As I recently wrote on Facebook, yesterday evening I went
to the cinema to see the latest instalment in the Underworld franchise and
as promised, I’m here to write my initial impressions. It’s a pretty rare
occasion to be able to write a post like this, since hardly any werewolf
movies are shown in cinemas around these parts (unless they’re part of a
more-or-less known series like this one), so I’m pretty happy to be doing this.
Also because I haven’t written anything in ages again, but I digress. Now, let’s
get this show on the road!
(This is where the spoilers start, so in case anyone thought this would
be spoiler-free, cease and desist right here and come back once you’ve seen the
movie. Sorry! If you don’t mind being spoiled, though, keep on going.)
First off, if going to this movie you thought it was all
over – well, for better or worse, it’s not. Contrary to what the trailers and
promotional posters would lead you to believe, this does not seem to be the end
of Selene’s tale. If you expected Blood
Wars to end with some kind of
resolution to the current plotline, then you’re in for a disappointment. The
only “peace” that is achieved here is an internal peace among the remaining
vampire covens and it very much seems like we are in for another sequel if this
one sells well enough. The conflict with the Lycans, which is still the
underlying reason for everything that has been happening for a while here, still
hasn’t seen any lasting resolution after five movies. But let’s look at things
one at a time.
So the basic premise of Blood Wars is this: Selene is still being hunted by both the
vampires and the Lycans, but for different reasons – the vampire council wants
her caught for her killing Victor and consorting with a Lycan/hybrid a.k.a.
Michael, while the Lycans want her because they think she can lead them to her
daughter, Eve, whose blood they ultimately want. Problem is, Selene doesn’t
know and doesn’t want to know where her daughter is in order to ensure her
safety. So why do the Lycans want Eve’s blood so badly? The overall motivation
remains the same since the beginning of the franchise – they want their species
to evolve (and I mean that as a plural, because they want both the Lycans and
the vampires to do that), so that the bloody conflict between the two ‘bloodlines’
could come to an end. As it’s to be expected, the vampires do not want to hear
any of this (even if it makes sense) and are bent on winning the war and
ensuring the purity of the bloodlines at any cost.
When it comes to Selene, for most of the film she
seems to be caught in the middle of all this wishing she could be left alone
and in peace. I do kind of get where the writers are coming from with this –
after learning that her whole life as a vampire had been based on a lie forged
by Victor, becoming an outcast from her own coven, losing Michael and then technically
losing her daughter as well, who wouldn’t become all mopey and resigned to
their fate? She does recover from all this a little at the end, though, due to
the events that transpire.
As we had already known for a while, Scott Speedman
would not be reprising the role of Michael in any more Underworld movies, so the writers did the only good thing they
could have done with his character, in my opinion, and got rid of him. Yes, in Blood Wars it’s finally confirmed that
the Saga of Michael Corvin has come to an end. Seriously, it was high time we
were done with Michael – for a while it looked like the writers didn’t know
what to do with him, so it’s better this way. After all, since his introduction
in Underworld: Awakening, David has been a much better sidekick
for Selene than Michael ever was, in my opinion. But the hybrid saga does not
end there, since now it seems we’re in the middle of the Eve Saga. While in Underworld it was all about getting to
Michael and in Evolution everyone
wanted him dead because of him being a hybrid, in Awakening and in Blood Wars
it’s all about getting to Eve because she’s a hybrid. In other words, Selene
can’t catch a break, because there’s always a person she has to protect.
Finally, I would like to touch on the subject of
Lycans themselves. Ladies and gentlemen, we at last have a female Lycan! Like,
they really exist. At least it seems so, because, disappointingly, we only get
one and it’s for a few short scenes where not much happens and she’s not even
given a proper name. So, uh, is that a yay? Yes? Maybe? I guess? But jokes
aside… If I want to talk about the Lycans, I have to mention one more thing –
if it wasn’t obvious already, it seems that since Awakening the Underworld
series has become centred on Selene and the vampires to the point that we are
encouraged to root for them. Now, this has become a problem for me, because the
original Underworld as well as Rise of the Lycans provided us with a
backstory of the vampires’ abuse of their sister race, which gave us a solid
reason why some of us could root for them. While at the beginning the reason
the Lycans wanted to create hybrids was closely tied to Lucian’s personal
revenge on the vampires, now they strive to evolve and perfect their species to
secure a lasting peace – of course, that would also mean they would become more
powerful than the vampires – and, who knows, perhaps they would exact their
revenge on the other faction by wiping them out (and can we really blame them?),
but hey, nobody’s perfect. However, all their attempts at achieving this are
thwarted in the end by Selene and David who eventually rejoin the Eastern Coven
and actually become members of its leadership. In Awakening, Blood Wars
(and even Evolution I would say) the
franchise has been following a pattern that is quickly becoming predictable and
mundane: the Lycans become organised and/or unified under a strong leader, try
to evolve/perfect their species, but in order to do that they need something
related to Selene and the vampires, so they attack her or the covens, initially
it seems like they might actually succeed, but in the end are decimated by the
vampires and everything returns to the status quo. And speaking of
organisation, at one point Selene remarks that the Lycans are organised and
have become a danger to the vampire covens because of a strong leader. She even
states that “there has never been a Marius”, which should set off a red light
in everyone’s who’s seen all the movies up to this point head, because have the
characters already forgotten about Lucian? The last time the Lycans were
competent enough to get something done was when they were led by Lucian. So
saying there’s never been an (insert name here) is pretty ungrateful to the
late Lucian’s memory. Ouch! Not to even mention another striking similarity
between Lucian and Marius – the fact they were both romantically involved with
members of the vampire coven, which was part of the reason they strived for the
unification of the bloodlines, but that’s just a cherry on top. What I was
getting at, however, is that in Blood
Wars the trend continues, where it appears that the creators are trying very
hard for us to root for the vampires only, because we know that whatever the
Lycans do, in the end, they will fail.
All in all, Blood
Wars is basically more of the same – vampires and werewolves still engage
in bloody shoot-outs, the vampires hold out against the Lycans, whose plans
inevitably fail, and the whole thing ends on another cliffhanger. I was really
hoping that this would be the movie that would tie up the series and bring us a
conclusion to the vampire-werewolf conflict, but that just wasn’t meant to be. While
there are some good things about it, it just seems like another
decent-but-nothing-special instalment in a franchise that probably should have
ended already. The effects are okay (they’re pretty much the same as what we
saw in Awakening), the music is
pretty good, but at some points I thought the acting could have been a little
bit better. For example, for the
first few scenes after Thomas arrived at the vampire coven I got the impression
that Charles Dance was delivering his lines into the air, because it seemed
like he didn’t want to make eye contact with any of his supporting cast, but
fortunately that soon changed. (I have to say, seeing him engage in a
swordfight was one of my favourite moments of the movie.) There were also a couple
of awkward scenes that could have been shortened or perhaps omitted altogether.
It seemed like the good scenes, although there were many, always ended up being
pulled down by the bad/awkward ones. It did seem to happen more at the
beginning and towards the middle of the movie, though, and less towards the latter
half, fortunately. We also seemed to get fewer Lycan wolf-form scenes than in
the previous movies – the reasoning behind this being that the Lycans are
paradoxically the weakest when in wolf form because they cannot use weapons and
their judgement is clouded too much by bloodlust.
So what would be my verdict on Blood Wars? I would say this – it’s definitely not the worst movie
you could go and see right now, but it’s also not the best. I’d say it falls
somewhere in the middle of the spectrum – it’s a decent action movie to watch
if you’re into the monster genre and of course it’s worth seeing if you’ve been
a fan of the series. Just don’t expect any fireworks. It could have been worse,
but it could have also been better. We will see if the story will continue in
time, but until I can whip up a full-fledged review once Blood Wars has come out on Blu-Ray, I will leave you with this.
This whole article is based on my personal opinion
after all, so let me know what you thought about the movie in the comments! And
if you’ve yet to go see it, I hope you enjoy it anyway regardless of what my
impressions were (I mean, I enjoyed it, but not as much as I’d hoped to) –
after all, we all like different things and that’s what makes us all awesome.
In the meantime, I hope you all have a great day. Take care and I will see you
next time!
P.S.
I am still planning on releasing those video reviews,
it’s just taking a lot longer than I expected to get everything sorted…
