Vampires, Werewolves and Sexy Heroes: The Guilty Pleasures of Underworld

By Rebecca Buchanan
March 1, 2006

To be honest, I've never been a big vampire or werewolf fan. Maybe it's the over-exposure. They're everywhere. Where are all the centaurs, I ask you? The shape-shifting ferrets? As such, I was a tad reluctant to see Underworld in the theaters when it was first released. The Boyfriend, however, took one look at the gore and latex and said something akin to "Yeehah!" and that was that.

So, we went to see Underworld. Basic premise: Selene is a Death Dealer, a vampire who specializes in killing lycans. Apparently-innocent civilian Michael is caught up in the war, and, in trying to protect him, Selene uncovers some disturbing truths about the origins of the war and the deaths of her own mortal family. Imagine my surprise when — shocking!! — I actually enjoyed it! What the heck? And if I had enjoyed it so much, than surely other people (besides the drooling Boyfriend) had as well; so then why were the reviews generally negative? What gives?

As Tart Leigh notes:

Leigh: I have disagreed with most of the movie reviews for the Underworld movies. I think they received such predominantly negative reviews because the reviewers didn't know what to peg these movies as. Most of the complaints I've read and heard about Underworld is that it's not horrific enough, or it's got too much plot, etc. — basically, all the things I liked about the movies! I don't know why people have such a hard time with the fantasy-horror genre, but I think that Underworld is a good representative of that genre.

Good points.

I pounced on a few of my sister Tarts for their insight.

Leigh: One of the things I liked best about the first film was the atypical plotting. Most Hollywood action movies have very straightforward, black-and-white plots. I liked that Craven survived — in real life, the weasley people often are the ones who make it! I liked that Viktor turned out to be not what Selene had thought for all those years, and that Lucian had some good reasons for what he did — he wasn't just a typical one-note villian. I also liked that they didn't try to force a romance between Selene and Michael down our throats — it didn't make any sense to me for two characters who were busy running for their lives to take time out to fall in love or have sex. I liked that the movie is mostly about Selene, a warrior who has killed all her emotions, who finds out that all the pillars she built her life on are being knocked down around her.

Wolfie: To know what I think of the original Underworld, you can read my review of it in our Report Card. To summarise, I loved the atmosphere of it, I gave it an eight out of ten, and I felt it was pretty original, despite the claim by a White Wolf staffer at a convention that it was a rip-off of the premise of their gaming system. What's more, besides being visually satisfying, the plot and characterization were both actually rather good!

And what can I say, Kate Beckinsale is definitely easy on the eyes, especially when her own eyes are in the ice-blue hunting mode, and her voice is just as easy on the ears. My absolute favorite part of the film is towards the very beginning, when she jumps and lands soooo smoothly and immediately walks away. Yes, I know she didn't really make a jump from that high, but you have to admit her stride was flawless there.

I was also very, very fond of Lucian. I know most gals were swooning over Michael, and he was cute enough, but for me Lucian was "ravage me now", eyes-rolling-back-into-your-head-with-pleasure "teh hot"! Of course, I might not have found him quite so enticing if he'd been a vamp instead of a lycan, but I digress .... Anyway, I really felt for him having lost his vamp lover, and was devastated (well, as devastated as one can be over a fictional character) when he was killed. I held onto the hope that he might come back somehow.

I also found Viktor quite engaging, and have happily noted the actor portraying him, Bill Nighy, in other films after seeing this one: Love Actually, Shaun of the Dead, and now he's portraying Davy Jones in the next two Pirates of the Caribbean films!

A couple of members of the private X-Men fan-RPG I belong to decided to start up an Underworld-based RPG as well (gee, I guess White Wolf had a reason to be worried after all.) Another member of the group found a way to believably add Van Helsing into the mix; my group of characters which includes Rasputin the "mad monk" as a vamp, and Anastasia and Alexy Romanov. Rasputin's "children", bridges the gap between the two storyverses. (I didn't like Van Helsing as well as the other members of the group, but I still don't think it was bad, particularly not as bad as many critics made it out to be. It had plot problems, but it also had some intriguing ideas. And Hugh Jackman and Beckinsale in hot clothes — I just wish she hadn't bothered with the accent.)

See! Lots of good things about the first film! And we can't have been the only three people in the universe to think so, as a sequel was very quickly in the works. Underworld: Evolution came out this past February. This time, I was actually looking forward to it. I wasn't quite sure as to the premise; the trailers were kinda vague; but Evolution appeared to follow up on many of the (deliberately dangling) plot threads from the first film.

This time, I quite happily accompanied The Boyfriend to the theater. And, yes, I and my sister Tarts enjoyed this film, too. Basic plot of the second film: now on the run from the first vampire, Marcus, Selene and Michael find an ally in a mysterious man named Corvinus and his organization. Selene turns out to be the key to the location of William, the first lycan and Marcus' twin brother, whom Marcus wants to free and unleash a plague of lycans upon the world.

Leigh: I liked that the second film tied so well into the first. Unlike the second and third Matrix movies, I definitely got the feel that the writers had had a good idea of where he wanted his story to go way back in the first movie. It built well on the foundations provided by the first movie (even if the title reminded me too much of X-men Evolution, that WB animated show).

Wolfie, though, while she enjoyed Evolution, had a few qualms.

Wolfie: I feel similarly about Underworld: Evolution [as about Van Helsing]: it didn't live up to my expectations, exactly, but I still don't think it was bad. My problems had less to do with the plot and more to do with what I had wanted to see covered in the story and changes in the atmosphere.

I had fully expected to see Raze again (especially since the actor playing him was also the co-creator for the original film), and wanted to see the lycans' reaction to Michael. I also had hoped to get to see more of the story of Lucian and how he fell in love with a vamp, and had still hoped maybe that shot he'd been given would save him. (It wasn't an unfounded hope — we thought someone else was dead in this film who turned out not to be!) This story was smaller in scale (and consequently much shorter), and lacked that lovely urban-gothic atmosphere of the first film. I'm also depressed by the fate of several of the characters. And I was seriously grossed out by the last fight scene.

The greatest problem I had with this one is that there are points about the physiology of vamps and lycans that I was able to allow myself to overlook before but just can't now. I'm a bit confused as to why Marcus turned into a full-on bat after drinking the blood of the lycan doctor. Why hadn't he originally become a full-on bat-man the way William became a crazed wolf-man? Why would drinking lycan blood now make him finally complete the change? Had he never drunk lycan blood in all those hundreds of years he was awake? Why didn't he have at least some wolfish features, since Selene said he was a hybrid, too? (I understand that he's a bat-heavy hybrid while Michael is a wolf-heavy one, but Michael had at least some vampness to him!) Why didn't Marcus go nutso with his increased bat-ness? What about being bitten by a bat would make vamps burst into flames in the sun? What about being bitten by a wolf would make the lycans be burned by silver? Since these are ascribed as blood-borne diseases rather than some sort of occult curse, the old "wrath of God" reasoning of the old legends just doesn't work here.

I did love, however, that we got more background on Marcus and his brother William, the origin of the lycans and vampires, and how Selene fit into that history. I liked Corvinus a lot (shouldn't he have been a crow, with a name like that?), but then I've always liked the actor who played him, Derek Jacobi. Tanis was an amusing character. And while I missed the urban-goth look, I liked the medieval feel of this one.

I do hope there's another film, one that returns to the war between vamps and lycans.

Oh, yeah, and take note studio heads: we enjoyed the films so much that we have already and would be willing to spend more of our hard-earned cash on Underworld-related merchandise.

Leigh: I actually wouldn't mind seeing a series of Underworld novels. Since I saw the first movie, I thought the plotting was dense enough to support a book framework, and I wouldn't mind delving a little more closely into the Underworld universe through fiction.

Wolfie: I have both of the novels based on the films — I could see them becoming a series. I really would like to see a short story collection about the lives of other vamps and lycans, too. Maybe one covering Lucian and his lady-love. And I don't want action-figures, but 12-inch dolls would rock! I want a Selene, a Lucian, and a lycan.

Finally, a last comment from Leigh.

Leigh: I liked that we saw as much naked Scott Speedman as we saw naked Kate Beckinsale. Even if the sex scene was a little oddly staged — was Michael trying to have sex with Selene's belly button for a little bit, there? And I thought the only truly predictable moment was the helicopter blade fricasse. As soon as I saw that, I knew SOMEONE was going through the blades.

I, um, covered my eyes during the fricasse. I did, however, enjoy the bare-chested Scott Speedman.

Here's hoping Underworld continues.

Wolfie's Underworld Review