Movie Talks Archives

Posted by: Daredevl Diggler at March 23, 2002, 2:24 pm

Topic: Reviews: Blade 2 Forum: JoBlo

Having seen Blade 2 and not being blown away by what I saw, I got to work and immediately started combing through the dozen or so reviews I read prior to seeing the flick. The movie got so much damn praise from every review I dared to peruse, that I figured I was heading out to see the Christ’s second coming of action/horror films. Maybe I should have remained untouched. I had some problems with the movie, I had quite a few, I had so many I wish I had a pad with me during the movie so I could jot down the complaints. I had so many complaints that I was relieved at one point because one was actually resolved before the closing credits. That particular complaint had to do with Ron Perlman’s scarred face from sunlight and the chick vampires lack of facial scar, even though she was exposed to similar UV Rays. I just assumed the bitch healed so she could save face so to speak, and not lose any of her lovely looks. Being that was all she had, as she acted her way through lines of dialogue like..” I want to die a pure blood” and “Complete the inner circle, kill me brother”. Ugh. Complaints as I noticed them:
1. Early in the film ,Blade is able to make Whistler human again by injecting him with some super serum. Well if we can save lives here, why not inject every vampire with this serum and save more lives. Being that most of the vampires Blade kills are not vampires by choice, they were victims like Whistler.
2. Scud turns to Blade and tells him to keep an eye on Whistler, no one can lose the taste cold turkey. He is referring of course to the taste for blood. This line is never ever fleshed out, its never touched upon again. There is no mention of whether he lost that taste, we just assume he is better. At one point they trick us into thinking he is still a vampire when he leaves his post to check a noise he heard, during the House of Pain sequence. 3. Which leads me to another complaint, if these Reapers are so damn strong, how come when one gets his arm caught in that shaft, he can not easily bust through the door. Immediately following the interlude with the captured Reaper, Blade descends into some vast sewer system. With no explanation as to where the Reaper from above has gone to. Have they killed him? I assume yes, but why not let us know you went and did such a thing.
4. One of my biggest complaint was the whole sewer sequence. The bloodpack led by Blade head down below the surface to flush out the Repears and destroy every last one. They are hunting during the day keep in mind. Based on that, since there is no electricity in this sewer, the only light to guide the way is sunlight from up above. To me, it would seem the sewer was rather bright. Whistler could not see so well, yet us the audience saw just fine. Sub-complaints:
a) If you are hunting during the day (like they were) why wear black? The one color that attracts sunlight more than any other. b) Knowing that bullets do nothing to harm the Reapers at this point. Why waste so much time shooting them. Just go down there with some heavy duty UV lamps and light the whole place up. Wasn’t the ending a tad bit contrived. Scud winds up being bad, he had the whole thing planned. The main Reaper was actually the son of the head vampire, or something like this. Somehow the daughter of this head vampire had no idea she had a brother. It got to be a little to far fetched, and for a horror flick, that’s not saying much. I have no idea who wrote the film and I am not taking the time to look it up either. I know Del Toro directed it, and from what Harry Knowles has said about him, hes like God’s gift to the horror genre. Del Toro apparently doesn’t know a thing about pacing, or doing his own rewrite. How old hat is the concept of discovering what you have been led to believe the whole movie is not so, it’s the grand plot of a single mad man. In this case, the strain of blood or something is causing vampires to become Reapers. Reapers feed off other vampires..yeah yeah. Blade is led to believe the Reaper strain was caused by some sort of Vampire Evolution…but NO! It is not so, it was actually a strain created by the head vampire and the first experiment is done on his one and only son. No reason is given as to why the old guy would want to fuck with his own kid and change him. By this time I was yawning. I yawned even wider when we find out Scud is bad..gasp! He’s one of those humans who does vampire bidding during the day. The only thing Del Toro handled well were the action parts. Man there are a lot of them too. But for some reason , I don’t think he had a whole hell of a lot to do with the direction of them. That thanks has to go to the stunt coordinator. Art direction was nothing short of awesome, the make up and shit for the Reapers was awesome. I don’t really want to bad mouth Harry’s buddy, but better luck next time man. I’m going to be the only person who dislikes Blade 2, I know this and I accept it. People will start to wonder about my taste in films and that’s fine too. But as I drove away from the theater, I considered liking the flick, cause for sure, there some parts that were too fucking cool. But, I’m a stickler for realism, not that I was expecting much in a Blade flick. People have been boasting about how this s a kinder, gentler Blade. He seems like a person now, Wesley adds depth to the character. Where? Where? Where? He’s still as one dimensional as a comic book. He does not transcend anything he was in the first movie. He still barely speaks and he still has that shit eating grin, while he’s fighting. For the 15 or so minutes that there wasn’t something chaotic happening on the screen, they could have easily injected some life into Blade. I read a review on AICN that said how he saw Blade as a tired character, in that he has been doing this vampire hunting for so long that it has worn him down. That I looked forward to, I wanted to see what wore him out. On the same token, I wanted to enjoy the fact that the regular vampires had fear for the first time, that there was a being beside Blade that could take their life. Then in the end they had to god damn ruin that. Ugh. Blade 2 did not suck, but when people asked me about it, I replied with “Yeah it was pretty dumb”. And that’s all. It’s a fairly stupid action flick, with some gore. It is by far not the next wave in Comic Book to film transition, and its not the new movie all other horror/action flicks should measure up to. Ghost World is still the best comic adaption. Blade 2 was just so damn disappointing.

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