Underworld: Evolution is a 106-minute sequel that spends most of its runtime explaining why the first film happened. Len Wiseman directs from a screenplay by Danny McBride, working from a story by Wiseman and McBride. Kate Beckinsale returns as Selene, the vampire Death Dealer, and Scott Speedman returns as Michael Corvin, the Lycan-Vampire hybrid. Sony Pictures Releasing put it in American theaters on January 20, 2006, after a premiere at the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles on January 11.
The film carries a critical score of 1.7 out of 10. That number is not a joke and not a rounding error. It is what happens when a franchise mistakes its own backstory for a plot.
Trailer, via Lakeshore Entertainment.
Selene and Michael in the Warehouse
The story picks up where Underworld left off. Selene takes Michael to a safe house so she can confront Kraven, the vampire regent, and stop him from killing Markus. Markus wakes first. He kills Kraven and Kraven’s men before that confrontation can happen.
Lorenz Macaro sends a team to investigate the Lycans’ lair after the battle. Macaro examines Viktor’s corpse and finds a metal disc. The disc matches a pendant once worn by Sonja. Michael holds the other half, which he got after Lucian died.
Markus uses computer knowledge pulled from Kraven’s blood to track Selene and Michael. He attacks. They evade him and hide in a warehouse. There, Selene and Michael share their feelings and have sex.
That is the shape of Underworld: Evolution. A chase, a kill, a piece of jewelry, another chase.
Andreas Tanis Explains the Bloodline
Selene and Michael work out that the pendant matters to Markus. They go to the hideout of Andreas Tanis, an exiled vampire historian played by Steven Mackintosh. Tanis delivers the film’s central exposition.
Markus was the first vampire. He was one of three sons of Alexander Corvinus, the first immortal, played by Derek Jacobi. A bat bit Markus, and he became a vampire. A wolf bit William, and he became a werewolf. The third son stayed human. That third son gave rise to a line of mortal descendants including Michael, who became the first Lycan-Vampire hybrid.
The first werewolves created by William were entirely feral and unable to return to human form. That is the film’s actual engine. Everything else is people running through corridors toward it.
The 1202 opening sets this up. An army led by the three vampire elders — Markus, Viktor, and Amelia — arrives at a village full of Werewolves. Viktor and Amelia capture William Corvinus, Markus’s twin brother and the first and most powerful werewolf. Markus defies the order. Viktor imprisons William in a secret location anyway.
A Cast Doing Work the Script Does Not
Bill Nighy returns as Viktor. Derek Jacobi arrives as Alexander Corvinus. Tony Curran plays Marcus Corvinus. Shane Brolly plays Kraven. Zita Görög plays Amelia. Brian Steele plays William Corvinus. Michael Sheen returns as Lucian.
That is a serious cast for a film with this little for them to do. Jacobi, in particular, is given the job of standing around as the origin of all immortality. He does it. The film does not reward him.
The returning players, in order of what the sequel asks of them:
- Kate Beckinsale as Selene — she carries the film from the first frame to the last.
- Bill Nighy as Viktor — a corpse for most of the running time, and still a presence.
- Scott Speedman as Michael Corvin — the hybrid the bloodline turns on.
- Michael Sheen as Lucian — present in the backstory, absent from the room.
Speedman has the hardest job in the film. Michael is the reason the bloodline matters, and he is written as a man who reacts rather than acts. The warehouse scene is where he gets the most to do.
The Pendant Is Not a Plot
The metal disc and the pendant are the film’s mystery. The film treats them as a mystery. They are not. They are a delivery system for the Tanis scene, and once Tanis talks, the object stops mattering.
Underworld: Evolution runs 106 minutes. The 1202 prologue, the Macaro investigation, the warehouse, the Tanis hideout, and the Markus pursuit fill that time. The genres listed are fantasy, action, and thriller. The action is competent. The fantasy is dense. The thriller is not thrilling, because the film keeps stopping to explain itself.
The tagline reads: “A new race. A new battle. A new hero…” There is no new hero. Selene was the hero of Underworld in 2003. She is the hero here. Michael is the new race, and the film treats him as a plot device with a pulse.
What the 1.7 Actually Measures
Underworld: Evolution grossed over $113 million worldwide against a production budget of $45 million. That is the number that made the series viable. The critical score of 1.7 out of 10 measures something else: how little the film gives a viewer who is not already inside the lore.
The sequel assumes you remember the first film and then spends time on a 1202 flashback and a corpse inspection. That is a strange choice for a film with a $45 million budget and a January release date.
The franchise continued anyway. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, a prequel, arrived in 2009. Underworld: Awakening, a direct sequel, followed in 2012. The series did not need good reviews to continue; it had the $113 million.
What Underworld: Evolution gets right is Beckinsale. She holds the frame, and the film knows it. What it gets wrong is everything the film was built to deliver: the reveal of the Corvinus bloodline, the first vampire, the first werewolf, the hybrid. Those are good ideas handed to a script that states them instead of dramatizing them. Tanis explains the mythology in a room. The 1202 prologue stages it as a capture. Neither scene makes you feel the weight of a bloodline that produced two species and one man caught between them.
The warehouse scene is the closest the film comes to a pulse. It is also one of the few scenes where Selene and Michael are allowed to be two people instead of two pieces of exposition walking toward the next set piece. That the film cannot build on it is the whole problem in miniature.
Underworld: Evolution is not a bad idea. It is a bad delivery of a good idea, and the 1.7 out of 10 is the correct verdict. The franchise survived on its box office and its lead. It did not survive on this film.
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