Vampires vs. werewolves pre-Twilight

Rating: 4/10 (19 May 2016)

These two never get along with each other and this was also already the case in the American movie "Underworld" from almost 15 years ago. The writer and director here is Len Wiseman and he also worked on all the sequels that follow up on this one, also the upcoming as this series here, in contrast to Twilight is still running and dishing out a new installments every couple years. I personally found Kate Beckinsale and Michael Sheen the most interesting performances and their characters the most interesting as well from this movie. I guess it was not their fault that I did not end up liking this film. One major reason may be that the (director's cut) version I watched easily went for longer than two hours. And I have to say the story material they had here, looking only at the important and successful stuff, is no more than 90 minutes. Probably less. The rest felt just like incredibly forgettable filler material.
That is why, in my opinion of course only, it is far from justified that this has become such a long-running series. Maybe I'm not doing the makers justice, but if we are looking at the entire franchise, they really need to step up their game compared to this one here, especially in terms of essentialism and focus. And maybe also in terms of more interesting characters as this film relies a lot on makeup and tries to make up for lack of great character development and elaborations. I will maybe check out some of the more recent installments at some point in the future and see if they managed to do so. I guess this series is only still running because people still go to the theaters to watch these films, so you cannot really blame the makers for that fact. This is how things roll today in terms of franchises that include many movies. As for how it all started, namely with the 2003 film "Underworld", I dish out a thumbs-down and don't recommend the watch.