PopFUZE #53

Saw Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans last night. This was a strong movie, with some great political undertones. A lot went into developing a believable love story between Lucian and Sonja. But, really, the film was pretty slow until Viktor discovers the affair. There wasn't anywhere near enough battles/ clashes for my liking, although what there was was reasonably brutal. Like the previous movies, the whole story basically takes place at night/ in the dark, which worked well in the first two as you had gunfire to illuminate the scenes; obviously, that doesn't happen in this movie.

The film looked very murky to me and there were some scenes where I couldn't really see what was happening, I think they might have used that to fudge some of the CGI, although the Lycan transformation scenes were done well.

When there was action, it was brutal, but this movie had far more character work than the first two combined; it made for an interesting exploration of the motivations of Viktor/ Sonja/ Lucian, but for a large part of the movie you essentially forgot this was supposed to be a story of warring vampires and werewolves...

One of my favourite parts of the movie was seeing Raze, the Lycan enforcer, have his more of his story revealed.

Overall, I loved the emotional arc of the movie; for Viktor, for Sonja, for Lucian. The prequel had the most powerful and tight narrative of all the movies. Loved the tie in to Selene and the first movie as well.

Have you seen this? What did you think?