Upon reflection, the tendency of Dracula adaptations to treat Jonathan as a bit character is probably inextricable from their tendency to treat the episodes concerning his time in Castle Dracula as a fairly tedious piece of exposition to a story which truly begins with Dracula's arrival in London.
I know this is blasphemy, but I feel like Dracula is the one novel that might actually benefit from being split into multiple films. Do an intimate bottle-episode psychological horror piece covering Jonathan's confinement to and eventual escape from Dracula's castle, so in the next movie we actually have proper context for his whole... everything.














