Bram Stoker's Dracula VS. Hellsing's Dracula

The author of Hellsing explicitly stated that his inspiration came from Bram Stoker's "Dracula". This is originally a novel published in 1897.  There have been many movie adaptations of the novel to date.  The three most notable ones are 1931 "Dracula", 1977 "Count Dracula" and 1992 "Bram Stoker's Dracula".  I have watched all 3 movies and read up on the novel.  Here are my thoughts:

Bram Stoker's original novel:

In Bram Stoker's original novel, Dracula sails to England to buy the estates that he has signed a contract for. It's implied he is planning to take over England before his plans are foiled by the vampire hunters, and forced to retreat back to Transylvania. He specifically targets Lucy to hurt the heroes. Dracula and Mina have zero sexual attraction:  Dracula turns Mina into a vampire to get back at the group of men who are hunting him. Simple as that.

"Dracula targets Mina Harker because he thinks she is his reincarnated wife from his previous life, that probably committed suicide when she learned false reports that he died while fighting the Ottomans. Mina falls madly in love with him despite being engaged to Jonathan Harker as well as Dracula raping and killing her best friend Lucy. She wants to be with him for all eternity and begs him to turn her into a vampire, but he is initially reluctant".  Doesn't this sound familiar?

Except that in the original Bram Stoker's novel, there is never anything romantic even hinted between Dracula and Mina. In fact, he specifically attacks her to punish the vampire hunters for thrashing his resting place, threatens to kill her and her husband if she so much screams for help, feasts on her blood and forces her to drink his, afflicting her with vampirism. In turn, she is repulsed by his appearance and is mentally disturbed for the attack she endured.  She does, however, expresses some pity toward the Count, specially when he dies, but that is it. In fact, she was portrayed as a stronger female character in the original novel than in most adaptations that came afterward: she goes from a very determined young woman that helps the heroes hold it together and track Dracula down to a weeping, hysterical damsel in distress that is often in love with Dracula in movies.

1931 movie:

The 1931 movie  generally stays faithful to the novel and casts the best actors as Dracula and Van Hellsing. I love how Van Hellsing is portrayed in this movie: inquisitive, wise, no-nonsense scientist-detective! Still, it cut out too much interesting/important stuff from the novel. How Van Hellsing defeats Dracula involves a great deal of planning which the movie didn't show.  One of the absent scenes is the one in which Van Hellsing fights and kills the Dracula brides. Also, because of the time, they could not show any gory or sexual scenes at all.

1977 movie:

The 1977 "Count Dracula" movie is the closest adaptation to the novel I've ever seen. Although the Dracula actor does not appear as intimidating and menacing as the 1931 version, he stays faithful to the original storyline and characteristics.  I particularly take interest in some philosophical points he brings up to the vampire hunters, such as:  "The cross is an instrument of torture",  "Why do you hunt me?", "What is the difference between me drinking blood and your cooked chicken?" - to which the vampire hunters have no satisfactory response to.  +1 to Dracula.

1992 movie:

This movie adaptation completely turns Dracula into a tragic romantic figure who becomes a vampire out of anger at the death of his wife, and subsequently does everything for "love".  [ IMO, making Dracula that way is so... lame, although being able to love one woman for 400 years is admirable ].  In Hellsing, we see that Dracula is made of much stronger spirit than that:  He never gave up even in death!  He was raped repeatedly as a child, but he rose in rank and power; he conquered nations.  He turned into Dracula only at the very end when he was decapitated. History has it that after Vlad's wife committed suicide, he did not give up; he got out there and lived and kept fighting. Not any one single event made him lose hope but rather, a combination of events.

In 1992 movie, Mina follows Dracula willingly. And Abraham van Hellsing has a slight crush on Mina. Mina ultimately prove herself to have no backbone. She is shown to love Jonathan Harker but then takes in immediate interest in Dracula as soon as he says he is a prince (despite him acting creepy as fuck on first meeting). First, she betrays Jonathan, then she betrays Dracula, then when Dracula is dead, she returns to Jonathan. This reminds me of Twilight when Bella diddles back and forth from one guy to another between every scene. Confusing as shit when one moment Mina professes undying love for Dracula then the next, she helps the Van Hellsing hunters kill him.  She simply goes with the flow, swings with whoever is the winner.  Sure, she's a Victorian woman who "had no choice" but this is a damn headache, a weak typical boring character. She is nothing compared to the thunderstorms that are Integra and Seras in Hellsing Ultimate!


HELLSING

Best Dracula/Alucard character design and personality. Period.

Only in Hellsing do you see an atheistic take on vampirism: It is said that Vlad turned into a vampire "by his own power".

The series definitely adheres closely to Bram Stoker's novel but also seems to follow the 1992 movie somewhat:  It is said in manga vol 7 that Dracula traveled to England to "obtain the woman he desired."  However, in the scene where Van Hellsing defeated Dracula, we see Mina cling to him with a horror expression on her face - unlike in the 1992 movie where she fell in love with him.

In Bram Stoker's novel and the movies, Dracula's henchmen are useless. LOL ...  Different from all the movies in which Dracula is shown to have very low power, in Hellsing, Dracula apparently had soldiers and servants (all were killed by the Van Hellsing group). The biggest difference in how Van Hellsing defeated Dracula is that - in Bram Stoker's version - he "killed" Dracula BEFORE dawn. In Hellsing, it looks more like an open combat that ends AT dawn than a sneaky attack. If this was the power level of Dracula before he became Alucard, it's totally believable that a man could defeat him.

Of course Hellsing's author added his own creative touch to the tale:  mirror, Science, alchemy, and all the powers that Alucard later gets.

I like how Van Hellsing is portrayed in the 1931 movie.
I like how Dracula is portrayed in the 1931 and 1977 movies.
I like how Mina is portrayed in the 1977 movie.