Underworld (1 Viewer)

[Andy Anderson]

(tune)
"Let's all go to the moooovies. Let's all go to the moooovies."
(dancing popcorn boxes and chocolate bars inserted here)

Actually wasn't it: "Let's all go to the lobby..and buy ourselves a snack.." ?

 

[Steve_Tk]

Holy heated debate batman. I wish I knew what this was all about. Have people been waiting on this one for a long time?

 

[Vlad D]

Have people been waiting on this one for a long time?

Yep. Although I only found out about this movie in May, this thread was started in February.

I'm really excited about this one. Ever since I was a child, I've loved just about anything having to do with vampires (maybe it has something to do with my name - Vladimir ) and different people's interpretation of them. Can't wait to see what they do with them in this movie.

Nice to see this thread is lightening up.

Vlad (maybe I'll change my last name to Tepes, although my wife may not like that )

 

[Vlad D]

Here is an excerpt from an interview (dated July 21, so I apologize to those that have alread seen it)with Kate Beckinsale. She explains some pretty interesting, IMO, ideas that they came up with for the movie.

Unlike most horror movies, this movie doesn’t rely on the classic myths and legends surrounding the killing of vampires and werewolves. “We heal like vampires do. We don’t have a whole lot about garlic and crucifixes. We don’t have any of that. It’s much more high-tech than that. The werewolves kill with ultraviolet bullets that shoot daylight into us. I can jump from this great height and land. We don’t turn into bats. None of the stuff that kind of makes me feel a bit [creepy] about doing a vampire movie is really in it, which I was kind of glad about. We shoot the werewolves with silver nitrate bullets. It’s really just having a couple of big-ass Glocks,” explained Beckinsale.

The entire interview can be found here: Kate

 

[Seth Paxton]

Well, I don't really want to get into the middle of the various sub-debates about why this film will be good or bad in terms of the genre type, etc.

But I did want to say that personally I find the trailer about as off-putting as it can get. The film is so heavily cribbing from Matrix, Blade, and The Crow that I have zero interest. As a director if you can't think of your own scenes to stage then why do I as an audience member have any faith in you to be creative anywhere else in the film.

We aren't talking about similar looking stuff here, there are shots that are almost directly taken from those other films AND done in the exact same style as well. Everyone's debating the Kill Bill cash-in from splitting that film into two films, but to me Underworld looks to be the bigger cash-in on the Matrix craze.

Maybe I'm jaded because I've already had to sit through so many of these sub-genre rip-off patterns that every smash hit film produces (like Star Wars and the space copies, Raiders and the adventure copies, etc).

To me Underworld appears to have stopped bringing new ideas to the table once the script was done. I feel insulted that someone thinks they can just resell me a Crow sounding, Matrix-techniqued/staged, Blade film and I will run out to see it.


As always, if the large cross-section of reviews I read points in a direction that says this impression is wrong, I will go see the film. But as it stands it just feels as much like a cash-in as The Real Cancun.

Quik-cuts are part and parcel in most trailer construction, making it easy to hide many problems or difficulties that were encountered in complicated action sequences

This is all too true. Nicholas Nicholby's trailer featured a sped-up camera movement that was actually altered from the film version, simply to give it that "hipper" style.

In this case, however, the biggest reason this still worries me is that what they chose to put in the trailers only serves to wave a bigger red flag of rip-of. Perhaps in someone's effort to sell the film they have done a reverse disguising of those similarities, making them worse rather than better.

But never-the-less, they do show extended shots that look directly lifted from the outtakes of those other films.


I'm not trying to crap on the thread. After all this is simply a pre-release discussion and no one can defend the film as good at this point either. Perhaps when it's released and becomes the Casablanca of action my words here can be shoved right back in my face. I just wanted to express my opinion of how the trailer campaign on this film has affected me, and clearly that differs from many others here.

And keep in mind that I don't think you are stupid, dumb, tasteless or whatever for wanting to see this film at this point. Either the ads (and info) work on you or they don't, that has very little to do with actual film quality. And even if the film sucked and you knew it, that still doesn't mean that if it's your type of genre/story that you should skip it anyway. We all like crap when it still contains some elements that we connect with. Some film types are like sex for people, even the crappy efforts are a good time for them.

 

[TheLongshot]

But I did want to say that personally I find the trailer about as off-putting as it can get. The film is so heavily cribbing from Matrix, Blade, and The Crow that I have zero interest. As a director if you can't think of your own scenes to stage then why do I as an audience member have any faith in you to be creative anywhere else in the film.

To be honest, I think it is kinda hard to look "gothic", and not have people think "The Crow", or have Vampires fighting in the modern day, and not think of "Blade". I'll be the dissenter here and say that there isn't much here that looks like "The Matrix". Yeah, there looks like there's some wire work, but it doesn't remind me of "The Matrix" at all.

Course, marketing of films is often based on what is familiar to the audience, that if they connect with the audience with what they already like, they can get people to go see this film. Hey, do you like "Blade"? Come see our film!

Trailers can be big liars, tho, and not tell you what the film is really about. "Nightbreed" comes to mind. All of the ads that I remember seemed to scream 'generic horror film'. When I saw it much later on home video, I was pleasently surprised that it was much more than that.

Jason

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Jason,
In the main trailer, about 00:09 seconds in, there are some twin guns shots that appear DIRECTLY out of the lobby scene in The Matrix.

I admit I am being very forgiving of this film...vampires vs. werewolves. Kate narrating some shots.

Take care,
Chuck

 

[MickeS]

Yes, like I said in an earlier post, it just seems way too derivative of other movies to really catch my interest.

The website is even called www.entertheunderworld.com which at least makes me think of the game "Enter The Matrix".



Well, like someone said (I think most recently on "Project Greenlight") if you have to add narration to a movie, there's definitely a problem with it.

 

[TheLongshot]

In the main trailer, about 00:09 seconds in, there are some twin guns shots that appear DIRECTLY out of the lobby scene in The Matrix.

Which was a ripoff of John Woo. They both steal from the same source.

My statement still stands.

Jason

 

[Hunter P]

Bah, the Kevin Bacon rule applies to special effects and plot devices too. I could tell you where some shot was stolen from the Matrix who stole it from some anime movie which stole it from...

There are no original ideas so why do we always argue about it? Me, I don't give a rat crap about that. To me it's all in the execution. If you're gonna rip it then at least add to it and make it your own. Try not to carbon copy it, and definitely don't fuck it up.

With that said, did anyone else think of the movie Nemesis (1993) when seeing the shot of Kate shooting a hole in the floor? I still think one of the best action sequences is when Alex does it in Nemesis through several floors. Now that's my kind of elevator!

(Did anyone else see Nemesis? Don't tell me I'm the only one. That movie is one bad-ass B movie.)

 

[Walter Kittel]

OT: Nemesis is one of my favorite guilty pleasures. For my money, it does a fine job of capturing the cyperpunk aesthetic, and actually does a better job in that regard than some better pedigreed films. And yes, it did remind me of Alex shooting through 4 floors.

- Walter.

 

[Marc_Sulinski]

OT: Nemesis is one of my favorite guilty pleasures. For my money, it does a fine job of capturing the cyperpunk aesthetic, and actually does a better job in that regard than some better pedigreed films. And yes, it did remind me of Alex shooting through 4 floors.

Is this movie available on DVD in OAR? I checked out dvdempire, and it lists it as 1.33:1. Is this OAR?

 

[Walter Kittel]

Nemesis: I've only seen the film in 1.33:1 ( on cable and the DVD release. ) IMDB says that the film's A.R is 1.85:1 so I'm going to guess and say that the DVD is open matte. I don't recall how much headroom is present in the film, so that is purely a guess. Off the top of my head, I don't recall any scenes that just scream out P&S.

- Walter.

 

[Michael Martin]

Tasty actresses in fetish-wear?

Hmmm...now if we could just think of a way to bring Kate's character from Underworld together with J-Lo's dream version of her character in The Cell....

 

[Elbert Lee]

I find that some movie goers are "jaded" with some genres while some are not. Just a matter of each individual's personal experience with different varieties of film. For myself, I always look for something compelling that will draw me into the story, regardless of whether the style of action has been done before. I am someone who is "jaded" with movies that were soley written around 4-7 obligatory action sequences (most of the 007 movies in recent history) and have no concept of what it takes to keep an audience interested in how things unfold (True Lies).
EL

 

[rin]

Good thing, too, because the vast majority of them aren't. But is art---including the performing arts---only for pure entertainment value (which seems to be your premise)?

Don't you just love these budding film critics' response when you ask them why they can't just enjoy the movie without picking apart every last detail? They always seem to come up with these self-fulfilling prophecies...

 

[Hunter P]

Gee, great, Rin. Thanks for bringing this to the forefront again. I had hoped we moved past this.

 

[rin]

Gee, HunterP, I guess you thought wrong, but thanks anyway.

I will be eagerly waiting the reviews by those who bashed it in this thread but will go see it anyway.

I think Underworld looks cool!

 

[Sean Laughter]

I didn't see this in the topic, so if I've missed it just ignore please:

White Wolf, who makes the pen & paper RPG "Vampire: The Masquerade" has filed suit concerning copyright infringement and the film "Underworld." Link to WW's press release here:

http://www.white-wolf.com/News/underworldrelease.html

I've never actually played the P&P game of V:TM, but I do own the rule book to the main series, just because it is a fairly interesting set-up with all the clans of vampires and how they interact. In the WW universe Werewolves and Vampires are mortal enemies, though from what I've heard about the movie Kate's character is a werewolf hunter, but I believe in White Wolf's universe Vampire's are deathly afraid of Werewolves and run like hell when they encounter them, lol. They also make games set in the same universe, "Werewolf", "Hunter" (that is Vampire hunters), and "Mage." I know the "Werewolf," "Hunter," and "Vampire" stories are all intertwined in the same world, not sure about "Mage" though.

The PR claims there are 60 points of similarity or something between the movie and apparently a novel based off of White Wolf's game universe and the game universe in general. I haven't read the whole thing very carefully.

Wonder if the release date of the film will be affected by this?

 

[Vlad D]

If find it interesting that White Wolf is suing Sony Pictures, Screen Gems and Lakeshore Entertainment citing "17 counts of copyright infringement," and "60 points of unique similarity between Underworld and their work" just as Underworld is about to be released.

I'm very familiar with Vampire: The Masquerade, and a little bit with Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and while I can definitely see some similarities in the Underworld trailer to the White Wolf games, I wouldn't go as far as to call them copyright infringements. But I guess I'll have to see the movie to know exactly the extent of these similarities and if they are actually copyright infringements. But it just seems to me that maybe White Wolf is looking for some PR. I don't recall them suing New Line over Blade and Blade 2, and there were similarities in those movies also.