Mavis - Blog Posts

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Hotel Transylvania is Toxic - [A look into the Dracula Family]

[Spoiler Warning — Duh. I also have the article posted on Medium if you wanna check that out]

So we all know the movie, “Hotel Transylvania” right? For those who don’t, to sum it up, it’s a movie series about this hotel that’s for monsters so that monsters can hide from humans. The owner of this hotel is none other than the culturally known classic Dracula himself — and turns out he has a daughter named Mavis. Her mother died shortly after she was born due to human’s hatred for vampires during that time period. However, I feel like the story tends to be deeply problematic in terms of how the characters treat each other (specifically the Dracula family).

First and foremost, let’s get one thing out of the way: Dracula is a horrible father in these movies.

Legit, I can’t tell which movie he’s worse in. The only movie where I think he’s not entirely problematic is the third one where they go on vacation. And even then, he completely ditches his grandson to date Erica and lies to Mavis (but even that situation was a bit complicated if you watched the movie).

Excluding that, he’s straight-up horrible. Don’t believe me? What did he do in the first movie?

In the first film, Mavis states she wants to travel since she’s now 118 (which signifies her newfound autonomy in the monster realm the same way 18 is the new adult age for humans — gee, imagine having to wait that long?). However, Dracula, remembering his past trauma with humans, is terrified of her leaving because he doesn’t want her hurt. Obviously, this sounds like a caring father, right? But here’s the major issue.

Eventually, Dracula says that Mavis can test the waters by visiting a nearby human village. This obviously excites Mavis considering that she’s quite literally never left the hotel throughout those 118 years (if I was her, I’d also wanna go outside, hot dang).

Mavis flies over to the village. But the most bleeped up part about the whole thing is during that scene where she’s inside the village, it’s shown that Dracula actively set up the village and hired other monsters to pretend to be humans as a way to scare his daughter into leaving — making them seem like they’ll attack her.

Let’s restate that. Dracula — Mavis’ father — hires other monsters to cosplay humans — and scares her into leaving so she goes back to the hotel.

The guy traumatizes his own child into staying with him so that way she doesn’t leave. Deep down–despite Dracula possibly having the good intention of wanting to protect her from humans who hate monsters — only wants to keep his daughter to himself because he’s become dependent on her for his happiness since the death of her mother (Dracula’s late wife). Yes, Mavis does confront him about this after finding out about it (and during her 118th birthday party no less), but it’s still so slimy that Dracula would manipulate and traumatize his daughter just so he could keep her to himself due to his own outdated perception of humans.

I understand that Dracula also avoided humans up until Johnny showed due to his own experience and trauma, but the fact he even went that far just to have Mavis isolated in the hotel with him is all kinds of wrong. It’s one thing to disagree with something that you think is dangerous for your child, and it’s a complete ‘nother to straight up manipulate and traumatize them just so YOU can keep them where you want them.

You think that’s bad? Oh, you haven’t heard the half of it.

In the second movie, Mavis and her human husband Johnny (who she met in the first movie) have a child named Dennis. Throughout the film, Dracula has a creepy fixation on the vampiric aspects of Dennis rather than completely accepting his grandchild for who/what he is. Almost every chance he got, he tried to teach Dennis to be a vampire or try to trigger his vampiric growth. Sure, you could try to paint it as Dracula trying to connect with Dennis or helping him discover more aspects of himself. But he constantly gets progressively more and more shady about it.

It starts off small with Dracula trying to teach Dennis how to turn into a bat late at night while he sleeps. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still icky to wake up a child from their needed rest, but just bare with me here. Then when Dennis got his tooth knocked out during the werewolf children’s birthday party, Dracula — instead of showing concern for Dennis’ wellbeing–acted happy about it, hoping it meant that a vampire fang was growing in despite there being no correlation between the two whatsoever. Even if Dennis would somehow grow a fang as a new tooth, the fact he cared more about his grandson’s vampirisim than whether or not he was okay is incredibly offputting (for lack of a better word).

And then when Mavis trusts her father to look after Dennis while she and Johnny visit his family in California (a plan formulated by Johnny and Dracula), he completely dismisses her wishes and takes him on a trip, hoping to get him to become a vampire while she’s away. He even visits his former vampire camp and throws him off of a high ledge since apparently, he learned to fly by “being thrown and figuring it out.” Yes, he saves Dennis before he hits the ground, but the fact that he’s so willing to throw his toddler grandson off a tower in hopes of him becoming a vampire is deeply concerning — if not immoral and dangerous.

And it makes no sense for him to do this either. Even if it was how Dracula personally learned how to fly, we see in the first movie that there’s a flashback where Dracula teaches a young Mavis to fly in a completely different way. She’s in the comfort of her own home, is wearing a helmet, and Dracula is placed underneath her to catch her should she fall. So it’s definitely not how he taught Mavis. Why would it be any different for Dennis if his method of teaching Mavis was much more considerate and softer? At that point, Dracula may as well have only done that for some sadistic reason. There’s still major favoritism with Mavis going on and I wouldn’t be surprised if Dracula did that out of malice for the fact that Dennis is half-human.

Even when Mavis returns to the hotel and chews Dracula out for it, he still keeps up his antics by attempting to ‘scare the fangs’ out of Dennis by having Dracula’s father, Vlad, possess the mascot playing Dennis’ favorite TV character, Cakey (who most likely mimics or is a parody to Cookie Monster from Sesame Street) and making him act scary. Yes, Dracula ends up stopping it — but the fact that he even agreed to it and dragged Johnny into his mess (don’t worry, I’ll address Johnny later on) is diabolical. He once again attempted to traumatize someone he supposedly loved to gain control. And what is his motive for doing all of this? To control Mavis.

See, in the movie, Mavis states that she wishes to move out of the hotel and go to California since she reasonably believes that it’d be safer for Dennis. Therefore, if Dennis were to be a vampire (and he does become one by the end of the film), Mavis would be okay with allowing him to stay at the hotel. But throughout the film, it makes it seem like Mavis’ desire to move out is unreasonable or a bad thing when she was most likely the only voice of reason throughout that entire movie (but even she’s not without her flaws and I’ll address that as well). Though when you truly think about it, Mavis simply wants to do what’s best for her child and is constantly gaslit in the second movie about it.

Because of the fact that Dennis is half-human half-vampire, he’s obviously going to be weaker than his monster counterparts. Even if not, Dennis is five years old — thus very young — and it was proven he was not even at an actual good strength capacity to survive the chaotic nature of the hotel to begin with. For crying out loud, Dennis got his tooth knocked out during a werewolf party. And considering Dracula’s less-than-concerned reaction to that, it’s no wonder Mavis didn’t want Dennis to be raised in that environment.

Granted, she may have been incorrect about his ability to become a vampire and sure, she might be ‘overprotective’ (a notion I very much disagree with) but at the end of it all, she just wants her child to be safe since she doesn’t know how weak or powerful he could be. In fact, she actually wanted Dennis to be human because she believed it would've given him more opportunities in life than she did. So if anything, Mavis is the only one in the second movie who was ever truly considerate of the well-being of her son for the right reasons — even if supposedly her views were slightly flawed. But, it still doesn’t justify all the stuff that Dracula and Johnny did to Dennis previously.

Dracula was so hell-bent on getting Dennis to be a vampire because it meant that Mavis would stay in the hotel. Even after Mavis gets married and has a kid of her own, her father is still trying to control her. Dracula still refuses to allow Mavis any sort of autonomy over her life and how she wishes to do things.

And Johnny (her husband) is absolutely not in the clear here either because one of the only reasons why he agreed to help Dracula in his manipulative endeavors is because he liked Transylvania so much that he didn’t want to leave.

I’ll say it again.

He liked Transylvania so much that he didn’t want to leave.

Johnny is not even thinking about the safety of his own child and is focused on his own wants. I get that Johnny’s whole character dynamic is that he’s something of a dummy, but there’s a difference between being a dummy and being so outright selfish to the point where you place your own wants above the needs of your child. Heck, the whole reason why Mavis and Johnny were on that trip to California to begin with was because Johnny and Dracula both agreed to trick Mavis into leaving so that way Dracula could keep trying to turn Dennis into a vampire. The one time that Mavis finally has some time with herself and her husband is all because her husband and father are manipulating her.

You’re seriously trying to tell me that Johnny, this selfish incompetent man-child, is Mavis’ zing/soulmate? You’re trying to tell me that Johnny is her one and only love? Because I’m pretty sure if he was, he’d also understand and be willing to discuss the problems with his wife, rather than manipulate her behind her back and essentially betray her trust.

We could call it a ‘lapse’ in judgment all we want, but at the end of the day, what decent father agrees to the traumatization of his own child just for his own personal gain? What Dracula did to Mavis, Johnny is doing to Dennis in a similar format. It’s disgusting.

Sure, the movie has Dennis become a vampire by the end of the movie, but let’s be honest. The only reason why the movie would’ve had to go that direction is because otherwise, the conflict between Mavis versus Johnny & Dracula would’ve never truly been resolved. She still would’ve rightfully been super angry with them for endangering her child to suit their own selfish desires. But when Dennis did become a vampire, there was no longer a point for her to be angry since it then would’ve been better for him to stay at the hotel. Though let’s be clear, Dennis being a vampire doesn’t negate everything that Johnny and Dracula did to her.

Throughout the whole second movie, Mavis is gaslit, manipulated, and her boundaries are constantly being dismissed by her husband and her father.

I know it seems like I’m mainly sympathizing with Mavis here (and that’s because I sorta am) but there’s one thing Mavis does in the second movie that grinds my gears as well.

Why. The heck. Did she invite. Her anti-human grandad. To see her son? In the movie, she says, “He’s never seen Dennis.” But in the grand scheme of things, why did SHE expect a vampire centuries older than her father to be more accepting of humans over her actual father who still has trouble with being unbiased towards them? It makes NO sense. I’m glad she at LEAST acknowledges it in the movie when she says, “I don’t know why I ever invited you,” but it still makes no freaking sense and the only explanation I can think of as to why is because she didn’t want Vlad or Dennis to interrogate her about it later.

In the fourth movie, after Dracula gets married to a human woman named Erica (who was the daughter of a van Hellsing of all people), Dracula realizes that Johnny and Mavis will eventually inherit the hotel. However, Dracula has a problem with the fact that Johnny (a human) would be inheriting the hotel.

So even after all this time, meeting Johnny, letting Johnny marry Mavis, having a half-human grandson, letting the human side of his family visit him (who were all very accepting of the monsters by the way), and even marrying a human woman, he still is discriminatory against them. So this goes to show that deep down, Dracula is just an obstinate racist (well, speciest) who refuses to change his mind unless it suits the situation he’s in. He’ll say, “Doesn’t matter–vampire, unicorn, no matter what.” But he doesn’t actually believe it. Actions speak louder than words. That’s also why in the second movie, Dracula was adamant about calling Dennis “Denisovich’’ which is his vampire name — it subtly removes humanity from Dennis’ identity.

Throughout the movie series excluding perhaps the third one, Dracula consistently shows himself as a manipulative human-hating control freak. Yes, I get that Dracula has had bad experiences with humans, but he’s also had way too many experiences thus far to believe that humans are the same as they were in the 1800s regarding their view on monsters.

This whole family (aside from Johnny’s parents and the children) is so toxic. Sure, Johnny’s parents aren’t perfect, but they were more than willing to let Dennis stay with them and make accommodations to make Mavis and Dennis feel comfortable (even if the said execution was less tasteful than Mavis would’ve originally wanted).

Boi, the first master looks happy today :))

Did you guys also watched that one Mavis x Rapunzel video when you were little or were you normal