Rise of the Lycans

Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans

To show how little I know about this franchise, I thought this was the sequel! To be honest, I never saw the first or the second Underworld movies, it's just not my cup of tea, and as hot as Beckinsale is, I didn't want to watch the movies just because she was running around in a tight black outfit shooting bad guys, good guys? I don't even know what those movies are about. I know she's a vampire, or half-vampire, or something.

I don't know objective this review can be because I thought Beckinsale was in this one! Apparently this movie takes place in the middle ages with the, ahem, rise of the Lycans, of whihc there is a hybrid type born with both smarts and ferocity. The dirty vampires enslave these new hybrid smart werewolves but that plan backfires. A new female hero, original Tomb Raider and action priestess of Doomsday plays the vampire big sister to Beckinsale, and also falls in love with the head Lycan, who becomes the leader of the Lycan resistance, rebelling against the dirty vampire overlords, with her help.


Dude is not happy

This move makes the uppity head vampire really mad, who goes crazy and gets all his armor clad vampire buddies to go after the werewolves, who have escaped, but left behind a bunch of their feral friends...and the leader's love interest.

Of course they go back, because these were wolves are pretty open minded, and they don't leave their friends and loved ones behind. A big battle ensues with agile, sword-wielding vampires fighting savage, claw and fang flashing werewolves. It actually does not go well for the vampires, who are all but wiped out. Just a few, literally, escape the massacre in their underground escape hatch via boat and the werewolves take over the huge castle and presumably the lands that were previously just stalked by them is now fully under their control. Unfortunately the head vampire father felt it necessary to punish his traitorous daughter with the ultimate recourse, death by sunlight.


"A good plan, but where will we find a wheel of cheese that large this time of day?"

If I were the head Lycan hybrid guy, I'd have transformed into my wolf form more often, especially in fighting the head vampire at the end, but he chose to wear leather armor and use twin short swords. In the grand scheme of things, I guess not having seen the first movies, seeing this prequel was the smart thing to do.

If you like the Underworld movies, chances are you've already seen too. If you can't get the same star power to last for the trilogy, the next best thing is to pull the 'big sister' card like they did here, which seemed to work out all right. The vampires were not in that ambiguous gray area for the film, they were decidedly the bad guys throughout with the werewolves being the good guys. I'm not a big vampire (or werewolf) fan but I may have to track down the other two movies just to see how the story unfolds. It's not an awful film, and fills an action / fantasy / horror niche which doesn't see the light of day too often.