Underworld: Evolution


Underworld: Evolution is a 2006 American action horror film directed by Len Wiseman. The film is a sequel to the 2003 film, Underworld and the second installment in the Underworld franchise. In the film, Selene and Michael fight to protect the future of the Corvinus bloodline from its hidden past. Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman reprise their roles of Selene and Michael.

Plot

In 1202, an army led by the three vampire elders arrives at a Lycan-ravaged village. Viktor and Amelia capture their target, Markus's twin brother, William Corvinus, the first and most powerful werewolf. Despite Markus's defiance, Viktor orders that William be imprisoned in a secret location forever.
In the present day, vampiress Selene takes Michael to a safe house so that she can confront the vampire regent Kraven; she knows that Kraven intends to kill Markus and plans to stop him. However, Markus awakens before Kraven arrives and kills him and his men. Lorenz Macaro, an elderly man, sends in a team of "cleaners" to investigate the aftermath from the battle in the Lycans' lair. When Macaro examines Viktor's corpse he finds a metal disc inside which is the match to a pendant originally worn by Sonja. The other half of the pendant is now possessed by Michael after the death of Lucian.
Using the knowledge of computers obtained from Kraven's blood, Markus tracks Selene and Michael down and attacks them, but they evade him and hide in a warehouse. There, Selene and Michael share their feelings and have passionate sex. Now knowing that the pendant is important to Markus, Michael and Selene set out to discover why Markus wants it. Selene recalls that she saw it as a child, but does not know its significance. They travel to the hideout of the exiled vampire historian Andreas Tanis.
Tanis reveals that Markus was the first vampire, one of the three sons of Alexander Corvinus, the first immortal. Markus was bitten by a bat and metamorphosed into a vampire, while William was bitten by a wolf and metamorphosed into a werewolf. The third son remained human and gave rise to a line of mortal descendants including Michael, who became the first Lycan-Vampire hybrid. The first werewolves created by William were entirely animal and unable to return to their human forms. Due to William's destructiveness, Markus approached Viktor, then a dying mortal warlord, and offered to metamorphose him and his army into vampires in exchange for tracking down and stopping William, and in destroying those he had infected. Viktor did not kill the brothers because he was led by Markus to believe that doing so would result in the immediate extinction of all other vampires and his Lycan slaves. Tanis further reveals that Selene's father was the architect who built William's prison and that the pendant is the key. Viktor killed Selene's family because they knew the prison's location, but metamorphosed Selene into a vampiress with the location of the prison encoded in her blood. Tanis then refers Selene and Michael to Macaro for help. After Selene and Michael leave, Markus arrives and drinks Tanis' blood to learn Selene and Michael's location, killing Tanis.
Visiting Macaro, Selene and Michael discover he actually is Alexander Corvinus. Alexander reveals that he has devoted his entire immortal life to keeping the Vampire-Lycan war a secret and refuses to assist Selene in killing his sons. Markus arrives, fights Michael and impales him. He learns the location of William's prison by drinking Selene's blood before mortally wounding his father and obtaining the other half of the pendant. He mocks his father's refusal to help William, revealing that he intends, with William, to rule the world as the god-like master of a race of vampire-Lycan hybrids. On Alexander's bidding, Selene drinks his blood, enhancing her physical strength and healing abilities to a level equivalent to that of a hybrid. Afterwards, Alexander blows up his ship, killing himself.
Selene, aboard Alexander's helicopter, leads his cleaners to the prison to confront and destroy Markus, but he has already freed William. In the ensuing battle, William bites the cleaners who thus metamorphose into werewolves. Michael, presumed dead and carried aboard the helicopter, awakens and joins the fight in his hybrid form, killing William by ripping his head off. Selene engages Markus in hand-to-hand combat, killing him by pushing him into the rotor blades of the cleaners' crashed helicopter.
After the battle, Selene realizes that Alexander's blood granted her hybrid abilities, including being immune to the effects of sunlight, which is lethal to vampires.

Cast

Critical response

As of May 30, 2012, it has a 16% overall approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 101 reviews. The site's consensus reads, "A visual and aural assault on the senses, this vampire-werewolf sequel makes a lot of noise and features a heavy-handed, overly convoluted story."
A few scenes of the film were shown in a panel at Comic-Con in San Diego, in July 2005; however, these scenes did not contain any plot spoilers of the new script, with attendees only being informed about the new hybrids by production designer Patrick Tatopoulos. The previewing was well-received as hundreds of fans waited hours to see a clip of the film as well as Kate Beckinsale and the other stars of the film.
Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times criticized the film's "steel-blue filter" and described it as "a monotonous barrage of computer-generated fur and fangs". Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle began his review by saying, "you can tell that Underworld: Evolution is trying to be an artistic action-horror film, because every scene is bathed in the color blue", going on to say that the film is "an admirable attempt to test the boundaries of the genre" but that it's confusing and not fun to watch.

Box office

The film opened on 3,207 screens with a weekend box office of $26.9 million or an average of $8,388 per theater. As of March 12, 2006, the film grossed a total of $62.3 million in the United States and $111.3 million worldwide.

Music

Soundtrack

Track listing

Score

Home media

The film was released on DVD on June 6, 2006.

Prequel and sequel

The background history that led to the current Vampire-Lycan War continues in the third film of the series, the prequel '.
A fourth film, sequel to Underworld: Evolution, was released on January 20, 2012, called '.