Every franchise has a panic button marked “prequel” for when fresh ideas are hard to come by, and it arrived only three films in for the Underworld saga when Rise of the Lycans landed in January 2009.
To be fair, the third installment does rank as the second best-reviewed entry of the quintet, even if a Rotten Tomatoes score of 29 percent is hardly a barometer of cinematic excellence. On the other hand, a measly box office haul of $91 million was the lowest to date, indicating that a leather-clad fantasy actioner without star Kate Beckinsale’s Selene was hardly a huge draw for the fandom.
Despite being widely panned by critics for its entire existence, Underworld has proven remarkably popular among both its supporters and on the streaming circuit, something that’s been hammered home yet again after FlixPatrol revealed Rise of the Lycans to have been hovering around the Starz global most-watched list for the better part of the last week.
Taking the story hundreds of years into the past to explain the origins of the eternal war between vampires and werewolves, Rise of the Lycans does win bonus points for turning Michael Sheen into something of a sex symbol for his largely-shirtless and snarling central performance as Lucian, which isn’t something anybody could have predicted beforehand.
Outside of that, it’s more of the same minus the newfangled technology, with the rapidly-stagnating supernatural property hinting that it was running on fumes at an alarmingly early stage, even if another two additional films emerged in the years to come.