#69 - Blade Trinity

We had to get here eventually, although with my track record, I expected you didn’t think as quickly. The final movie in the Blade Trilogy did have some issues behind the scenes, and they mostly revolve around the attitude of the star Wesley Snipes.

There’s no real getting around these issues. Apparently, Snipes would spend most of the day in his trailer smoking weed and would only come onto sets for close ups, letting his body double do anything else. He was particularly rude to most of the cast and called for the firing of writer/director David S Goyer, after having attacked him. Oh, and he later sued the production studio for his lack of screen time.

David S Goyer is his own can of worms. From the stupid sexist comment about the She Hulk being created to have someone for the Hulk to sleep with (you are aware they’re related right? That’s disgusting) and for of course being among the writing team of Batman vs Superman.  That said, he’d already written Blade’s 1 and 2, and wrote some of the Nolan Batman trilogy so it can’t be all bad... can it?

Oh no…

Yeah, this movie did badly, making a $125m on a $65m budget, that is likely a studio loss when you factor in theatre cuts and promotion and it was savaged by critics, with a 25% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

So, I’m braced and have excessive amounts of alcohol at my disposal, let’s dive into Blade Trinity

We open with Ryan Reynolds narration, which is an incredibly bad sign. We’re in movie 3 and he’s a character we don’t know yet. Apparently ‘it started with Blade’ which is utter bullsh*t. He also mentions something about Dracula which means we’re finally getting a villain who is in Marvel Comics, after their complete absence in the last film.

Anyway, we open in the Syrian Desert for some reason. Some vampires arrive, wearing sun-proof suits I guess and they’re so confident they stick their finger up at the sun. On the scale of 1- Sean Been how dead are they? They enter the temple because for some reason Dracula is there, in Syria. They uncover a hidden passage under the temple and find some ancient language and it’s explained that Syria is the cradle of civilisation… TRANSLYVANIA!!! I don’t know a lot of Dracula law, but I do know a little basic geography. Dracula would be most comfortable in Transylvania, which is in Romania, not Syria. The distance in air travel is over 1600km. 10 hours of bat travel. What I’m saying is, this is some bullsh*t.

They find Dracula’s body and one of them is killed, and they start killing the audience with the seizure inducing flashing, then it goes black for several seconds before cutting to a warehouse being blown up with dynamite, this sends the vampires fleeing from Blade. This action scene… it’s pretty dull and it’s not helped that it keeps pausing to play the opening credits.

Some vampires escape but Blade is soon in pursuit thanks to his partner Whistler, this chase has the weird fast-forward edit I vaguely remember from the first movie, but now used in an action scene, making a fast paced scene kinda blurry and difficult to follow. And we hear that Snipes didn’t do any ADR for this movie, so not even remotely sound-alike guy did it instead, great. 

Also, this fight scene is happening a public area, so no-one’s reporting the gunshots, the guy on top of a car trying to break through the window and the multiple deaths that have happened so far. Blade gets the lead car to crash after killing the driver, a crowd, having not seen events in the tunnel, drag the guy out.

Blade arrives and shoots him, but it turns out he’s not a vampire and really? You expect me to believe he didn’t know. Blade movies have established previously that he knows the difference between a vampire and familiars. Either he’s incompetent or he didn’t care. Also, he may not be ash, but the stake bullet went straight through his chest, he should be dead, like immediately, not given enough time to gloat! Fake teeth, what is this a Looney tunes cartoon?

So now the Police are on his tail too. Wonderful Blade, you’re a moron! Also, if they had any idea what happened in the tunnel and I’m sure there’d be cameras in there, there’d be a reasonable chance he’d be able to plea self-defence. The vampires caught it on camera because… Blade returns to his hideout for Whistler to chew him out and give him in inhaler delivery system.

So Blade is wanted criminal now and the FBI are after him. Meanwhile, we find out Dracula surrendered himself after killing that one guy so he could be taken into the city, he’s been feeding ever since, and for some reason he feeds like a reaper, rather than an actual vampire.

  

So, Dracula… no, that’s not Dracula… why? So, there’s a report on Blade, which is relevant for some reason. The chief of police believes he’s a sociopath and Edger Vance seems to know his motivation for some reason and thinks he’s completely out of his mind. And Whistler gives a speech about how Blade is like a son to him. OK, on the scale of 1 to Sean Bean how dead is this guy?

Meanwhile, woman with shopping and baby walks home and is ogled by brainless sh*theads, a usual evening in New York. Said sh*theads decide to attack a woman with a f*cking baby. Turns out they’re vampires but the woman is not defenceless either, the baby was a diversion and she’s actually pretty badass. Lady, you have a light-saber bow, why are using pointy bits of metal if you have a light-saber bow? So, did this scene establish anything relevant? No Could it have been cut? Yes. Was it awesome? A little. Was it necessary? Nope, because the next action scene is here already

The FBI used Whistler to track blade and we’re going to get what’s essentially a repeat of the base siege scene from the first movie, right down to Whistler getting killed again. Seriously? You went to ludicrous lengths to bring him back, and you’re just killing him off again, not even against the vampires but the FB f*cking I. Oh and FYI, doesn’t sound like Kris Kristofferson did any ADR either.

They blow up the base but it doesn’t matter as Blade is surrounded and captured anyway. Blade reveals he’s killed 1,182 familiars to the FBI… what? WHAT? It’s not that I don’t believe he’s killed familiars but that’s a very high number. Next up, the psychologist tries to interrogate him, not believing he’s a vampire and instead demonstrating his point by say, breaking out of the cuffs, he just says nothing and is branded. They inject him with a drug to keep him docile and it’s revealed that the psychologist is a familiar because…

And so is one of the cops, why am I surprised? More vampires arrive for the transfer of Blade… I’m sure no-one would notice right now if you just killed him… that’s what you want to do right? JUST KILL HIM! Nope, we have to wait for Ryan Reynolds to make his entrance, along with that woman from earlier. They give him the inhaler thing to help him regain his strength and we get another seizure inducing action scene

Blade decides to fight off and leave them but thankfully, our lady friend, who we find out is also a Whistler, has the Hawkeye set of trick arrows. They make it out from the conveniently unlocked door but find police waiting for them, thankfully another guy makes it through and picks them up under a barrage of police fire.

So we get the contrived as all hell explanation for how Whistler has a daughter who’s also a vampire hunter and we’re introduced to the *groan* nightstalkers. A bunch of humans with a bow that would make Hawkeye jealous and otherwise no super-human powers whatsoever. Yeah… I can see why Blade doesn’t really think they’re up for it.

Back with… Look, I can’t take him seriously as Dracula, so let’s give him another name… Billy, a character from the greatest disservice to Vampires since this movie?  Perfect. So Billy is not pleased about their failure and decides to do nothing to any of them. Ryan (I know his actual name is Hannibal King but I’m not calling him that) gives some exposition on Danica Talos (Parker Posey) doused in casual sexism.

Now, they’re calling Billy 'Drake' because that’s ‘kewl’ which is why I’m insisting on continuing to call him Billy in spite of this. They try really hard to convince us that Billy is badass… couldn’t you just show us instead. So Billy is walking in daylight, he can do that I guess and we then transition immediately to night time. He enters a goth store and feeds on the girl inside, like an actual vampire and not a reaper this time.

Turns out that the blind member of the group has worked on a dues ex-machina virus that will kill all vampires, all they need is Dracula’s blood. The logic is flimsy at best but for the sake of this movie being over more quickly, I’ll take it. Patton Oswald is the weapon’s designer of the group and Ryan Reynolds continues to be annoying.

They head out, and it’s revealed that Abigail listens to music as she works…. Blade, ditch their asses and go back to working alone, steal their sh*t first by all means but… they’re morons. So, the group track down and interrogate familiars and have we forgotten that Blade is a wanted fugitive? Yes, I think we have.

They find out that Doctor Vance might know something, which you’d think was obvious from the prison scene so they fight their way in only to find that he’s dead and has been killed by Billy. A fight ensues but Reynolds gets captured and nearly killed, allowing Billy to escape. Blade runs after him, but he steals a Baby and man is the chase scene weirdly edited and long… far too f*cking long

OK, so it’s revealed here they brought back Billy because of his unique ability to survive in sunlight (that weakness was not established in the original Bram Stoker novel) and I have to ask, why didn’t they do that earlier rather than the convoluted plans from the last 2 movies. Of course, Billy uses the baby to escape. Thankfully Abigail has a magic healing thing that fixes Reynolds right up.

Here’s a major problem with this Blade, he barely ever speaks. He was always a stoic character but here he’s more stoic than Stoic the vast if they drained all his personality, and made him actually stoic. Most of this is down to the fact Snipes didn’t show up on set. Holy sh*t, that’s an actual child, what the f*ck are you doing here? She’s here to ask patronising questions…

They’ve worked out that the Vampires have a base in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, they open it up and find a human harvesting station. Now, this should be the thing of nightmares, and be the climax to the movie but we are 1 hour in, still 40 minutes of movie to go and damn, it’s such a good setup. Pity it’s going to be entirely wasted.

Blade rather easily gets the entire place shut down, I’m sure it’ll positively stay that way… what do you mean it will, f*ck this movie!

Billy rather easily gets into the base. I’m sure having the blind woman on security helps there. He kills Patton Oswald and the other guy. I barely knew ye, so I don’t really care. Oh, he’s disguised as Whistler for some reason. If Kris Kristofferson needed to be in the movie more, why did you kill his character off? He kills off the Blind Woman while the kid cowers in a vent, where she’s definitely safe… She screams a lot when Billy finds her.

Blade and Abigail return to find the dead bodies of most of the crew. It’s implied here I think that Abigail was in a relationship with the blind woman… that could’ve been better established earlier.

So Ryan Reynolds wakes up with a reaper dog on his chest. Whilst it’s satisfying watching him repeatedly smacked around, it also means we get a full scene of listening to him talk… and be slightly sexist. It seems the child was also abducted to I think get his compliance, I’m not really sure. Abigail shoots her arrows, despite the fact we already know she’s good at it.

They get a video from the blind woman about the daystar virus, it’s possible it may also kill Blade but the climax is incoming, they’re not gonna care at this point. It’s been outfitted into a projectile weapon that can be shot or form a part of an arrow. How lucky…

Oh god, that child is not a good actor, not that Domonic Purcell exactly shines either. Time for a Batman and Robin style suiting up montage! That’s what Blade really needed! They head out on Motorcycles as we cut down to the continued torture of Ryan Reynolds, who reveals he had a tracker embedded in him when he joined the night-stalkers.

Silver is pumped into the air-conditioning making it difficult to breathe for the vampires to breathe as Blade arrives to conduct the rescue. But he ‘comedically’ doesn’t uncuff him, I wouldn’t either. Blade easily takes out the advanced guard as Abigail arrives to uncuff Reynolds. Pity. Headphones in, she begins taking out the second wave of guards as Blade progress up the stairs. It’s actually one of the better fights. Abigail gets to the kid and easily defeats the kid guarding her.

Meanwhile, it’s Ryan Reynolds vs the pups from hell, reaper edition. He tricks them out of the window and they fall to their deaths, before falling back into the cell he started in and being faced with that guy who’s name I don’t care about. Blade finally finds Billy and their fight begins. Sometime much later, Reynolds finally remembers he has weapons and uses them, Billy assumes his goofy looking CGI form, as opposed to his goofy looking human form and has Blade on the ropes. Time for Reynolds to go up against Danica, who was off doing something for the rest of the fight.

Abigail fires an arrow with the virus but Billy manages to catch it, only for Blade to stab him with it seconds later so who the f*ck cares. The virus does its job, killing all the vampires in the near vicinity, including Danica, saving Ryan from being bitten by her. Billy seems not to be instantly killed by it, Billy decides that since Blade fought with honour or some such sh*t he’ll do him a solid and pretend to be his body for the police to uncover, since they remember finally that that was a thing in the movie. He warns that Blade will inevitably succumb to the bloodlust.

Ryan Reynolds gives some parting narration about how the war isn’t over, except for the fact that it actually is so this is pointless. The end!

This was a tough one to get through. Whilst the behind the scenes trouble, particularly with Snipes does clearly show, he wasn’t wrong when he said that this was a bad script! 

Too much is thrown at you, and often forgotten about either for a long time or completely. I don’t like the easy exit they gave with the vampire virus and their interpretation of Dracula, from the writing to the casting is dreadful!

The nightstalkers are a waste, they don’t have credibility as a unit, made even more so by the fact that among them are a blind woman and a child! Ryan Reynolds in particular was insufferable. His shtick works with Deadpool, but here, just no. If their intent was to launch a spin-off here, why kill off most of the cast?

The directing is passable at best, it’s blatantly obvious that Goyer is not a director, the action in particular suffers for it. It’s also rather lacking in blood for a Blade movie, people get too squeamish?

This movie gives me Rage Issues!

Rating 500%