Movie Review: Blade Trinity

Blade: Trinity [2004]

Boy oh boy. The first two Blade movies weren't particularly stellar must-see movies, but they were great. They were very much enjoyable, solid action flicks that also happen to be based on one of the most iconic Marvel comic superheroes. But Blade: Trinity and its troubled production essentially killed the franchise and it's not hard to see why, considering the movie's pretty much, well, poop. 

Which is a big shame, since we've got a pretty awesome cast assembled. Rounding up the returning Wesley Snipes as Blade and Kris Kristofferson as Whistler, we get Dominic Purcell (Prison Break's Lincoln Burrows and Legends of Tomorrow's Heat Wave) as Dracula, Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool himself!) as Hannibal King, Jessicca Biel as Abigail Whislter and comedian Patton Oswalt and wrestler Triple-H even get minor roles. The cast's pretty strong, and Ryan Reynolds acted as an insanely hilarious proto-Deadpool in his swear-every-third-line deal going on (he gets chased by a vampire pomeranian!) but the general plotline is so flaccid, so all-over-the-place and the story is such a huge step down from the previous two movies that I found myself dozing off halfway through the movie. I'm not quite sure why, really, but Blade: Trinity essentially fucks up everything that Blade II did right. It has multiple plotlines running throughout it, but they feel disjointed and forcibly smooshed together and not things that organically worked well.

Basically yet another vampire cult raises up Dracula (a.k.a. "Drake") the original vampire, far more powerful than anyone else. Okay, we've got Reapers in the previous movie, raising up the stakes by introducing one of the most iconic vampires in all literature as another aberrant vampire similar to Blade's own Daywalker status is fine. 

But then we get the very flimsy opening of Blade killing a human familiar in public, causing the FBI (the fucking FBI!) to show up at his base, blow it up, murder Whistler and capture Blade. All in the span of like five minutes. It's just... not very believable and a bit of a stretch, even with the vampire manipulation. And it's all just a very convoluted way to get our new set of quirky supporting characters, the Nightstalkers (mostly just Whistler's bastard daughter Abigail, and Hannibal King, because everyone else is just boring interchangeable dudes, unlike Ron Perlman's army of weirdoes from the previous movie). Abigail's status as Whislter's daughter amounts to very little, honestly, beyond being able to use a particularly awesome high-tech laser bow, and as entertaining as Hannibal King is, he doesn't actually do much. Oh, and the Nightstalkers have developed Daystar, a bioweapon that can kill vampires at a molecular level. The movie then just goes into more and more convoluted means to get the Nightstalkers not to use the Daystar at the earliest possible opportunity. Like, sure, it doesn't work on Dracula, but why not use it on the others immediately?

After Blade talks shit about the Nightstalker's amateur operation, we then get thrust to the whole Dracula plot, where Danica Talos, King's old enemy, is behind Dracula's resurrection. And Purcell does his best to portray an immortal being who doesn't really give two shits about the conflict, but the script doesn't really do him justice. If he doesn't give a shit, why fight Blade? Why fight for Talos? If he wants vampirekind to rule, why not take a more active role? And why does his shirt go all the way down to the navel?

The fight between Dracula and Blade in the city is okay enough, entertaining enough, but ultimately nothing too spectacular. We get a weak, flimsy investigation montage where apparently Talos's vampires are making human farms, where kidnapped comatose humans are being drained of blood for vampire consumption? This is actually interesting, but Blade shuts down that farm, and it's never mentioned for the rest of the movie, or ties into anything at all.

Dracula then shows up and kills every single person in the Nightstalker base other than the little girl, taken captive for obvious drama reasons, and also King, who then proceeds to fight a vampire pomeranian. Which is hilarious! And then there's the whole nonsense with Talos, which honestly felt like a huge plot tumour -- through no real fault of the actors themselves, but the script really makes it hard for me to even give a shit about them other than as Hannibal King's rivals. Ditto for Dracula. And for whatever reason Dracula's blood is needed to make the Daystar virus effective. It's then finale time, everyone fights, Blade unleashes the Daystar virus (which conveniently has a 'mix with Dracula's blood' setting on the arrow) that kills all of the vampires except for Blade, who goes comatose because of his human heart.

It's honestly a huge mess all throughout, and even the gory over-the-top action scenes that's the guilty pleasure that drives my love for the first two Blade movies fail to really impress considering how much of the action is either repetitive or honestly unimpressive CGI-assisted ones. Overall kind of a flop. Other than Ryan Reynolds cussing at pomeranians. That bit's funny.