Chalk this review up to wanting to give this franchise a second chance after spending the better part of the last decade avoiding having to watch the first movie again. Back in 2003, I deeply, thoroughly disliked the Len Wiseman-directed Underworld but my complaints/concerns with the movie never really evolved anywhere beyond "oh, it's so boring." But sitting through all three films over the course of a couple of days, I've finally been able to quantify exactly what's wrong with the series--calling the three films here "boring" is a reductive way of dealing with the many flaws and weaknesses baked into the direction, performances, music, look, and even premise of these vampire vs. werewolf action movies, but if I were pressed to provide a one-word reaction to the movies, I'd ultimately end up going back to that very word.
With a fourth one on the way in about a month, based on the first three entries in the series, I can only advise you to stay far, far away from the sequel and stop encouraging the bastards.
If this is your first go-round with the series, the three movies (and the anime shorts included in this set) tell the story of a centuries-old war between vampires and werewolves (dubbed "Lycans" here for reasons that are never made especially clear). Both species live in secret, with the vampires considering themselves an alpha class tasked with eradicating the lycans from the face of the planet. This is actually a specialized job handled by vampire Death Dealers, of which Kate Beckinsdale's Selene is one.
The first movie finds Selene uncovering a conspiracy to create some kind of vampire/werewolf hybrid which might, for nebulous reasons, end the conflict between the two species. This hybrid is actually hapless doctor Michael Corwin (Scott Speedman) who receives both species' blood and turns into a plot point with superpowers. We meet some vampires and werewolves of which Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen are maybe the most magnetic and lively presences on screen, we get lots of slow-mo gunplay and then the movie lurches to a conclusion with no real feeling for a change in the stakes.
The real problem with the first movie (cut and past repeated across the other two) is that the mythology is all backstory which we get in huge chunks of exposition around the many gun battles, effectively reducing the fiction to "rival gangs of automatic weapon-toting Eurotrash (seriously, leather coats and pants are ubiquitous here), and sometimes some of them turn into CG wolves." Also, Michael and Selene fall in love for some reason that's never elaborated upon. The sequel is a "let's flash back to the first movie repeatedly" attempt to pile more backstory on top of the series, dragging the two leads into the plot in spite of the fact that neither one of them really has any actual stakes in the story. And the third is a feature-length expansion of something that was explained in a three minute flashback from the first film, i.e. the beginning of the werewolf/vampire war. At least in this one we're spared more slow-motion gunplay.
I was "bored" with these movies because at no given point in time was the simple conceit of vampires vs. werewolves ever really exploited. The stylized films (the colors cycle between blue, black, and white) reduce the creatures to elements in corridor shootouts. Seriously, consider how many scenes are simply characters shooting down a hallway and it's thoroughly depressing how limited the scope of the ideas are for these movies. This limited vision extends to the animated shorts included with this set under the subtitle Endless War, serving as a bridge between the second movie and the fourth coming in January. This is somehow even worse than the movies, where, given the nearly endless ability to animate whatever they might want, the filmmakers choose to show... gun fights between a bunch of leather-clad characters.
These are truly terrible movies because in each case, the scripts, the direction, and even the performances seem locked in the smallest, least exciting ideas, content to parrot the action beats of better movies (or worse, some of their own) and not at all invested in making its world feel like anything other than a box for its plot points to bounce around in, and after you reach the fifth time another point where a character dryly explains what's going on you want to escape the the suffocating universe created here.
Audio and Video
I can't find fault the video quality here, especially since it brings over the deep blue-black color palette with which the franchise is associated. If you love the way the Underworld movies look, this is as fine a reproduction of the visuals as you're likely to find.
Special Features and Presentation
No new features here as everything has been ported from the initial single-disc Blu-ray releases. The three movies are all packaged in their individual retail cases and likewise individually shrinkwrapped, save for the Endless War anime which comes in a generic white sleeve. The set also includes a download code for an Ultraviolet copy of the movies if you're inclined to watch them on the go.
The Underworld Trilogy collection is available on Blu-ray now.