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. =)