Underworld: Awakening (From D)

I was with K last Friday watching this movie and had a similar, yet somewhat different outtake. First I'll say I'm not a huge fan of the series, I think it's kinda fun and definitely better than some of the other vampire fare out there (for one they don't freaking sparkle!).
I really liked how the movie started, basically with a friendly reminder of what happened in the last few movies in case you hadn't seen them, not sure what you're doing at this movie if you haven't seen the others, but hey whatever stirs your chili. The initial premise is that the Vampires and Lycan have been discovered by humanity and there was a massive "purge". I was intrigued about the direction this could take the series, would the vampires and lycan join forces to fight a common enemy? Let's say that exploration didn't last long and we are quickly sprung forward 12 years.

Kate Beckinsale was exactly as you expect in her role as Selene, here I have no complaints. The story moves along quickly enough but is really pretty predictable. Overall I would say, while I enjoyed it, it was definitely a fairly weak installment in the series. I'd give it a C.

Now some may want some more specific reasons as to why, so here is the spoiler filled version.

****SPOILERS****

****Seriously stop reading if you don't want to know anything*****

****I swear if you complain about me spoiling it for you it's really your own dam fault****

This is the spoiler dam - stop reading seriously

OK so if you're still around, that means you want to know the annoying things about this movie. For one, they went right back to the freaking default of vampire v. lycan. I was really hopeful that a potential truce between these enemies against a common enemy would be further explored. How would they deal with the threat of humanities numbers, and knowledge of both species weaknesses. Well guess what, that lasted all of 12 minutes and we are right back to the same little war in the first one. 

Then there was a younger vampire, who it was basically implied was new to the vampire scene and was never around for the death dealers, so he would have only been like 20 years old. Now he was the "son" of an elder, but seemed to have an awful lot of authority for what would essentially be an infant in the vampire community (supposing that he was only 20. 

Finally, there was the cheapest of all gimmicks in the movie. The main antagonist is a lycan who can't be killed with silver, while this is overall pretty cool as it gives Selene a much bigger challenge then normal, for some inexplicable reason the writers decided to just make him super big, creating mass literally out of thin air. To me this is probably the last example of why these writers were just flat out lazy. Why couldn't the lycan just have been faster/stronger/and impervious to silver? They had to go and make him plus sized as well? The whole movie pretty much felt like the writers were told "make another Underworld movie". They said "OK" and tossed it together in about 3 weeks. So much wasted potential

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So this means I'm in agreement with K. If you're a huge fan of the series check it out on a matinee (skip 3D, while it wasn't bad, it wasn't necessary either). If you just kinda like the movies, go rent it, Netflix it, or borrow from a friend.