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Review: Blade II - Electric Boogaloo 366

Posted by chrisd from the rubber-duck-the-vampire-hunter dept.
I took some time to go and see the sequel to the 1998 film Blade and I thought I'd post a review about the movie and see what other slashdotters thought. In general it was like watching someone else play a really pretty beta quality video game. Read on if you'd like to know more. I don't spoil much of anything, I assure you.
Well, the mystery for me is over. I know who made all that money during the dot-com bubble. It was Blade. Remember in the first Blade movie, he had to hock the watches and things that he took off the vampires he killed for working capital? I found it sort of grounding that he had to pay for his silver and garlic. In this movie, he's been able to pick up gobs of silver bullets and weaponry, shipped his muscle car, machinery and support guy to Prague to find his friend Whistler. Whistler is played by the unshowered, unshaven, crotchety Kris Kristofferson, who was supposed to have died in the last movie.

He finds him, of course. Mind you, Whistler's now a vampire who is in some kind of hastily unexplained "stasis" for the last few years, so that Blade can inoculate him against the vampire virus and make him human again. The science in this movie, by the way, is insultingly bad, and exceptionally inconsistent. It seems to me if you are going to offer some kind of crappy vampire virus you might as well make it somewhat consistent. It's airborne! It's blood borne! It turns out it's script borne, infecting those who it's convienient to infect and missing, strangely, Blade and his pals.

The story (which I urge you to ignore) is that Blade must team up with the "BloodPack" to defeat a new, powerful and virulent strain of vampires known as the "Reaper" strain which poses a threat to the Vampire Nation and to Humanity alike.

I don't want to dwell on the story too much since, well, the producers of Blade II didn't, so why should I? But the stupid names they chose for everything. "Whistler," "Scud" and "Blade" must defeat the "Reapers" with the help of the "Bloodpack" of the "Vampire Nation." This clearly points to their actual audience. Immature 13-year-old boys up late watching bad cable when Cinemax after dark just isn't doing it for them.

And me, I guess, I mean, I did go and watch this tripe. Perhaps the only redeeming features of Blade II are the fight scenes, a number of which were even filmed such that you could see what was going on. The ones you could make out were fantastic, full of groovy moves and excellent gymnastics and flashing leather, steel, vampire flavored flash bangs and flying silver bullets. So that was fun, but watching Blade II makes you realize how well Blade I's fights were filmed. And don't get me into the numerous continuity errors that whap you on the forehead every ten minutes.

As far as Wesley Snipes' performance, it was energetic. I'd place this movie somewhere between Drop Zone and Passenger 57 in the Snipes oeuvre.

So , if you really really really like playing Mortal Kombat-style fighting games, go see Blade II. Also, if you want to see the trailer for the upcoming Friday the 13th movie, Jason X, Jason in Space, go see Blade II. Yes, I'm serious, Jason X. 10! In Space! Starring lots of Canadian sci-fi actors on break from Andromeda ! I weep for action cinema. Thank God I've got Hard Boiled on DVD.
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Review: Blade II - Electric Boogaloo More

Review: Blade II - Electric Boogaloo

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  • A counter opinion... (Score:5, Informative)

    by mbourgon ( 186257 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @09:42PM (#3232487) Homepage
    Roger Ebert (don't laugh until you've read his column- the TV show DOESN'T COUNT):
    http://www.sun-times.com/output/ebert1/wk p-news-bl ade22f.html

    Excerpts:
    The movie is an improvement on "Blade" (1998), which was pretty good.
    [...]
    This news is conveyed by a vampire leader whose brain can be dimly seen through a light blue translucent plastic shell, more evidence of the design influence of the original iMac.
    [...]
    You can sense the difference between a movie that's a technical exercise ("Resident Evil") and one steamed in the dread cauldrons of the filmmaker's imagination.
    • I like this line from that review:

      This reminded me of the night in O'Rourke's when McHugh asked this guy why he carried a gun and the guy said he lived in a dangerous neighborhood and McHugh said it would be safer if he moved.

      Although there is no accounting for taste.

  • Well seriously what were you expecting? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by psxndc ( 105904 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @09:42PM (#3232489) Journal
    I saw blade II. Did I love it? Nah. Did I hate it? Nah. Did I seriously expect character development and a sense of being moved at the end. Puh-lease. Blade II is a summer flick, 3 months too early. You expect fights, cool gadgets, and an occasional betrayal. Blade II delivers. It succeeds in its mission. Should you go see it? I dunno. It depends on what you're looking for in a summer flick released in the spring.

    PS I think JasonX looks like Grade A, B movie goodnes.

    psxndc

    • "Yeah, Finals are over. Lets see Blade 2. I want to go watch a movie where my brain doesn't have to work to hard"

      "Yeah, no kidding. We can go watch Gossford Park next weekend"

      That conversation sum up my feelings on Blade 2. It was perfect in that sense.
      • actually Gossford Park is a good Blade 2 analogue.

        The individual scenes are great, the whole just doesn't add up though. If Blade had been a comic book, it would have gone back for a few re-writes. If Gossford Park were a novel, the author probably would have been a bit more subtle (oh! I wonder who his mother could *be* )

        Go to Blade if you want to see fight scenes.

        Go to GP if you want brittish people wittily mocking one another and generally acting at their BBC-ish best.

        If you want movies that work as a whole rather than just on a scene-by-scene basis, I'd suggest Lord of the Rings for fights, The Panic Room for scares, Royal Tennenbaums for "quality," and Y Tu Mama Tambien for laughs and subtitles.

        I'm serious about Y Tu Mama Tambien, it's worth the drive to wherever it's showing remotely near you.
    • I would definately agree. I thought it was great, but I went in with the realization that this wasn't going to be the best store every written. I also liked the seeing Danny John-Jules playing somethign other than Cat/Duane Dibbley from Red Dwarf. Although, I kept waiting for him to act like a cat.

  • Let us bow our heads and be thankful (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kickstart70 ( 531316 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @09:44PM (#3232495) Homepage
    Jon Katz didn't write this review.

  • you were expecting something else? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by abolith ( 204863 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @09:44PM (#3232498) Homepage
    I didn't think it was THAT bad, geez. Ya it had some problems but this isn't the kind if movie you go and see for a plot, you see it for some good FX and lots-o-vampire-Asswhoopin. That is what the movie had, technology and science be damned. It wasn't made to be on the plot line level of say brotherhood of the wolf, or Braveheart, it was made to be as it was. The next time you go to see a movie, try to have a realistic expectaion of what it will have, and it will have what you are expecting.
    Plain and simple...

    • Exactly. I saw this with 6 friends on opening night in a sold-out showing. Everyone there seemed to enjoy it just fine for what it was: your basic popcorn vampire flick with gratuitous (CGI-assisted) violence. It had a couple of well scripted lines ("You're human?" "Well, almost. I'm a lawyer"), and tons of flashy action sequences. The movie got an ovation (albeit not a standing one) when the credits started to roll. Basically, it's a movie that deftly accomplishes what it set out to do - provide basic, brain-dead entertainment. Woo hoo!
    • Was a sequel to BLADE.

      I agree with you, that in the context of the origial, it was very good. Blade sees his vampire part in a slightly different light, because of that vampire chick who had the hot ass. Character development.

      There was a bit of discontinuity between the original and the sequel, but that's easy to dismiss with a bit of suspension of disbelief. Blade's partner shot himself but Blade didn't see. Or did a vampire sneak out of the shadows, take the gun away, and just shoot it in the air? The area WAS crawling with vampires after all.

      Blade suddenly being rich... he DID kick the ass of some seriously rich vampires in the previous movie. We can only assume that his scrounging really paid off. Not a far-off assumption, all things considered.
  • ...although it would be hard to suck as much as that did.
  • ...But I'll wait for the DVD release and pop my own popcorn.

  • My take (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BSDGeek ( 528577 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @09:46PM (#3232509)
    Blade II reminded me a lot of Resident Evil. Mostly in regard to the "creatures". The plot was decent, I suppose. There was a lot of action, as to be expected. And I thought that Wesley Snipes does a great job of acting. The special effects were definately better than in Blade I. I too saw the trailer of Jason X, it appears that on every deep space exploration mission, some evil being appears... 2 Andromeda women are in the Jason X movie, Lexa Doig, and someone who's name eludes me at the moment.

    • Re:My take (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Com2Kid ( 142006 ) <com2kidSPAMLESS@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @09:59PM (#3232570) Homepage Journal
      I saw RE on Friday and Blade II yesterday (Monday).

      Let me say that the movies are HARDLY alike. The first scene from Blade II MAYBE, but that is it.

      Resident Evil has you jumping up in your chair going "Holy shit!" (first time I've actualy been SCARED at a horror movie, LOL. VERY nice job Sony, w00t! Go see RE !NOW!)

      Blade has the FIRST ORIGINAL USE OF SLOW MOTION EFFECTS SINCE THE MATRIX that literaly had the ENTIRE audiance cheering out loud. Yes it was THAT good. Well that and I think that all action movie fans by now are sick and f*cking tired of the same old cliche slow'mo effects in movies, hehe. The producers of Blade II got the slow motion thing out of the way right away and that was it. :)

      RE has a good deal more story line in it then Blade II, and far less actual butt whooping. (there is hardly any but whooping in RE oddly enough, a lot of dead things being re-killed though.), Blade II had more of the humor that made the original Blade so darn kick ass. :)
      • One of the best movies to use slow motion effects is Shaolin Soccer. It uses wire effects and slow motion better than any movie I've ever seen outside of Crouching Tiger and the Matrix. The plot didn't do anything for me, but there is _nothing_ cooler than seeing shaloin monks playing soccer. It may sound silly, but it's actually damned cool. It still doesn't have a U.S. release, so you'll either need to order it or grab it off the internet.

        Colin Winters

      • Re:My take (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Skirwan ( 244615 )
        Resident Evil has you jumping up in your chair going "Holy shit!" (first time I've actualy been SCARED at a horror movie, LOL. VERY nice job Sony, w00t! Go see RE !NOW!)
        Maybe RE had you jumping up in your chair, but those of us who have actually seen a movie before found it terribly, terribly predictable.

        The 'shocks' in RE came from two primary sources: (a) The 'surprises' came five to ten seconds later than you expected them, and (b) the musical cues were very, very loud. Basically, the entire movie could be summarized by the standard "Scary Music, Scary Music, Scary Music, Fake-Out, Calm, Monster-And-Loud-Music " pattern that dominates the less-inspired films of this types.

        Blade II, on the other hand, had no pretension of being a scary movie; it was content to be a violent movie, or sometimes a gory movie. I found most of the fight scenes quite enjoyable, which is good seeing as there wasn't much else. But the point is, Blade II knows what it wants to be, and that gives it a huge leg-up over movies that don't have the guts to pick a genre or the skill to straddle several.

        --
        Damn the Emperor!

  • Beavers!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by DeMorganLaw ( 543089 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @09:47PM (#3232514)
    They were like beavers! The new strain of vampires lived underwater in a damn made from bones. Did the people working on the script have writers block and decide, "Hey lets make them like beavers".
  • My verdict:
    A movie with entertaining fight scenes and some funny lines. The plot: Snipes beats up and kills all his enemies (I bet you weren't expecting that).

    If you are squeamish you may not like it. It's definitely more gruesome than the first movie.
  • I'm suddenly having mental images of breakdancers in front of a man writing a $50,000 check (warning: my memory is fuzzy).

    I'm not going to watch this for the storyline (that's why I'm reading Catch-22 and The Grapes of Wrath right now). This movie is pure action. Personally, I'm sick of all the schlock appearing on the silver screen lately: nauseating horror-dramas, "historical" movies with an emphasis on artistic license and a lack of fact checking (just how did your character get to London from Grand Central, Ben?), and asinine comedies catering to the lowest common denominator.

    Thank you, Blade II, for breaking the trend. I shall spend my $9.50 (or hopefully less; I can see a matinee if I want) to watch you on the silver screen as I should have the original.

  • Heh, not all the science was bad. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jonathan ( 5011 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @09:50PM (#3232524) Homepage
    I particularly liked the fact that the vampire virus wasn't just referred to as a virus, but an arbovirus, an actual viral group that includes the agents of yellow fever and dengue. Somebody actually must have cracked open a virology textbook! Then again, arboviruses are transmitted by insects, a fact that wasn't used at all in the movie, so maybe they just liked the name.

    • It should also be noted that although insects are the primary facilitator of an arbovirus it is blood born. It's thought that misquitos initially receive the virus from already infected carriers such as birds and then transmit the virus up and down the food chain. Human encroachment into previously unsettled areas is putting arbovirus group into an increasing area of risk.
    • The original Blade featured a magic vampire-killing serum called EDTA, which is about equally cute.

      Ethylendiaminetetracetic acid is a real chemical commonly used in molecular biology. It's a calcium chelator, meaning it globs onto calcium ions in solution and prevents them from reacting with anything. Calcium ions are how heart (and other muscle) contractions are propagated, so you can see the connection...but not as far as it looking like blue food coloring and making vampires swell up and explode. :-)

  • Wow aren't you Mr.Negative (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Deltan ( 217782 ) on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @09:52PM (#3232532)
    Who honestly went to this movie to look for a storyline comparable to Lord of the Rings? Like come on, you went into it expecting WAY too much.

    It's based on a comicbook, every comicbook movie sequel has been cheese. Why would you expect any different of Blade II? Did anyone else notice the appearance of Danny John Jules aka "The Cat" from Red Dwarf? He probably just used his same cat teeth from Red Dwarf heh. Anyway, the movie is meant to be entertainment just like the WWF and that's all it is plain & simple. The fight scenes were well done, it had some gore, some corny lines and a chick in leather.

    It was entertaining, all in all an okay show to see. =)
    • "Did anyone else notice the appearance of Danny John Jules aka "The Cat" from Red Dwarf?"

      That's about the only interest I have in seeing it. I almost saw Tomb Raider because Chris Barrie (Rimmer from Red Dwarf..) was in it. Fortunately Slashdot turned me away from both these movies.

      The $14 I saved on that really should go towards the subscription. :)
      • I started dating this girl, just because she works at a movie theatre.

        Before, I used to befriend the ticket boys, and try to get to know them
        better, so they let me in when I want.
        But one of them was caught one day by an undercover security guy, and he
        never let me in again.

        My new girlfriend gets a free admission every weeked, and she can bring one
        other person.

        The only catch is, they don't allow us to see new movies. For example, we
        only saw LoTR last thursday (and I didn't like it.)
        But it is always free. Just buy your soda from a neighboring fast-food chain
        (it is cheaper there) and thank AMC for being good to me and my girl.

        --
        How can I moderate myself to zero, because I don't want this OT post default
        to a +1 (I already deducted the +1 Bonus.)
  • I actually downloaded this movie since I highly doubted it was going to be worth $10 price tag. I turned it on and watch it with a friend of mine, and just watched the suckage happen before our eyes. The intro was lame, foreshadowing the rest of the movie. Once you see that they actually brought Whistler back, at that point I questioned whether the writer had even seen the original movie. Due to the ambigously-gay squadron of 'badasses' a lot of the fight scenes just seemed to be cheesy as all hell. Oh, and the second half of the movie was busted due to a corrupted vcd, but to tell you the truth, I didn't care all that much. Perhaps I am being judgemental, only having seen the first half of the movie, but somehow I doubt all of a sudden the movie would kickass. I'm still wondering how they managed to screw this up. Anyone?

    • Once you see that they actually brought Whistler back, at that point I questioned whether the writer had even seen the original movie.

      It's my understanding that the original version of the first movie ended with a scene where Blade ran into Whistler, who was now a vampire. This scene was cut in the version that appeared in theaters, but IIRC it's on the DVD, or at least mentioned in the director's commentary.

  • BEST MOVIE EVER (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why do people ALWAYS base movie quality on plot, character development, love, and all that other crap? How can you honestly say you didn't stand up wooting like a monkey every time Blade did something awesome? I know I didn't, but it sure pumped me up enough to smile continuously for 5 days.

    I for one think, nay, KNOW Blade 2 is the best movie ever. It was just 2 hours of non-stop killing vampires. Like remember the scene when Blade did that totally radical thing with his weapon before killing the vamps? Oh wait, that was EVERY time he killed something. Blade was so badass it wasn't even FUNNY. What was funny is how much he 0wned all the vamps. Also, they didn't squander precious movie time on "romance". THis is truely a movie for guys. They spent merely 2 minutes total on just establishing the fact that Blade and that vampire girl were kind of attracted to each other. They left it at that and let Blade get back to shooting, stabbing, and flipping.

    Finally, if you want to get technical about movie science, why not bring up the fact that Blade can't exist in the first place? If vampires evolved from Humans, wouldn't that make them different species? How would a vampire male mate with a human female and produce offspring? I dunno, maybe Blade is sterile. Whatever.

    I'm gonna go see it again.

  • I liked it (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Com2Kid ( 142006 ) <com2kidSPAMLESS@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @09:54PM (#3232541) Homepage Journal
    I liked it.

    Decent use of surround sound in what was not even a THX theater (rare!).

    I thought that the story was pretty good too, nothing revolutionary, but it got the point done (reason to go around beating the sh*t out of things.)

    Not as many things were killed in Blade II as in the original Blade, but it defintly made me keep on saying to myself "Man they hired one hell of a fight scene choragrapher."

    Did some scenes of the fights (specificaly the parts up in the air) seems almost like they used clay animation or something? No I am serious, it almost looks like free form computer deformation based animation effects of some sort. In other words, very 'clay' like. During one scene the characters even took on a distiguishable NON-REAL apperance. I am VERY surprised that that scene made it past QA in its current form. :(
    • Did some scenes of the fights (specificaly the parts up in the air) seems almost like they used clay animation or something?

      You didn't imagine that. It was in the fight scene between a masked Nyssa (who is quite hot) and Blade near the beginning. The camera took a wide angle and two near-silhouettes were fighting against the vampire-repelling lights in the background. If it was even CG, it was pretty horribly done. Me and my friends let out a groan when we saw that, and I, like you, wonder how in the hell it made it into the final cut.

      Jason.

    • it defintly made me keep on saying to myself "Man they hired one hell of a fight scene choragrapher."

      This has to be the one reason I currently have to see this movie. It was choreographed by Donnie Yen [donnieyen.com], son of Chinese wushu master Bow Sim Mark [taichi-arts.com].

    • I'm not sure if you noticed, but some of the fight scenes were sped up. At points it looked good, and at other points it made the character movements look weird and unnatural (which is probably what you saw).

      I don't think that they sped up any fight scenes in the the first Blade, but there was a cheezy driving shot where blades car appeared to be going 100+ Km/h when it was probably filmed at 10 Km/h.

  • Sunlight (Score:2, Interesting)

    by aridhol ( 112307 )
    What I want to know is why the BloodPack is afraid of sunlight. I mean, why didn't they get the same sunscreen that Deacon Frost used in the first one? This time, the sun burned right through the guy's leather glove!
  • ... because one of the secondary actresses is Leonor Varela, Chilean.

    The TV news programs are hyping the movie because of that and that alone: "The chilean actress that's becoming a star in Hollywood!", "Leonor Varela stars among the great actor Wesley Snipes", and more hollow phrases like that.

    Unsurprisingly, other than stating this is a "horror" movie, they have mentioned pretty much nothing about the film itself.

    This proves once again what an unimportant remote little country Chile is... and the worst thing this happened less than four months ago, when _Driven_ (with Cristián De la fuente, another "great" chilean actor) was premiered in USA... fortunately, around here it was a total flop.
  • "Oh yeah. Nah, I didn't die. What, you didn't know that? The vampires got me. Jeez pay attention kid."
  • you might say that the movie was somewhat inconsistent, but at least there was a twist in the story and not the standart hollywood crap where the bad ones wear black and the good ones white all the way to the end! in addition [warning: spoiler] the ending is not the usual hollywood romantica where the heroes live happy ever after at the end. finally: whoever goes to see blade II expecting an elaborate plot should be doomed to see the jason X trailer for 3 consecutive hours... blade II is what you watch a sunday afternoon (matinee -- it's not worth full price) when you need to relax from work.
  • Why do these monster slayers insist on lugging 15 tons of weapons and ammo into the sewers, and then use them to repetively, and innefectively, shoot the monsters?

    Many scenes looked like technology tests for spiderman special effects.

    The reapers anus-like heart is more than worth the price of admission. Now we can effectivly classify the goatse guy.
  • Ok first, the virus was covered in the first one, as you'll (oh wait, you didn't) recall, the hemotologist(sp?) discovered the cure in the first one. Second, Blade doesn't get the virus because he already has it. He isn't cured because he chooses not to be (also in the first one). Third, if you had watched this movie you would have realized that Whistler was in stasis because the Vampires were torturing him to the brink of death and healing him repeatedly. If you really want to go on about the movie, try commenting on things like light not going around corners. Or mention how he seems to kill vampires in lots of ways besides hitting the heart. The movie took some genuine liberties, but you missed them by a mile. Or, if you wanted to really talk about the movie, you could talk about the superb rendering of flame by the CG team, or the excellent graphics in general.

    You did make a good point about the money though... I sort of figured that Scud was helping him appropriate it myself.
    • Genuine liberties? As if there were facts that they didn't stick to? This is a fantasy movie about make believe monsters. There are no facts to stick to, therefore no liberties to be taken. In the Blade universe the writers can have vampires capable of dying from whatever method they want.
  • Had the author of this "review" payed attention they'd know that the reason why Whistler was in that chamber was because they would periodically toture him and harvest his blood, then put him back in there to let him heal before doing it again. I don't think they should let people like chrisd into movie theaters. Because a movie is not generally what they are looking for. They want something that presents the holy impossible with unimpeachable evidence that it can be done. They want something that is so utterly believable, but they want it to be about something unbelievable. They don't bother to waste their time relaxing and, god forbid, enjoying the movie. They sit there on the edge of their seat waiting for the next thing they can't point out as incorrect. I dunno where you got that the virus was "airborne", but had you spent more time actually watching the movie and less time typing up your review in your head you might have had a better time.
  • i liked it when BLADE turned into that cartoon fighter, when he was fighting the two cyborg vampires, and he did MAD FLIPS and A FULL OLLIE off a TELEVISION. Then he BUSTED some HEADS with the POWER OF THE SUN. Blade is the all american hero, he's like a half dead GI JOE with better gear than BATMAN and cooler sunglasses than the freakin TERMINATOR. If I were BLADE I would open my own diner and call it Blade's Diner and I wouldn't serve vampires, either.
  • From the review:

    "The science in this movie, by the way, is insultingly bad, and exceptionally inconsistent. It seems to me if you are going to offer some kind of crappy vampire virus you might as well make it somewhat consistent. It's airborne! It's blood borne! It turns out it's script borne, infecting those who it's convienient to infect and missing, strangely, Blade and his pals."

    So exactly what is that you expected from this...a REALISTIC Vampire movie!!! Isn't that a bit of an oxymoron???

    I am all for realism in film, but to complain about the "science" in a movie whose plot revolves around vampires, even for a self-respecting geek such as myself, may be a bit much!!! :-)

  • Don't worry, no spoilers in this review. (Not that there CAN be any spoilers for this movie, but perhaps that is a spoiler in and of itself.)

    I saw Blade 2 on Sunday, and normally I cringe at plotless movies. In some ways Blade 2 has more of a plot than the first movie.

    Are there plot holes? Oh sure, you can drive a few trucks through most of them.

    However, I found myself not caring a whit.

    If you want to see a pure unmitigated action fest, Blade 2 is it.

    Personally I loved the movie because I have studied Martial Arts for 11 years, and I loved seeing some techniques that I have not seen in movies before. (Mostly the Cheung Style Wing Chun - Specifically the Biu Gee techniques Snipes uses.)

    However, the movie is so campy that when the fight scenes start to incorporate WWF moves (no really, I am not joking!) instead of groaning I found myself howling with laughter.

    If you go to see it, go to see it for pointless action, and no other reason. (Unless you would like to see Danny John-Jules, The "Cat" from Red Dwarf in a new role.)

    This is not a "plot" movie.
  • Instead of nitpicking my numerous problems with this review, I would just like to point out how much Blade 2 has improved over the original.

    Now I don't deny some of the original's fight scenes were done with style, but the choreography was horrible. And remember that CG blood from the end? Possibly the worst CG in a modern movie.

    Blade 2's choreography was scripted by Donnie Yen (Iron Monkey), who also had a (small) role in the film as one of the Bloodpack members, the Snowman. Now while Yen didn't have much chance to shine on the screen, his influence is felt throughout the entire movie. Rather than the stiff fight scenes from the first movie, Blade 2 is never satisfied with just wowing the viewer, it instead wants to kick the viewers ass.

    The worst fight scene in Blade 2 (after he climbs out of the pool of blood) exposes all of the problems with the original. The enemies seem to grab a ticket and attack Blade in order, while he picks them off one by one with wrestling style moves. Atleast those camera angles from under the glass floor were cool...

    The entire movie is basically one long drawn out fight scene, and while this may hurt the story, it remains true to the comic book origins. We didn't need a lengthy prologue about Blade's origins, or his history with Whistler, if you want that go see the first film. Just like Terminator 2, Blade 2 uses the exposition of the first film to make itself a more visceral experience.
  • The original Blade was the essence of cool. By the time they got to the hospital and the cops tried to arrest him, it was on the all-time list.

    [Cops fire, bullets bounce off]

    "Are you out of your #%&@$ mind?!?!?"

    [Cops run]

    ROFL!

    There were some genuinely great scenes in the first movie. The "he moved" line when they fry the fat vampire, the music starting when Blade catches the sunglasses at the end, the sword flourish in the final battle, Whistler's "catch you fellas at a bad time?" the car (any movie with a big block engine anywhere in it automatically gets a minimum of 5 on the 10 scale), etc.

    Just a really cool movie. I might just go see the sequel. If Ebert liked it, it can't be all bad, right?

  • Its a comic... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by infra-red ( 121451 )
    I don't know what you were expecting, but heres something to give you some better perspective.

    Blade Bio [marvel.com]

    This movie was a real action movie based on a comic book hero, nothing more nothing less. I personally found it to be quite entertaining, but I wasn't expecting something that would move my soul. If you want to pick on something to complain about, why not some of the "wrestling moves" used in a few of the fight scenes.

    I found the plot to be sufficient to move from one fight to the next. They make a decent effort to explain things like Whistler still being alive, and they had already established the nature of the virus in the first movie. It had more action then the Blade, but was exactly what I was expecting to see. I wasn't disappointed in it at all and intend on seeing it again with a friend.

  • Quick narrative introduction.
    Lots of fighting.
    Blade meets the vampires and hooks up with the blood pack.
    Lots of fighting.
    Decend into the sewer.
    Lots of fighting and ultraviolet explosions.
    Betrayal
    Double Betrayal
    More fighting.
    Even more fighting.
    Collection of reaper fetus' get shot up.
    More fighting.
    All the bad guys die.
    Mildly (not) Touching end scene where the girl vaporizes in the morning light.
    Credits.

    I'm sorry if I spoiled the plot for anyone. That's just about all of it.

    -Restil
    • "Lots of fighting and ultraviolet explosions"

      I gather you mean "ultraviolent explosions," although if the vampires blow up in a blaze of light, I guess "ultraviolet explosions" is appropriate.

      (Bad pun on a British miniseries (presumably) about vampires called "Ultraviolet.")
  • Take a look at the original Blade [aol.com] from the series Tomb of Dracula [aol.com] by writer Marv Wolfman [teako170.com] (yes, that really is his name)

    Someone should make a movie out of it someday ...

    Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]

  • The movie is... campy. There are lots of great one-liners and a ton of overacting.

    It's kind of the Matrix meets Evil Dead. If you're into cheesy, campy horror/action flicks (like I am) you'll love it!

  • So , if you really really really like playing Mortal Kombat-style fighting games, go see Blade II. Also, if you want to see the trailer for the upcoming Friday the 13th movie, Jason X, Jason in Space, go see Blade II. Yes, I'm serious, Jason X. 10! In Space! Starring lots of Canadian sci-fi actors on break from Andromeda!

    Jason X?

    Wow. Microsoft's been really busy on that new operating system. They showed we can fly with Windows XP, and now, with Jason X, we can fly, see blood spill, and die along with our computer systems.

    Neato. Hope it comes with some popcorn and a bladder-buster cola.

  • "It's open season on all suck-heads."
    "Some mutha-fucka's always gotta ice skate uphill."

    Crappy, ultra-campy action-movie lines from the original - lines that *made* the movie.

    I went to Blade II to watch a bad ass kick ass and say corny lines. To have a plot-line would be superfluous. The dialogue was just space between fight scenes, as far as I'm concerned - and they interspersed it with humour!

    I got what I came for, plus. Honestly - the "BloodPack" just *screamed* Vampire the Masquerade [white-wolf.com] campaign! complete with faux-political intrigue! honestly - we aren't *supposed* to take it seriously!

    If you want a lot of *wonderful* action, complete with bad-ass dialogue/one-liners, Blade II is the movie. It has raised my standards for that "genre". It's just fun, fun, fun.

    They even manage to throw Blade his shades just before the real action begins! rock!!!

    der_m

  • All the fight choreography was arranged by Donnie Yen, most recently of Highlander 4, but perhaps better known as Wong Kei-Ying from Iron Monkey.

    The upshot is that the fight scenes (which is what you should be seeing this movie for, not the plot), are incredible. Donnie Yen himself is a minor character in this movie, but fans will be dissapointed to discover that he has only one noteable fight scene, which is very breif, and no dialog whatsoever. However, as dedicated fans know, Donnie Yen's trying to steer his career away from acting and more towards direction and choreography, both of which he excells at.

    I'd recommend anyone interested in Donnie Yen to pick up Iron Monkey [imdb.com], of course, but moreover the movies he himself directed [imdb.com], such as Legend of the Wolf [imdb.com] and Ballistic Kiss [imdb.com].

    • I agree with everything you said up until that last paragraph. Donnie can't direct movies. He can choreograph them, yes, but he should not be allowed to ever direct again, especially movies in which he stars such as Ballistic Kiss and New Fist of Fury (or whatever the US title is this week).

      It's realy too bad since his career looked promising with Woo Ping as his mentor. But a messy divorce kept the number of his films down.

      Having him killed offscreen was a travesty in my opinion.
  • First off, I loved Blade 1, it was a romp full of vampire fu goodness.

    Blade 2 was like that, but way overdone. I couldn't help but laugh at Snipes every time he over-flaired his sword moves or what should have been smaller movements.

    Blade 2 just added to the long list of action movies that suck as they try to use some sort of "group". The only exception that I've seen is Executive Decision, Steven Segal's best film to date.
  • Yessir, I think that after watchin' all them cool wwf-type moves on that there Blade 2, I'm a-gonna git me some backyard rasslin' action. Oh man, did you see the preview for The Rock's new movie? He's gonna git him one a them oscar things for best badass of the year. Yeah, and then maybe I'll catch one of them NASCAR races...Saint Dale would have wanted it that way. Lucky number 3!

    -h-

  • My Blade II Review (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Obiwan Kenobi ( 32807 ) <evanNO@SPAMmisterorange.com> on Tuesday March 26, 2002 @10:47PM (#3232783) Homepage
    There is nothing, I repeat, nothing in theaters right now that is more fun than Blade II.

    It's big. It's brawny. It's darker, it's scarier, it's downright vicious compared to the kicked dog that is now the original "Blade."

    Sure the names are simple and the action is over-energetic. This is a living comic book folks, and anybody who's ever read a comic book will easily see the connection. We have the "cool" shots of him putting on his sunglasses, the "slow-mo-coming-out-of-the-water-with-big-guns" shot, etc. The framing is specific and easy to follow. The story for "Blade 2," like any well-plotted comic book, is driven by action. Unlike other superhero films (*cough*TombRaider*cough*) that rely on "stopping points" to explain plot, "Blade 2" just throws it all at you and expects you to keep up. The new Reapers are easily the most frightening thing I've seen on the big screen in the past few years, I don't know about you.

    The plot of course is that Blade helps the vampires destroy the vampire-eaters. But, and this is going to sound a bit strange, it still manages to convey the importance of loyalty, tells a love story, and captures betrayal in a non-cringing and original way. This is especially important for a film such as this, where such melodrama is encouraged, but normally goes too far to remain serious. And now that we've moved past the "origin story" film, scribe David Goyas finally breathes life into a character who desperately needs it.

    And you have to give a hand to director Guillermo Del Toro. Look at a few of his past few films: The first brilliant 1/2 hour of "Mimic" and the exceptional ghost story "The Devil's Backbone". Del Toro takes a gritty sense of realism and blends it with a stylish take that the original "Blade" was painfully missing. The editing is the true defintion of "The Fast and the Furious," with jump-jump cuts and brutal slow-down that was tried in "Moulin Rouge" but is brought to perfection here.

    Let's face it folks, it's a popcorn film. It's meant to be seen with friends so they, just like yourself, can spout Blade's one-liners for the next few weeks and groan in unison at the most gruesome spots.

    Del Toro's amazing direction and Goyer's much-better-than-the-first-Blade script make this a solid hit. See it loud and proud on the big screen in a dark room with strangers. This one's a true crowd pleaser.

    Evan (blog [misterorange.com]); I write for here [filmthreat.com] and here [dvdangle.com].

  • A movie review NOT by Jon Katz? That is like, weird and I think he'll be upset about that.

    I will be seeing Blade 2 this Friday and I hope it is as good as some people are saying.
  • Thanks for throwing cash at the likes of Jack Valenti, everyone!
  • I just saw it tonight after watching the first one this weekend.

    The first one oozed style, flair, pinache....whatever word you want to use for it. It was amazing. This one tried to capture the same sense. Didn't work.

    This one had a better plot, IMO. Sure, they both require suspension of disbelief, but c'mon, it's a movie based on a comic book. I can suspend my disbelief.

    The first one had a mild love interest that was believable, as Blade drew parallels between the doctor in the movie and his mother. This movie had an apparently much more important love interest for Blade. Why? Damned if I know. That wasn't explained or developed. Maybe it's those damn phermones.

    The fight scenes were done quite poorly, IMO. They were shot all close in with lots of fast cuts. I haven't been this disappointed with action sequences since Romeo Must Die. C'mon, some of these people can do martial arts (Snipes is a 5th degree black belt, if I remember correctly), so why weren't they allowed to do their stuff. This whole 5 cuts a second crap is ridiculous. It's genuinely hard to watch and make sense of.

    Overall, I was disappointed. The first one was more enjoyable...

  • And I got just that! The vampire safe house club scene was great. They one-upped the opening club sequence of the first movie with this club scene. The people standing around with their skin peeled back and vamps pickin away at it was both amazingly gross and kinda like watching a car wreck, don't car buy you gotta stare.

    Blade was always one step in front of the guys.

    The big dude from 'Beauty and the Beast' played an excellent bad guy. Do you Blush? Of course we must use that line in his finale. Once again quite the shot.

    The Bad Girl gone Good was hot in her sexy leather outfit. Not to mention her death sequence. It was very cool CGI.

    The co-horts of the blood gang were a bunch of idiots.

    The reaper autopsy was wild. Not to mention the way they go for blood.

    Chopping the guys head in half with a sword and the eye stares at you and blinks. That was great!

    This was a VAMPIRE movie people. Not only that but a VAMPIRE tha walks during the day not sucking people's blood and killing other vampires! You expected a plot? Come on. The first one didn't have much of a plot.

  • katz (Score:3, Funny)

    by h4x0r-3l337 ( 219532 ) on Wednesday March 27, 2002 @12:21AM (#3233116)
    I still don't agree with Katz' reviews, even when he uses a pseudonym.
  • If you can't sit back and just enjoy a movie you really shouldn't be reviewing it for others.

    Balde II was one of the best sequels I ever seen. I was glued throught the entire movie. The audience was cheering sporadically.

    Do you like martial arts flicks? Did you like "Big Trouble in Little China"? Did you like Spawn? Do you like horror movies? If you answered "yes to any of these then Blade II is the best thing playing this week.

  • For a movie based on a comic book, I thought they did a great job. The director, screenwriter, and cinematographer clearly love comic books and captured the over-the top symbolic essence of the art form.

    A battered Blade falling through a rain of bullets into a swiming pool of blood-- a vampire commando with automatic weapons in each hand running down a sewer pipe lined with super-vampires-- a hero with a Katana, pump shotgun, bioweapons, vampire fangs, and leather trenchcoat-- this really captures the essence of "what the hell, it looks cool."


    I thought the level of gross-out, horror movie violence/video game was a little insane. There are scenes where people open up with automatic weapons in night clubs, characters heads cut in half (I mean, you see inside the brain), and the super-vampire bad guys gave me nightmares. "It's ok to kill everyone in the movie because they're all just vampires" was a little too easy. You can't just weasel out of the ethics of showing hundreds of people eviscerated by saying that they were vampires so it's ok. There are a few scenes where actors seem to stand around in a fight waiting for someone to hit them-- this isn't Jackie Chan action but a string of one-on-one battles even in mass fight scenes.


    If you liked Blade I and the Matrix, I think you'll like Blade II. It gets more stylish in some places than the original and has relatively good writing for its genre. The actors all pull off their respective characters well. The Whistler plot-line is a little poorly thought out and it is not clear why all of the super-vampires hunt vampires instead of humans. Mordoc's revenge motivation shouldn't extend to his progeny. I think the star-crossed lover bit and the "do you trust Whistler" could have been emphasized a lot more and actually made this a really good movie plot-wise if they were pulled off.


    -m

  • I haven't seen it, so I can't give an opinion, but I find it interesting that Blade II rates much higher than Blade on IMDB. I tend to find that IMDB ratings, on average, agree with my opinion (though LotR may be great, I'm not sure it qualifies as #3 movie of all time).

    I'll probably wait to see it on cable. I just ordered the first one a few days ago, which I really enjoyed. I hope this review is a fluke, though the way it was written leads me to believe I'll probably agree with the author.
  • Now that was a *really* bad movie. So bad that I kept thinking about getting up and leaving but couldn't because I wanted to see how bad it got.

  • Let me preface this by saying my wife and I watched Blade the next evening for therapy. So
    these comparisons are pretty fresh in my mind.

    The review does get some things wrong - the virus is transmitted by the bites, of course - they're vampires. It's not clear from the first movie that Blade does have the virus. It's clear that his DNA was changed by his exposure to the virus, and that a retrovirus treatment will cure him, but not that he's infected.

    The "Vampire Nation" is also clearly a construct from the first movie, not something made up to attract 13 year-olds. It's a parallel government that rules the Vampires.

    Wesley Snipes was not at all energetic - he really wasn't into the role, and the CG fight-scenes were terrible. Yeah, they might be good compared to Playstation, but not that much better. The fighting characters were all skinny and rubbery, they didn't bend naturally.

    But the bigger problem is the direction. Watching the original again, the cinematography is simply brilliant. Be it the framing of the hands under the strobes in the bloodbath club or when the camera is chasing the Blademobile through the city, and pans off to a Vamp having a snack on the corner, Blade *looks* like a comic book, perhaps the finest adaptation I've seen. And the way the music is tied to the action, the editing was brilliant. When my wife and I were watching it the other night, there's the scene where Blade has been drained of his blood, then he takes some from the lovely costar, and goes to rejoin the fray. He comes flying down the temple shaft, and lands in his very cool one-hand-down pose. Frost's henchman gets attitude, starts at Blade, saying, "Man, I'm gonna fuck you up this time." Blade nearly effortlessly cleaves him in half, the vamp disintegrates, leaving only Blade's stolen shades to come flying through the air back to him. Just then, the music starts to come up, but it's just a driving bass beat; the camera comes in on Blade, he puts on his sunglasses, and they hold the shot for longer than you'd expect. I never really noticed how long the shot was but I looked over at my wife and she was staring at the screen, bobbing back and forth with the beat. I know if I could look in her mind she was saying, "Oh, he's gonna kick some ass, Oh, he's gonna kick some ass." It was a really clever sort of suspense they were building, reinforced by the music. Of course, just then, the rest of the techno track comes on and he proceeds to moidelate scores of vampires. Well, there's none of that in the second movie. They have techno music, but it's a soundtrack, not an integral part of the work.

    The first movie was a comic book brilliantly translated to the screen. The second one looks like Quake translated to the screen. They even used yellow lens filters when the scenes were boring.

    To add insult to injury, Blade 2 was mostly ideas and scenes from Blade cut and paste all over the place, painted with the "genetic engineering is bad" brush. When they did the scenes in Blade they were fun and original. When they did them in Blade 2 they weren't.

    In Blade, the story starts in a slaughterhouse, where they're storing humans for food. They later mention there's a bloodbank in every city that's run by vamps. In Blade 2, the story starts in a boodbank that's run by vamps.

    In Blade, there's a scene in a vampire nightclub, which introduces to the vampire culture and with the bloodbath and the treatment of the human provides us with literary justification for what Blade's about to do. It's a techno club and Blade's fight is choreographed with the music.

    In Blade 2, there's a much larger club scene, but it has no significance, except to make the radio headsets hard for their users to understand.

    In Blade, when Blade is captured by the vampires, they drain his blood and are about to win because he's weakened. He gets some fresh blood from his lovely costar and saves the day. In Blade 2, when Blade is captured by the vampires, they drain his blood and are about to win because he's weakened. He gets some fresh blood from a giant pool of blood they have there for some reason. Just in case anyone was wondering, blood goes bad very quickly. That pool of blood probably costs several thousand dollars per hour to maintain.

    In Blade, Blade can spot a familiar a mile away. In Blade 2, he has a familiar infiltrate his organization. He claims to have known all along, In Blade, we learn familiars are marked by their masters so that if another vamp tries to drain him they know who they'll have to answer to. That's why they're marked on the back of the neck. In Blade 2, familiars are marked on their hands, on the inside of their lips, etc., apparently so the coroner can find it.

    In Blade, when Dragoneddi(sp?) is exposed to the sun, he falls apart in pain, then explodes like someone put a stick of dynamite where the moon don't shine. In Blade 2, when Blade's not-quite-love-interest is exposed to the sun, she blissfully melts away.

    The inconsistencies go on. It's not that they make the movie unenjoyable, rather they're symptomatic of the mediocre plat and general lack of creative effort that went into this film. The first movie was a triumph, this one is a Hollywood formula piece.

    And Whistler was annoying, for heaven's sake. That took some serious work.
  • Well, Del Toro and David Goyer (writer/producer) want to make a third movie where the premise is what the vampires have actually won and the humans are their food/slave etc.
    Personally, I'd like this team to come back for a third movie but not sure if I like the plot. But it'll sure as hell give them a chance to take the movie to a new level of gore and violence.
  • What frustrated me in the first movie was Wesley Snipes in an intendedly tear-jerking soliloque telling that doctor he had rescued, the mysterious tale of his deeply tormented life, in a blatantly failed attempt to draw you into the character and offer some sort of unique insight into his "complex psyche". Had to love this quote "you have no idea ... what it's like ... to be me ... *deep, tormented look*".

    This was just an example. There were a few other similar scenes.

    FORGET THAT. Get to the ass-whoopin' already.

    Blade 2 fixed that. Less plot. Less dialogs. A couple good lines ("You ... do not ... KNOW ... who you ARE ... MESSING WITH !@(#") ("..OOOoooohh"). And more action. This was the whole reason why i went to see the movie. I wanted to see Snipes kick ass.

    Oh yeah and also they introduced a hot vampire chick. Dark, mysterious, tight-fitted outfit, just like Trinity in the Matrix. mm-mmMM. Add some subtle erotism with blood-sucking action between Blade and Nisa. Most definetly gratifying. The first movie had no good lookin' chick whatsoever.

    What I did like about the story, was Blade getting in closer touch with his vampire-side, partly thru unspoken romance/understanding with the vampire chick. I found this to be far more effective to show conflicts within Blade, than long-strung dialogs from the first movie. Blade is a man of action. not words. Whose ass he kicks and the manner in which he does it defines his relationship or attachment to other characters.

    Anyway. I'm a happy camper. Go Blade :)

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