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

A counter opinion...

[mbourgon]

Roger Ebert (don't laugh until you've read his column- the TV show DOESN'T COUNT):
http://www.sun-times.com/output/ebert1/wk p-news-bl ade22f.html

Excerpts:
The movie is an improvement on "Blade" (1998), which was pretty good.
[...]
This news is conveyed by a vampire leader whose brain can be dimly seen through a light blue translucent plastic shell, more evidence of the design influence of the original iMac.
[...]
You can sense the difference between a movie that's a technical exercise ("Resident Evil") and one steamed in the dread cauldrons of the filmmaker's imagination.

Let us bow our heads and be thankful

[Kickstart70]

Jon Katz didn't write this review.

Re:Let us bow our heads and be thankful

[PhoenxHwk]

Yeah, but JonKatz's review would tell us of the chilling reality of vampire movies in a post-9/11 society. The ramifications of this being that we now live in a world where Vampires and Blade can get along in the face of a greater danger. Just like the Taliban. Or something.

Re:My take

[Com2Kid]

I saw RE on Friday and Blade II yesterday (Monday).

Let me say that the movies are HARDLY alike. The first scene from Blade II MAYBE, but that is it.

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!)

Blade has the FIRST ORIGINAL USE OF SLOW MOTION EFFECTS SINCE THE MATRIX that literaly had the ENTIRE audiance cheering out loud. Yes it was THAT good. Well that and I think that all action movie fans by now are sick and f*cking tired of the same old cliche slow'mo effects in movies, hehe. The producers of Blade II got the slow motion thing out of the way right away and that was it. :)

RE has a good deal more story line in it then Blade II, and far less actual butt whooping. (there is hardly any but whooping in RE oddly enough, a lot of dead things being re-killed though.), Blade II had more of the humor that made the original Blade so darn kick ass. :)