Sunday, October 12, 2014

Wolf Awareness Week II: Day 1



 
Underworld: Awakening
2012
D: Måns Mårlind, Björn Stein
**********
Pros: Super-Lycan design is step in the right direction, Charles Dance briefly appears to class things up
Cons: Story, Characterization, Special effects, Action

      What better way to start Wolf Awareness Week 2014 than to finish off the Underworld series?  I heard this one wasn’t as well received by fans of the original, but the trailer made it look action-packed.  I didn’t care for the previous movies or expect much from this one, but perhaps if the action scenes were fun, I might enjoy this entry as a guilty pleasure.  Unfortunately, this movie didn’t even deliver on an Ultraviolet level.  What I ended up watching almost made the first movie look good.  Underworld: Awakening not only fails at being a movie, it fails at the dubious task of being an Underworld movie.
      I found the plotline of the Underworld series potentially interesting despite its flat characters, but the new movie seems to press the reset button in favor of a more clichéd premise.  Shortly after the events of Evolution, humanity has discovered the existence of the vampires and “Lycans” (I refuse to earnestly use lupine terminology to describe creatures that look like this) and initiated a massive purge which wiped out almost all of them.  The “Lycans” are thought to be totally extinct at this point.  Our favorite genocidal vampires Selene (Kate Beckinsale) and her boyfriend Michael Corvin (a CG Scott Speedman) are captured and placed in cryogenic storage.  The movie begins with Selene being freed and violently escaping a lab run by Antigen, a corporation run by Dr. Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea) that’s supposedly researching a cure for the disease that causes vampirism and “lycanthropy.”  While Selene understandably kills the mooks attempting to apprehend her, she later tracks down an Antigen official (Wes Bentley) who helped her escape so she can interrogate and murder him.  Now this guy didn’t have her best intentions in mind, but it’s good to see that this is the same Selene we know and love.
     Selene is estranged from Michael, but she has some limited link to him through visions, because apparently having a prophecy in the first movie wasn’t enough.  Eventually she meets a young girl who does not act like a young girl named Eve (India Eisley) and a vampire named David (Theo James).  The group is attacked by “Lycans” and Eve is injured.  They take her to David’s coven where they meet his father Thomas (Charles Dance, reminding me that I would rather be watching Game of Thrones).  Thomas blames Selene for the status quo but they are allowed to treat Eve by giving her blood to drink for the first time.  At some point Selene finds out that Eve is the genetically-engineered offspring of herself and Michael, and we have some angst over this.  The coven is attacked by an army of “Lycans” including one “Super Lycan,” looking for Eve, who is handed over to them by Thomas in exchange for a ceasefire. 
       It’s soon revealed that Dr. Lane is secretly a “Lycan” (possibly as an homage to Rea’s role as a werewolf in The Company of Wolves) along with many of his followers, and the “cure” he’s looking for is actually a serum designed to make his kind immune to silver.  Obviously, Eve’s DNA holds the key to this discovery, making the movie even more clichéd.  We now have a situation in which the “Lycans” have the upper hand in the battle against the vampires.  As I pointed out before, it made no sense for them to be the underdogs in the first movie because their immunity to daylight is a massive advantage that would allow them to blend in with human society, as they are doing now.  Unfortunately, turning the “Lycans” into villains completely ignores the whole point of the series, in which Selene finds out that they were fighting the good fight the whole time.  The closing narration of this movie even reinforces this heresy further:
“Though the world has changed, our enemy remains the same.
The Lycans will rebuild. And will hunt for her father as they did for her.
But as they grow stronger, so will we.
The Vampire coven will not survive this world, we will reclaim it.”
Wow, seems we learned no moral lesson whatsoever from the previous movies, and it turns out racial violence is A-OK after all. 
      It’s a good thing I’m not a fan of these movies, or I might really be upset right now. 
      The Super-Lycan turns out to be Lane’s son Quint (Kris Holden-Ried).  As the primary guinea pig for this serum, he has some extra powers.  I will comment that I think the design of the Super-Lycan is a vast improvement over that of the other “Lycans.”  He doesn’t look as good as William Corvinus, but at least the design looks canid and is used on someone who is actually a genuine character in the movie.

      Before the final rescue, Selene teams up with David and Detective Sebastian (Michael Ealy), who lost his vampire wife to the purge.  When they storm Antigen, Eve is freed and fights Dr. Lane while Selene faces off against Quint.  Eve kills Lane by ripping out his throat, and Selene takes advantage of Quint’s increased healing abilities by planting a grenade inside him.  During the battle Selene finds Michael in cryogenic storage and quickly frees him.  When the fighting is done, her vision tells her that he has made it to the roof, but by the time she gets there, he has already escaped.  The movie ends with her vowing to find him.  I don’t know why Michael doesn’t share this vision if there’s some kind of love link between them.  You’d think he’d follow the link to her, but I wouldn’t blame him if he doesn’t want to.
        I’d like to say that the fight scenes were at least good, but they weren’t.  Whereas the previous movies had competent, but forgettable action, this one’s violence was defined by poor editing and bad CGI.  One of the strengths of Underworld’s visual style was its excellent use of practical effects, which contrasted with its poorly integrated CGI.  Here, they ditched the former in favor of the latter; they threw out the baby and kept the bath water.  Quint’s transformation into the Super-Lycan isn’t sold well by his performance, which is naturall if an actor is told to react to something that isn’t really happening on set.  His relatively cool death is also marred by lack of good acting in the scene.  Dr. Lane’s death is graphically gory, but computer generated.  CGI gore strikes me as quite a folly considering that fans of R-Rated violence generally prefer it be done practically.  It’s too bad we’re more interested in wasting perfectly good corn syrup on unhealthy and tasteless beverages.  I blame the 3D aspect of this movie.  I’ve always thought that 3D is unnecessary for photorealistic imagery, making it like something you see in a View-Master.  It works okay with CGI cartoons, though.  This is why don’t like this fad: it encourages filmmakers to purposely use bad special effects and editing.      
      There’s not much to say for this movie.  It ditches potentially interesting plot developments from the previous movies for something far more clichéd.  The evil pharmaceutical company trying to harvest a child’s blood and the final violent rescue of said child are very tired tropes.  None of the characters are very interesting, with not much more than clichéd sci-fi angst tropes and momentary expositions to do define their personalities.  Despite dealing with some motherhood issues now, Selene is mostly bland and occasionally unlikable, just like in the previous movies.  David himself seems like a hunk put in to attract a young adult audience, and I hear he’s getting a spinoff for some reason.  I suppose this would be upsetting considering the movie dispenses with Michael as a character and uses composite imagery of Scott Speedman for his brief appearances.  I personally wasn’t a fan of the character so I didn’t mind too much.  I may not be a fan of this series, but I wouldn’t blame any fans who found this movie disappointing.   It manages to be a bastardization of a movie series that wasn’t particularly good to begin with.
     
    
           
QUOTES

EVE: I dreamt of the day we would meet.  Like a silly girl.  You’re as cold as one already dead.
SELENE: Yesterday, I was with your father. He was only a little further away from than you are now. I went to sleep. And when I awoke the next day, I learned that, overnight, 12 years had passed. And instead of the only man I ever loved, there stood a girl with his eyes.  My heart is not cold. It's broken.

SELENE: You have no reason to fear us.
THOMAS: Do you think I'm foolish enough to take you at your word? No reason to fear a Death Dealer who fell in love with a Lycan, who murdered two of our elders, and who, at every turn, has betrayed her own kind.

EVE: [ripping out Lane’s throat] It’s worse if you try to fight it.  Trust me. 

[Selene punches through Quint’s stomach and pulls her hand out]
QUINT: I heal instantly
SELENE: I’m counting on it. [tosses him grenade pin]           

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