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Selene the vampire woman shoots more werewolves.  The End.

If you've seen any of the other Underworld movies, you know what to expect.  If you liked them, you should like this one, too.  I admit that the Underworld series is a guilty pleasure of mine, and this entry was fun enough.  The cracks are starting to show, however.

At this point, they've finally given up even pretending to have a plot, which is probably a good thing.  The "story" is just a succession of excuses to have vampires and werewolves beat the hell out of one another (even moreso than before, I mean).  The budget is obviously lower this time around and the gore has been trimmed back, which makes me think that at some point the plan was for a PG-13 rating for theatrical release and an R-rated DVD/Blu-Ray edition.  The major "plot" element of this movie was obviously introduced with an eye toward easing the series's inevitable transition to straight-to-video.  Here it is:  Awakening introduces a new werewolf/vampire hybrid, genetically-engineered from Michael Corvin's DNA and, apparently, gestated in and birthed from Selene's womb.  (Michael and Selene are captured and used for scientific study near the beginning of the film.)  This character is obviously intended to be the new heroine of the series in future installments, when the budget finally won't be enough to afford Kate Beckinsale anymore.

Oh, and humanity has finally officially discovered vampires and lycans, and wiped out most of them.  Not that this makes any difference to how things play out.  Vampires and lycans both still live in small groups, still fight each other, and still don't seem to give a damn about hiding, however much they may say they do.  The only thing different is that the vampires don't hang out in goth costumes being arrogant and debauched ... they hang out in goth costumes being pitiful and pining for the old days.

One thing that is surprisingly good is the quality of the CGI.  Many of the werewolves are men-in-suits spruced up with CGI, and it works really well.  Even the full-on CGI werewolves are animated with a sense of mass and presence that's far better than the first couple of Underworld movies, despite the lower budget they had to work with.

So, yeah.  It's an Underworld movie.  Kate Beckinsale's ass is clad in tight vinyl, her machine pistols fire roughly 1500 shots before needing a reload, and werewolves run on walls.  Go into it expecting not much more than that and you should be happy enough.  I hope the next entry in the series is either much better or much, much worse.  If things continue on like this, the series will be just competent enough to get very boring.

I enjoyed the first two movies.  The fictional world was new with the first one, and the second had good atmosphere.  But the characters are way too stylized and uber-cool for me to relate to them or care about them on any level, and the GCI battles, no matter how well done, just get old after a while.  Always up for Kate Beckinsale's ass in tight vinyl of course  :smile:

You'd think that based on how they look...  But in fact, the first Underworld has a quite low budget of $23 million.  Evolution seems to be $50 million, Rise of the Lycan had $35 million and Awakening has a budget of $70 million.

I quite agree that the first Underworld LOOKS better and more expensive than Awakening though.  I suspect just how far Len Wiseman managed to make that money stretch is the major reason he got to do Live Free or Die hard.

Awakening looks rushed.  I suspect a brief pre-production and behind the scenes issues there.  That and directors not used to such a large production. 

On another note, am I the only one constantly rooting for the werewolves?  They're way more interesting characters, and the vampires are more-or-less evil.

 :buggedout:  Wow.  Awakening looks like a slightly-better-than-average funded DTDVD movie, while the other three look really great.  I suppose the people behind Awakening put almost everything into the costumes and CGI for the werewolves, and on my second viewing I think I detected a fair number of scenes shot in front a greenscreen with the environment CGI'd in later.  Everything else about Awakening -- the costumes, the number of extras in certain scenes, the "size" of the movie -- feels smaller and cheaper than previous installments in the series.

And no, you aren't the only one rooting for the werewolves.  That's why Rise of the Lycans is my favorite of the series.  In fact, when Selene found out that almost all the vampires around the world had been wiped out, I said, "Good!"

I'd also hazard a guess and say they had to give Kate Beckinsale a big chunk of money to come back.  That's probably at least $10 million of the budget right there.

Also, totally agree on Rise of the Lycans - characters with clear, good motivations you can root for > characters who wander around doing stuff for 90 minutes.