Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans

Dear Chad,

I watched Underworld 3 the other day. I figured you would want me to write you and tell you about it because you like good movies (remember Cold Creek Manor…that was awesome). This is a good movie. It’s a prequel to the other two Underworld movies. As such, it doesn’t feature Kate Beckinsale in skin-tight black leather. Sorry. Instead, it has a different hot actress name Rhona Mitra in skin-tight black leather. It’s not directed by Len Wiseman. He’s too busy trying to get more Die Hard sequels in the works. Therefore, Rise of the Lycans is directed by Patrick Tatopoulos, a Frenchy. The French are good movie directors, guys like Godard and Truffaut, and now you can add Tatopoulos to the list.

There are two things about Underword: Rise of the Lycans that really stand out: the color blue and Viktor’s eyes. Viktor (Bill Nighy) is the main bad guy (or good guy if you’re rooting for the vampires but no one roots for the vampires, they root for the lycans) vampire who’s selfishness and bad decision-making skills are the catalyst for the war between the vampires and the lycans. We learn all about this from flashback scenes in the first Underworld movie. Rise of the Lycans is all about those flashbacks in full-length feature-film time and epic battles. This prequel is necessary to understand the complicated backstory of the Underworld franchise. Without it, you really wouldn’t comprehend the Shakespearean implications of it all.

So anyways, I was talking about the color blue and Viktor’s eyes. This movie is very dark and very blue. It’s like it’s supposed to be in the future, but it’s not. It’s in a blue, midevil sort of undetermined past. I think the director either had access to a blue camera lens filter or they added the blue color during editing. It doesn’t matter. Either way, it works and it works well. It adds a great atmosphere to the film. It’s like everything is cold, but without the snow. You really feel like the vampires are dark and evil. Viktor’s eyes are blue, too. But they’re a penetrating blue, like they’re looking into the depths of your hollow, evil soul (not your soul specifically, Chad, but the soul in general). Viktor never blinks and he stares a lot. There were times when I found myself hypnotized by his glare, to the extent that I missed some of the action going on around him. Very effective, in my opinion.

Well, this wouldn’t be an Underworld movie without some awesome battles between the vampires and the lycans. Lots of blood and shredding skin and biting and swordsmanship and ninja stars. Nothing beats a good Death Dealer/Lycan battle. Remember that really awesome lycan from Underworld 1? The black guy with the really deep voice (Kevin Grevioux)? This movie features his origin story and really gets to the heart of his character. His name is Raze. He was a human slave of the vampires that gets turned into a lycan and then joins up with Lucian (Michael Sheen), the lycan leader, to overthrow Viktor and end the subjugation of the lycans. Lucian has a love affair with Viktor’s hot daughter, Sonja (Rhona Mitra). This really pisses off Viktor and the battles begin, but not before Lucian gets a whipping worthy of The Passion of the Christ. Man, it’s brutal. Whipping scenes make me cringe, especially when the whip has a bunch of metal knives at the tip.

Okay, so that’s it. Give me a call when you see it so we can discuss the philosophical implications and themes of non-conformity, slavery, forbidden love, and death. Until then, you should probably re-watch the first two Underworld films because they are awesome.

Talk to you soon,

Jared

PS: In case you didn’t know, lycans are lycanthropes i.e. werewolves.