The war continues to rage on a much larger scale in this much anticipated sequel. Werewolves chasing down vampires, vice versa and the like. In this movie, the war is in full swing, and a new faction steps into the fight from out of the shadows and the past as Marcus seeks out his brother.
In this movie you will see a lot of old faces due to a lot of flashbacks and a lot of new faces. You have Marcus the first vampire, (Yes, the first movie did say Viktor was the first vampire but if you paid attention you caught the truth) William the first werewolf, and even the good old starter of both immortal lines.
The first scene in the movie is a flashback where you see Viktor, William, Amelia, and a lot of cannon fodder chasing down William as he goes on a bout of destruction. With them coming across a savaged town, you get a rather nice opening battle scene as all the mauled people come back to life and start changing into werewolves. After this the vampires finally catch William and sentence him to be imprisoned for all time, away from his brother. This is more or less the plot of the rest of the movie as it unfolds in modern times. Marcus seeks to find and free his brother, who he believed he could now control since he is a hybrid. To do this he must find the location of his brother from the memories of someone who was there at its creation as well as finding the keys to get him out of his prison. And form there, we queue more violence.
This movie more or less picks up right after the first movie by having one of the first present time scenes taking place in a vampire safe house with Selene trying to get Michael to drink some blood since she fully believes that he\'ll have to have it now that he is a hybrid. He of course objects. Even with the warning that eating normal food could be fatal or that at any time he could go into a blood rage if he didn\'t feet, he decides to show her up and get some real food. As all of this is going on, Marcus ends up ripping up out of the floor to confront Kraven and his cronies.
This is when the second movie starts to unravel everything the first movie set into place.
In the first movie, it took a well trained priestess to make someone see things with their blood. Selene tries this and gets a jumbled message across. Well in the second movie, just drinking someone\'s blood gives you all of their memories. Based upon this I have concluded this: It takes a well trained priestess to listen to a bunch of people (maybe take their blood) and do the blood ritual to give the awakening vampire certain memories, a plain vampire to totally screw up something when she could have just gone for everything, or anyone else to just give the entire message in their blood with no hitch.
This comes around a lot in the second movie. Marcus getting all of the scientist werewolf\'s memories from the first movie from the little blood that trickled into his mouth, some from Kraven to learn how to do things and see all of his past deeds, etc etc etc. This happens a lot in Evolutions. If you didn\'t want him to know something, why not just think up something up? This was one of the many things that made me raise an eyebrow at the movie.
Later in the movie the drop the \"if the first vampire dies, we all die\" myth. Even though tons of vampires that have created other vampires die, and their creations don\'t die, this little myth of theirs seems highly unfounded. Sure, it might not be something they\'d all want to test, but there is also no founding for this myth (which also applies to William and the werewolves).
In the last movie Selene said she was but a child when Viktor \"saved\" her, well that might be a bit exaggerated. In her flashback of that time, she is full grown. So unless people on the verge of 18 are still children, I\'d say this is another bad on their part. If she were to relive all of her flashbacks at that age then I would have had no problem with it, but there are plenty of flashbacks with her as a wee child.
The last thing I\'ll mention that gave me that same perplexed look I had given before was that in this movie, when one leaks blood onto another vampire\'s open wound it is expected to heal itself up. Perhaps when this happens in the movie it is out of desperation, but after you\'ve been what you are for several hundred years you should know what will and will not work. I\'d think they\'d cover that in Vampire 101.
One thing I felt just didn’t fit into the feel of the movie was the nudity and sex scenes and nudity. With all the flashbacks of these scenes, it doesn’t help the mood of the movie at all. These few areas could have been done with the standard issue cut away as the man and woman lay down or something instead of spending all the time on them that they did.
Now you must be thinking to yourself \"this movie must suck\", that is far from true. I have spent a lot of time pointing out where this movie let itself slide and do things I would consider wrong, but that is mainly because I enjoyed the first movie that much. I am a fan of this series, so that means I\'m that much pickier on what I see as wrong.
With this movie they did a lot more CG\'ing of the werewolves, mainly because they did that much more leaping, jumping, and clawing than they did in the first one. At times though you can still catch an old use of the costumes, which I really liked myself. Some might complain that at times some of the CG looked \"tacked on\", but the key to remember is... It is hard to make a bat man combination flying at 65mph over the road look realistic.
The action in this movie is that much better than in the first movie, by a good several turns of the knob. With an obviously higher budget, the fights are that much more vicious. And this movie doesn\'t short you on the fighting scenes at all, there are plenty abound for you blood thirsty monster lovers.
With the story of this movie and all the new people you see, it really keeps your attention (even though some of it will be in a “what the...†fastion). With the first vampire trying to find his first werewolf of a brother who was hid away from him since he was too much trouble to control, to seeing them both in action, seeing Alexander the creator of them all, their individual powers, and the huge conflicts that come around when the huge masses of power collide.
Even with all of its slights, this movie is a step up on the first movie in a few ways. With the second movie, the storyline moves along (at a fairly decent pace) but leaves you wondering what’ll be next. With the rumors of the Underworld series being a trilogy, you’ll be left wondering what ground hasn’t been covered yet. While this is not a great sequel, it is far above what the second matrix movie did for that franchise. Maybe not a movie I’d say go pay the eight or ten dollars for, but if you can catch a cheap matinee then it’d be worth it. Unless of course you just want an action movie containing both vampires and werewolves, then it’d be worth the full price.
Fun Fact: In White Wolf’s Werewolf: The Apocolypse, the tribe of werewolf that was most known for its pure blood was the silverfang. The coat color of silverfangs was usually a white color, the same color of Williams fur. Just one more new thing for White Wolf to go after Sony for with these films.
"Underworld: Evolution" opens January 20, 2006 and is rated R. Action, Fantasy. Directed by Len Wiseman. Written by Danny McBride and Len Wiseman . Starring Bill Nighy, Kate Beckinsale, Michael Sheen, Scott Speedman, Tony Curran, Derek Jacobi.
