“I think someone wants to talk about vampires.”

At last we reach the end of our current vampire slaying romp with Wesley Snipes. In 2004, series writer David S. Goyer stepped up to take the helm of the franchise for Blade Trinity. The film looked at is the “extended, unrated” cut on the DVD (if you care about that) which runs about 122 minutes. Let’s see how it stacks up to the first two.

Plot
A group of vampires seek out the great granddaddy of their race to try and put a stop to that pesky dhampir that keeps killing them. Before that can happen though, the vampires try and neutralize the Daywalker by setting him up to kill a mortal familiar of the vampires in a very public way to get the law breathing down his neck. Captured, our hero is rescued by a band of young vampire hunters called the Nightstalkers. Things escalate as both sides try and find some kind of “final solution” to the war between them.

Characters
Blade: Wesley Snipes plays the sociopathic half-vampire once more. While he still has the look and the movies for killing vampires and all that, some of that fire he had in the first two movies is missing. Maybe its because Blade is once again forced to work with a large team of characters that vie for the spotlight. Maybe its because he now plays the mentor figure to a young vampire slayer. He does get some cool lines (he gives a gravely “koochie-koo” to a baby he just rescued) as well as his only real emotional outburst in the entire trilogy after his safe house goes up in smoke along with his mentor. Its surprisingly effective as a character moment.

Whistler: Kris Kristofferson once more, but he doesn’t last very long in the film before he goes kablooey and dies again (for real this time. At least until they make another movie) when the feds storm Blade’s safe house. That’s a shame, since he doesn’t get much of a chance to be the surly badass we’ve come to know and love.

Danica Talos: Parker Posey is the more or less mastermind to put down Blade this time. A pretty, spoiled “rich bitch” its her idea to find the very first vampire so that he can take down Blade once and for all. She doesn’t do a bad job of things, but after the first two movies, she just doesn’t seem quite as interesting as the main villains of those films.

Asher Talos: Danica’s brother, played by Callum Keith Rennie. He’s…her brother, defers to her leadership…and that’s about it.

Jarko Grimwood: Paul Levesque, better known as Triple H, as Danica’s metal-fanged hulking enforcer with a pet Pomeranian. A vampire Pomeranian. Yes, he’s a wrestler, but he’s not bad as the bad guys’ big guy, gets some fun lines, and has a pretty cool brawl at the end of the film. Out of the villains, he seems to get the most mileage out of his characterization.

Abigail Whistler: Jessica Biel plays Whistler’s heretofore unknown illegitimate daughter, which works about as well as it sounds like it should. After Whistler’s death, Blade takes her under his wing, since she’s the last legacy of his dead mentor. She’s pretty good in a fight and really good with a compound bow (which, having taken archery as a kid, I find Jessica Biel drawing back a bow extraordinarily hot). Sadly, she doesn’t get a whole lot of good dialog and the whole “Whistler’s unknown daughter that he trained in vampire slaying but never once thought to mention to his star pupil” thing just doesn’t work out. Also, the movie loves the idea that she loads up her iPod (product placement!) with music for when she hunts. Its not a very good slot for a character trait, but the film keeps trying to hammer home how badass it is when she puts the earbuds in, like shit’s about to get real. Its…very difficult to take that seriously.

Hannibal King: Ryan Reynolds pretty much steals the show here as the smartassed former familiar and ex-boyfriend of Danica Talos. The character was drawn from the comics, but I don’t think that that version of King was as cavalier with the quips. Regardless, he gets the best dialog, does the best delivery, and chews every scene he’s in. Easily the best character in the movie, he gets major badass points for intentionally pissing off Blade at every chance, wearing a bull’s-eye on the back of his bullet proof vest (and a tasteful “Hello, my name is Fuck You” on the front), and for endlessly taunting the vampires when he gets injured, and later captured. Rather than break or stay silent, he just keeps jawing off to his ex, no matter how many times he gets smacked around.

Drake: Dominic Purcell (the guy from Prison Break) is the first vampire, the one people called Dracula and so on. An ancient evil, dug up in the Fertile Crescent to solve the problem of Blade, he’s a rather disappointing character, largely on account of being a jumble of things. He’s an ancient shape shifter, has a mouth that can open up like the reapers in the second film, and can walk around in daylight without ill effects (which, okay, Bram Stoker’s Dracula could do that). He’s also presented as a kind of uber-predator and a proud warrior guy at the same time, and for some reason the first vampire’s natural form is a demonic, chitinous cousin to that dude from Legend. I have a problem with this, since the second movie clearly established that vampirism in this series was some kind of virus. What virus mutates a human into a chitin-armored demon shape shifter??? It doesn’t make sense. We’ve had one writer for the entire trilogy, so I mean, what was he thinking when it came to that? Was it supposed to look cool and imposing? Was it studio meddling? Anyway, Drake gets one pretty cool scene where he’s wandering around town and enters something like an independent Hot Topic that stocks nothing but Dracula merchandise (Dracola, Drac plushies, Drac vibrators). Watching him stare in absolute confusion at all the bizarre merch they made out of his name was pretty funny.

Hedges: Comedian Patton Oswalt, the guy who voiced the main character in Ratatouille, is the replacement tech guy and, well, he’s a pale shadow of Whistler. Hell, he’s even a pale shadow of the chain smoking Scud.

Sommerfield: So, the nerdy brains of the Nightstalkers, the one who comes up with some kind of genetic bomb to kill vampires is a blind woman with a little kid named Zoe. This wouldn’t be a bad thing necessarily, except the Nightstalkers also never bothered to think that perhaps putting the blind woman on monitor duty might not be the best idea. Also, I think she wears high heels at some point near the end, which, I don’t want to sound insensitive, doesn’t sound like a safe footwear choice for a blind person trying to find out if there’s an intruder in the place… Well, you get the point. Basically her death is there to give Abigail’s character a traumatic rude awakening and fuel her desire for vengeance.

Dr. Edgar Vance: A psychologist who examines Blade after the cops catch him. Its actually a pretty funny scene since it goes about as well you’d think, and the guy voiced Mentok, the Mind Taker on Harvey Birdman. Just thought I’d share.

Visuals/Effects
Let’s see, the special effects are largely good. Dying vampires are more incendiary than in the last film, the reaper-faced dogs are well done, and that cool but impractical UV arc thing is suitably cool and useful in exactly two combat situations. Drake’s true form isn’t very good. The full body costume is okay for what it is, but just that. This is supposed to be the Big Bad Vampire, the cloth from which all other bloodsuckers are supposedly cut, and its not impressive and difficult to take seriously.

For a directorial debut, David Goyer has some good things going and some bad things. The good includes being pretty good at framing a shot, letting the action scenes speak for themselves without an over reliance on quick cuts and close ups. The lighting isn’t anything terrible, but nor is it nearly as atmospheric as the first two films.

The worst thing the film does visually is the preposterous number of slow motion slowdowns. While the fight scenes largely avoid that nonsense, you could easily make a drinking game out of this movie whenever a character jumps, is running or whatever other scene the filmmakers feel needs extra DRAMA. You could probably shave off a few minutes of film if the slow-mo stuff was removed. Occasional slow-mo is okay, using it this much knocks you out of the suspension of disbelief.

Writing
It wouldn’t be a Blade movie without David Goyer writing the script. Credit is again given to Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan for creating the Daywalker. It still feels like a Blade movie, but, well, something’s wrong. The second movie bordered on the line of “too many characters to juggle,” but that was mostly the Bloodpack, and most of them died in action anyway. This one pretty much replaces the Bloodpack with the Nightstalkers, but the support team gets, depending on your mood, either not enough time to endear you to them, or too much time on screen which sucks away development of more important characters. Interestingly, the “Nightstalkers” themselves were an actual team in comics in the early 90s featuring a trio of Blade, Hannibal King and some guy named Frank Drake. The movie version works better as a power trio. Whistler getting killed off for real this time doesn’t really have any bearing on the plot, its just an excuse for Blade to “need” the new kids, and to give Abigail some gravitas.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t some interesting ideas presented. The vampire “final solution” is just creepy when you think about it (and see it). Watching Blade interact unsuccessfully with human society is a nicely done way to show you just how outside the normal he is. The network of vampire slayers laying low across the world in little cells fighting a guerilla war in the shadows is also kind of cool. There’s definitely some fun stuff in there, but the whole doesn’t equal the sum of its parts.

Sound
Music’s appropriate and good for what its supposed to do here. Original music by Ramin Djawadi and the RZA, along with yet more hip-hop and techno that helps drive action scenes forward.

Conclusion
Blade Trinity is, in the final estimation, nowhere near as good as the first two. Its still fun, but filmmaking and storytelling choices show that the franchise is losing steam. It doesn’t run out of gas, but by the end, I realized that, while we’ve had our fun with these movies, and much fun was indeed had, its time is passed, Blade’s story is told, let’s move on, before the franchise loses all footing and slips down the slippery slope of franchise decay.

“You've been training for two years to take me out, and now here I am. Whew! Ooh, so exciting, isn't it?”

Well fina-damn-ly. Its time to take a look at 2002’s Blade II, a sequel to Blade (obviously) but this time, Guillermo del Toro was behind the helm, steering the vampire slaying ship toward Eastern Europe and giving audiences a closer look at the political machinations of the vampire world. Contextually, this movie comes after the debuts of some high profile comic book movies like X-Men and Spider-Man, and Marvel was much less shy about having their logo planted on the film. It didn’t hurt that del Toro is himself an unabashed comics fan either.

Plot
After tracking down the not-quite-dead body of his mentor in Prague, a vampire slayer gets a curious offer of temporary alliance when the vampires that oppose him face a new strain of bloodsucker that feeds on human and vampire alike. Sounds like a simple vehicle for our hero to kill Euro-trash vampires, right? Well…the third act throws a lot of twists at the audience that throw things into a more…dynastic light.

Characters
Blade: Wesley Snipes is once more the sunglasses wearing, heroically sociopathic dhampir. Blade finds himself in an awkward position when the Vampire Nation offers a truce. Of course he doesn’t trust the bastards and at various points displays an incredible level of magnificent bastardness that reminds everyone why he’s a bogeyman for vampires across the world. Blade is also a lot quicker with the quips in this film, throwing out one-liners with a disturbing smile (considering the character). He even gets some tender moments when he finds his mentor, Whistler and with Nyssa at the end. Easily this film’s Badass for his level of contingency planning (and for attaching a bomb to the back of a guy’s head).

Whistler: Kris Kristofferson returns as Blade’s crotchety- Wait. Didn’t he die in the last movie? He did. Or DID he???? Apparently the Vampire Nation got a hold of him and kept him in a weird state of life/undeath so they could torture him and use him as bait to lure Blade to Prague so he could take care of their reaper problem. He’s still a badass in this film, and actually manages to be even surlier than before (coming back from the dead will do that to you), but doesn’t get as much time to shine what with all the other characters populating the screen. The movie also dangles the idea that he might be a traitor to the cause because of his mysterious disappearances, but you never really get the feel that he actually would betray Blade.

Scud: Norman Reedus (one of the McManus brothers from The Boondock Saints) is Blade’s replacement Whistler. He’s a tech-head with an eye for making vampire-killing gear and vies with Whistler for surly one-liners.

Damaskinos: One of (if not the) Grand Poobahs of the Vampire Nation, he’s a frail, positively ancient bloodsucker geezer that recruits Blade to eliminate the reaper-strain of vampires, since, well, after the new guys finish off the vamps, who else will they turn to for food? He’s just…creepy, but you realize that a vampire like that doesn’t get ancient without good reason, and there’s more to Damaskinos than he lets on.

Nyssa: Chilean actress Leonor Varela is Damaskinos’ daughter, she’s sent to recruit Blade for the job, and the two kind of, sort of bond despite being on opposite sides of the war. He’s a Daywalker bent on slaying them, she’s the leader of a black-ops vampire team called the Bloodpack trained to take him down. You bet there’s a bit of sexual tension. Speaking of the Bloodpack…

Reinhardt: Ron Perlman is easily the most competent of the Pack, a shades wearing, almost totally bald shotgun toting badass who doesn’t hide the fact that he really doesn’t like Blade. He’s definitely a villain, but the question is, who’s he working for, really?

Asad: The other vampire sent with Nyssa to recruit Blade (and something like a lieutenant for her), he’s played by Danny John-Jules, who voiced one of the Fierys in Labyrinth and apparently played Cat (an evolved human-shaped cat) on TV’s Red Dwarf.

Priest: Tony Curran (who was the redheaded, non-tattooed Viking in The 13th Warrior who made it all the way through the film) isn’t in the film much. He’s a pro-pureblood vampire, ready and willing to slaughter turned vampires. He’s the first of the Bloodpack to fall to the reapers, but not without a fight.

Chupa: Matthew Schulze is one of the bigger vampires (and wearing a chain mail shirt for a while). He shares Reinhardt’s sentiments about working with the Daywalker. He gets really pissed about Priest’s death. Actually, he gets pissed about a lot of stuff easily. He’s the easily pissed off one.

Snowman: Big name martial artist/actor Donnie Yen is the silent, katana wielding member of the Bloodpack. Sadly, aside from one pretty cool fight scene, he doesn’t get a whole lot to do in the film.

Lighthammer: Daz Crawford plays the big, largely silent, Maori-face tattooed big guy of the Bloodpack. He’s got a big honkin’ hammer that looks anything but light. Sadly, he’s a case of wasted potential as he’s not nearly as badass as you would hope.

Verlane: Marit Velle Kile is the redheaded vampire who’s the lover of Lighthammer. Aside from one complication near the end of the second act, that’s about as far as her character goes.

Jared Nomak: Oh yeah, the bad guy (well, the bad guy who’s the most urgent threat). Luke Goss’ Nomak looks like a homeless bald guy, which isn’t very scary, until his face opens up like the Predator and he starts killing vampires that turn into other reapers. He’s apparently a carrier for the reaper strain, a mutation of vampirism (which is now referred to as a virus, so in the Blade universe, vampirism is a biological, not mystical condition). The hunger is particularly nasty for reapers. They need blood like junkies need a hit, and he can feed off of vampires as well as humans, the side effect being that vampires killed this way turn into reapers themselves. Unlike Nomak himself, the regular reapers are more zombie-like (fast zombie that is) in their behavior (and lack of coherent speech) and they’re pretty damn creepy when you see them swarming through a suspiciously large, old world sewer at the heroes. However, as the movie progresses, there’s more to Nomak than what’s initially presented, and allows for some tragic elements into his characterization.

Visuals/Effects
Guillermo del Toro is a damn good director, no doubt about that. His shots are well lit, staged and framed, but its also clear that Blade II looks different from the first one. For one thing, the Prague underworld is much more colorful than New York in the movie, and the overarching visual sense of the characters’ isolation isn’t present (probably due in part to the sheer number of characters on screen). Its certainly not a bad thing, and I like what del Toro has done with shooting this movie, but, I really liked that stark, isolated look from the first movie because, in a way, it provided most of the character subtext for Blade.

That said, the visual effects are a huge step forward from the first movie. The reapers are just creepy in their design (and well realized), the movie is particularly gory and squicky in places, and as vampires die, they ignite before turning to ash this time around. The CGI has improved quite a bit, though some of the fight scenes use computer graphics to substitute for actual actors. Those scenes aren’t bad or badly done, but you can tell that the figures are slightly off in those parts.

Action scenes are well done, generally well shot and provide nice visuals. Blade fighting two vampire ninjas against a wall of UV lights is a groovy idea but unfortunately, the CGI “stuntmen” are a little too obvious. The final battle with Nomak is brutal, and the shootout in the sewer is full of that “how the hell are they gonna get out of this?” that caps off the second act nicely. Oddly enough, the only times the movie really goes for more closeups and quick cuts are when Blade fights Nomak.

Writing
David S. Goyer once again behind the keyboard, though the movie also credits Blade’s creators Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan (two well known names in comics) for, um, creating Blade. Anyway, the writing is pretty good. The first movie stayed on its rails until the plot reached the station, but here Goyer adds in intrigue and at least three twists by the end of the film. One of the twists is just kind of tossed in for the hell of it with no foreshadowing, but the other two parts are handled better. Dialog is good, no complaints there. Unfortunately, most of the Bloodpack only have a scene or two to stand out from the background. They don’t really feel like the credible, well-trained unit we’re told they are. Instead, most of them feel like throwaway fodder with an occasional gimmick (poor, poor Lighthammer).

Sound
The original score by Marco Beltrami and Danny Saber peeks its head up from the ambient background for a couple very good moments. In that, its superior to the previous movie’s. The commercial soundtrack of techno and hip-hop continues to be appropriate for action scenes and ass whoopin.’

Conclusion
Blade II is, once more, a solid action movie. It introduces more characters and a few plot twists that mostly work without overflowing the basic idea of “Blade kills Vampires a lot” with a bloated, ponderous movie. Its not quite as streamlined as the first movie, but its by no means bad, and I found myself sitting there watching going “you know what? I like this franchise. These are fun to watch movies.” When you boil it down away from my verbose penchant for pretentious superlatives and thirty dollar words, that’s the whole point of a movie, right?

“I’m gonna be a naughty vampire god!”

It was 1998 and the comic book movie genre was effectively dead after things like Batman and Robin. A Wesley Snipes movie was released about a half-vampire that hunted down vampires with extreme prejudice. It turned out to be a pretty successful action flick, but most audiences at the time didn’t know that the characters involved were (rather loosely) based on an obscure vampire huntin’ superhero created by Marvel back in the 70s. The movie made enough to support a franchise, and the modern superhero film was ushered in.

Plot
So there’s a guy who hunts vampires in the back alleys and discothèques of New York. He’s supported by a crotchety mentor figure, and rescues a woman who’s been bitten by one of his targets. That target vampire works for an up and coming vampire who wants to shake the status quo up a bit by unleashing a vampire god upon the world. In 120 minutes, things go from bat to worse. (Oh yes, I went there)

Characters
Blade: Wesley Snipes is the stone-faced, thoroughly antisocial Blade. He’s a half vampire, known as the Daywalker among his prey since he has all of the strengths of a vampire (strength, healing, being able to sense them) and none of the weaknesses (garlic, turning into a wicker man at dawn’s early light), though he does have a mean thirst. Now, granted, Blade only has about one expression throughout the film: pissed, but at least they give him a good reason for it, ie. His mother was bitten during labor. Blade survived, she didn’t.

Whistler: Kris Kristofferson as Blade’s crotchety old mentor with a limp and a foul mouth. His family was destroyed by a vampire attack, so that’s why he’s pissed at them. He’s like Blade’s surly, foul-mouthed version of Q, coming up with gadgets and devices to kill vampires. It was a hard choice, but I think I’m going to go with him as this film’s badass, but only because they didn’t give him any scenes to angst about near the end. No special powers, just piss & vinegar and a hatred of vampires keep Whistler truckin.’

Dr. Karen Jenson: N’Bushe Wright as the unfortunate doctor who gets attacked by a vampire while examining him in the morgue. Blade rescues her, and she becomes our point-of-view character in this war. She also brings some comic book science into play, having discussions with Blade & Whistler about vampires, and what can make their blood explode. Ostensibly a love interest, but aside from one or two scenes, there’s not much of a love story.

Deacon Frost: Stephen Dorff plays Frost, an upstart vampire kid who isn’t a pureblood (he was “turned” while a mortal) His band of bloodsuckers is a motley one, but he’s got ambition and the desire to bring about some kind of vampiric apocalypse by unleashing a blood god. He’s smarmy, sarcastic and highly animated, an interesting foil to the “all business” Blade.

Quinn: Donal Logue is Frost’s right hand man, a colorful, violent vampire who has a habit of surviving fights with Blade with only a missing limb here and there. Logue plays him over-the-top, sociopath (even for a vampire) and its fun to watch.

Mercury: Arly Jover is Frost’s lover, a white-wearing vampiress with a foreign accent and peroxide-blonde hair. She doesn’t say much compared to Quinn, but seems the more business oriented of Frost’s associates.

Elder Dragonetti: Udo Kier is the most vocal of the Vampire Council, and he makes it perfectly clear that he doesn’t like Frost and his punks trying to stir things up. This is a bad move on his part.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)
Considering that this was 1998, I’m largely willing to give a pass to some of the CGI effects. Most are pretty good, like how vampires turn to skeletons and then ash when killed (usually). However, the blood stuff near the end, well, it hasn’t aged as well. Certain physical effects are really nice though, like the big, fatass vampire in the archive that Blade encounters when he’s looking for information.

Stephen Norrington handles the visuals rather well here. I understand that he was also the director of the…not well received League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but we’re not getting into that. The pacing of the film is rather good, there are only a few slow spots here and there. The action scenes, being the whole point of the movie, are all well done. Blade has some interesting toys with which he puts the undead in their place, and Snipes is very good at killing vampire stuntmen in an interesting manner.

There are two non action oriented things I would like to commend the movie on. The first is the time lapse photography of New York daytime turning into night. There is just the slightest hint of otherworldliness involved that adds menace to the transition location shots. The other part is that Norrington shoots the heroic characters as being alone, outside of the locations around them. Blade stands alone in every scene he’s in, which is fitting for someone who doesn’t belong in either world. It’s a very subtle thing, and it carries over to Whistler and Karen, but its very effective at communicating mood.

WritingThe script is by David S. Goyer, whom you’ll likely hear more about as we delve deeper into the Modern Superhero Film Genre. Goyer introduces some new(ish) things among vampires, like the two classes bickering, the temporary sunscreen thing, the “EDTA makes vampire blood explode since its an anticoagulant” and the fat vampire living in a basement. Sure, the concepts might not stand up to scrutiny, like, if sunblock can keep vampires from getting all roasty, what about their eyes? Still, they’re trying new things with vampires, and its kinda nifty.

One problem I did have was that it really wasn’t clear about the nature of the vampires. Are they mystical in origin, since they have a “vampire bible” and a blood god they want to summon? Or are they simply a genetic mutation, something that can be cured by SCIENCE, like how the doctor lady posits? The end result is rather vague.

Sound
The techno/hip-hop soundtrack during action sequences works quite nicely. Unfortunately, I can’t remember a single thing from the score by Mark Isham.

Conclusion
Blade is a very fun, surprisingly competent superhero movie (remember, for 1998). There isn’t a lot of meat to this film, the bulk of it being “what if a dhampir was a superhero and killed vampires in New York?” Sure, it’s a bare bones concept, but the movie succeeds in delivering just that without too much annoying baggage. Certainly recommended.