There's a disturbing lack of magic of any sort in these.
One day the fantasy genre will work its way out of the Hollywood ghetto its been toiling in. That day is not today.
How did we get to 5 of these things across a 13 year time span?
I won’t pretend to have ever been a particular fan of the “Underworld” franchise but there’s nothing wrong with being a B-movie that knows exactly the kind of simple thrills and diverting lateral moves that its audience wants to take away to pass the time and even though it hasn’t exactly worked for me, the series is undeniably successful at offering its audiences just that.
The adventures of Selene and her efforts to survive a war between Vampires and Werewolves (or Lycans as they’re referred to) that is crumbling society and the world is like the White Wolf “World of Darkness” fan’s equivalent of “The Fast and the Furious.”
Up to this point, the series has managed a decent job of keeping its lore in check and story moving forward That may not sound like much of an accomplishment but as I’ve said before, the movies ultimately know they’re place even if they revel in stylistic and occasionally soap operatic cheese.
So exactly what went wrong here has me more than a little bit baffled.
“Underworld: Blood Wars” sees the Vampire/Lycan war continue to rage on across the globe, with Selene being asked to return to the Vampires to end the war once and for all, oblivious to the hidden motives of her people’s leadership to find her vampire/lycan hybrid daughter in an effort to vaguely weaponize her blood.
That’s about what little plot can be truly gleaned from this mini catastrophe of production because whatever criticisms of thin narrative, wooden and hammy acting, bad dialogue or whatever have you that one may have been able to throw at the previous “Underworld” movies, it wasn’t easy to call them incoherent.
For all their posturing of deep lore and tumultuous politics, “Underworld’s” actual plots don’t really extend beyond reach point A from point B and kill all of the monsters that stand in the way.
“Blood Wars” runs through a lot of locales with Selene interacting with quite a few characters and not once does any sense of what motivates her or anybody else properly shine through. It’s like watching the most dramatic bits of a soap opera without having seen any character build up to the exchanges in question. The second it seems like some sort of story might be happening, a betrayal and action sequence plow in out of nowhere to leave you mildly confused enough for the process to repeat itself in another 15 minutes.
Perhaps this all could have worked as some sort of action reel but this is one of the major areas where the film completely drops the ball.
As some sort of standalone direct to video venture, maybe “Blood Wars” would be mildly admirable in its ability to make something from few resources in a release with little stakes but the reality is that this is where the franchise has simply run out of steam.
Not one bit of the choreographed action impresses but horrendously low technical standards of the film are the real standout misstep that drags it below being even a “so bad, it’s fun” watch. The lycan transformation effects are so hilariously awful that they somehow make the original, now 14 year old “Underworld” look like a more modern big budget feature comparatively. The slick and rubbery CGI displayed proudly front and center as though the technology hasn’t been better mastered in films with even cheaper budgets and doesn’t even come close to some of the rough effects in “Blade” from almost 20 years ago.
The effects and piss poor fight choreography make for a lifeless slog of an action movie, with no attachable sense of character or storytelling to make the experience the least bit more tolerable, wrapped in a bow of editing so amateurish, you would almost swear they were making some of these bad choices on purpose. Two party conversations with cuts for facial reactions every 2 seconds, cutting with no establishing shot to completely different locations, you name it, they mess it up.
I accidentally watched the first 5 minutes of the film on fast forward after dropping my Playstation 4 controller and rectified the error before starting over. I later chose to rewatch the entire first third of the movie thinking maybe I didn’t readjust the play speed properly and was shocked to learn that the bad ADR, accelerated motion, and lack of natural silence or dialogue cadence was all the default speed.
“Underworld” may be a diverting guilty pleasure of a series for the right audience but “Blood Wars” is just so bad its insufferable. Even the usually reliable Kate Beckinsale spends the runtime looking like she’s constantly eyeballing the exit for the shoot.
If the filmmakers were going to put such little care into this product, the least they could have done was drop it where its audience wasn’t forced to go out to see it if they even wanted to bother.
It’s not like we’re living in the age of streaming.
I suppose people will have needed to generally care about “Underworld” to get worked up over it but in light of viewing it, knowing fully that it had a proper domestic and international theatrical release, I can’t quite bring myself to swing against “Bright” as one of the worst films of the year the way many critics have hailed it as.
Now some of that is that I personally don’t believe that it’s quite as bad as the reputation preceding it but the tale of an Orc cop’s training on a fantasy Earth and the struggle of him and his partner to survive a gangland struggle between criminals, cultists, and corrupt law enforcement after discovering a destructive and potentially reality warping magical wand follows an admirable production model that I hope Hollywood takes note of when they need to burn movies off.
“Bright” was savaged by critics upon its December release on Netflix and it’s not exactly hard to see why.
Director David Ayer handles the technical aspects decently but there’s no dismissing the lazy storytelling at play with the film’s world building.
The lack of diversity in imagery or exploration of societal mechanics leave the only understanding of this being an alternate universe as whatever dialogue awkwardly fuses modern vernacular with vague defeat of “The Dark Lord” from millennia ago. This is of course, when the main protagonists aren’t dealing with the evil cultists putting the world at large, at which point, you really wish you had a better understanding of how law enforcement jurisdictions work when status quo can be so easily and casually upended.
While the concept and setting of “Bright” is really its main star, the problematic storytelling that sits at its core badly damages the ability to properly enjoy it as much as you really want to, which does unfortunately undercut many of the movie’s better set pieces and more poignant moments regarding racial tensions and the ways that the past never truly releases its hold over future society.
Fortunately, the paintjob of the setting, despite being rendered effectively hollow, does at least lend itself well to a work of stylish technical competence.
“Bright” isn’t exactly a good movie but I would posit that its approach to its subject matter makes that somewhat incidental to its actual goal; exploring a relevant issue through a high concept production that was never going to be everybody’s cup of tea. The movie almost feels like homage to works such as Wolfgang Petersen’s “Enemy Mine” or Graham Baker’s “Alien Nation,” utilizing a pulpy, lacking in subtlety visual aesthetic to challenge viewers to find humanity in something that feels very firmly alien. That isn’t to say this film even comes close to either of those but it does make the movie’s many shortcomings a bit easier to digest.
Much of the movie’s action, consisting mostly of shootouts is well paced and generally well shot while the weirder magical stuff actually lands with impact.
The biggest saving grace in “Bright’s” arsenal is perhaps its performances, which lend themselves to some of the best displays of world building that the movie has to offer and provide something worth actually investing in when the movie looks to lose steam before the credits roll.
Will Smith knows how to do gruff yet charming in his sleep, so his turn as veteran LAPD officer Ward is pretty standard faire but every once in a while he gets to stretch himself with moments of grappling with compartmentalized racism and consideration for partaking in police corruption that touch on systemic and institutional angles of societal racism that rarely get highlighted when the topic is explored.
Meanwhile, Joel Edgerton continues to show why he’s one of the best working actors today, with his take on orc officer, Jakoby, whose desire to honor his Orc heritage while following his dream as a law enforcer puts him at odds with both communities that he belongs to but he fights to never let it bring down his endearingly sunny and optimistic demeanor.
He’s cheerful, welcoming, and sincere but not socially naïve despite being green to his job and Edgerton nails it, making him feel more real than the actual human characters of the movie and all through hefty makeup and prosthetics that would’ve hindered lesser talent.
“Bright” is a very lopsided movie. Where it fails, it does so painfully and where it succeeds, it does so in spades. The only thing that keeps me from proclaiming it a successful B-movie is that it you can see very clearly just how much money it had pumped into it for a project that’s unfortunately been slightly miscalculated.
That said however, while it probably would have been a disaster rolling out into theaters, the reality that streaming it in whatever comfort you choose as its debut has made an undeniable impact upon the way that the film industry should probably be choosing to roll out its products.
“Bright’s” promise of polish and development via potential franchise treatment is far from new but the idea of it is far easier to swallow knowing that it can be done without paying to be in a theater you don’t want to be in. While I don’t want that notion to ever be a substitute for actual quality, it does pose an interesting question regarding how our perceptions of a film can change when the circumstances of viewing them become less demanding.
Next time, things get a little less original when Crapshoot looks at old TV shows that should've stayed in the media graveyard.
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