Underworld Awakening‘s release is almost upon us, however, bringing with it Kate Beckinsale, a slew of new characters and more vampires versus Lycan mayhem. And orchestrating it all this time is a pair of directors hailing from Sweden.
Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein made their feature debut with 2005’s Storm. They followed that with the thriller Shelter, still unreleased in the U.S. and starring Julianne Moore and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Underworld Awakening (opening January 20) is their biggest feat yet and Shock recently spoke with them about the experience and about their desire to make this the most kinetic, monster-filled Underworld entry yet.
The cat is out of the bag in this film, the “underworld” seems to be non-existent this time, seeing as the humans now know of this underground movement of vampires and Lycans. So, how does this film stay true to the universe and what weve come to expect?
Mans Marlind: Were trying to keep it Underworld in tone. Once we started working on it, it was like you didnt want to stray too far from all of that because then it will just become another movie. You want to have the Underworld feel. Yes, the story picks up 12 years [after Evolution], but that doesnt necessarily mean it has to be this futuristic thing, its just 12 years later and now you have the humans involved in this comic book world. We were always pushing ourselves to not do something youve seen before in the previous films. We have daylight scenes, which is difficult because there havent really been any before. How do we treat daylight? Stuff like that is fun to do.
That said, are we going to get some new weaponry and new creatures in this installment?
Marlind: Say you have a favorite band and theres a new album coming out. You want it to sound the same, because you like them, but if they sound too much the same, youll think theyre boring. Its the same thing here. We still want people to recognize what they like, because they came to see an Underworld movie, but here weve got Kate back. Kate is Underworld. That was one of the things we felt was important, so everything else we could play around with. We changed the classical gothic style, the Eastern European feel, to something neo-gothic because we have the element of man involved this time. We put many more creatures in here; we needed to show a different kind of Lycans. One of the things we worked the hardest on is delivering hard-hitting action. We wanted to start tough and keep pounding away until the end of the first reel, which is 13 minutes later. I think we f**kin pulled it off.
During development, was Michael (Scott Speedman) in the fold of the story or was he always absent?
Stein: Yes, theres a mystery and we read about it on the Internet all of the time and were very happy. [laughs] And it will remain a mystery.
Marlind: There are a couple of things in this film where we felt, Well, maybe we should explain this shot or maybe we should explain that shot
Nah, lets leave it at that! Lets see what the fans pick up on and what mystery it creates. We did a small film called Storm and it was so cool to hear everyones take on what certain things meant to them that you never thought yourself. So, mystery is good.
Marlind: Totally. We had never done action in this way. When we came aboard we said we had to push ourselves. How intense could we make it? I think its more intense in action than the other films and it was a challenge for us. We had our stunt coordinator working with us a lot to work out the action and especially in 3D. We shot this in 3D. A lot of the tools we were used to were not there, we had to get use to new tools.
Who did you work with FX-wise this time around?
Stein: Patrick Tatopoulos, who was the production designer on the first two Underworld films and directed the third, helped us find the creatures. We told him what we wanted with the new creatures. Then he did his wonderful designs and Steve Wang came in and did some maquettes which are to die for. I want to break into Lakeshore and steal them. More so than an Academy Award. Those maquettes were created and we sent them to different post-production houses for cyber scanning. But were using both men in suits and CG. We have one werewolf that is really, really, really big that we could not have pulled off with a suit. That will be all CG. I remember seeing a Lycan in the flesh when we were on set and it was incredible, like a kid meeting his favorite screen monster for the first time. Its standing in front of me, I can touch it. Talk to it. [laughs] Todd Masters did a great job on this and his team did a lot of the gore. We have a lot of that. Heads being split open and stuff.
Well, not only do you have flesh and blood creatures on set to play with, but youve got Kate to direct. Thats good times right there.
Marlind & Stein: [laughs]
She obviously has a love for this character to keep coming back
Marlind: It is special for Kate for many reasons. She met her husband while shooting the first film. Shes close to Selene, but you can see the differences between the two. Kate is really funny and has the mouth of a Russian sailor. And then youre like, Okay, Kate, we gotta go, and she turns into this bad-ass. She gets so much aggression out there.
Stein: He was close and distant. We honed the script together to get it in a place we were happy with. And he was always a text or phone call away, but he had to do Total Recall. But in the back of our mind we were like, Oh shit, what is he going to think of what were doing? Is Kate going to call him and say we suck? There was a moment where it was like, Is this going to be strange? But it became very natural and we got along great.
Does this film kick off a new trilogy?
Stein: Its the beginning of something new. Ill say that our ending, it totally leaves the door open for a future.
Do you have your next project lined up?
Marlind: Were looking at everything from small projects, to big projects and comic book properties. There are a few things were looking at.
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