Out of all Mina Harker’s I’ve seen, there’s only one I like: Peta Wilson’s Mina in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The worst one, in my opinion, was Helen Chandler’s Mina in Dracula (1931). Bela Lugosi was superb in his role and that’s why his Count Dracula is iconic. As for Mina… She was reduced to a mere background character – shame on you, script writers.
If you’ve read Bram Stoker’s novel then you know what Mina was like: she was written as a strong character and played an important role in tracking down Dracula. Without her contribution, the others wouldn’t have found him when Dracula fled London. Stoker wrote her as a woman of the future.
What about Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), you might ask? Well, Winona Rider’s Mina was too easily led for my liking. Her getting charmed by Dracula I could understand, Gary Oldman’s Dracula was quite likeable, but there was one scene that ruined the film for me. SPOILER ALERT: when Mina tried to seduce Van Helsing and declared her love for Dracula I had to cover my eyes because it was so bad and out of character. And it made me question her feelings towards Jonathan.
Ok, ok, I know that film adaptations can be different from the original source. My peeve is that some of those adaptations take a strong character and make her weak. Which is very different from having a weak character that becomes strong as the story progresses – that is called character growth. When the opposite happens it’s called regress.
Journals of the Undead 