Mini Review - Blade II

The original Blade was a fun time, and it was successful, so in Hollywood tradition a sequel was green-lit. Now, I’ve spotted a problem with Blade’s longevity, he is a Vampire Hunter, and as such he doesn’t have a variety of rogues like other comic book characters, generally either someone from the hierarchy of vampires or random Avengers villains. As such I worry the action can get a little stale, something I’ll come back to in the review.

Wesley Snipes and David S Goyer were both involved as star and writer respectively, with the directing this time handed to Guillermo del Toro, last seen here when I did Pacific Rim but also known for the the Oscar winning The Shape of Water. The film gathered a mixed reception with a 57% on Rotten Tomatoes, just below the Fresh threshold of 60% with the average score being 5.9/10. That said, it was successful, earning over $150m on a $55m budget and sadly ensuring the green-lighting of Blade Trinity, we will get to that.

This review was originally scheduled for back in July, but got pushed back as my DVD was skipping moments and I felt I’d be rushing to judgement.

Blade II sees Blade 2 years after the events of the first movie and we’re quickly into an action scene, for better or worse, there are a lot of those in this movie. This one justifies one of the biggest ass-pulls I’ve ever seen. You remember how in the last movie Whistler, Blade’s long-time confident, was bitten then killed. Well after the first action scene he’s found alive and cured.

So, we’re given a short amount of time to breathe and we’re introduced to Scud (yeah, he actually wants to be called that) who is Blade’s newest confident/technician/ what? I’ll talk about him more later. But enough talking, we’re quickly into the next action. You might notice the plot hasn’t actually started yet. This 2-on-1 fight is choreographed really well, this movie posts some pretty good one-on-one fight scenes but really struggles with crowds, as we see good wave around and twirl sticks as opposed to actually attacking.

Turns out the two who attacked are Nyssa and Asad, who bring Blade and his crew to Lord Damaskinos, a vampire head who has become with the recent Zombie strain of vampire, they lack most conventional vampire weakness (sans sunlight) and feed on other vampires, causing the strain to spread. Blade is charged with leading a group called the bloodpack, made of Ron Perlman, the aforementioned Nyssa and Asad and others who are going to die before we give a sh*t about any of them.

And we’re quickly thrust into the next action scene at another Nightclub/hideout. Man these are highly convenient. Because of the bigger cast of heroes, the action works better here, except for the lighting and quick cutting. A few are killed off but the main action scene happens a few minutes later in the sewers where they’re suddenly swarmed by the zombie vampires. They defeat all except the carrier, who’s decided suddenly he doesn’t care about raising an army and gives a hint to Whistler about who he really is. Soon everyone is captured by Damaskinos, as he reveals he created the zombie strain in an effort to eliminate the weaknesses of his kind and also has a bunch of clones he plans to use to erm…. Erm… start a rock band? Yeah, that sounds about right.

From here on its basically non-stop action, and more of the bad guys waiting around problem we saw in some of the earlier ones. Scud is revealed here to be a traitor and I feel that’s a massive missed opportunity. Neither Scud nor Whistler are characters in the comics, so the movies had free rein to do anything they wanted without pissing off the audience. Unfortunately, they went the obvious route of making the new character, the one who we had no emotional connection to, the bad guy. They put him and Whistler at odds throughout the movie, both suspicious of the others intentions, and this made for some half-decent comedic banter. Beyond that, it’s revealed Blade knew about this the whole time, and for some reason kept him around. I will say that Norman Reedus seems to having the time of his life playing him.

Wesley Snipes plays Blade as a self-confident and self-assured badass, and whilst that’s entertaining in the action scenes, it gives us very little during the more dialogue heavy moments. He has no character arc, and that’s true of everyone. It’s entertaining to watch but when you analyse this you realise there’s very little to it. This isn’t helped by the problem that aside from the characters I’ve mentioned, there’s very little personality to the Bloodpack. Nyssa and Dieter are the only 2 to make it to the climax alive and they’re the only 2 to display much in terms of personality

Normak, the carrier suffers from the same problem. I don’t know what his end goal is, and it seems to change half-way through the movie for no reason at all. I understand his anger at his father for basically making him a carrier but it’s not demonstrated until the scene where they confront each other. The fight between him and Blade is a good one, but there’s very little in terms of stakes to it, I’m pretty sure at this point Normak wants to die anyway. Damaskinos’ motivations are a little clearer in that’s manipulating Blade into fixing up his mess then capturing him to complete his goal, but he doesn’t give off a lot of personality in any of his scenes.

Blade 2 has solid, if imperfect acting and action scenes, it’s enough to carry a limp plot and even limper characterisation. It’s fun to watch, but there’s very little beneath the surface

Rating 65/100