Wolf Awareness Week II: Day 3

 

The Howling

1981

D: Joe Dante

**********

Pros: Good buildup, Visuals, Werewolf design

Cons: Characters could have used more work, Awful ending

      Though most people know Joe Dante for the classic Gremlins as well as many questionable family movies he made more recently, he got his start in horror.  His big break was Piranha, which has the reputation of being one of the best Jaws rip-offs, an honor which would be more dubious had that not been the assessment of Steven Spielberg himself.  Dante had enough of a reputation in the genre that the villain of Death Machine was named after him, and that’s got to count for something.  One of his most known horror films is his contribution to the werewolf subgenre, The Howling.

      Based on a novel by Gary Brandner, it begins with Los Angeles anchorwoman Karen White (Dee Wallace) taking part in a sting to catch serial killer Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo), who has been stalking her for some time.  As this happens, her network’s therapist Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee) foreshadows the movie’s plot by airing a monologue about repression, animal desires and human nature.  Karen meets Eddie in a particularly oblivious/permissive inner city adult theatre, and he menaces her while playing brutal rape footage.  He’s about to attack her when the two cops on the case show up and shoot him in the ensuing commotion.  Understandably traumatized from the experience, Karen has no memory of what happened in the theatre and has nightmares that vaguely suggest that Eddie turned into a werewolf.  She freezes on air during her report of the event, much to the frustration of her producer Fred (Kevin McCarthy).  In response, Waggner sends her and her husband Bill (Christopher Stone) to a therapy commune that he runs. 

      When they arrive, they meet a few quirky individuals, including a suicidal old man named Erle (John Carradine), a creepy nymphomaniacal hippie named Marsha (Elisabeth Brooks) and Slim Pickens.   Among the oddities, Karen meets the relatively friendly and well-adjusted Donna (Margie Impert) and quickly befriends her.  Bill has an awkward encounter with Marsha in which she subtly comes on to him in a way that reflects her disdain not just for his marriage, but the concept in general.  It’s nice to know that this scene from a 1981 film perfectly captures what it feels like to be on Tumblr.

I've had enough of this Social Justice Wolves.

The commune also takes Bill on a hunting trip when Karen and Donna find a mauled cow.  The fact that a therapy commune in which people are treated for PTSD and suicidal tendencies grants its patients unrestricted access to firearms should be a yellow flag.  I think it’s pretty clear that at least some of these people are hiding lycanthropy.  After all, it’s stated to be a werewolf movie, and if it turns out there are no werewolves after a lot of buildup, the results are generally disappointing.

      Bill’s fidelity to Karen makes him initially likable, but this sympathy breaks down quickly.  When Karen is disturbed by the howling of wolves at night in the commune, his response is unimpressive.  I probably would have pointed out that wolves generally can’t break into houses and so she shouldn’t worry.  Instead, he doubts her judgment, saying, “The wildest thing you ever heard was Wolfman Jack.”  Yeah, well, that and that serial killer that almost murdered her a couple days ago, Bill.  After experiencing another unsuccessful attempt at seduction by Marsha, he is bitten by a wolf-like creature in the woods.  Succumbing to the effects of the bite, he meets the seductress again and they have sex by firelight as they begin to transform.  Predictably, she is shown in full frontal, but he is not.  

      Meanwhile, Karen’s coworkers Chris Halloran (Dennis Dugan) and Terri Fisher (Belinda Balasky) are investigating Eddie Quist’s property, finding many drawings, including many of wolfmen and one of coast.  They visit the coroner (John Sayles) to find that the door to Eddie’s storage unit has been dented from the inside and his body is missing.  They also look to a bookstore run by Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) who gives them a few books on lycanthropy.  He also informs them that werewolves can change at will and only silver bullets or fire can kill them.  After Bill’s bite, Terri is called to the commune by Karen and she makes the connection between Eddie and the location by seeing the coast from his drawing.  She looks for answers, but is attacked by a werewolf.  She escapes to Dr. Waggner’s office and makes a call to Chris.  She looks through some files searching for Eddie Quist, and one of the funniest things happens in the movie: just when she finds the file, a werewolf’s hand calmly takes it from her hand from offscreen.  Then we get the first good look at what the werewolf looks like.  Not only is it a great reveal, it’s one of the best werewolf designs I’ve seen.  This is comforting because a disappointing number of movies can’t seem to get this simple task right.   

      Karen confronts Bill over his infidelity, and he responds by slapping her.  Disgusted, she flees to the Doctor’s office only to find Terri’s body and a still living Eddie Quist.  Before he attacks her, we see the werewolf transformation in all its glory.  The effects on it are good and have a B-Movie charm.  There’s also a rather putrid pulsating effect it has on the flesh which is distinctive.  While the metamorphosis is creative and the effects are good, the whole thing is sullied by the fact that Quist is standing in a static pose the whole time.  This really does mess up the credibility of the scene.  Karen also waits until it’s before she throws acid into his face and flees.

     Having heard Terri’s death over the phone, Chris grabs some silver bullets from the bookstore and drives desperately to the commune.  The drive over is well integrated with the rest of the movie and edited well to induce tension.  When he arrives at the Doctor’s office, he encounters Quist with half his face melted off.  He kills Quist before he can transform, which is a shame because I wanted to see what his acid-burned face looked like in werewolf form.  He finds Karen held captive by the other members of the commune in a barn.  They reveal that they are all werewolves, including Dr. Waggner.  Waggner formed the commune as a way to help them suppress their urge to eat humans, but all the others have had enough of him and his ways.  He argues with them a little, but to no avail.  Chris rescues Karen, and they lock the werewolves in the barn.  They then set the barn on fire, which is too bad for the werewolves because they apparently share the Signs aliens’ weakness in regards to wooden doors.  The two escape the commune, but Karen is bitten at the last second by a werewolf who is revealed in death to be Bill.  For no reason whatsoever, there is a momentary full-body shot of two stop-motion wolves, which is distractingly the only time this effect used.

      The final faceoff is actually rather anticlimactic.  Now, I love this trope when it’s done right, but not when the threat is built up as a credible one.  While the twist is fairly obvious to anyone who actually heard of the movie and didn’t just stumble into it accidentally, the buildup is effectively executed and promised to something more.  The werewolves should have been far more of a challenge once all bets were off, and it should have taken a hell more than just one journalist with a bolt-action rifle full of silver bullets to defeat an entire commune of what should be the perfect killing machines.  A lot of this is because the werewolves are apparently idiots.  When Chris tells them that he has silver bullets, they stupidly call his bluff instead of rushing him after he gets the first shot off and has to manually chamber another round.  It wouldn’t have been any less cheap if John Preston had entered the barn and used Gun Kata against all the werewolves, but it would have been a lot more fun to watch. 

      Upon returning home, Karen and Chris agree that the public must be told.  While Karen reports on the communes burning on live TV, she voluntarily turns into a werewolf, with a few funny reactions from her fellow anchor and some TV viewers.  This I think is where the movie should have ended.  It would have left the film with a sense of ambiguity and a little bit of dark humor.  Instead, Chris “mercifully” shoots Karen dead. 

Unfortunately, she had not gotten past the Pomeranian phase of her transformation.

This is not only questionable to say the least, but it makes little sense.  It’s like they wanted to shoehorn a tragic horror movie ending in there just for the hell of it.  Granted, the movie never made it obvious how much control a person has in wolf form, but it was made very clear that the werewolves were people who had a choice in how they acted; it’s just that these particular made a choice in the end to kill.  Also, the finale makes the offensive suggestion that a group of people who have a condition that makes it more difficult to adjust to society should not be given a chance to live at all.  It’s a disturbing (an increasingly more fashionable) idea that people should not make any effort to resist they’re primal urges or practice self-control, and if one happens to have a more harmful, idiosyncratic urge, that person’s life is not worth living. 

        The ending isn’t the only problem.  Characterization in this movie leaves a lot to be desired.  Karen is an extremely passive character until the end.  We don’t get to know Bill well enough before his fall to feel too bad about it.  Terri is the most active and most intelligent character in the movie, but she’s the first to die.  Perhaps the most disappointing character arc is Donna.  She could have been one of the more complex characters in the movie.  She’s a werewolf, but she befriends a human and comes off as likable.  However, in the final confrontation, she shows no conflict.  She doesn’t have Waggner’s back when he tries to reason with the other werewolves even though it makes perfect sense for her take his side, especially when she clearly detests more zealously pro-homicide Marsha earlier.  She and Waggner demonstrate that the werewolves are perfectly capable of being moral, but the movie ignores this in the end.  Karen ignores this in her final speech, and her monologue of the uniqueness of humanity’s ability to make moral choices, which is meant to justify her killing, makes sense in real life, but applies equally to the werewolves in this movie.  If people were to follow the intentions of her murder/suicide, it would result in a tragic persecution of werewolves. 

      While the movie is problematic, it has great style and effects.  The werewolf design is excellent, and my only complaint about it is that that the werewolves have some very skinny digitigrade legs that seem really awkward to stand upright on.  The campfire yiff scene finished off with what looked like the silhouettes of two traditionally animated werewolves.  In contrast with the pointless stop-motion shot later in the movie, it looked stylized and mysterious, helping the atmosphere of the film.  Gore effects and makeup are really good.  Scenery of the woods was very atmospheric as was Pino Donaggio’s score (in a cheesy B-Movie way).   A slight complaint is that the movie is billed as a horror/comedy, but the comedy is pretty sparse, which is a criticism that fortunately does not apply to this movie's more famous contemporary.  The movie has enough style to be worth a look for any werewolf fan, but its ending prevents it from being a truly good horror movie.               

            

QUOTES

DR. WAGGNER: Repression. Repression is the father of neurosis, of self-hatred. Now, stress results when we fight against our impulses. We've all heard people talk about animal magnetism, the natural man. the noble savage, as if we'd lost something valuable in our long evolution into civilized human beings. Now there's a good reason for this.

KAREN: I don’t know if I want to remember.

BILL: What?

KAREN: Doc said once I remember what happened, it won’t scare me anymore.  I’m not so sure.

BILL: Honey, give this place a chance, ok?  We gotta do something.

KAREN: Well, I hope these people aren’t too weird.

[cut to Erle hollering]

[Bill walks up to Marsha’s table and takes some food]

MARSHA: [passive-aggressively] You want some?

DONNA: Haven't you ever done Assertiveness Training? Before I looked into the Doc, I did it all - EST, T.M., Scientology, iridology, Primal Scream... I don't know, I figure another five years of real hard work, and maybe I'll be a real human being.

PAISLEY: We get 'em all: sun-worshippers, moon-worshippers, Satanists. The Manson family used to hang around and shoplift. Bunch of deadbeats!

SAM NEWFIELD (SLIM PICKENS): No, no, don’t bother.  I’ll get the state guys over to the center.  I wouldn’t worry, Mr. Holloran.  I’m sure she’s safe.

[Cut to Terri getting killed by a werewolf]

DR. WAGGNER: [upon being shot] Thank God.

KAREN: Good evening.  From the day we’re born, there is a battle we must fight. [teleprompter is clearly showing something different]  A struggle between what is kind and peaceful in our natures and what is cruel and violent. 

FRED: What the hell is this, an editorial?

KAREN: That choice is a birthright of human beings, and the real gift that differentiates us from the animals.  It is as natural to us as the air we breathe. 

FRED: [to Chris] Did you pass this material?  This is not reading on the prompter

CHRIS: We changed it a little bit. 

KAREN: But now for some of us, that choice has been taken away.  A secret society exists and is living among all of us.  They’re neither people nor animals but but something in between [Fred chuckles and facepalms]  Because of this mutation their violent natures must be satisfied.  I know what you’re thinking because I’ve been where you are. 

FRED: That’s enough.

CHRIS: Leave it.

FRED: Leave it?  Cut!

CHRIS: Leave it!

KAREN: But I have proof and…tonight I’m going to show you something…to make you believe. [transforms into werewolf]

ANCHORMAN: Holy Shee-it!

GUY WATCHING TV WITH WIFE: What is this?!

BOY: Wow!

MOM: What are you kids watching?

GIRL: The news lady’s turned into a werewolf!

PAISLEY: Hoo-boy.

[final lines]

MAN: Hey Ernie? Put that pepper steak on for me, will ya? And a hamburger for the lady.

ERNIE: How do you want that?

MAN: How you want it, honey?

MARSHA: Rare.

Wolf Awareness Week II: Day 2

 

Balto III: Wings of Change

2004

D: Phil Weinstein

**********

Pros: Decent Animation, Some good subversions

Cons: Flawed Script

       After Balto’s (Maurice LaMarche) adventure with his daughter in Balto II: Wolf Quest, a second direct-to-video sequel was made focusing on the relationship between him and one of his sons, Kodi (Sean Astin, who apparently wanted some light duty after Lord of the Rings).  This movie has some major flaws with its premise and plot, particularly its inciting action. 

     After a nice and appropriately old-fashioned Universal Logo (right after the modern logo for some reason) and a crudely fonted opening credits sequence (in which Rosie makes a silent cameo), The film begins by establishing that Kodi is a sled dog for the Post Office, delivering mail between Nome and White Mountain, where a gluttonous Basset Hound named Dipsy (Kathy Najimy) and a panicky old dog named Mel (David Paymer) live.  They don’t seem to have much point in this movie, and most of the human characters aren’t even worth mentioning to me since they’re all voiced by people who already have a part in the movie.  The conflict arrives in the form of a bush plane pilot named Duke (Keith Carradine), who offers his services to deliver mail for the area.

And why would you refuse?  His plane has a big mustache on it!

       This inspires the townsfolk to hold an absurd plane vs. sled dog race to see who can deliver the mail faster.  This ignores an important plot point in the first movie which made it clear that the sled dogs were a last resort because the weather did permit the life-saving medicine to be delivered by air.  It should be painfully obvious to everyone that the plane is faster.  While the movie sacrifices its believability to even dignifying such an illogical cliché, it does a commendable job of deconstructing and subverting it.  I generally dislike this trope mainly because it’s played out in an oddly Luddite way.  Sympathy is always given to the “old way,” which somehow usually wins in the end.  Moreover, technological progress is good, especially when it can get important tasks done faster and safer.  Fortunately, this isn’t the case here.  Not only is Balto amazed by the airplane, he frequently acknowledges that its advantage over sled dogs cannot be denied.  The replacement of dogs by modern transportation is correctly framed by movie as an inevitability.  Also, Duke is depicted in a refreshingly sympathetic light.  He’s nice to Balto (whose heroism he has heard of) and is never framed as an antagonist.  Sorry to say this, bronies, but this already makes the movie better than “The Super Cider Squeezy 6000.” 

      Kodi and his fellow mushers Ralph (Bill Fagerbakke), Kirby (Carl Weathers) and Dusty (Charity James) are understandably worried about the loss of their jobs and see Duke as an enemy.  They pressure Balto into leading the team despite his protests that it’s a doomed conflict.  He reluctantly agrees and begins to worry that he’ll disappoint his son if they lose.  Considering how Balto saved an entire town of children once, I think he can afford to blow this asinine contest.  Jenna (Jodi Benson) reassures him by telling him that he doesn’t need to be a hero to Kodi, just a father.  She sings this because Jodi Benson, like the Winter Soldier, is there to do what she’s good at and then put back into cryogenic storage until someone needs her to sing again.  Jenna’s advice is very good advice when Balto hears it, but the movie’s plot ends up forcing him to ignore it and be a hero anyway.

      A major subplot revolves around the fact that Boris (Charles Fleischer) now has a love interest!  He’s approached by a female goose named Stella (Jean Smart), who begins to aggressively flirt with him.  While most of the animals in these movies lack humanoid structure, her design, with its simulated chest bust and long, hanging feathers simulating hair, makes her a furry.  While at first she seems a bit too sexually aggressive, she later turns out to be a more sympathetic character.  I think we seem to have been programmed into not trusting women who take an active role in courtship, and the movie may have used this to subvert expectations.  Boris accepts her advances but is evasive whenever the subject of flying comes up because of this his crippling acrophobia.  As a result he starts lying compulsively to her about it.  That’s okay, Boris, it’s perfectly fine to actively withhold important and relevant information from a potential lover.  Rantasmo said so.  It soon becomes apparent that he’s the one who’s mistreating her.  He’s fully entertaining her advances but he’s the one that’s being the true asshole in this situation.  She seems fully honest in her opinions and her feelings about him.  She even goes through the trouble of making a sultry song and dance number for him.  The least he could do is conquer his fear or come clean to her.  Eventually, Stella finds out about his dishonesty when Boris brazenly brags to Balto about his fooling her without realizing she’s right there.  She angrily yells and chases him, and the hilarious thing is scene is that this whole thing is happening right in front of a large group of humans. 

Nobody questions this.

In the commotion, Boris is accidentally stuffed into a mail bag, which is loaded into the plane by the somehow oblivious humans.

      The race ends with the sled dogs “victorious” because the mustache plane has mysteriously disappeared.  Balto seems to be the only one aware that there is something wrong with this picture.  I might ask why the humans in this movie have yet to notice or do anything about this, but then again I’m not too surprised considering that they can somehow handle mail bags with live geese inside them without noticing.  Balto is the only smart character in this movie.  His suspicions are confirmed when Muk and Luk (Kevin Schon) run to him and Jenna, ranting about how they were “attacked” by a loud, flying monster, which Balto and Jenna immediately realize is a crashed plane.  He immediately appeals to Kodi and Co. for help, but they are shockingly cold to the news that a human being may have died and refuse to help “the enemy.”  This is jarring coming from someone who is supposedly a sympathetic character, but it’s not like it’s framed incorrectly.  The movie knows how reprehensible Kodi’s reaction is, and he is rightfully called out on it by his parents.  On his way to help, Balto is approached by Stella, who’s wondering where Boris is.  She’s immediately concerned when informed of the plane because she knows that he was on it.  So now Balto, Stella, Muk and Luk go into the wild to save the two characters, because Jenna never gets to do anything.

      They face many natural obstacles along the way, including the two most irritating and pointless characters in the whole movie.  They’re attacked by an aggressive moose (Maurice LaMarche) who is a painfully lame parody of Robert DeNiro.  It’s obviously Squit’s voice from “The Goodfeathers” without the jokes.  Seriously, he just says “You talkin’ to me” without context to the heroes and attacks them until he gets in a fight with another moose (LaMarche) who is a lame parody of Joe Pesci.  This is a textbook example of how not to do referential humor.  The moose are tacked on and they seem like the closest thing to antagonists in a movie that doesn’t even need any.  So it doesn’t help that Codi and Co. temporarily come off viler for their callousness earlier in the movie.  They only thing this scene accomplishes is that the moose provoked some decent snark from Stella.

        Our heroes find the wreckage of the mustache plane with Boris and Duke, who shouldn’t be alive at this point.  Duke was knocked unconscious far too long to not to have sustained serious, debilitating brain injuries and on top of that was lying for days completely exposed to the elements.  Boris has also lost consciousness in the snow and was frozen stiff when the group found him.  They got better.  While carrying Duke home in a makeshift sled, Balto encounters his old enemy (no, not Steel, gravity).  Holding on for dear life, Balto and Duke are saved by a remarkably well-timed rescue by Kodi and Co. They triumphantly return home, but Boris still has to sort out his issues with Stella.

       Now that Boris’ life is no longer in danger, Stella takes the time to tell him off for being a lying piece of dirt before leaving him for good.  If that is where it ended, I would have been quite satisfied.  Unfortunately, Boris calls after her by painfully predictably screaming, “Stella,” and she decides that he’s needy enough to give a chance.  He comes clean with her and she decides to go out with him after all.  Stella got my hopes up as a character, but ultimately disappointed me.  She does have her likable qualities, but she’s too forgiving of a man who treated her dreadfully.  The movie ends with a montage showing that the plane eventually replaced the sled dog for male delivery, and that Duke has renamed his wings after Balto.

      Balto III: Wings of Change seems to have the opposite problem Wolf Quest had.  I personally thought Wolf Quest had a great story marred by heavy-handed spirituality and an absurd deus ex machina, while Wings of Change was a mediocre plot redeemed by some smart subversive elements.  This movie may arguably be the weakest of the series because it’s not nearly as moving as the other two, but I will say that as Direct-to-Video animated sequels go, the Balto sequels are pretty good.  The relationship between Balto and his son is fine, but Kodi was not half the character Aleu was.  He spent so much of the movie being unlikable, and his redemption didn’t seem like enough time was dedicated to it.  The payoff to his arc is one good deed in the form of a deus ex machina.  The animation was okay by direct-to-video standards, and the voice acting is good overall.  Maurice LaMarche is a great voice actor, but his mimicry of Kevin Bacon’s Balto isn’t as passable in this movie as it was in the previous one; it comes off a bit low and raspy.  There are a lot of characters in this movie that could have been cut out of the movie altogether with little effect.  The dialogue isn’t terribly impressive and it’s one of the things, along with the plot holes, that makes this movie fun to riff on.  You and your friends can pass the time yelling or laughing at some of the oblivious things that come out of the characters’ mouths.  The movie is overall middling at best, but I do appreciate it for subverting a rather tiresome cliché.   

                   

  

QUOTES        

BORIS: Ah! What do you know? I am flying. Ha-haaa! I am one hot goose!

BALTO: I’m not sure Stella’s gonna see it that way.  [Boris flies by him a foot off the ground]

BALTO: I can’t tell from here how far we need to backtrack.  Stella, can you take a look around?  Bear Rock looks like…a, well, giant bear.

STELLA: You don’t say.

BALTO: Look, we don’t want any trouble.  We’re just passing through.

MOOSE: You talkin’ to me?

BALTO: Our friend is down there and he might be hurt.

MOOSE: You talkin’ to me?

BALTO: We just want to get by.

MOOSE: I just want to know if you’re talkin’ to me.

STELLA: Here’s a newsflash, genius, WE’RE TALKING TO YOU.

[Moose becomes angry]

BALTO: Please, this is an emergency.  We don’t want any trouble.

MOOSE: I think you’re talkin’ to me.

STELLA: Now he gets it.

STELLA: Bye, Boris.  It’s been an education.

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]           

Wolf Awareness Week 2014

 

Well, it's Wolf Awareness Week again, so I guess I'm going to do what I did last year and review some wolf movies.

Day 1: Underworld Awakening   2

Day 2: Balto III: Wings of Change   5
Day 3: The Howling   4
Day 4: An American Werewolf in London   7
Day 5: Hotel Transylvania   4
Day 6: The Grey   5
Day 7: Alpha and Omega 2: A Howl-iday Adventure   2