Underworld: Awakening - It’s a new world
- 20 August 2011
- Gerard Wood
The fourth instalment in the über-stylish Underworld series, Underworld: Awakening, is due in January 2012 and the first trailer has just been unleashed. Len Wiseman, who wrote and directed the first two movies in the series, Underworld and Underworld: Evolution, was replaced at the helm by Patrick Tatopoulos for the third movie, and although Wiseman is credited with involvement with the writing of the fourth movie, he didn't return to direct. Instead, direction is in the hands of a duo of Swedish filmmakers, Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein. Mårlind and Stein are a fairly unknown quantity with only one movie to their credit, a horror called Shelter, and some work in television.
The first two movies introduced us to the ancient blood-feud between Vampires and their former slaves, the Lycans, a war that has raged across time but comes to a head with the evolution of a hybrid Vampire-Lycan, Michael Corvin. The second movie ends ambiguously for the Vampire heroine, Selene (Kate Beckinsale), and Michael: the war continues but the landscape has changed forever and chaos is threatened.
Wiseman always maintained that the Underworld storyline was intended as a trilogy and back in 2006 revealed that the third film would be a prequel. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans took us back to the origins of the blood-feud: Lucien, a Lycan slave, fell in love with Sonja, a Vampire and daughter of Viktor, Lord of the Vampires. Under Lucien’s leadership the werewolves rise up against their masters in a titanic struggle to win their freedom but Lucien is recaptured along with Sonja, and Viktor cruelly puts his daughter to death.
Set long before Selene’s time, Kate Beckinsale didn't grace the screen for the prequel.
The good news is that Underworld is now a trilogy in four parts (thank you Douglas Adams) and Kate Beckinsale is back in the form fitting black leather as Selene. At least twelve years have passed since the events in Underworld: Evolution but what has transpired is unclear: what we do know is that Selene was captured and has been held prisoner for twelve years. Breaking free she finds herself in a new world in which humans have discovered the existence of both Vampire and Lycan clans and are conducting an all-out war to eradicate both species.
The cast includes Charles Dance, Stephen Rea, Michael Ealy, Sandrine Holt and India Eisley. The screenplay is by J. Michael Straczynski with writing credits given to Allison Burnett, Kevin Grevioux, John Hlavin, Danny McBride and Len Wiseman.
Naturally (sigh), Underworld: Awakening will be in 3D, but we can live in hope that the 3D will be more than an irritating gimmick and actually contribute something to the story-telling.
Underworld: Awakening is due 20 January 2012.
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