Review: Blade II - Electric Boogaloo

I took some time to go and see the sequel to the 1998 film Blade and I thought I'd post a review about the movie and see what other slashdotters thought. In general it was like watching someone else play a really pretty beta quality video game. Read on if you'd like to know more. I don't spoil much of anything, I assure you. Well, the mystery for me is over. I know who made all that money during the dot-com bubble. It was Blade. Remember in the first Blade movie, he had to hock the watches and things that he took off the vampires he killed for working capital? I found it sort of grounding that he had to pay for his silver and garlic. In this movie, he's been able to pick up gobs of silver bullets and weaponry, shipped his muscle car, machinery and support guy to Prague to find his friend Whistler. Whistler is played by the unshowered, unshaven, crotchety Kris Kristofferson, who was supposed to have died in the last movie.

He finds him, of course. Mind you, Whistler's now a vampire who is in some kind of hastily unexplained "stasis" for the last few years, so that Blade can inoculate him against the vampire virus and make him human again. The science in this movie, by the way, is insultingly bad, and exceptionally inconsistent. It seems to me if you are going to offer some kind of crappy vampire virus you might as well make it somewhat consistent. It's airborne! It's blood borne! It turns out it's script borne, infecting those who it's convienient to infect and missing, strangely, Blade and his pals.

The story (which I urge you to ignore) is that Blade must team up with the "BloodPack" to defeat a new, powerful and virulent strain of vampires known as the "Reaper" strain which poses a threat to the Vampire Nation and to Humanity alike.

I don't want to dwell on the story too much since, well, the producers of Blade II didn't, so why should I? But the stupid names they chose for everything. "Whistler," "Scud" and "Blade" must defeat the "Reapers" with the help of the "Bloodpack" of the "Vampire Nation." This clearly points to their actual audience. Immature 13-year-old boys up late watching bad cable when Cinemax after dark just isn't doing it for them.

And me, I guess, I mean, I did go and watch this tripe. Perhaps the only redeeming features of Blade II are the fight scenes, a number of which were even filmed such that you could see what was going on. The ones you could make out were fantastic, full of groovy moves and excellent gymnastics and flashing leather, steel, vampire flavored flash bangs and flying silver bullets. So that was fun, but watching Blade II makes you realize how well Blade I's fights were filmed. And don't get me into the numerous continuity errors that whap you on the forehead every ten minutes.

As far as Wesley Snipes' performance, it was energetic. I'd place this movie somewhere between Drop Zone and Passenger 57 in the Snipes oeuvre.

So , if you really really really like playing Mortal Kombat-style fighting games, go see Blade II. Also, if you want to see the trailer for the upcoming Friday the 13th movie, Jason X, Jason in Space, go see Blade II. Yes, I'm serious, Jason X. 10! In Space! Starring lots of Canadian sci-fi actors on break from Andromeda ! I weep for action cinema. Thank God I've got Hard Boiled on DVD.

Comments

My take

[BSDGeek]

Blade II reminded me a lot of Resident Evil. Mostly in regard to the "creatures". The plot was decent, I suppose. There was a lot of action, as to be expected. And I thought that Wesley Snipes does a great job of acting. The special effects were definately better than in Blade I. I too saw the trailer of Jason X, it appears that on every deep space exploration mission, some evil being appears... 2 Andromeda women are in the Jason X movie, Lexa Doig, and someone who's name eludes me at the moment.

Re:My take

[Skirwan]

Resident Evil has you jumping up in your chair going "Holy shit!" (first time I've actualy been SCARED at a horror movie, LOL. VERY nice job Sony, w00t! Go see RE !NOW!)

Maybe RE had you jumping up in your chair, but those of us who have actually seen a movie before found it terribly, terribly predictable.

The 'shocks' in RE came from two primary sources: (a) The 'surprises' came five to ten seconds later than you expected them, and (b) the musical cues were very, very loud. Basically, the entire movie could be summarized by the standard "Scary Music, Scary Music, Scary Music, Fake-Out, Calm, Monster-And-Loud-Music " pattern that dominates the less-inspired films of this types.

Blade II, on the other hand, had no pretension of being a scary movie; it was content to be a violent movie, or sometimes a gory movie. I found most of the fight scenes quite enjoyable, which is good seeing as there wasn't much else. But the point is, Blade II knows what it wants to be, and that gives it a huge leg-up over movies that don't have the guts to pick a genre or the skill to straddle several.

--
Damn the Emperor!

Wow aren't you Mr.Negative

[Deltan]

Who honestly went to this movie to look for a storyline comparable to Lord of the Rings? Like come on, you went into it expecting WAY too much.

It's based on a comicbook, every comicbook movie sequel has been cheese. Why would you expect any different of Blade II? Did anyone else notice the appearance of Danny John Jules aka "The Cat" from Red Dwarf? He probably just used his same cat teeth from Red Dwarf heh. Anyway, the movie is meant to be entertainment just like the WWF and that's all it is plain & simple. The fight scenes were well done, it had some gore, some corny lines and a chick in leather.

It was entertaining, all in all an okay show to see. =)

And this is a glowing review

[bill_mcgonigle]

Let me preface this by saying my wife and I watched Blade the next evening for therapy. So
these comparisons are pretty fresh in my mind.

The review does get some things wrong - the virus is transmitted by the bites, of course - they're vampires. It's not clear from the first movie that Blade does have the virus. It's clear that his DNA was changed by his exposure to the virus, and that a retrovirus treatment will cure him, but not that he's infected.

The "Vampire Nation" is also clearly a construct from the first movie, not something made up to attract 13 year-olds. It's a parallel government that rules the Vampires.

Wesley Snipes was not at all energetic - he really wasn't into the role, and the CG fight-scenes were terrible. Yeah, they might be good compared to Playstation, but not that much better. The fighting characters were all skinny and rubbery, they didn't bend naturally.

But the bigger problem is the direction. Watching the original again, the cinematography is simply brilliant. Be it the framing of the hands under the strobes in the bloodbath club or when the camera is chasing the Blademobile through the city, and pans off to a Vamp having a snack on the corner, Blade *looks* like a comic book, perhaps the finest adaptation I've seen. And the way the music is tied to the action, the editing was brilliant. When my wife and I were watching it the other night, there's the scene where Blade has been drained of his blood, then he takes some from the lovely costar, and goes to rejoin the fray. He comes flying down the temple shaft, and lands in his very cool one-hand-down pose. Frost's henchman gets attitude, starts at Blade, saying, "Man, I'm gonna fuck you up this time." Blade nearly effortlessly cleaves him in half, the vamp disintegrates, leaving only Blade's stolen shades to come flying through the air back to him. Just then, the music starts to come up, but it's just a driving bass beat; the camera comes in on Blade, he puts on his sunglasses, and they hold the shot for longer than you'd expect. I never really noticed how long the shot was but I looked over at my wife and she was staring at the screen, bobbing back and forth with the beat. I know if I could look in her mind she was saying, "Oh, he's gonna kick some ass, Oh, he's gonna kick some ass." It was a really clever sort of suspense they were building, reinforced by the music. Of course, just then, the rest of the techno track comes on and he proceeds to moidelate scores of vampires. Well, there's none of that in the second movie. They have techno music, but it's a soundtrack, not an integral part of the work.

The first movie was a comic book brilliantly translated to the screen. The second one looks like Quake translated to the screen. They even used yellow lens filters when the scenes were boring.

To add insult to injury, Blade 2 was mostly ideas and scenes from Blade cut and paste all over the place, painted with the "genetic engineering is bad" brush. When they did the scenes in Blade they were fun and original. When they did them in Blade 2 they weren't.

In Blade, the story starts in a slaughterhouse, where they're storing humans for food. They later mention there's a bloodbank in every city that's run by vamps. In Blade 2, the story starts in a boodbank that's run by vamps.

In Blade, there's a scene in a vampire nightclub, which introduces to the vampire culture and with the bloodbath and the treatment of the human provides us with literary justification for what Blade's about to do. It's a techno club and Blade's fight is choreographed with the music.

In Blade 2, there's a much larger club scene, but it has no significance, except to make the radio headsets hard for their users to understand.

In Blade, when Blade is captured by the vampires, they drain his blood and are about to win because he's weakened. He gets some fresh blood from his lovely costar and saves the day. In Blade 2, when Blade is captured by the vampires, they drain his blood and are about to win because he's weakened. He gets some fresh blood from a giant pool of blood they have there for some reason. Just in case anyone was wondering, blood goes bad very quickly. That pool of blood probably costs several thousand dollars per hour to maintain.

In Blade, Blade can spot a familiar a mile away. In Blade 2, he has a familiar infiltrate his organization. He claims to have known all along, In Blade, we learn familiars are marked by their masters so that if another vamp tries to drain him they know who they'll have to answer to. That's why they're marked on the back of the neck. In Blade 2, familiars are marked on their hands, on the inside of their lips, etc., apparently so the coroner can find it.

In Blade, when Dragoneddi(sp?) is exposed to the sun, he falls apart in pain, then explodes like someone put a stick of dynamite where the moon don't shine. In Blade 2, when Blade's not-quite-love-interest is exposed to the sun, she blissfully melts away.

The inconsistencies go on. It's not that they make the movie unenjoyable, rather they're symptomatic of the mediocre plat and general lack of creative effort that went into this film. The first movie was a triumph, this one is a Hollywood formula piece.

And Whistler was annoying, for heaven's sake. That took some serious work.