Movie Review: Blade II

Blade II [2002]

It's not very often that I discover a superhero movie that I haven't watched, especially in this time and age where movies are available on a click of the remote (with the occasional credit-card swiping) instead of having to scrounge DVD rental stores for them. But despite my own ravenous hunger for anything based on comic books, the Blade trilogy kind of flew over my radar until very recently.

And... and I loved them! Well, two of them, anyway. I reviewed 1998's Blade a while back, and generally loved it. It wasn't particularly clever, or even innovative (especially considering the vampire craze around the 90's) but it was fast-paced, fun, action-packed, brutal, and built up a world that felt pretty cool. 

Blade II had all that, and more. Delivered and directed by Guillermo Del Toro, and bringing back the ever-awesome Wesley Snipes as the titular Blade and Kris Kristofferson as Whistler... and most importantly, three of my all time favourite actors show up. Ron Perlman (the titular Hellboy in the Hellboy movies, Slade in the Teen Titans cartoon), Norman Reedus (Daryl of Walking Dead fame), and Donnie Yen (star of the Ip Man movies, Chirrut Imwe in Rogue One) show up as supporting roles. And, hoo boy, it's a pretty fun movie. Blade II simply does what sequels should do -- up the ante, up the action, deliver and delve a bit more into the mythology behind the world of Blade the Daywalker. 

Blade and his mentor-slash-partner Whistler are still badass, a touch on the jackass side, has swagger and attitude, but ultimately good enough and has enough of personality to not be a parody of the 'badass 90's hero' cliche. Blade's one-liners and quips are just amazingly delivered even as Blade himself moves through action scenes fluidly with great effects both practical and CGI (love the ultra-gory vampire explosion effects). Sure, some parts of the CGI -- especially when it's Blade and not the enemy vampires that are CGI'd -- may look a little wonky a decade after the fact, but the movie's fun enough to allow you suspension of disbelief. 

The storyline of Blade II has many moving elements and 'cool' aspects that really could've felt underdeveloped and even shoehorned in if handled by a different team (looking at you, Transformers sequel movies) but somehow the multiple plotlines going on -- the Reapers, the Vampire Council, the two different big bads, Blade's new partner Scud, Whistler's story -- all work well and feel like parts of a cohesive story instead of erratic jumping all over the place. And honestly? For its runtime, Blade II feels relatively well-paced, even with the insane amount of action going on but not too fast that the emotional beats of the story didn't make sense, and not too slow that the movie drags on.

The main plotline is that a strain of new vampires, the Reapers, are let loose upon vampirekind. They're basically to vampires what vampires are to humans. They eat vampires, they turn whoever they bite into Reapers, they are immune to all of the vampire's weaknesses, and they display some freaky body horror that'll put the weird flower-mouth things from Resident Evil to shame. And in response to this, the council of vampire lords, led by Eli Damaskinos (who I bet got the position simply because everyone's in awe of his kickass name) sends his daughter Nyssa to recruit Blade to hunt down the Daywalkers. 

Meanwhile, Blade himself has been working with his old partner Whistler -- who, naturally, survives the previous movie's death scene because he got himself turned into a vampire instead of putting himself down. Whistler's more old-timer style clashes with Blade's new partner Scud (Norman Reedus), who's all hip and down-low, yo. Although Scud does prove himself to be capable with a crapton of fancy gadgets. Whistler's return feels a bit tired in that comic-book heroes-never-die mentality, but I'll buy it. Considering his death was off-screen and it at least came at the cost that they had to use an anti-vampire serum to bring Whistler back, I'll buy it.

The fight between Blade's team against Nyssa and Asad is well-choreographed, and the quick meeting with the all-too-awesome Bloodpack, led by Reinhardt (played by Perlman) and filled with an army of badass-looking dudes -- Chupa, Snowman, Verlaine, Lighthammer and Priest -- it's just a neat treat to see these colourful dudes with fancy costuming and simply exuding the aura of badasses, and the constant dick-measuring contest between Blade and Reinhardt is amazingly portrayed, especially with the whole explosive charge thing. With the aid of the Bloodpack, Team Blade's fight in the vampire nightclub against the Reapers is amazingly done, and appropriately gory and shows us the dangerousness of the Reaper plague. They find out that the Reapers still fear the sun, but lose Priest in the process while Lighthammer does that thing in zombie movies where someone gets bitten but keeps it hidden from the rest of the group. Oh, and Whistler deserts his post, nearly getting Scud killed and casting suspicion on Whistler as a traitor. Whistler's excuse that he's tracked down the central nest in the sewers basically throws off any suspicion on his part, though.

We get a pretty creepy dissection scene of a Reaper corpse, which reveals that the Reapers will 'burn out' in 12 hours if they do not feed, and their heart is protected by an extra layer of bone. It's very gruesome and the effects team is on point at showing a body that's alien yet eeriely familiar at the same time. In the nest, of course, a combination of actual Reapers attacking and Lighthammer turning into a Reaper himself causes things to go haywire. None of the lesser Bloodpack really had much of a personality, but they do deliver great scenes. Snowman hacking things with his sword, Lighthammer and Verlaine's lover relationship being shown well and Verlaine's anguished mutual-kill of her and her infected lover, Chupa's constant suspicion on Whistler... all great stuff that makes the Bloodpack less than just a list of names to be ticked off.

However, while many of the Bloodpack members are killed, Blade manages to murder all the Reapers with Scud's UV bombs. All except for the original host, one Jared Nomak. And then Blade gets betrayed by the vampires, and after he wakes up, through some exposition we learn that Jared Nomak and the Reaper strain was created by Damaskinos, and Jared is, in fact, Damaskinos's son. Scud is also revealed to be a familiar to the vampire council, which is a bit of a surprise, but Norman Reedus's Scud has always been filled with sycophancy and over-eagerness that felt a bit fabricated, as is his casting suspicion on Whistler and general dicking around that his treachery didn't feel like an ass-pull. There's a cool bit as Blade kills Scud even when he's being captured, a brutal torture sequence, an escape sequence and the very awesome bit as Blade fights and murders Reinhardt. 

The final sequence is a little weaker as Nomak and Damaskinos's confrontation felt slightly rushed, but his confrontaiton with his sister Nyssa -- a strong presence throughout the movie -- comes to a head and Nomak ends up being a far more tragic figure than before. Nyssa's own growing realization that her father never cared for her or Nomak is also well-done, also gradually building up from their first interaction throughout the movie. Blade and Nomak gets an awesome final sword battle, with Blade using a piece of information from the autopsy scene earlier to get a strike in against Nomak. Nomak and Nyssa end up ding with dignity, making the Reaper crisis be self-contained into the movie while still not feeling cheapened like some superhero plots that literally get ended in a day. The danger of the Reaper virus and how quickly it can spread out of control has alwys been well-demonstrated in the movie, especially in the club scene, but the weakness of them burning out quickly and Nomak's status as the ground-zero patient makes the threat simultaneously up the "holy fuck" level and still feel manageable by our protagonists.

Overall, easily one of my all-time favourite superhero movies, and it's not a designation I throw around lightly.