Underworld: Awakening (2D) (US - BD RA)
Gabe awakens in a future where the Underworld movies still aren't very good
Feature
Six months after the events of Underworld: Evolution, humans have captured the priority vampire target, Selene (Kate Beckinsale), and put a global military crusade to exterminate vampires and lycans dubbed ‘The Purge’ into effect. The vampire survivors are forced underground where they wage guerrilla warfare against the human government. Selene and her vampire-lycan hybrid lover Michael Corvin are attacked underwater where they and frozen (somehow). Twelve years pass, and the humans have annihilated 95% of the vampire race, and believe the lycans to be entirely extinct. Selene is freed from cryogenic suspension and escapes the medical corporation, Antigen, where her cells are being used to create an antidote for the viruses that created the original vampires and lycans. Selene has strange visions that she follows, believing them to be linked to Michael. The visions lead her to a building where she encounters another surviving vampire named David (Theo James). Together they discover the visions aren’t coming from Michael, but a young girl named Eve (India Eisley) – the secret hybrid daughter of Selene and Michael.

The original Underworld got away with being generally disappointing based on its amusing concept, which came at a time when mainstream entertainment wasn’t crossing vampire and werewolf lore all too often, and Anne Rice’s romantic notions of vampire lore were dying off. Sure, Blade had already kicked and chopped his way through two action packed films, proving that the public had a taste for kung-fu action in their vampire films, but Blade is a dude, and he only fights vampires, not werewolves, leaving Underworld with at least a hint of unique quality. The first film was popular enough to re-gather the original creative team and spawn a sequel in 2006…alongside two other kung-fu fighting lady vampire movies, Kurt Wimmer’s Ultraviolet and Uwe Boll’s BloodRayne. This is not even to mention that between the first and second Underworld films a third Blade film was released, and Kate Beckinsale fought vampires and werewolves in skintight leather for Stephen Sommers’ Van Helsing. Clearly the nominally unique qualities had run their course, and audiences were left with a sad and shockingly lifeless movie in Underworld: Evolution. By the time the third film in the series was released, a prequel not staring Kate Beckinsale (note: I never saw Rise of the Lycans, so for all I know it might have been a masterpiece), Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight vampire vs. werewolf love story was a full-on phenomenon, True Blood had run a season on HBO, and any remaining good will towards the original film had evaporated into the vampire vs. werewolf ether. I find it very hard to believe anyone was really looking forward to Underworld: Awakening.
It’s an interesting enough concept to skip this far ahead in the timeline following a prequel, but there’s also a sense that Wiseman is trying to reboot the failing franchise. The previous films count towards the exposition here, but there’s not a lot in the way of callback once the story gets movie. This is also more or less the same story all over again, just set against a different timeline, with the vampires and werewolves trading social standings. The bigger problem is that there’s just isn’t a lot of story, which is a consistent theme throughout the series, especially in the case of the second film, which treaded between action scenes on the goodwill of the original film’s stolen concept. At its base Awakening is a chase flick in the Terminator mould, only without the added value of interesting characters (the rate at which major characters die is actually somewhat amusing) to . There’s an overwhelming sense of nobody really caring about the product, and simply going through the melodrama motions to find the next action sequence, like the cut scenes from a video game. And not even a good video game. There’s also no levity to speak of, not even a failed attempt at a joke. It’s genuinely depressing that it took four writers, including J. Michael Straczynski to put such an empty script together. At the very least things move very, very quickly (the runtime, minus credits, is 78 minutes), leaving us little time to grow too bored with the complete lack of intrigue.

The action theoretically works well enough, but is utterly numbing, featuring nary a single unique or even memorable image. Directors Måns Mårlind (who also directed an empty but gorgeous Swedish film called Storm) and Björn Stein deftly avoid shaky-cam clichés, but still manages to over-cut most of action, creating confusing, weightless, bombastic mash-ups in place of anything dynamic or expressive. As if they wasn’t content enough to confuse the audiences eye (and keep in mind that this was shot for 3D), many, many sequences, action and otherwise, are flooded with strobe lights. The big action beats are designed to maximize the 3D photography, which is funny because the production design is so exceedingly slick that in 2D the lack of differentiation creates a relatively flat look. Worse yet it looks cheap (the budget was reportedly $70 million), cheaper even than Daybreakers ($20 million), a film which Mårlind and cinematographer Scott Kevan liberally nab their images, as if there weren’t enough Blade-swiping Underworld films to work from. These films (along with the Resident Evil series) have never been all that gory aside from a few choice cuts, which is always a disappointment. Awakening has its share of sloppy bits, I believe more than any of the previous films (keeping in mind I haven’t seen the third one), and I admit I was quite happy to see werewolves defaced and internally exploded. Perhaps someday one of these films will really push the limits of its R-rating and get by on ridiculous gore. Assuming they continue to refuse to write interesting scripts. The special effects are weak at best, especially the heavily advertised super-lycan, but are generally serviceable considering type.
Video
Underworld: Awakening was shot for 3D using the RED EPIC HD digital camera system, which, to my eyes, appears to be the industry standard for a digital look that doesn’t ape 35mm film. This 2D release looks utterly perfect, even when trying to look gritty and imperfect. The near future world of the film is generally quite slick, including extremely smooth silk and lycra costumes, and steel and concrete sets, which puts the RED system’s ability to create soft and subtle blends to the test admirably. Even skin and hair textures are generally smoothed over, but there are still a number of textured set elements and gore effects to give the transfer a chance to show off its detail abilities. One definitively positive thing I can say for RED is that it seems to save filmmakers from darkening their films to a point of confusion (see: Thor, anything by . That soupy black look isn’t so much a problem when post production controls can ensure the important highlights are still discernable. The sharpness of these highlights is quite impressive, creating fine lines without any major blown-out white levels. The Underworld series has always been visually defined by practically monochromatic blue colour schemes. The whites are replaced with light blues and the blacks with dark blues. It’s silly, but it’s a theme. This new film mostly follows suit, but skews its blues a bit more toward teal, and replaces many of its light white highlights with, you guessed it, orange. That’s right, we’ve got another orange and teal movie. O&T doesn’t entirely define the colour scheme, there are regular deep red elements, green sneaks into the mix on occasion, and if I’m honest the orange is a little more yellow than orange, but for the most part we’re talking more of the same thing we keep seeing out of the action genre. Design flaws aside these hues look incredibly crisp and pure, without any bleeding or compression artefacts.

Audio
It’s not at all surprising that a film so focused on outstanding slickness features an extremely aggressive DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 soundtrack, but it should probably still be said – this is an extremely aggressive track. The action scenes are the obvious standouts, with their back to front machine gun fire effects, their front to back fiery explosions, growling werewolves, and zippy vampire chick flying from channel to channel, but even rather innocuous sequences feature intricate sound design practices. POV shots feature rear channel breathing effects that recreate the sound of being within one’s own head, and the sound of approaching danger and general dystopian ambience. The monster noises are ridiculously weighted by LFE enhancement, ensuring a simple growl will vibrate the room even at moderate volume levels. There are some minor inconsistencies in the basic dialogue, and volume levels of the center channel seem abnormally low for type. During dialogue heavy sequences I found myself forced to turn up the receiver, only to quickly turn it down again when the action picks up again. Paul Haslinger’s throbbing, omnipresent score is repetitive, but very well mixed, even with the loudest action noise, and features plenty of its own LFE enhancement.
Extras
The extras start with a commentary track featuring directors Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein, and producers James McQuaide, Richard S. Wright and Gary Lucchesi. This is a busy enough track, and from what I can tell everyone is to be participating (it’s hard to tell some of the voices apart) and in good spirits. Everyone seems to be proud of their work, but recognize their limitations, and are aware they aren’t reinventing the wheel here. The jokes are lame, but there’s plenty to learn from the behind the scenes process, and little time is wasted patting each other on the back. If flat commentary isn’t your thing there’s also a Blu-ray exclusive Cracking the Underworld picture in picture experience. This includes pop-up trivia notes that fill us in on the mythology of the Underworld universe that sometimes pops up on-screen text, and other times shrinks the screen to fit an additional screen that features footage from the original movies. Unfortunately the people that are most likely to care about the in-film option are fans, and I’m guessing fans already know this stuff, and likely even own the previous films. Kind of a waste, but the double screen moments at least tend to pertain to the current on-screen action.

Next up is a series of five behind the scenes featurettes. Selene Rises (12:10, HD) covers the history of the lead characters throughout the series, with producers Gary Lucchesi, Len Wiseman and Richard Wright, directors Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein, costume designer Monique Prudhomme, and actors India Eisley, Theo James, Michael Ealy and Kate Beckinsale herself slobbering all over Beckinsale’s performance. Casting the Future of Underworld (12:30, HD) features the same interviewees, along with actors Charles Dance, Stephen Rae and Kris Holden-Reid, discussing some of the new characters and cast members, and their place in the apparently continuing series. Resuming the Action (8:50, HD) features many of the same interviewees, along with second unit director and stunt designer Paul Barry discussing the film’s action, giving due credit to Barry and his stunt crew. Building a Better Lycan (10:20, HD) once again features many of the usual interviewees, along with make-up effects supervisor Todd Masters and his crew, discussing the process of making the film’s werewolves, complete with plenty of behind the scenes footage. Awakening a Franchise: Building a Brutal New World (18:50, HD) features a last interview with the usual suspects, along with celluloid effects supervisor Adreas Gutsche, sterographer Kasimir Lehto and production designer Claude Paré discussing the film production design, special effects cinematography, including a new RED camera that was produced just for the film in order to shoot 120 fps in digital 3D HD.
The extras end with a blooper reel (3:20, HD), Lacey Sturm featuring Geno Lenardo ‘Heavy Prey’ music video (3:30, HD), and trailers for other Sony releases.

Overall
The Underworld movies continue to parallel the equally mediocre Resident Evil series. Besides the odd coincidence of both series being (largely) put together by writer/director/producer and lead actress husband and wife teams (if Milla Jovovich wasn’t born in the Ukraine I could say British husband and wife teams), Resident Evil and Underworld are proudly mediocre action horror films, and have followed the same video game inspired fight/cut-scene/fight/cut-scene/boss fight formula. With Awakening the Underworld movies are now apparently making movies that bide time until the tease of a sequel, leaving audiences to pay good money to essentially watch an elongated trailer for the next film. At least the first two Underworld movies felt like complete films. This 2D release looks and sounds fantastic, so I suppose it doesn’t make the worst reference disc.
* Note: The images on this page are not representative of the Blu-ray image quality.
Review by Gabriel Powers
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Existing Posts
I like the underworld films and Resident Evil films. I can agree that Awakening is the weakest in the series and feels like a trailer for the next one.
It might have something to do with using my bd drive, PowerDVD kept defaulting to 3D even on a 2D monitor.
ShaiBrooklyn wrote: The only issue I have is that the 3D and 2D are the same. You have to watch all of the trailers in 3D to get to the menu to select 2D so in the event you don't have a 3D set its pretty vomit enducing.
The movie itself wasn't terrible but I agree on the elongated trailer comment.
you sure you didnt just experience technical issues? because in my case the trailers looked fine and full on 2D. i did notice the green band "warnings" had that floaty effect with shadows so i figured it would be 3D normally. but the trailers themselves looked fine and normal for me. not sure if it matters but i watched on my PS3 with a regular 2D tv.
i was surprised because i'd read how the trailers were also 3D so i was fully expecting a "choose your version" screen before anything happened but of course that only comes after the trailers. so i just figured that the disc somehow would know what you're using and they'd automatically be 3D if you were using a 3D tv.
The movie itself wasn't terrible but I agree on the elongated trailer comment.
you sure you didnt just experience technical issues? because in my case the trailers looked fine and full on 2D. i did notice the green band "warnings" had that floaty effect with shadows so i figured it would be 3D normally. but the trailers themselves looked fine and normal for me. not sure if it matters but i watched on my PS3 with a regular 2D tv.
i was surprised because i'd read how the trailers were also 3D so i was fully expecting a "choose your version" screen before anything happened but of course that only comes after the trailers. so i just figured that the disc somehow would know what you're using and they'd automatically be 3D if you were using a 3D tv.
Is this one of the first discs to have the new, unskippable FBI warnings on it? The genius who came up with that idea should be taken out back and and put out of or misery.
I did not have that problem since my copy features only the 2D version. That does sound terrible though.
The only issue I have is that the 3D and 2D are the same. You have to watch all of the trailers in 3D to get to the menu to select 2D so in the event you don't have a 3D set its pretty vomit enducing.
The movie itself wasn't terrible but I agree on the elongated trailer comment.
The movie itself wasn't terrible but I agree on the elongated trailer comment.
Another thing, Gabe...do you hate the word "franchise" as much as I do when describing film? It's all over the extras on this disc and it was like hearing nails on a chalkboard every time I heard it. The Resident Evil films are always described the same way by Paul W.S. Anderson, so there's another similarity for ya.
pitdeadite wrote:
Last week, the stuido registered the domain name for another sequel - "Underworld: Battle".
i hope they're just covering their bases and that isn't a serious contender for the subtitle.
Last week, the stuido registered the domain name for another sequel - "Underworld: Battle".
i hope they're just covering their bases and that isn't a serious contender for the subtitle.
Chris Johnson wrote: Everything is limited to you.
Now you're getting downright existential...
Seriously, I'm happy people enjoy these, but I think fans deserve better than trailers for the next film in the series.
Now you're getting downright existential...
Seriously, I'm happy people enjoy these, but I think fans deserve better than trailers for the next film in the series.
Last week, the stuido registered the domain name for another sequel - "Underworld: Battle".
I, for one, was ecstatic when I heard they were pushing forward with this sequel. The first two Underworld movies are my all-time favorite guilty pleasure mindless action flicks. Rise of the Lycans still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth just because it was severely unnecessary.
Underworld: Evolution is the best in the series in my opinion, and where I respect your opinion of it being "empty," Gabe, I have to totally disagree. There was more love (and a bigger budget) with that one than the first one, and the special features do reflect that. I love how the littlest detail from the first film was the centerpiece for the sequel. And the movie is just downright fun. I never tire of it.
Awakening was good overall, and I'm hoping they continue the franchise. I love Kate Beckinsale's Selene character, and am pleased she is willing to continue the series as long as there is still interest.
Underworld: Evolution is the best in the series in my opinion, and where I respect your opinion of it being "empty," Gabe, I have to totally disagree. There was more love (and a bigger budget) with that one than the first one, and the special features do reflect that. I love how the littlest detail from the first film was the centerpiece for the sequel. And the movie is just downright fun. I never tire of it.
Awakening was good overall, and I'm hoping they continue the franchise. I love Kate Beckinsale's Selene character, and am pleased she is willing to continue the series as long as there is still interest.
I think the Resident Evil movies have stormed right past, "mediocre," into "abysmal s**tstorm," territory. Still, though, good review, Gabe.
Everything is limited to you.
Over 'anything else out there now', eh? That strikes me as a very limited scope...
I will take the "Underworld" and "Resident Evil" movies over anything else out there now.
Yeah, I did catch that. I'd already written every other part of the review by then, but I probably should've still made a note.
"...the Underworld movies are now apparently making movies that bide time until the tease of a sequel, leaving audiences to pay good money to essentially watch an elongated trailer for the next film".
Don't know if you caught or not, Gabe, but one of the producers basically admitted as much and acted as if it was a good thing in one of the featurettes (I think during the "Casting the Future of Underworld" one). Ballsy.
Don't know if you caught or not, Gabe, but one of the producers basically admitted as much and acted as if it was a good thing in one of the featurettes (I think during the "Casting the Future of Underworld" one). Ballsy.
i love the franchise and really liked this movie but yeah, the "super" lycan looked pretty bad. the whole franchise never had amazing CGI but it was always good enough but this guy looks cartoony and like some video game villain. that said, i still enjoyed its presence and what it did. lol
as for the story, i remember seeing this in theaters and while i totally loved the action, i was shocked that it took a good 20mins or more before an actual story started. it was all action after action for that first chunk. that wouldnt have been so bad had the movie been the 100-120min runtime the other three were but at 80ish mins....didnt leave room for much.
so i can totally see what those who didnt like it....dont like it. but i'm easy to please so i enjoyed all of the few mins.
as for the story, i remember seeing this in theaters and while i totally loved the action, i was shocked that it took a good 20mins or more before an actual story started. it was all action after action for that first chunk. that wouldnt have been so bad had the movie been the 100-120min runtime the other three were but at 80ish mins....didnt leave room for much.
so i can totally see what those who didnt like it....dont like it. but i'm easy to please so i enjoyed all of the few mins.

Sorry y'all, running a little late on things.


Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian
Disc Details
Release Date:
8th May 2012
Discs:
1
Disc Type:
Blu-ray Disc
RCE:
No
Video:
1080p
Aspect:
2.40:1
Anamorphic:
No
Colour:
Yes
Audio:
DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 English and French, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Audio Description Track
Subtitles:
English SDH, French, Spanish
Extras:
Directors and Producers Commentary, Cracking the Underworld Picture in Picture Experience, Five Behind the Scenes Featurettes, Blooper Reel, Music Video, Trailers
Easter Egg:
No
Feature Details
Director:
Måns Mårlind, Björn Stein
Cast:
Kate Beckinsale, Sandrine Holt, Theo James, Michael Ealy, India Eisley, Stephen Rea
Genre:
Action and Horror
Length:
88 minutes
Ratings
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