Underworld
Sep. 19th, 2003 07:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwangoI went to see Underworld this afternoon before anyone could ruin it for me. I enjoyed it, though I'll concede that the film was far from perfect.
I noticed a few flubs in the effects, and there was some weak acting. On the whole, though, I thought the effects were handled well, and most of the main characters were well portrayed. The story itself was much more complex than I expected, and I was pleased by that. It had a few flaws of its own, but on the whole I found it enjoyable and reasonably well-assembled.
Very Mild Spoilers
From things I heard about the White Wolf lawsuit, I had gathered that the book White Wolf contends the movie borrows from is an interpretation of Romeo & Juliet. If that's the case with the book, and the film truly borrowed heavily from it, then logically the film would also bear a strong resemblance to Romeo & Juliet. I found part of the back story to be vaguely reminiscent of Romeo & Juliet, but not strongly so. For one thing, the "forbidden union" was only forbidden by one side. For another, there are no tragic suicides present anywhere in the film. To me, those two differences immediately tear down any comparisons between Shakespeare's story and the film's story. Of course, not having read the book mentioned in the lawsuit, I still have no idea how similar it is to the movie, and thus how much weight the lawsuit actually carries.
My main complaints: I felt that some of the character motivations were poorly explained. It was never made clear to me exactly what Lucien hoped to gain from his work. I would have liked a little more information regarding which pieces of vampire/werewolf mythology were being used. I understand that including that information could have required awkward exposition, but I still found myself wondering about a few things. In particular, I was a little fuzzy on how much damage you actually need to inflict on a vampire or werewolf before they are unable to heal. There seemed to be a large difference in the power of different elder vampires, which seemed odd. I don't know if this was just supposed to be something that we accept, or if it's a plot hole. Finally, several nifty widgets were cleary only included in the film because they would look cool, and didn't seem to be particularly effective weapons. Other nifty widgets, on the other hand, were kind of nifty and effective, so that was nice.
I noticed a few flubs in the effects, and there was some weak acting. On the whole, though, I thought the effects were handled well, and most of the main characters were well portrayed. The story itself was much more complex than I expected, and I was pleased by that. It had a few flaws of its own, but on the whole I found it enjoyable and reasonably well-assembled.
Very Mild Spoilers
From things I heard about the White Wolf lawsuit, I had gathered that the book White Wolf contends the movie borrows from is an interpretation of Romeo & Juliet. If that's the case with the book, and the film truly borrowed heavily from it, then logically the film would also bear a strong resemblance to Romeo & Juliet. I found part of the back story to be vaguely reminiscent of Romeo & Juliet, but not strongly so. For one thing, the "forbidden union" was only forbidden by one side. For another, there are no tragic suicides present anywhere in the film. To me, those two differences immediately tear down any comparisons between Shakespeare's story and the film's story. Of course, not having read the book mentioned in the lawsuit, I still have no idea how similar it is to the movie, and thus how much weight the lawsuit actually carries.
My main complaints: I felt that some of the character motivations were poorly explained. It was never made clear to me exactly what Lucien hoped to gain from his work. I would have liked a little more information regarding which pieces of vampire/werewolf mythology were being used. I understand that including that information could have required awkward exposition, but I still found myself wondering about a few things. In particular, I was a little fuzzy on how much damage you actually need to inflict on a vampire or werewolf before they are unable to heal. There seemed to be a large difference in the power of different elder vampires, which seemed odd. I don't know if this was just supposed to be something that we accept, or if it's a plot hole. Finally, several nifty widgets were cleary only included in the film because they would look cool, and didn't seem to be particularly effective weapons. Other nifty widgets, on the other hand, were kind of nifty and effective, so that was nice.
