Let’s see how it all ends.
Underworld is an odd franchise. We have an interesting world that seems to be quite solid as it stands up to numerous bad entries in the story of Selene. This time around, we follow Selene as she has lost her daughter (okay…) and now the lycans want to find the daughter, so they need to find Selene.
But wait, there’s more: we also have more needless vampire politics and power-hungry idiots who throw a wrench into everything. I think the writers saw too much Game of Thrones and figured court intrigue is what people are interested in. The problem here is that we don’t know any of these characters (a whopping 3 return from previous entries), so the intrigue doesn’t matter. The world itself has a cool vibe, but the characters who exist within this world are so paper thin that we can’t invest in anything that occurs.
The new big bad wolf Marius (Tobias Menzies-who I hope had fun) has the largest pack, ever, and represents the largest threat to the vampires, ever. Yet, the threat didn’t seem any larger than Lucian’s, or the humans, or anything else… The scaling within these films is bizarre to say the least. At most we see Marius with maybe fifty men—so where is the army? Further, we see (again) that the vampires sit around wearing the latest Hot Topic fashion and don’t do much else… How have the werewolves not won the war already?
Everyone seems incompetent at what they do. The leadership is a joke, which I guess can work, but the combat is also a disaster. The end battle features werewolves standing out of cover firing at vampires who are in cover and firing back, and no one gets hit. They should have all just been yelling “pew pew pew” instead because at least that would have been funny. I don’t demand hyperrealism in action sequences, but the aim of our heroes and villains is worse than a drunk storm trooper.
It all drags on towards a predictable and lackluster conclusion that wants to leave the door open for another entry in the franchise (one that seems doubtful to happen). The blurry and over-edited action sequences have become a trademark of the series, as has weird storytelling, and a moving goalpost.
However, what annoys me the most is how utterly inconsistent the lore is surrounding our dogs and bats. What it takes to kill one is vastly different from scene to scene. Swords seem more effective, but all our characters opt to shoot at nothingness.
I could rag on the inconsistencies of these movies for hours. Fans won’t mind and people who don’t like the films will just nod along. If you’re starving for action/horror I guess the first couple entries are worth a watch. How this series spawned five is beyond me.
Sorry folks, I’ve just run out of crap to joke about here.
I suppose we should discuss the series as a whole. As with Resident Evil we have two mega-franchises that are female led, which on the one hand is awesome, but the characters in each series are simply terrible. Let’s not forget that many people now hate Brie Larson because she had an opinion, so maybe the studio played it safe by not allowing Selene to have opinions—seriously, we know nothing about her by the end of five movies. It truly seems like the studio deliberately kept her from being a person.
I don’t have a conclusion here. It is just weird to me that these two series have empty characters and yet did so well.
These movies suck.
Jay Hates Movies 