Katherine just sent me a link to this Yahoo! News article stating that Underworld director Len Wiseman has been asked to write and direct two sequels to his horror/action directorial debut.
I saw Underworld and I enjoyed it, but I don’t think it was a terribly good movie. Or if it was, it wasn’t the movie I wanted to see. I won’t give it much criticism for not being original, because in a vampire action movie I’d be disappointed if I didn’t see rainy, bluish tinted gothic sets and Matrix-esque action. Here’s the first half of the above new story’s summary of the film: “Underworld follows a beautiful vampire vixen (Beckinsale) caught in an epic battle between the immortal races of vampires and werewolves.” Except that the movie isn’t about the epic battle, but about its end. There have been lots of good stories (especially Lord of the Rings) whose story is but a minor part of its greater mythology, but I think that every single person who went to see Underworld didn’t want that. We wanted vampires fighting werewolves. We got very little of that.
What we did get was a fun but flawed movie. Every time that Victor (Bill Nighy) was on screen I heard people in the audience laughing, and I’m certain that his scenes weren’t meant to be funny. The story seemed cramped. I liked it, but I think that by telling the story of the end of the war, plus having to tell the backstory of the war itself, there wasn’t much time left for character development or, failing that, a few better full-on fight scenes.
But I’ll have to give them credit on having some of the best werewolves I’ve seen on film. They’re tough creatures to do well. Canines don’t have broad shoulders like people do, so they don’t look right standing upright. Wolf heads are so much longer than primates’ that they look unbalanced if just stuck onto a human necks, but at the same time a person’s face with fur on it doesn’t look different enough, either. Underworld did it pretty well, and they did well in conveying how painful the transformation must be when Michael goes through it in the police car.
What gives me hope for this upcoming franchise is the possiblity noted toward the end of the Yahoo! article that “one of the films may be a prequel.” Maybe they’ll make the movie I wanted this one to be.