Yeah, I know we technically covered a movie this month that's not only Marvel, but has vampires... but I don't care, it's my blog. Besides, it's been a while since we covered the first one. Blade II was the logical conclusion after the success of the first Blade film broke new ground and set up the massive success of comic book movies for years to come.
Seriously, more than twenty years later, Blade walked so that pretty much every other superhero could run.
Blade II picks up some time after the events of the first movie. Blade (Wesley Snipes) is hunting down his mentor Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) is not actually dead, but instead has been kidnapped by a different gang of vampires than in the first movie. That, however, ends up being the least of Blade's problems. A new pandemic is sweeping through vampire kind, turning them into a deadlier variant known as the Reapers. They are stronger, faster, more bloodthirsty, and worst of all their bite can turn humans and vampires into them. What's a Daywalker to do? Well, team up with a vampire family - the Damaskinos - to take them all out before they destroy both the humans and the vampires alike.
Much like the first film, Blade II starts off with an instantly iconic and memorably badass action scene to show us that Blade is... well, a badass. After returning to his replacement weaponsmith Scud (Norman Reedus) and curing Whistler, Blade has his work cut out for him this time. With friends like the Damaskinos (including Ron Perlman), does he even need enemies? After all, their "Blood Pack" was a team of vampires commandos specially trained to hunt... him.
Wesley Snipes returns as the stoic badass with the occasional quippy line Blade, who does really well and has clearly settled well into his iconic role. Bringing back Whistler, given he and Snipes having such good chemistry together is a no-brainer even if it is a retcon. Scud makes a fine addition to Team Blade as well, though he might want to trade in those pistols for a crossbow. Just saying. Also, the whole betrayal thing, you dick.
You have a new villain in Jared Nomak (Luke Goss), who of course plays a very different villain than Deacon Frost did in the previous movie. Rather than seeking the ultimate power of vampire kind, Nomak has a very simple motive in mind: revenge. The vampires, at least the eldest among them, know the truth of where the Reaper virus came from and he intends to expose this secret for all to see.
There's also a bigger look at vampire culture (or, rather the "Vampire Nation") than we've ever seen. Rather like a certain franchise that heavily involves vampires obscuring themselves from the general populace, the Damaskinos know that the Reaper virus spells big trouble for them and thus see it as their common enemy alongside Blade. They do rightly bring up that, after the Reapers are done with vampire kind, humanity will be next. It's not like they're going to stop needing blood. So, it's very much an Enemy Mine situation... emphasis on enemy, since it's abundantly clear that neither Blade's team nor the vampire-centric Blood Pack trust each other from the very beginning.
Really that's all I can say about it. Blade II capitalizes on what made the first movie great while deepening the mythos a bit more. The inclusion of the Reapers as a bigger, badder threat is good, though someone weakened in their menace by them ultimately having a fruit fly existence. The film has great action, more than a few good lines from several different characters rather than just Blade himself. It even has a few dodgy early 2000s effects (although they looked pretty good for the time, anyway). Combine all of this from some stellar directing by horror maestro Guillermo Del Toro, and you have yourself a hell of a supernatural action adventure film with very overt horror elements to it. Unlike Morbius or other vampire stories, the monster in this one is more Blade's unending quest to control the thirst within him... and his never ending war against the vampires, two things that will forever separate him from the human beings that he protects. When we get to Blade: Trinity, we'll get to see how the absence or corruption of all these different elements made that movie... well, suck, not to put too fine a point on it.
Final word on Blade II, though - it's good and it's easy to see why so many people consider in the best of the New Line Cinemas trilogy. Next time, we'll be closing up Horror Month 2022 with the latest reboot of the Halloween franchise - Halloween.
Be there!
Blade II is brought to us by New Line Cinemas and Marvel Entertainment.
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