BLADE II (2002)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

Time has not improved my opinion of the second BLADE movie. In whatever year I saw it on DVD, I thought its action scenes were uninspired and repetitive and its new characters tiresome. One insight: since I did not remember that the director was Guillermo del Toro, from now on BLADE II will be my go-to, should I want to demonstrate the vast contrast between his quality works and his crap.

David S. Goyer is once again the sole credited writer, but I don't believe anything in BLADE II is derived from the comic. I neglected to note in my review of the first installment that Goyer had dumped all of the supernatural aspects of Marvel's "vampire-verse," substituting the Mathesonian concept that vampirism was caused by an infectious virus. Yet the disease still gives its infectees some of the vulnerabilities of traditional bloodsuckers, in that they turn to ash when stabbed with silver or exposed to sunlight. For Number Two, Goyer followed up on the virus-idea by creating a variant species, "Reapers," who don't have the same weaknesses but DO have weird ALIEN-like tentacles that can sprout from their mouths, as an opening scene is swift to reveal. I find myself wondering if this idea came from Lovecraft-fan Del Toro, though it doesn't really matter who came up with an idea almost as dumb as sparkling vampires.

Blade (Wesley Snipes) has a busy opening: he learns that his mentor/armorer Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) wasn't really killed in the first movie, but was vampirized. Blade captures and cures Whistler and kills a few dozen traditional vamps. Then his kung fu skills are tested by two highly trained warrior-vamps, who eventually announce that they want to enlist his help against the Reapers, who threaten both vampire-dom and humanity. Blade meets with their elderly vampire leader Eli and agrees to make an alliance of convenience.

Nyssa (Leonor Varela), the daughter of Eli, leads an elite squad of warriors who have been training for two years-- albeit not to battle Reapers, but with the expectation of taking down Blade himself. The hero shows no real reluctance to risk his life by fighting beside bloodsuckers sworn to kill him-- in fact, during most of the movie Blade never shows any emotions at all. Even when he cows the elite warriors by showing up the foremost tough guy Dieter (Ron Perlman), there's no sense that Blade gives the matter any more thought than he does about the proper polish for his swords.

After all that setup, the rest of the movie just reduces down to a lot of commando missions with no strong sense of what's being accomplished. The combat-vamps, with the encouragement of Eli, do attempt to wipe out both the Reapers and Blade. Only Nyssa honors the alliance, and not surprisingly, things don't go well for her either. The closest thing to human interplay is that Whistler butts heads with Scud, who took Whistler's place as Blade's human aide while the older man was off being a vampire. It doesn't come to much, but it's more fun than watching Wesley Snipes run through super-fast, boringly mechanical martial arts moves with trained stunt-guys.

The one good thing about the mediocre BLADE II is that because it made money, it led to one last installment, which I for one liked better than the first two.