Underworld: Blood Wars

Underworld: Blood Wars turns out to be another movie that I consider a general "meh".

I don't consider that bad, after all the entire series just isn't very good. However, it is traditional that we try and watch this in the theater when we can. We saw the original Underworld 13 years ago when it came out, and it wasn't a masterpiece then. However in our geek subculture we thought it was awesome, a vampire versus werewolf action movie.

It turns out that Blood Wars is about the same as the rest of the movies. The plot is full of holes, the acting is poor and not anything really original. It really was a waste of Charles Dance's acting abilities (he was Thomas, the older vampire who died defending his son). You will notice I didn't say Kate Beckinsale because honestly I never found her a good actress and only liked her in the Underworld series.

The movie itself was long, boring but had interspersed some decent action scenes. The travel montage itself was probably the worst part of the movie when Selene and her companion vampire traveled north. It is boring, but the part that caught me the most was when they were on the frozen over fjords of the north and they were walking, the very next moment they are riding huge draft horses across the same ice. Where the hell did those come from. I realize they probably filmed it because it "looked cool" but dear god give us something believable to assume they found horses on the ice, with no villages around.

The Eastern Coven and the total emo/goth dress style did absolutely nothing for me. All Wolsey and I could joke around is that half the budget of the movie (and in the movie world half the cost of the coven) had to be based on the dress style of the coven. Maybe 14 years ago I would have been more impressed (and even more so 25 years ago in the early 90s) but now I just roll my eyes at the all black dress style. That trope just needs to die.

Don't even get me started on the weird Salubri crap of the Nordic Coven (white wolf reference). The mysterious "nice" vampires who can go to the other world. My biggest problem with them was that they were getting destroyed by the vampires in their coven, but were badasses when they went back to the Eastern Coven. I realize they were surprised at their home, but it was their home, they had the advantage of ground, and supposedly being great warriors, except they weren't. Yet another inconsistency in the movie.

I could go on about this, however even with all the inconsistencies I do have to say I still have a fondness for the movies and I will see the next one.

The good: I liked the action scenes, even if a bit overdone. I like the subject matter, although I could use with a little updating of the tropes used.

The bad: Plot holes I could drive a semi-truck through, bad acting, overdone tropes and can we please stop with the goth/all black look for the vampires.