Loren Greenblatt: Alright, we’re back, and we just finished Blade II: Blade Sharper (if only it were really called that). This is Del Toro’s wonderfully stylized monster-mash vampire movie sequel to Stephen Norrington’s "pretty okay" 1998 film Blade, which starred Wesley Snipes as the vampire hunter Blade and Kris Kristofferson as his mentor Whistler.
Max
O’Connell: This one came about in an interesting way. David S.
Goyer, who wrote all three of the Blade movies (as well as
Batman Begins) and directed the terrible third film, Blade:
Trinity, got to writing the second film just as the comic book
movie craze was heating up. This came out in 2002 the same year Spider-Man
really kicked the genre into high gear. Goyer was looking for a new
director, and he and New Line Cinema really liked Del Toro, so they
grabbed him. This is the only Del Toro film where he didn’t have a
hand in writing the script, because he felt it suited his sensibility
so well that it wasn’t necessary to alter it too much.
LG:
And it really does. This doesn't feel like a gun-for-hire job one
bit.
MO:
Basic plot- Blade is a vampire hunter. He's called the Daywalker,
he's half-vampire himself, he has vampire powers but none of their
weaknesses except for the need for blood. But he’s found a way to
get past it with this serum that he made with Kristofferson. He’s
still at war with the vampires, but they form a truce because of a
new kind of vampire called the Reaper, a vampire that feeds on
vampires who're threatening to overrun the entire world. Furthermore,
after the Reaper bites vampires, it turns them into Reapers.
MO:
There's kind of a Cameron influence there- just because we don’t
know the characters who are going to be monster food doesn’t make
them thin. We're only shown know what’s important about them for
the movie. But there’s two central ones: Nyssa (Leonor Varela),
the daughter of the vampire leader (who looks an awful lot like a
cross between Nosferatu and the marble vampires in Cronos) and
Reinhardt played by Ron Perlman, the alpha male of the Blood Pack,
who doesn’t like Blade very much, and not just because he’s got
this Aryan Nation thing going on.
LG:
Yeah, he asks Blade if he can blush. I liked the way Del Toro uses
these scenes to mock the alpha male mentality between Perlman and
Snipes- he knows that this is just a bit silly with the macho stuff.
It’s a little undercut by how much the film builds up Blade as the
kind of macho badass, but hey, Del Toro’s dealing with an
established franchise with an established star, Del Toro's not trying to completely reinvent it the
way Cameron did with Aliens. He's just doing it better with a
greater sense of humor.
MO:
They’re also joined by some of Blade’s friends, both old and new.
The new guy is Scud, a weapons specialist played by Norman Reedus,
who’s most famous for those terrible Boondock Saints movies,
but let’s ignore that, because he’s a lot of fun here.
MO:
When Nyssa sees this, she chastises Blade for not having made peace
with what he is like she has. It’s an interesting point. We might
be able to use more of it, but it’s good for what it is. As for the
reapers, they’re described as crack addicts who have to feed over
and over again in order to get an insane vampire high, so to speak.
LG:
Let’s talk about the Reapers. They are a wonderful mishmash of
monster tropes. They’re vampires, they have zombie-like traits,
they swarm like the monsters in Aliens. They’re a bit like
the bugs in Mimic, but with personality. The leader of the
Reapers, Nomak, passes like a vampire-human. It’s like if the mimic
bugs could actually blend in worth a damn! He’s taking good ideas
from his weakest movie and making them work. There’s a scene where
they descend into the sewers that’s a lot like Mimic or
Aliens, but it’s still very distinctive, and it’s
gorgeous.
MO:
It’s like a souped-up Mimic meets Aliens meets
Near Dark meets anime, with a shot taken from Alan Moore’s
Watchmen thrown in for good measure.
LG:
And it turns out that (spoilers) Nomak was created by the vampires, so there’s
a bit of a Frankenstein thing going on as well.
MO:
It’s interesting that vampirism is also kind of looked upon as a
virus in this thing, but also as a genetically-engineered mistake.
Del Toro is interested in the Frankenstein thing of humans
meddling in the wrong things, but here the vampires are
meddling in things they shouldn’t. The real villain is the head
vampire, played by Thomas Kretschmann of The Pianist.
Kretschmann and the Blood Pack all have that vampire racism thing
going for them. There’s a scene where, when the Blood Pack enters a
vampire club, they complain that most of the vampires in attendance
aren’t pure-bloods, and that they should just kill them all. It’s
especially played up, though, when we learn Kretschmann is trying to
make a perfect, pure vampire.
LG:
And with Wesley Snipes against the vampire racists, there’s a
bit of a Blaxploitation thing going here and in the other Blade
movies.
MO:
And the Frankenstein thing comes out with Nomak. He’s meant
to be the ultimate vampire, but the whole thing ends up biting them
in the ass. (end spoilers)
LG:
Del Toro wants to do a proper Frankenstein movie based on Bernie Wrightson's comic adaptation…
MO:
…but that’s among his billions of planned projects.
LG:
Now, those Del Toro goo and gore effects that we love so much are
here. There’s a scene in the vampire club where there’s a big
rave, people are feeding and trading razorblades on tongues while
they kiss like one might use ecstasy, a man is casually cutting into
a topless woman’s back (a not so subtle reference to Devil’s
Backbone). But everything with the Reapers is even more disgusting. There's an inspired moment where a Reaper has been pinned to a wall with a sword and it, in a keen illustration of it's animistic nature, crawls up the wall, allowing the sword to tear through it's own genitals.
MO:
The gooeyness there is very purposeful. There’s a great sense of
biology with the Reapers, which we get an even better sense of at a dissection of a
Reaper corpse.
LG:
We see that they have these sacks in their shoulder-blades that
inflate when they eat. I’m not a biologist, and I’m sure real
biologists would laugh their asses off at this very concept, but it
feels real enough in the film to legitimize these creatures.
LG:
Ebert had a great line about the film calling it a “visceral
vomitorium.”
MO:
It is that, without a doubt. It plays with just how many kinds of
blood we can have- blood gelatin, powdered blood, pools of blood for
rejuvenation at the vampire headquarters.
LG:
This is Del Toro’s first real action movie, and on our first
viewing, I got the impression that I liked the action a lot better
than you do.
MO:
I can see anime as an influence, which is what Del Toro cites, but
this is a point in time where everyone was influenced by anime and
The Matrix, and there’s too much of that here. There are
some interesting set-pieces, but he became more confident directing
action with the Hellboy movies.
LG:
I’d agree, but I’m going to stand up for the action here. The
difference between the action here and in The Matrix is the
sense of playfulness. Instead of martial arts, they’re doing
wrestling moves. There are Road Runner moments to play up that this
is a live-action cartoon. CGI obviously makes things less tactile,
but Del Toro uses that as an excuse to do things with bodies that are
impossible and make it really cartoonish and animated. It’s a
stylistic choice that really works for this film, where I don’t
think the digital stunt-doubles work as well for Hellboy. I
will give you that the final fight is dull, perhaps because we’ve
been overloaded with awesome moments, but that’s where I check out.
MO:
There are some character bits in that fight that are interesting,
but the actual fight scene has no sense of humor, where I’d agree
that the overt cartoonishness are the best moments here. Example:
Wesley Snipes’ performance in the Blade movies has always
been a sticking point with me. There’s a sense of humor, but it’s
too often self-consciously grim. An exception? His Wile E. Coyote
look to the camera in a chase early on in the film. I also love when
he uses a vampire as a human shield, as he gets shot the vampire
yells out “Fuck, it’s not silver, but it hurts like hell!”.
LG:
Or the vampire who wears a red boa and Blade promises to get him
later, only to have the guy show up in an epilogue where Blade says,
“You didn’t think I’d forget about you”. That’s a lot of
fun. I also really like how Del Toro plays with the material of the
first film and builds off of it.
MO:
Some of what he does so well is how he plays with color and
atmosphere. I love when Pearlman kills a Reaper with an ultraviolet
light ray, and as the vampire explodes, the light reflects off of
Pearlman’s face and sunglasses.
LG:
Or how about the waves of blue light as the light bombs go off? It’s
like a laser-light show mixed with Blade Runner. There’s his
amber and cyan combo light that helps things pop and give it
dimensionality. The film looks fantastic.
MO:
Two moments of cartoon violence I really love in this (spoilers) - first there’s
Scud’s death.There's some nice, tense interplay between Scud and
Whistler, since Whistler has been living with vampires for two years,
and he could be a traitor. In actuality, Scud is a rat bastard who’s
working for the vampires. The reveal has a nice moment of visual wit.
where Scud takes a bomb that was strapped to Pearlman’s head and
tell Blade that it was a dud to make Blade feel in control. Blade
then presses the real button revealing that it wasn’t a dud,
blowing Scud up. bones and blood goes flying everywhere while Kris
Kristofferson gets the funniest line in the movie- “I was just
starting to like him.”
LG:
And since it’s a movie made in the early 2000s, we have to see
the explosion eight times from different angles. That’s fun.
MO:
The other bit of cartoon violence I love is in the fight between
Perlman and Snipes, where Pearlman is cut in half and he’s like a
cartoon character who turns into two slabs of meat.
(end spoilers)
(end spoilers)
LG:
It is a beautiful monster moment. That’s the thing about Del
Toro- he believes that monsters are beautiful creatures, and he gives
them their due. He will never cheap out on horror elements.
MO:
Side note, I checked this out, and apparently the Reapers are
influenced by Morbius the Living Vampire from Spider-Man.
LG:
That makes sense. It’s a vampire created by scientific means, and
they’re both Marvel. They actually wanted Nomak to just be Morbius,
but I guess they were told no because Morbius was going to be used
for a Spider-Man sequel. Because that happened, right? Right?
MO:
Something else I love about Nomak is how sympathetic he is- he
considers his existence a pathetic horror.
LG:
Del Toro believes these monsters should be real characters, and this
is something he’ll carry through to the Hellboy movies. We
understand the villains point of view, and the they are very shrewd
when planning against Blade. Just like Michael Corleone, they quote
Sun Tzu’s “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”
proverb. That
said, the Blood Pack isn't great at it. They are terrible at their job.
They’re meant to kill Blade, but they need him for this truce. You
could wait until after Blade has done the job you've asked him
to do before trying to kill him, but no. Instead, three of them try
to take on Whistler, a 70-year-old man with a bad leg.
MO:
Yeah, it’s pretty funny. Now, there are some brutal bits near the
end, though, (spoilers from here on out) as Nomak takes a chunk out of the head vampire’s neck
and lets him bleed out (green blood!) on the floor. And at the end of
the otherwise disappointing final fight, Nomak’s heart is finally
punctured, but not enough to kill him, and he realizes that this is
his way out, so he kills himself. It’s a wonderful character
moment.
LG:
And because it’s anime-influenced, the camera zooms inside and
sees the blade piercing the heart, which is neat.
MO:
Nyssa’s death is less successful.
LG:
There’s beautiful imagery as she dies, but it’s building off
a quasi-romance thing between her and Blade that doesn't work. It
might also bother us less if not for the fact that this death is
repeated, to much greater effect, in Hellboy II. It does
illustrate a very specific way Del Toro has improved as he’s gotten
older. He’s kind of like Buster Keaton, in that he’ll tinker with
moments in past films until he feels that he has them right.
MO:
Now, do we feel like the lapsed Catholic thing is missing too much
here?
LG:
Well, there’s a few things, like a fight inside a church, but it’s
more of a science thing rather than a religion thing in this one.
MO:
Yeah, honestly, the scientific approach fits Blade.
LG:
And I’ll give Del Toro his willingness to toy with his style, since
his blockbusters have this modern gothic style that’s mixed with a
technological edge. Kretschmann’s villain lair is a very
Nosferatu-esque element, but there’s also a lot of
futuristic material there, and that contrast helps build this world.
MO:
It’ll be nice to see how he combines the scientific material
with the lapsed Catholic material in Hellboy, but it’s good
enough here.
Loren's Grade:
I enjoy the style and the gooeyness of this film so much that I’m
giving it an A-.
Max's Grade:
I’m going with a B. It’s minor work, to me, but it’s really
enjoyable.
That's it for our review of Blade II. If you agree or disagree be sure to leave a comment below. You can follow Screen Vista's on facebook by clicking here.
Roundtable Directory:
Geometria
Cronos
Mimic (director's cut)
The Devil's Backbone
Blade II
Hellboy (director's cut)
Pan's Labyrinth
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Unmade Del Toro
Pacific Rim
That's it for our review of Blade II. If you agree or disagree be sure to leave a comment below. You can follow Screen Vista's on facebook by clicking here.
Roundtable Directory:
Geometria
Cronos
Mimic (director's cut)
The Devil's Backbone
Blade II
Hellboy (director's cut)
Pan's Labyrinth
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Unmade Del Toro
Pacific Rim
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