Blade II

March 28, 2002

Whistler is alive!

Actually, I was surprised at how well bringing him back worked. Of course, I knew from all the commercials that he was back – and that alone gave me misgivings about the film – I hate it when filmmakers just ignore it when people die! But making him a vampire prisoner was semi-plausible, in as much as vampires are plausible at all.

All in all, it was better than I expected it to be – I was really expecting a big load of crap, seeing as how most sequels are useless wastes of celluloid. 2002 is officially the year of the sequel, what with all the sequels in the pipe: The Scorpion King, Men in Black 2, another Harry Potter, Jason X, Halloween: Resurrection, Austin Powers 3, Spy Kids 2, Final Destination 2, Hellraiser VI: Hellseeker, The Santa Clause 2, Die Another Day (the 20th James Bond flick), A Nightmare on Elm Street VIII (the one I am looking forward to most)…oh yeah, lets not forget Episode 2 and The Two Towers! Well, as one of the first sequels of the year, Blade II isn’t too bad a start…

This film did raise a few questions in my mind. First off – vampires do drugs? What was up with that vampire snorting what I assume was red cocaine? It looked more like Pop Rocks. And there was an allusion to Blade liking the kind bud…that, I can see – but can you imagine a vampire with the munchies? Fucking scary!

Another question – why the fuck would a vampire hang out at a Blood Bank? I guess it is like picking up one of those 72 hour old hot dogs at 7-11 – it ain’t exactly food, but it’s better than nothing.

Enough with the questions – there were some very cool things about this movie. I like how the “Reapers” were very Nosferatu type vampires. I have always been partial to the Nosferatu type of vampire, as opposed to the Euro Fag vampires that the little goths seem to love so much. I won’t ruin the “special feature” that Reapers have that make them so creepy – you’ll just have too see it for yourself. The Vampire fetuses were also very cool. The Master Vampire’s Bathory-esque blood Hot Tub was also pretty cool, but I have one of those for my Sims.

Unfortunately, there some very un-cool things in Blade II. The Vampires in the “Blood Pack” had very gay names for the most part. Lighthammer? Sounds like a hobbit, not a vampire. Snowman? Wasn’t that one of the guys in Top Gun? Red Eye? Uh, yeah. Chupa was the only decent vampire name among the bunch!

Also uncool were the very obviously CGI fight scenes. Not all of the fights were overly CGI, but the fight between Blade, Red Eye and Nyssa when they first meet is so noticeably CGI that it was annoying. Please, filmmakers, keep your subpar CGI to yourself! Another problem with the fight scenes were the WWF overtones. There were way too many body slams and suplexes in the fight scenes – and I swear that I saw Blade give someone The People’s Elbow! Even with those flaws, the fight scenes were much more impressive than in
the first movie. Apparently all the pussy vampires decided to learn the martial arts in between Blade and Blade II.

All in all, it was nearly worth the $7.50 each that Russ and I paid to go see it. I’ll take what I can get, since this is only the second new film I have seen in 2002!