Underworld Trilogy Blu-ray & DVD Sets (Sony w/Evolution + Rise Of The Lycans)

 

Underworld/Evolution/Rise Of The Lycans:

Picture: B+/C+     Sound: B+/C+     Extras: B     Films: C/C-/C+

 

 

Underworld – Rise Of The Lycans is third Underworld film, but this one departs from the Selene story and serves as a prequel to how things began.  The story arc is essentially the same, Romeo & Juliet with vampires and werewolves.  Sonja (Rhona Mitra) daughter of the king of the vampires Viktor (Bill Nighy) is in love with Lucian (Michael Sheen) a werewolf who is a slave in Viktor's kingdom.  After Lucian disobeys Viktor's law of forbidding any slave werewolf to turn into their true form, to save Sonja's life, there are severe consequences.  Lucian essentially loses his right as Viktor's most trusted slave and is severely punished.  Sonja and Lucian plan an escape to run away far from the laws forbidding them to be together.  When their plan is discovered by Viktor, Lucian knows the consequence of what the punishment for Sonja will be death and he must save her.  Lucian embraces his werewolf nature and decides to free all of the slaves and unite all werewolves in a fight against their vampire suppressors.  Anyone who has seen the prior two films, knows of this stories ending as it was seen in flashbacks, so I wont give it away here.

 

The film itself is superior to both of its successors but lacks the visual aspect.  The computer generated images are not very good here.  A lack in budget perhaps is the problem.  Also, whoever thought it was a good idea to use CGI blood splatter should never work in movies again.  It looks absolutely terrible and takes away the "believability" of the actions scenes completely. Maybe it was a budget problem.  That complaint aside, the movie is entertaining and the performances are much better than they should be.  It took me a while to even recognize Michael Sheen, who we recently saw in a superb performance and film Frost/Nixon; he far exceeds the expectation of what this role would normally be.  Bill Nighy is over acting here, as he did in all three films, but it works perfectly.

 

And Rhona Mitra (who bears a resemblance to Kate Beckinsale), can do no wrong in my eyes and fits perfectly here.  Welcoming the departure of Len Wiseman as director, Patrick Tatopoulos, who in his first feature length film does a good job of staging the story around the many action scenes.  His previous work is mostly in the special effects department, which brings me back to my earlier point, he should have known better than to use CGI blood!  Either way he could be a name we will be seeing in summer action blockbusters in the future.  As for Wiseman his third film Live Free Or Die Hard proved he might be capable of making an entertaining movie.  Let's hope he stays away from the Underworld franchise for good.

We previously reviewed the original Underworld on Blu-Ray here:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5949/Underworld+%E2%80%93+Unrated

And the Double Feature of the first two films on standard DVD here:

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8080/Underworld+&+Underworld+Evolution

 

Underworld Evolution holds the same great looking picture and sound quality as the first one did.  The 1920 x 1080p 2:40:1 Resolution looks very clear and rarely is there a flaw in it.  The audio transfer is the same as the original.  Rise of the Lycans has the same picture ratio as Evolution and looks great again.  The TrueHD 5.1 sound is exceptional, showing Sony is serious about sonic quality in their blockbuster productions.  This trilogy Blu-Ray set is a very nice addition to any library looking for great quality discs, even if the films are another story.

This trilogy edition includes the previously released individual editions on Blu-Ray with no additional features exclusive to the box set. Each individual Blu-Ray has the following:

Underworld:

Director & Cast Commentary
Outtakes
Fang Vs. Fiction
Storyboard Comparison
Finch Music Video
& 7 Making of Featurettes

Underworld – Evolution:

Director & Filmmaker Commentary
6 Making of Featurettes
Atreyu Music Video

Underworld – Rise of the Lycans:

From Script to Screen
Origin of the Feud
Re-Creating the Dark Ages
Filmmaker Commentary
& William Control Music Video

Exclusive to the Blu-Ray are:

Behind the Castle Walls Picture in Picture
& Lycanthropes Around the World an Interactive Map.

The standard release of this trilogy includes a few features from all of the movies, but does not keep them all.

 

 

-  Nate Rutkus