andygates: (Default)
andygates ([personal profile] andygates) wrote2006-08-17 01:16 pm
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Underworld Evolution

Or How I Stopped Caring And Learned To Love Black PVC.

Hmm. Underwhelmed Evolution maybe. It just didn't hang together for me. There were bits that were nice (mostly centred around the aforementioned black PVC), the blood-memories idea was explored more playfully, the makeup effects were great, but... but Michael the down-home farmboy hybrid just looks like he's about to start singin'; Kate still runs like a barbie-doll even if her action-stance has got better; and guys, the colour-changing eye thing was done better in Innocent Blood over fifteen years ago. Try harder.

The layers of secret spookernatural society are annoyingly built and revealed in a manner that suggests not a rich parallel world into which we are plunged (as Nightwatch does so well), but stuff being made up as they go along. And since the main plot is a great fat retcon in the first place, I got the feeling that I couldn't trust the world at all, I couldn't engage with it because it was so arbitrary. Is he going to be okay? Is she going to find out what happened? Who cares, here's a church full of naked chicks. All of which leaves us with a skinny goth chick with guns - perfectly tasty but as a snack, not a meal.

Yay, black helicopters. Boo, physics going AWOL whenever a Lycan gets jumping. Yay, pimpy cinematography. Boo, every frame looks like a graphic-novel panel so the specialness is just lost, the "ooh!" effect is squandered. Yay, manipulated colour palette, boo grey is not the one I'd lead with... I'm just left annoyed that at the end of the first movie there's a suggestion that Everything Will Change, then the second movie is another Day In The Life Of Slay-Chick, and at the end guess what, Everything Will Change.

It will. I won't bother renting #3.

[identity profile] ankaret.livejournal.com 2006-08-17 01:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Bill Nighy looked good in the flashback, but that was an even weirder accent than Davy Jones.

Scott Speedman is terribly dull.

[identity profile] thudthwacker.livejournal.com 2006-08-17 06:28 pm (UTC)(link)
The thing that bugged me most about Underworld (I don't recall if it was the original or "Evolution") was that everyone had guns which were fairly effective on their enemies, and yet Lycans would, at first opportunity, go Crinos, become unable to use firearms, and get cut to ribbons from a safe distance. The Lycans always seemed to be portrayed as hopelessly overmatched, which results in the whole idea of a centuries-old war being ridiculous.

Really pretty films to watch, though.

[identity profile] andygates.livejournal.com 2006-08-17 06:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Well they could go the route of the Russian infantry and just heave manpower at the superior guns of their enemy... but then the whole idea of it being a *secret* war becomes absurd. More absurd.

[identity profile] tyrshundr.livejournal.com 2006-08-18 05:58 pm (UTC)(link)
...Everything Will Change.

It will. I won't bother renting #3.


Somehow I do not believe you.

The PVC has you.

[identity profile] andygates.livejournal.com 2006-08-18 07:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Only if I can work out how to capture DVD frames for use as.. er.. wallpaper.