From 2010 to 2014 Richard Cobbett wrote Crapshoot, a column about bringing random obscure games back into the light. Except this week, because the game decided to play silly buggers. Instead, here's something from everyone's favourite director, Uwe Boll.
BloodRayne 3 is a movie that clearly didn't need to be made. Same goes for BloodRayne 2. The first film though, I can at least see the attraction of the license. Nobody could ever make a good BloodRayne movie, and no matter how much love and money was poured into the project, it would never lead to, say, Dame Judi Dench walking down the red carpet, Oscar in hand, gushing over the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play the Queen of the Lecher Bitches. You could however make a fun BloodRayne movie—a knowing, confident, trashy action flick that slammed its first reel down on the table and said "Look, it's a hot redhead vampire chick in leather, killing Nazis. You in? Bring popcorn."
So, of course, Boll opted to make a historical piece set in the 1700s. Then he did BloodRayne 2 as... a western. Only now does he turn his attention to the horrors of the Third Reich, as seen in the original game. Can this change be shot in the arm the series needs? You may be surprised!
No, of course you won't. It's rubbish, and that's why you're here, reading this. Not for nothing is Boll considered one of the worst directors ever, even though—honestly—that's not true. His films are dreadful, no question, and every game license he lays his hands on seems doomed to turn to shit... but he's still light-years ahead of directors like Coleman Francis, Hal Warren and many others.
What marks Boll out is that he snaps up licenses that might otherwise have made for acceptable movies (and also Postal), and does weird things to them. It's not simply that they're bad, though yes, they stink to high heaven, but that they're bad in really, really weird ways.
Alone in the Dark used this song as the backing for a sex scene. In The Name Of The King was a Dungeon Siege license of all things, despite the only connection being that both worlds were called 'Ehb'. The sequel is a time-travel story in which Dolph Lundgren gets attacked by ninjas and sent back in time. House of the Dead featured the immortal exchange "You did all this to become immortal? Why?" "To live forever!" And let's not forget that he later took that turkey, foleyed in lots of fart noises and jokey captions, and regurgitated it back onto the market as House of the Dead: The Funny Version. Shudder...
The problem is the more Boll's done, the more he's moved from making entertaining turkeys to just plain boring movies. Far Cry is a snorer. BloodRayne 2 had no soul. He's tried to compensate by ramping up his own personal level of crazy, from challenging reviewers to boxing matches (unless they actually had combat experience) to appearing on screen, but mostly with stuff that just comes across as a little bit sad. For instance, he appears as himself in the Postal movie as the owner of a German theme park, announcing "my movies are funded with Nazi gold" and paying people in gold teeth. Yes, it's an offensive joke, but only in the same way as a drunk hobo bellowing obscenities from a bench. The only proper reaction is to shake your head and sigh "Oh, Uwe..."
Picasso famously had his Blue period. For Boll, 2010 was his Nazi period. Filming in Croatia, he churned out three different movies: this one, a straight historical piece called Auschwitz, which is a mix of interviews with schoolkids and One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich, and - just in case you thought he might be turning over a respectable leaf - a parody of BloodRayne 3, with Rayne swapped out in favour of a fat superheroine called Blubberella. Shocking precisely nobody, critics responded about as well to all of them as if Boll had personally shat on their chocolate cake and handed them a fork.
My rental copy of this calls the movie BloodRayne 3: The Blood Reich. Needless to say, that's a terrible name, so it's not surprising that it snaps back to simply "The Third Reich" for the title sequence—an opening that starts on a cheery note by replaying the rape of Rayne's mother back in the 1700s, followed by about five straight minutes of prisoners in trains being taken to a concentration camp. In case you weren't aware, Rayne fills us in on the fact the Nazi regime wasn't a particularly pleasant one, ending with a declaration of "Fucking Nazis..." that carries all the emotional weight of "I broke a nail."
Knowing that these sets and actors were doing double-duty in a film called Blubberella doesn't do much for the sinister atmosphere here, though it's quickly broken as La Resistance shows up with explosives and automatic weapons to seize control of the train. Rayne herself runs in across the top of the train and... oh dear. She's only on screen for about two seconds, but that's plenty of time to burst out laughing at both her incredibly silly little hat, and the realisation that as far as this film is concerned, Rayne's actress is little more than her own cleavage's costume. The Germans barely even seem to notice her, even when they could simply shoot her from behind, and opt to concentrate their attention on La Resistance instead. Thanks to the power of clumsy editing though, everyone is soon dealt with. Rayne seizes the initiative and pursues their commanding officer into a train car, where he quite clearly swings a metal bar down for her to catch in her hands and twirl a bit in front of him.
"And who shall I say has the honour of besting me today," he asks, which seems a little self-defeating when he still has a knife. "Honour?" demands Rayne. "The last thing this is about is honour."
No. It's about being the clumsiest piece of staging I have ever seen in an action movie. Behind her, unnoticed, a German guard has survived the massacre, and somehow walked right past La Resistance to get into the train, and is sneaking onto the scene, side-arm in hand. He could simply shoot her at any point from almost point-blank range, but instead he opts to keep tippy-toeing around.
"Let's just make this short and bloody," growls Rayne, completely oblivious until he pulls the trigger. The bullet rips through her, splashing the commanding officer with her blood, though not bizarrely hitting him with the actual bullet. Good thing he made sure he fired it at the only angle that could possibly have happened, otherwise this would have been a really short movie!
Wait, what am I saying? I just found a brand new reason to hate the Nazis.
Rayne jumps so hard she almost falls out of her corset, spinning around to smack him one with the metal bar, then impaling the commanding officer on the other end of it. Then, despite the fact that she saw all this and should clearly know better, she leans down to drink his blood. The title card finally appears—BloodRayne: The Blurred Third Reich. But the drama has only just begun! To suck!
Rayne emerges from the train only to end up with a face full of guns, as it becomes clear that La Resistance has absolutely no idea who the hell she is. They demand she gives up her incredibly fake-looking swords. Rayne declines, and the guy with the gun dials down his request to merely "Don't cause trouble!" It's an odd request for the sword-wielding woman with blood dribbling from her lips and piles of dead Nazis at her feet, but one that turns out to be an acceptable middle-ground. Luckily, the leader of La Resistance, whose name is Nathaniel, is slightly better informed than his partners, Vasyl and Magda.
"I've never seen anyone move like you do," he tells her. "I bet you say that to all the girls," replies Rayne, along with absolutely everyone watching this movie, in various different tones of sighing inevitability.
Nathaniel identifies her as a 'dhampir', which in folklore referred to human-vampire hybrids, often suffering from physical conditions like not actually having bones, but has long-since entered the dictionary of fiction as "Dhampir (noun): 1. Ass-kicking vampire hunter that still dresses like a goth ninja but doesn't suffer from all the stupid weakness, 2. Probable rip-off of Durham Red'.
Rayne doesn't confirm this, though since she's licking blood from her lips while standing in the sun, it's clear that either he's right, or she's a seriously creepy goth. She tells Nathaniel that she's shish-kebobed the Commandant, and the two agree to team up before anyone starts querying the use of that rank in this context. Unfortunately for Nathaniel, opening up the train reveals that instead of the guns and explosives he was expecting, he's merely saved the lives of hundreds of terrified prisoners. He smacks the train and storms off in a huff, before Rayne comes over and feels the need to tell the head of La Resistance what extermination camps are, and that they'll likely be killed if they keep milling about like bored extras. Nathaniel shrugs and decides that in that case, they'd better save them, probably.
As the party leaves through the snow, Rayne does another quick monologue about what she is, though when she gets to the bits about "my natural magical abilities allow me to withstand the elements that eradicate vampire kind," you have to imagine her actress wishing she had similar protection against cold, or at least a costume that doesn't expose enough cleavage to lose a nuclear submarine in.
Back in the train, the Commandant —who never gets a name—wakes up and pulls the iron bar out of his chest, while Rayne heads off to La Resistance's base. Here, one of the three big problems with her character quickly becomes obvious: for a 200-year-old huntress, forged in battle and used to living on the edge, Rayne is a really ungrateful, whining brat who's often more valley girl than vampire. Her first act at Resistance HQ is to complain that her dinner isn't ready, despite Nathaniel taking the time to organise and specially cook her pigs' blood to drink.
"I don't mean to be ungrateful," she tells him. "Well, then it certainly comes effortlessly to you," he sighs, and doesn't look any more impressed when she ends up storming out of a meeting where she keeps telling him that they're losing the war and there's no end in sight with a scornful "I've lost my appetite!" From the look on his face as she departs, it's all he can do to avoid dumping the whole damn pot of blood over her head while shouting "Well, excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me, princess!"
And no. As we'll soon find out, she has absolutely no reason to be this arrogant.
Meanwhile, at a concentration camp not far away, the Commandant's lieutenant shows up to recruit the help of this film's special guest villain, Clint Howard, from its own... um... commandant. Just to remind us that the Nazis are evil, the lower-c commandant takes the time to randomly shoot a prisoner in the head, before we cut to a messy medical lab. Clint is playing a Dr. Mengele/Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS type, only painfully experimenting on vampires instead of prisoners. He puts in his typical performance, poking and prodding and torturing one unlucky vamp FOR SCIENCE!, despite the Lieutenant asking if he really has to ruin so many perfectly good prosthetic effects in his presence.
Not for the first time, all this medical malpractice exposes a key problem with most vampire mythology —that it really doesn't work in the real world. "They are very difficult to kill," breathes Dr. Clint. "Only by stake, fire, sunlight or holy water..." And decapitation, assorted bullets, regular water, assorted bladed weapons...
Nevertheless, while he may come across as an insane mad scientist who only enjoys the pleasure of hurting others, it turns out that the harsh face of Dr. Clint hides the soul of a dreamer.
True, his specific dream is "to make Hitler immortal!", but who are we to judge?
"I have no authority in these matters," begins the Lieutenant, which doesn't strike me as the best opener, "But I will not stand idly by as you kill that... creature as part of some mandated experiment of yours."
I wonder whether it was the writer, actor or director who didn't know what 'mandate' means.
Back at Rayne's secret lair, which she has apparently, things instantly get confusing with the revelation that she apparently sleeps quite comfortably in her regular clothes, boots, and push-up corset, but for some reason draws the line at wearing her coat to bed. Waking up with a start, she slips it on, heads out into the chilly day and... nothing. That's the end of this utterly pointless scene.
I hope you're paying attention. There may be a test later.
Over at Nazi HQ, Dr. Clint and the Lieutenant appear slightly busier. Dr. Clint steps out of a room, announcing, apropos nothing, "It is a science I don't understand!" Not understanding things ends up being a bit of a theme here. By their dialogue, they've clearly been inspecting the Commandant, in the process of transforming into a new kind of vampire due to being splashed with Rayne's blood before she drained him. We cut back to another pointless scene of Rayne, this time hiding her blades in a gutter for some reason, then back to the two of them walking down some stairs, where they walk into a different room on another floor to meet... the Commandant, whose appearance surprises them.
Dammit, this isn't a movie. It's a bloody Moebius Strip. And speaking of stripping, back the camera goes to Rayne, who after waking up with a dramatic glare and hiding her blades, turns out to be in a brothel. She sneaks around uncomfortably, hiding from sight of the customers, never filling us in on the why. Is it to meet a contact? A secret stash of weapons? To assassinate a prominent German officer?
No! It's CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGED RANDOM LESBIAN SEX TIME!
Since the life of a dhampir Nazi hunter is difficult, Rayne starts out with a relaxing naked oil massage from one woman, only to be interrupted by the sound of another screaming. Cue Rayne reluctantly getting up and pulling on a dressing gown for the first of many scenes where she gets to overpower someone in an attempt to boost her soon-to-be-fading hero credentials. She bursts into the other 'masseuse's room to find her lying topless on the floor and being punched by a big German man in white Y-fronts, who she grabs by the balls until the celery can't be twisted any more. This bit of right-on grrl power not even slightly diminished by the way she pushes the topless girl out of the room ahead of her in order to maximise the number of tits in this movie, the others thank her in the only way they know how.
Yes! It's CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGED RANDOM LESBIAN SEX TIME! PART II!
While Rayne enjoys her free all-over tongue bath, one of the other 'masseuse's hurriedly nips out to betray her to the Nazis in the building across the road, where Dr. Clint and the Commandant are having one of those symbolic chess games that villains think makes them look smart. Surprising nobody but her, she promptly gets the standard traitor's reward—being bitten and drained by the Commandant. Well, I say 'drained'. Really, he takes a mouthful and decides he's had enough, before dispatching soldiers to stop Rayne. They conveniently show up just as she's finished getting dressed and surround the building, though are no match for her ability to just run away. One of them does land a shot though, splattering some of her odd syrupy blood on the concrete for Dr. Clint to scoop up.
Counting this as a victory, he heads back to check the now-vampired 'masseuse', who wakes up looking rather more gothic than before, but no better at acting. He splashes her with a bit of holy water, which burns her, but apparently not as much as if she'd been turned by a real vampire instead of whatever the hell the Commandant is, saying it would have "crushed your hand like papier mache." No, I don't know what he's talking about either. I'm not sure he does, since he immediately goes on to add "The times they are a-changin," despite that being a song from some 20 years into his future.
Much pointless exposition follows, interrupted only by the Commandant in the middle of another Symbolic Chess Game without an actual opponent—unless he's playing with the camera-man between takes. Soon enough though, we're back with the 'masseuse', who decides to try putting the 'vamp' into 'vampire' and giving it a capital V. For Vampire. Which is what she is, to be clear. I know this sounds obvious, but Dr. Clint is going to forget it in roughly two sentences time, so I want to make sure.
"You've jettisoned your human foibles," hisses Dr. Clint. "Your mortal coil, as Shakespeare called it. you've managed to both evolve and regress at the same time. You've become subservient to your primal instincts. Hunger. Thirst. Bloodlust. Sexual urge..."
The 'masseuse' points out—I think, it's difficult to tell without subtitles—that many of the men she's served in the past have had at least three of the four, and asks if he's a gambling man. "It appears that I am," he grins, unlocking her cage and getting in with her. Amazingly enough, she fangs up and goes for him, only for him to pull holy water and a stake out of his pocket and turn her into a pool of slime.
Back at La Resistance, Rayne is in full Valley Girl mode, demanding grenades and explosives.
"Rayne, you don't know what you're doing!" Nathaniel tells her, which is probably meant to sound a bit patronising, but in the circumstances is actually pretty damn appropriate.
"I'm going home to sharpen my knives!" she pouts, flouncing away like an angry teenager.
"He's not just a vampire, Rayne!" shouts Nathaniel, resisting the urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. "Now he's a vampire with an entire German army behind him!"
Wait. There's more than one?
Nathaniel glares her down, telling her that she may well have had 200 years of fighting vampires her way, but now she has to work as a team. Rayne points out that when she does that, the team usually dies, but Nathaniel shouts her down by saying that's their decision to make, not hers. He then follows up by pointing out he's already set scouts to watch for information and has people in place to actually take on the Commandant in a sensible way, rather than—for example—her stuffing her already over-stuffed bra with plastic explosives and charging in with a Xena yell.
"I need you to understand something," Rayne kicks back, somewhat feebly. "I have spent my whole life hunting down the undead, and I promise you, it's about to get seriously fucking complicated."
"I was sick of killing just Nazis," Nathaniel replies. "An undead will fire things up around here!"
Ignoring the fact that it's a fairly stupid resistance leader who even considers his enemy mutating into hyper-powerful creatures of the night to be 'a refreshing change', this scene hammers home another basic problem with the BloodRayne movies. Rayne is incompetent, and constantly reliant on being bailed out by the mundanes. Boll shows nothing but contempt for her as a character, repeatedly stripping her of both heroism and authority, with everything from the scripting to the constant cameras pointed straight at her cleavage making it clear that Rayne is in the movie for precisely two reasons: Leftie and Rightie. Even when dealing with hyper-sexual characters—and done well, they're fine—heroines worth watching are way more than that. Rayne can't be, because Boll never lets her.
As if to prove the competence gap, Nathaniel explains that Magda is about to start an operation in town. ("Who's Magda?" demands Rayne, despite having been introduced just after the title card). She also takes the sexual-wiles approach to success, only smarter—honey-trapping a German officer and getting him off guard in a bar. He checks her for weapons with a very slow pat-down, and finds nothing... because she taped the gun under the table earlier on. When she pulls it, she takes him totally by surprise, backed up by first the bartender, who also has a gun, and then Nathaniel and the rest of La Resistance. This done, it's revealed that she's a world-class code-breaker who single-handedly cracked Enigma. And then, she pours herself a quick victory drink before taking the lead on the interrogation.
And Rayne? Rayne just stands awkwardly behind her, like a Halloween party reject.
"Looks like you got things tied up," Rayne admits, shuffling out in the street. The movie takes pity on her by giving her a couple of random vampires in a smoke-filled street to take care of on her way home, but that's a minor sop at best. And her humiliation is far from over.
Cue a quick dream sequence—obviously so, thanks to wibbly wobbly camera work and effects. Rayne stumbles through it, though it's not clear exactly where she's meant to be, with ominous music playing. You'd think that at the very least, she'd be in prowling huntress mode here, independent and dangerous—a functionally immortal 200-year-old warrior ready for anything.
"Nathaniel!" she shouts nervously. "Nathaniel!"
Of course. But she's out of luck. Instead of Nathaniel, she finds that she can't even kick ass in her own dreams, as a leather-clad vampire Hitler—repeat, a leather-clad vampire Hitler, shows up to treat her to a curb-stomp battle, hurl her around and drain her. She wakes, sitting bolt upright and actually shrieking. Bow before the mighty dhampir! Truly, she deserved three movies of her own!
Now things just get sad. The Commandant tracks down the Lieutenant and drains him, turning him into another half-blooded vampire type. For some reason, he emerges from the process as more of a sniffer dog vamp, and is sent to track down Rayne so that the Commandant can get his hands on all of her blood and make an army just like himself. This turns out to be more than a little pointless, as Nathaniel doesn't just beat him to it, but does so saying, "Don't have to be a bloodhound to find you..."
(I'll bet. She's been to bed several times now, but still not actually changed her clothes.)
Rayne and Nathaniel take advantage of the calm before the storm to reinforce the illusion that they actually belong together. Rayne takes a moment to rub his face in the fact that he just performed a cold-blooded execution during Magda's sting operation, but then changes her mind and adds "He put himself in that situation as soon as he donned jackboots and fell into rack and file."
"...donned?" asks Nathaniel, smirking.
"Yes. Donned," Rayne repeats, crisply. "I'm considerably older than you, Nathaniel."
"Yes. But still. Donned?"
Um. Two things. First, what's wrong with the word 'donned?' We use that today. It's not as if she suddenly started speaking in ye olde English, or began scheming to infiltrate the villains' demesne to rescue prisoners from their oubliette. Second, with the amount of stupid in this movie, should it really be highlighting that the supposedly French, German, Polish and other characters are all not simply speaking in English for our benefit, but now canonically speaking in English? Just saying.
The romantic meeting is broken up by the rest of La Resistance, with the Lieutenant in hot pursuit. For the second time, Rayne completely forgets having been introduced to one of Nathaniel's team, Vasyl, despite having worked with them for at least a couple of days, and has to be reminded who he is. Then, it's fighting-time, and finally she gets to show off what she can do. It's Rayne vs the Lieutenant, two vampires locked in mortal combat, fighting with super reflexes, experience and...
...ha ha, no. Vasyl leaps up and beats the shit out of him with a crowbar instead.
The Lieutenant quickly breaks under the weight of Rayne shouting and wobbling her chest at him, and tells the group that the Commandant have already gone after Magda for her code-breaking abilities. Nathaniel promptly goes ballistic. "If they've got Magda, they've got everything!" he screams. "They've got Allied troop positions, they've got safe-houses—"
Wait. How have they got these things? Why would she be cracking Allied codes? For that matter, why is La Resistance set up so that one person would have all of this information. Isn't that why these things are usually split into cells, in case of things like... say... capture or torture, or being turned into a vampire by an evil nameless Commandant? Planning, sir! I know you've been hanging around Rayne for quite a while now, but you mustn't let her tactical thinking rub off on you like this.
In a secret lair that it takes the good guys about five picoseconds to find, the Commandant has Magda tied up and blindfolded, awaiting interrogation. Even helpless and restrained, she still manages to have more dignity and defiance than Rayne usually manages with two giant swords in her hands, but it's all for nothing. The Commandant drains her, and when La Resistance shows up, it's to a trap. Oddly, though, it's not the trap that would actually make sense. They find the vamped-up Magda still bound and tied for no apparent reason, but she can't even hold back her fangs for even as long as it takes to cut her down, never mind take any of them out. Rayne stakes her, and then the group spends ages searching the entire building without finding anyone... until Rayne makes the mistake of actually pointing this out, at which point the Commandant and a whole battalion of Nazi soldiers magically teleport in behind them.
They choose a poor place for the trap though, giving La Resistance plenty of cover. Not having any ranged weapons of her own, Rayne stumbles around in the middle of the fight, occasionally punching someone, before climbing up to a catwalk high above the battle where she fights a couple of vampires one-on-one. Not mentioned is the fact that she defeats them by flipping them over the edge, so technically all she's accomplishing is raining down vampire death on her own allies.
"Shoot the windows!" she finally shouts, her 200 years of vampire hunting finally reminding her about the whole vampire/sun feud, though once again, it's technically La Resistance that saves the day.
But then! Through the magic of off-screen teleportation!
Dr. Clint and the Commandant hang Rayne upside down, draining her blood and occasionally using her as a punchbag. Being generous villains, they're nice enough to let her keep her sexy uniform during all this, as well as explain their plan to "infuse our Fuhrer with your blood!" Here's where if you're paying attention, you start noticing a bit of a problem with this storyline. Actually, several. First, as plans go, trying to introduce the unholy blood of a 200-year-old vampire into the veins of a eugenics fiend seems like, if not a non-starter, then a relatively tricky sell—especially since it's only been tried once before and not entirely successfully. Second, it's not remotely clear why in a world where vampires are largely feral hunting types, the Commandant has retained his loyalty to Hitler to the point that he's willing to do this plan instead of, to take a purely hypothetical example, try and conquer the world himself.
Third... well, we'll get to that in due course.
First, we have the stupidest scene in the movie, barely 15 minutes from the end. The Commandant loads Rayne and Nathaniel into a truck, in the middle of a convey, to take them to Berlin. He assigns—wait for it—no guards. None. He doesn't shackle them. He doesn't tie them down. He doesn't have anyone watching them. He puts the leader of La Resistance (it's suggested the entire La Resistance) into the back of a truck with a supposedly super-powerful dhampir, and just gets on with his day.
Rayne is unconscious after being drained and beaten, but Nathaniel is absolutely fine. He glances around a bit as the truck drives, and then after an entire movie of somehow managing to not even glance away from her eyes in conversation, casually lets his fingers run across her stomach... and then up a little higher... and actually lifts up a cup of her corset for a quick peek. Sleeping Booby wakes instantly and goes for his throat, before deciding... oh... what the hell? The two start kissing, then ripping their clothes off and banging each others' brains out, with Rayne getting squished up against a window.
And yes, in case you needed to ask, Nathaniel is indeed the more dominant of the two.
Between shots, the remains of La Resistance, who apparently aren't all dead, work out a plan to stop the convoy before the inevitable 'the pass', though timing spares them the sight of their leader and his undead girlfriend's naughty bits zipping past their faces at 30mph. As in the brothel earlier, they both get dressed just in time for the attack, which sends the convoy crashing off the road. Gunfire erupts. Rayne and Nathaniel escape from the truck by... uh... opening the door—yes, it wasn't even locked—and join the fray. Dr. Clint is taken out with a sniper shot, while Rayne arms herself with knives.
The Commandant watches this and decides he's had enough. He grabs a vial of Rayne's blood and drinks it down in one go, and now it is on! How can Rayne possibly go up against a villain dosed with an alcopop-sized charge of her blood and oh wait she has an entire body of the stuff as well as 200 years more experience using it. It's almost like this plot makes no sense.
For some reason, the Commandant reacts to it anyway, getting a bit black-veined and over-enthusiastically yelling "I AM POWER INCARNATE!" Nathaniel stabs him in the back with a knife, but he's now officially the End of Movie Boss, so it only knocks off a few HP. Rayne gives it her best, and in a stunning change of fortunes... gets shaken around like a doll, smashed into the side of the truck, and dropped to her knees in a couple of seconds by her hulked-out childe.
Then, she gets up, kicks him to the floor and drops a rock on his head. Splat.
Believe it or not, it's even more abrupt than it sounds.
And that's BloodRayne 3, bar a quick coda about how much more work Rayne and Nathaniel still have in front of them, none of which will hopefully be coming to a DVD near you any time soon. It's far from the worst game-to-movie conversion, but if you think that's high praise, remember that Mortal Kombat is generally held up to be one of the better ones. It's not exciting, the plot makes no sense, it's not even an eighth as sexy as it thinks it is, and if you're a fan of the BloodRayne character, this will do even more to turn you against her than the fact that her games weren't that good. Really, they weren't.
As for our friend Uwe Boll, In the Name of the King 2 is coming relatively soon, but after that, no more game conversions have been announced. Long may this state of affairs continue.
[Editor's note: Boll went on to direct In the Name of the King 3 a couple of years later. Sigh.]
