Welcome To the Dead Parade #8: Blood Feud
Or is it "Blood Food?" I haven't gotten a chance to check out The Vow yet this week, so I decided to start up the Parade early. In honor of the DVD release of Underworld: Awakening this week, the Dead Parade will take a look at the Underworld franchise thus far.
Amid the senseless violence, apathetic collateral damage, and constant blue-tinged cinematography, Beckinsale's Selene and Speedman's Lycan-bitten Michael engage in a nearly emotionless Romeo & Juliet romance. But what Underworld lacks in feeling it makes up for with a story that pairs Shakespeare with creative mix of science, mysticism, and social class commentary, made flashier by the makeup effects of Face Off judge Patrick Tatopoulos and menacing character performances from Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon) as Lycan elder Lucian and comic genius Bill Nighy (Love, Actually) as uber-vamp Viktor. The spoiler ending takes some thought to get to the coolness factor of it, but taking Underworld into account for what it is, I found it to be a commendable effort.
C-
"Eight centuries ago, unknown to humanity, a blood feud raged between a ruling class of Vampires and a rebellious legion of werewolves known as Lycans.
Legend tells that the war began with two brothers, the immortal sons of Alexander Corvinus:
Markus, bitten by bat, became the blood leader of the Vampires.
William, bitten by wolf, became the first and most powerful Lycan."
In present day, the climax of the first film is explained (Vampire elder Markus, now a Lycan/Vamp Hybrid that looks like a demonic Avatar creature with wings, has awakened with a lust for blood--and knowledge--seeking the location of his imprisoned brother, William), the action is a little less senseless, and the romance between Selene and Michael (is this a possible reference to the Marvel supervillain Michael Korvac?) is given more mileage than in the first film. But the indigo landscape persists, larger in scale than before (disappointing), along with Tatopoulos' exceptional makeup effects (not at all enhanced by the sub-par wire work that makes Markus hover like a flying monkey in 1939 and allows Michael and Selene to leap tall buildings in a single, perfectly straight bound no matter what the physics of their takeoff may be), and sinister power performances from the main players (especially Tony Curran as Markus, menacing his victims as he makes creatively gory use of his taloned demon-wings).
But the plot was rushed, spending so much time on Markus' search for his brother without giving any thought to his ultimate motives for doing so. And in traditional epic anime fighter fashion (eg: Dragon Ball Z, Bleach, Naruto), in order for there to be reason enough for a sequel and/or a favorable plot resolution, there must be some weak plot device that allows the main heroes to repeatedly come back from the dead and become ridiculously more powerful that they were before with no consistent regard for its side-effects (bitten by a Lycan in the first film, Michael has flashbacks of Lycan history; feeding on vampires, Markus gains their memories; however, when Michael feeds on Selene's blood or she drips her blood into his wounds, nothing happens). There are other discontinuities as well, like Markus being able to become a Hybrid by ingesting Lycan blood but William not becoming a Hybrid even though he had killed thousands of Vampires over the years, and the bridge being destroyed twice in the final scene.
If not for the good-but-not-great action sequences, this Underworld effort would have Evolved into a beast without a leg to stand on.
D
For one, Rise Of the Lycans is a prequel, abandoning the whole ridiculous Hybrid/Uber-Vamp/Lycan Prime concept for a more traditional, involved, coherent Vampire VS Werewolf origin story. Without Speedman and Beckinsale to underact in the Underworld, Viktor and Lucian (Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen once again) are allowed to take center stage as more sympathetic characters (much less so in Nighy's case as he's still playing the self-serving ruthless king, but still...). And for once, the bruised cinematography, while still present, allows some flesh to show through.
A little bit on the story: Rise Of the Lycans expands on one of the smaller details thrown into Evolution; Viktor having his daughter Sonja (Rhona Mitra, Doomsday) executed by sunlight for her forbidden love with a Lycan, whom we now know to be Lucian. Viktor wants to use Lucian to Lycan-ize the local human population and enslave them as daytime attendants to the Vampire clan. Enter Sonja, and the Romeo & Juliet-like plotline evolves into a sort of Were-Spartacus, hinting that the title Rise Of the Lycans may be a nod to Rise Of the Planet Of the Apes, as the two films have many elements in common. Chief among them being the rebellion of intelligent "lesser beasts" against their dominating "intellectual superiors." Rather than once again subjecting the audience to the over-the-top (apologies to Steven Tyler) single combat with automatic weapons and the horribly executed Superman-ish wire work that filled the first two Underworlds--and Evolution in particular--ROtL scales things back in all the right places while keeping the spectacle. The super jumps are shorter and the senseless, impersonal gun battles of yore are here replaced by gory swashbuckling, medieval warfare, and the kind of acrobatic hand-to-hand your average martial arts superstar could do without wires, were he not under contract to avoid a broken neck. You can see the sad ending coming as soon as Sonja and Lucian first lock eyes, but the plot progression and powerful performances are by no means diminished by 20/20 foresight. Extremely derivative, but derivative of true classics, and still the best Underworld yet. And even though I've said a lot already, that's saying a lot.
A-
I'll bet you guys were wondering when I would get around to making the Vampire/Werewolf-to-Zombie connection more obvious. No? Well, too bad. I'll tell you anyway. Like zombies, Vampires and Lycans are infectious species (if bitten, you slowly--or quickly, depending on plot necessity--become one of them). Like your average zombie movie, the Underworld films deal with socio-economic issues like slave labor, man's dependency on luxury and tendency towards savagery, the insatiable appetites of the inherently soulless, the public's blind acceptance for the way things are in the face of glaring historical evidence, and any other argument you see fit to attribute to the genre.
This is the first Underworld to feature 3D technology, and in the absence of creature designer Patrick Tatopoulos, the effects were less than stellar in some cases. The staples of modern 3D are here in force: Shattered glass, slow-motion wire stunts, spurting blood, gushing water, smoke clouds, and flying weapons litter the landscape, but appear more realistic and less campy than, say, Final Destination or Resident Evil had done before. But when it comes to the Lycan effects, which were so impressive in the past, the purely digital creatures are now so obviously faked that every chase scene looked like something from a video game cinematic, and every 3D Lycan attack made me feel like I was playing Doom on Super Nintendo instead of watching a movie that was made this year (it is 2012, right?).
I otherwise enjoyed the turn that the series has taken, and appreciate Len Wiseman (back in the director's chair again) for his use of "more vapid action and less story in Underworld: Awakening than previous installments," (Rotten Tomatoes) which, in my opinion, simplified the film and led to fewer continuity issues, rectifying one of the major problems Evolution suffered from and upping the entertainment value for the target audience.
C+
Hopefully, I will have a review of The Vow for you soon. And next week, I am undertaking a, ummm, large...undertaking with a Just the Ticket special One-A-Day series: five movies, one per day, from Tuesday to Saturday (I actually had to count that on my fingers just now, can you believe it?), starting with the telekinetic slamfest that is Chronicle and finishing up with Glenn Close portraying a woman pretending to be a man in Albert Nobbs (sounds like a hermaphrodite porn film, but trust me, it's not). Until next time,
Turn On,
Tune In,
SW@,
Out.
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