilight not ruined vampires yet?
Years ago, vampires became sexy again, and Hollywood was all over it. Good for them, they finally remembered how to make money. The problem is, Hollywood will exploit a trend six ways to Sunday, and then try to do it some more, as long as people show up. I’m tired of the revamped vampire stuff. To be fair, I’ve never really been into that scene, but I can see the appeal. But every trend has to reach a point when people get tired of it. For example, I think zombies are awesome, but the second season of The Walking Dead is making me bored with it all. The same thing should happen with vampires. But as long as there are teenagers, I suppose vampires will be cool.

You just know Fox News is going to be all over this
These guys were calling The Muppets communists because the villain in their latest movie was a rich oil man from Texas. The Muppets. What do you think they are going to do when director Timur Bekmambetov–a Russian–makes the founder of the modern Republican Party into a sci-fi hero? The only thing that would set them off more is the inevitable sequel, Ronald Reagan Werewolf Hunter.

Lincolned out
This year, we’re going to get two different movies based on the 16th president. One, directed by Steven Spielberg, will focus on his leadership during the Civil War, while the other will cover his career as a vampire hunter, which failed to come up on the campaign trail, and is frequently overlooked by historians today. I’m not suggesting that the same audiences will see both, but do you remember how lame it was when we had two Wyatt Earp movies come out around the same time?

You must be joking
I think it’s also important to note here that making presidents into something fantastic, such as a really tall guy who hacks up vampires and goes on to free the slaves, really only works in the comedic sense. Presidents are so public and so real to us that it’s hard for us to think of them as anything other than what they realistically were. Remember when the Founding Fathers were all ripped defending the fledgling America 300-style on Robot Chicken? Slow motion, outlandish action scenes regarding presidents only works when it doesn’t take itself seriously. You can update or take liberties with fictional action heroes just fine, but with real people it doesn’t translate.

Now that I think about it, recounting The Alamo 300-style would be great, provided Davy Crockett yells enough.