Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

Patrick Tatopoulos designed the creatures on the first two films and directs here for the first time, and that background shows. On the commentary track the team say the castle great hall and courtyard were built complete, with no digital extensions and real concrete in the floors. Most of the werewolves, by contrast, were made in the computer; only one mechanical werewolf head worked on set. The shoot was based in Auckland, New Zealand. Kate Beckinsale’s Selene is not inside this story; she surfaces only at the close, in archive footage and voice over. The weight sits on Michael Sheen’s Lucian, Bill Nighy’s Viktor and Rhona Mitra’s Sonja. Sheen went through three months of hard physical preparation before the shoot and asked to play Lucian’s transformation himself from start to finish. Kevin Grevioux, one of the series creators, works on the story here and appears as Raze. Len Wiseman does not direct this time; he produced and wrote the story. The film was made for $35 million and took $91.4 million worldwide. A good fit if you can take a story that never leaves the castle and the forest around it, and a revolt whose outcome the earlier films already told you. Not for anyone waiting for Selene’s story to continue; Beckinsale is archive footage and a voice over.