Underworld - Reevaluating a Cornerstone of my Youth

Happy Month of Halloween everyone!

Last year on this blog, I put the spotlight on one of my favourite movies of my teenage years: Van Helsing by Richard Sommers. To this day I still find that movie to be incredibly fun and enjoyable, as far from perfect as it might be.

At the same time I also discovered Underworld. Which shared with Van Helsing the presence of Vampires, Werewolves, and Kate Beckinsale in a leading role.

That's pretty much it!

While Van Helsing is a much more over the top adventure, with gothic fantasy vibes, Underworld has more serious tone and takes place in a urban setting.

And yeah, this was one of my favourite movies when I was a teenager… Please, put your pitchforks away! As time goes on, I turn back to this movie less and less. There wasn't the same level of nostalgic affection anymore, the same that ties me so much with a movie like Van Helsing. So today, I wanted to take a look back and rediscover this movie, to see if the spark is still there.

Underworld

Factions at War

We open with our main character, Selene, aura farming on the balcony of Cathedral. Two werewolves tailing a human as stealthily as a clown in a funeral, but when they realize some vampires are watching them, the situation quickly devolves into a shootout in the subway.

During the fight, Selene reaches further into the city's underground, where she hears a bestial clamour echoing through the tunnels. She realizes that, underneath the city, a colony of werewolves is hiding and it's getting ready for something big.

A narration informs us of the conflict between the factions. It all started 600 years ago by the hands of a now dead werewolf called Lucian. In spite of his death, the struggle never stopped, and the werewolves manage to hold the resistance, even if their number are dwindling.

According to the vampires their victory is closer than ever, which is why Selene's warnings about a possible colony fell on deaf ears. According to Kraven, her coven's leader, it's impossible that such a thing could exist hidden under their noses.

Kraven's skepticism makes Selene even more determined to find out the truth: Is there really a hidden colony? Why were the werewolves hunting a human? and more importantly… Is Lucian actually dead as they say?

I gotta say, this movie's beginning is not that bad. They could've saved us the exposition dump, but you still have a nice action scene to set up the tone, a mystery with the werewolves and the human they were tailing, and a main character that has to prove her theory to a very skeptical coven.

Unfortunately the issues quickly raise their heads, it's clear very quickly what the biggest problem of this movie is gonna be: too much meat on the grill. In just two hours, this movie tries to stuff as many thing as it possibly can, with a pacing so quick that nothing is able to leave an impression.

Two Boring Lovers

Selene as the main character becomes very annoying very quickly. Her mind is set on one thing only: annihilate the werewolves to get revenge. Her family was murdered by a pack, and the ancient vampire Viktor was the one who turned her. Since there she sees herself as only a weapon, she lives for the fight and the killing, denigrating people like Kraven, which are too much of a "Bureaucrat" and not enough of a "Warrior".

She keeps everyone at arms way, and is about as enjoyable as a kick in the nuts. She seems only capable to feel anger, and doesn't help that Kate Beckinsale was directed to look as stone faced as humanly possible, even in scenes where she's supposed to look sad.

She still had it a hell of a lot better than her co-star, Micheal, the man who was chased by the werewolves. We only know that he works as a nurse and he puts saving others as more of a priority than saving himself. Unfortunately he gets constantly bounced around by the events, and he's only important for the secret hidden within his genes.

This guy, should also be Selene's love interest!

The two have negative chemistry. Selene is constantly angry and Micheal is constantly confused by what's happening to him, which is understandable, but doesn't really help in creating a believable relationship.

But maybe I'm just too blind to their powerful romantic tension, because everyone else in this movie is firmly convinced they're madly in love with each other! To the point that they say Selene has been "Tainted by an animal" the moment they find out that Micheal has been bitten by a werewolf.

The two are destined to be together by the end of this, so maybe everyone was right on the money.

Still I would've loved to see the two being able to forge something that at least resembles a believable relationship.

Especially since the theme of merging the bloodlines it's the one that echoes throughout the plot of this story, too bad they just intend it as… Let's create a super powered monster!

"Why are they after you?" Selene asks calmly

Forbidden Union

It's not gonna take long to find out that Lucian is really alive and well (bet you didn't see that coming!), and he's planning his vengeance from quite some time against the vampires. His plan is to finally merge the two bloodlines.

Since the beginning, the two species seem destined to annihilate each other, the bite of werewolf being lethal for a vampire and vice versa. The two bloodlines however have a common ancestor, Alexander Corvinus. Lucian is convinced that in his blood lies the secret to forge this union.

Lucian's plan is obtaining a sample of Micheal's blood before he completely turns into a werewolf, and the blood of an ancient vampire. By injecting them with both, he should kickstart a mutation that would allow him to become a new hybrid between the two races and, ideally, stronger than both.

Lucian, played by an almost unrecognizable Micheal Sheen, is a character that really needed more screen time. Not only because is one of the better actors in this movie, but because of how his past perfectly blends itself with the theme.

He was a slave of the vampire before the uprising. These slaves were used by the vampires as guardians during daylight. Lucian, in spite of this condition, was never spiteful towards the vampires and even ended up marrying one of them. But one the elder Viktor found out about it, he decide to punish both.

Sonya, his wife, was burned alive in front of an helpless Lucian. By witnessing the death of his lover, the anger was such that he turned into a wolf, breaking the chains of his prison before he could also be executed. This is the background of the revolution and consequent 600 years of war between the factions.

With such an emotional baggage you would expect to see him being a lot more active, even if he faked his own death. Instead he spends most of the time in his underground warehouse, leaving most of the work to his underlings, to then finally get killed like a complete asshole by the end of the movie. A massive waste and it's not even the only one.

The Elder Vampire

To cast Bill Nighy in order to play a part of an elder vampire, with enough power to snap a werewolf's neck with just one hand, has been the best decision this movie has ever made. He's perfect for this role, and you really get how everyone in his lineage would be intimidated by his mere presence.

Selene sees him as a father figure to her and as such she's extremely devoted. But she's unaware of his darkest secret, he was actually responsible for the death of his family. Viktor, as many other rulers, is very good at setting very strict rules only to be the first one to break them, in this case feeding off human blood.

Living in secret, the vampire communities, before the advent of blood banks, used to rely completely on animal blood. Viktor however, hated the taste of beasts, and wasn't shy of taking a stroll to the nearest village and slaughter a family or two in the most brutal way possible, just so he can make it look as work of the werewolves.

Selene has been spared by all this because she looked so much like her daughter, Sonya, the same woman who he was forced to feed to the fire because of her relationship with Lucian. With Selene, Viktor saw a chance to have his daughter back for all eternity, no matter how much of their relationship was built of a mountain of lies.

Viktor only awakens in the halfway point of the movie, being in hybernation while waiting for his turn to rule. Selene, feeling surrounded by people she cannot trust, decides to awaken him before his time, but this decision turns against her.

The memories Viktor gains from Selene's blood are confusing, the fact that he was awakened before his time, combined with the rumors of he possible infatuations with Micheal, make it so that Viktor is unable to trust her, and a rift creates between them.

So in this story we have a war between factions, an antagonist looking for revenge with a plan to stop it, a main character in love with a man that is about to transform in his sworn enemy and a manipulative father figure who won't hesitate to kill her in order to stop this union.

In the hands of a good writer all these elements could've made for a intriguing story, unfortunately in this movie the focus was merely on these three aspects.

Action, Action and even more Action!

The only focus of this movie is the constant fight between the factions, with brawls and shootouts to no end. This wouldn't necessarily be so bad if it wasn't for the lack of breathing room left to the plot.

The movie wants to shove all these elements of feuds between the races, family drama and love stories, but doesn't really have the time to do so, because it's too busy shoving in as much action as it possibly can.

Time management is maybe this movie's worse problem, especially when its biggest plot twists have be told to the viewer, instead of being shown.

The only time this movie actually makes an effort of showing something, it even does it well! The flashback of Lucian's past, in a very short time, shows you everything you need to know. But other important stuff like, the truth about Selene's family, is just blatantly told to your face when there's only a few minutes left to the end.

But thank god, they took time to tell us that werewolves in this universe, were able to manufacture UV rays bullets that burn a vampire from the inside. I was losing sleep over this!

Unfortunately all these scenes become monotonous very quickly, and it doesn't really help that there's also a monotony in the aesthetic as well. It's a movie about vampires, I'm not expecting sunlight, but this movie has a filter over it that makes it almost look black and white. The only color that occasionally pops is the red, and they can't even use it in any stylish way.

Even the vestiary is not that great. Selene and the other "fighter" vampires are dressed in black leather like they just ready to explore The Matrix, while the noble vampire have just raided the closest Alternative Goth store. The werewolves all conform to a style that I would classify as a halfway between "Homeless" and "I just got out of a metal concert in the middle of the night"

There's nothing that pops out, everything looks like the most generic action movie of the time. Really looking at this now, 20 years later, feels like I'm watching a bad adaptation of some action campaign someone cooked up during a Vampire The Masquerade session… and to my surprise, I wasn't the only one that had the same feeling!

Plagiarism?!

I was honestly curious to see if Vampire played a role in inspiring this movie, and looking through the Wikipedia page, I stumbled into a curious anecdote. White Wolf, the makers of Vampire The Masquerade, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit over stuff taken straight from their tabletop RPGs.

Together in the lawsuit there was also the author Nancy A. Collins, who noted way too many similarities between the plot of this movie and a story published by her, titled The Love of Monsters. The whole thing ended up being settled out of court.

This discovery was mind blowing to me, is it possible that all the plot of this movie was just a clumsy way to adapt a book? The dense plot, all the themes of union between races, the extremely detailed system of how the vampire society works… Is it possible that were all taken from elsewhere just to be the window dressing to a mediocre action movie?

The fact this entire lawsuit was settled out of court doesn't help in making it look like this was deliberate, instead of being a coincidence.

Especially considering how everything just shat itself in the sequels.

An Epic of Disappointments

This movie ended up being a nice success, which lead to this becoming a whole series that expanded up to 5 movies, and as big of a fan I was of the first movie, even at the time I thought the sequel was big piece of crap.

Underworld Evolution is nothing different from what we saw in the first movie: even more action, even more gray, even more of a love story that tastes like styrofoam and a whole lot of retcons to Selene's past in order to give her a more central role to this whole series.

Did you know that Kate Beckinsale and the director Len Weissman got married at the time? Just a random thought.

The biggest attraction of this movie would've been a huge fight to the death between Micheal and Marcus, which had both become hibrids between Vampires and Werewolves, but the novelty wears off fast. The constant retcons made the story really forced and that even when I was a teenager angered me to no end, it really felt like they had no ideas and were trying to push out a new movie as soon as possible.

Which is absurd considering the first movie ends with a cliffhanger!

I remember having enjoyed the third movie of the series, Underworld - The Rise of the Lycans, a prequel in which we're gonna see in first person the event that led to Lucian revolting against the vampires.

This movie is actually stands out for being the only one with a much more fantasy aesthetic, compared to the usual urban environments of the rest of the series. Also being a prequel focused over Viktor and Lucian, makes it so that the better actors of the first movie, Micheal Sheen e Bill Nighy, could actually reprise their roles!

When Underworld: Awakening came out we were deep in 2012, far removed from the peak of my fandom. I've only watched it once, and the only memory that's left from this experience was the fact that it left me with a massive headache. This thanks to the genius choice by the director to add a constant strobe effect to every single action scene of this movie.

The last movie in the series, Underworld: Blood Wars came out in 2016, ten whole years ago… and it's still the only movie I haven't bothered watching. When the trailer first came out my only thought was "Wait… Are they still making these?!?"

Admire the new hybrid species! A hairless werewolf with a human face

What remains 20 years later?

I'm not gonna lie, it was a bit nostalgic to see this movie again after all these years, but unfortunately, unlike Van Helsing, this is a chapter that I feel I'm gonna close forever.

Van Helsing is far from being a perfect movie, but Richard Sommers is damn good at putting together an adventure that takes you along for the ride an leaves a standing impression! There's a lot of care put in the realization of Van Helsing that makes it incredibly enjoyable, and even today I still see characters that are remember fondly by some people.

Underworld instead, is the emblem of mediocrity. Aesthetically is nothing new, it wants to be taken seriously, but the story is so shoddily put together that it can't stand out, and even the actors on set are acting like they're asleep on the wheel.

At least in Van Helsing even the more over the top performers left an impression!

I feel so bad especially for Kate Beckinsale who, in this movie, had a chance to finally play the heroine, and instead she ends up being more forgettable than her character in Van Helsing, whose only role was being kidnapped constantly.

To my 16 year old self, having a knock out brawl between vampires and werewolves was good enough to turn the brain off and have some fun, but today I need something meatier even when I'm looking for some very dumb action movies.