Underworld? Underwhatever.

If you watched the first installment of Underworld, then we’re really sorry. But aside from the feelings of resentment and possible shame, you would have some background that might make Evolution a bit more understandable, if not tolerable. Even though we had seen the first Underworld, we really tried to gaze upon Evolution without a tainted memory, with an open mind. We really did. And it seriously helped.

The movie opens with a deep flash back into the 1200s. Apparently, there were two brothers, twins, who were like, totally immortal and shit, who handled nasty animals with fierce and improbable regularity (‘cause they’re all tough and whatnot) and they both got bit. One dude got bit by a bat, the other by a wolf.

I bet the parties they threw were CUUUURAAZZY!

As our Appalachian cousins say: viola- the first links in the chains of Drakulas and Wolfmen were born.

But the Drakula brother was magically better at controlling his tendencies, and could mask himself as a regular joe whenever necessary. He could go from big, green fruit-bat lookin’ guy back to human warrior (with a patchy goatee) guy with little effort. The man had skillz. Wolfdude, on the other hand, had no such self-discipline. So he was on a total 24-7 blood-bender rampage, and couldn’t turn himself back into man-form to have a normal conversation about politics or getting laid with his twin bro. His entire life was consumed with roaring a-lot and eating entire towns.

And then there was their creepy immortal father, who lived on a big oil-tanker/pirate ship with his own little “Project Mayhem” crew of bald-dudes, decked out in bullet-proof black with lots and lots of guns. Dad was always looking over his two sons as they fought around the house, and then into eternity as creepy night-mutants who fought around the Earth.

Lame story short (as possible): the Vamp brother had to contain his Wolf brother in order to keep the other vampires from straight-up slaughtering his ass. Wolfdude was totally out of control, and he was turning the world’s humans into fellow wolf-beasts faster than the vampires could suck ‘em dry. It’s a question of resources here, so in order to protect their food supply the vamps locked up the Wolfdude for an eternity, in the dungeon of some lost castle in the magical Frozen-Yet-There’s-a-Running-River-There Mountains of Hasn’t-Been-Found-Yet Land. Eight hundred years later, brother Vamp returns to free brother Wolf so they could go catch a ballgame or whatever, and all hell breaks loose. Dad refuses to intervene, so he gets de-immortaled (de-immortalated? Mortaled?) and dies on his pirate ship by blowing everything up with a metal hockey puck bomb. Vamp and Wolf die really graphic deaths. The variety of cinematic death where the fifteen year-old boy in the seat behind throws up a fist and yells “fuck yeah! Die mutherfucker! YEAH!!!” with spittle flying from his lathered braces onto the back of your seat, and possibly your head.

It doesn’t matter how they did all this transitioning, because you don’t need it to enjoy the storyline:
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Hey, where DO vampires and werewolves come from anyway?

From some immortal twins who got bit by some animals and decided that killing babies was the shit. And like all siblings, they want to kill each other and their dad can’t bring himself to discipline them in public. Everyone knows this. What are you, a dumbass?

Well what about mummies and a differentiated-from-Republican-yet-solid Democratic Party Platform? What do you have on that?

Fuckin’ myths. What are you, retarded?
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So that’s your basic plot. Throw in a miniature Lara Croft with that sexy Bri’ish accent along with a really stiff-acting guy who looks like the lead singer of Creed (except for those high-pressure moments where he turns into a miniature Incredible Hulk) who become mutations of their own weirded-out selves (along with having awkward sex in a storage unit, which was totally hot, and probably got stuck in there due to the demands of all four fan-fiction blogs dedicated to Underworld, who all feverishly scribbled-in some skin-time), and you have all the necessary elements for this movie (along with a really long run-on sentence, littered with unnecessary parenthetical phrases).

Lot’s of blood is shed. There’s some vomit, slow sex, constant gun-fire, a crashing helicopter, several “OH NO SHE DI’NT!!!” moments, and all the old people in the movie get peaced-out. So it’s a family film. Kinda like Monsters Inc.

What would have been better, really, is if the writers and directors had veered completely away from the comic book thing, which is getting really tired these days anyway, and just blatantly did what they ended up fumbling around: pit two completely unrelated fantasy evils against one-another for the sake of lots of creative killing scenes, and then build a plot around how the hell that could have possibly occurred to begin with. Like that Alien Vs. Predator movie, but better (aiming low = easy street, baby). If they had approached it from this, an arguably more practical direction, they might have come up with the following far superior match-ups:

Underworld: The Decepticons vs. Mumm-Ra. Total pop-culture iconography battling it out for world domination and energon cubes (one wants them for food, the other for really fantastic looking pyramids to dwell in). You can’t go wrong with this one, especially if they continue the whole idea of blending the two. Mummy Robots that can turn into other potentially useful shit but still walk all slow amongst clouds of fetid dirt. Think about it. That’s beyond badass. Underworld Evolutions: Mechanical Fetid Dirt. Oh hell yeah.

Underworld: The Cylons of the original Battlestar Gallactica vs. Cobra Kai from Karate Kid. A gold Cylon would step to Johnny and be all “you earthlings and your imperfections will suffer the wrath of Cylondom. Stop staring at my eye.” and Johnny would look back over his shoulder to his Sensei who, with arms smugly folded, would slowly mouth the words “Sweep the leg.” A body bag would be retrieved for him, yeah.

Underworld: Scot Farkas vs. Colonel Klink. Why the hell not? Anything would be an immeasurable improvement.

Image from www.moviereporter.net