When you consider how much of an influence the original Blade is credited with when it comes to the meteoric rise (and rise) of the superhero movie, it’s truly stunning to see how spectacularly the franchise crashed and burned in it’s third installment. It literally doesn’t make a lick of sense, especially when you consider that the directorial talents that got the series to where it was in the first place were Steven Norrington and Guillermo Del frickin’ Toro. And yet Blade: Trinity was destined to hurtle headlong into a fiery and very public car wreck due to the far fetched, yet very real ludicrous events happening daily behind the camera. I could go into lurid detail about what exactly happened to who and how but I won’t because firstly this isn’t an article in the National Enquirer and secondly, national treasure Patton Oswalt can tell the story way better than I can – serously, check it out on youtube. What I WILL comment on is how relentlessly shit this movie is, how baffling many of the plot points and directorial choices are and how every member of the supporting cast is trying to scream for help behind their eyes.
A vampire clan led by petulant lunatic Danica Talos has found Drake – no, not the singer – an all powerful vampire that may have been the first of his kind. Immune to sunlight, able to shape shift and once know by his non de plume: Dracula (yep, it’s gonna be one of THOSE kinds of movies), Danica hopes this vampire saviour can vanquish Blade and unite the species into finally taking over the world. However, this hardly seems necessary considering they’ve already framed Blade for the murder of a civilian and now has the entirety of the police force treating him and his mentor Whistler (a REALLY tired looking Kris Kristofferson who bows out early) as public enemy number 1. After a SWAT team subdue Blade and kill Whistler (with almost no fanfare) it’s down to The Nightstalkers to bust him out and take up the slack of the majority of the film. Wisecracking, ex-vampire concubine Hannibal King and Abigail Whistler, a surviving daughter the script just pulls out from it’s butthole, form a formidable team and forge an alliance with the increasingly monosyllabic Daywalker to defeat Danica and Drake and maybe even find a way to end the vampire virus for good. But if this biological secret weapon terminates anything with bloodsucker DNA, what does this mean for Blade?
No part four, that’s for fucking sure.
Actually, the non-arrival of any further movies in the franchise has nothing to do with a vampire killing virus and more to do with the fact that Blade: Trinity sucks harder than the vampires themselves. Much of the blame lies with writer/director David Goyer who seems to have a worryingly loose hold on the franchise that he himself created, yanking tonally muddled scenes out of the void and hoping someone bites. For example, take the scene where Drake wanders into a vampire themed store and is dismayed at being shown various artifacts such as bloodsucker cereal and vampire dildos (thankfully not stored on the same shelf). Is that supposed to be funny? Tragic? I’m not even sure Drake actor Dominic Purcell is even entirely sure as his confusion seems 100% genuine. Also, as Goyer obviously had no control over his leading actor (who tried to actually choke him on set leading to Goyer hiring bikers as bodyguards) he seems to let everyone else do what they want, how they want, which, when you have notorious ad-libbers Paker Posey and Ryan Reynolds in the cast, may be both the best and worst move you could make. In addition to this, what should’ve been a triumphant finale for the popular character is muddled to the point of confusion. I’m still not entirely sure what the hell exactly happens in the dying minutes of the movie and the existence of a few alternate endings prove that no one else does too. Rza’s closing song fucking rules though…
The other recipient of this addition of the blame game is star Wesley Snipes who, if reports and stories are to believed, was stopping at nothing at torpedoing his own meal ticket in a perfect storm of toxic masculinity and a haze of marijuana smoke. Despite sporting shades and an unmoving, impassive face for the entirety of the movie you can still somehow plainly see how much he just doesn’t want to be there. His apathy is overpowering, enimating out of the screen like a radioactive sneer to the point where your fairly convinced he’s maybe had a full blown mental breakdown. Let’s put it this way, a scene where he’s dressing down and verbally abusing the rest of the main cast (particularly Reynolds, rumour has it he HATED Reynolds) doesn’t feel much like he’s acting. More like acting out…
The rest of the cast, who isn’t apparently suffering a massive mid-life crisis, attempt to cope in various ways, mainly by all acting as if they’re in different films. Parker Posey as villain Danica Talos for example chooses to overact wildly like she’s still in one of those mockumentaries like Best In Show while sporting a hairdo(n’t) like a dorsal fin and vigorously not giving a solitary fuck. Jessica Biel on the other hand throws herself into the physicality of her role sporting awesome shoulders and biceps and getting pretty adept with a bow and arrow while dear old Ryan Reynolds, seemingly feeling every molecule of hate flung his way by Snipes, up-shifts into full Van Wilder mode, spitting out wise cracks at a near godlike rate and producing one of the single greatest lines in cinema history. Sure some may rank “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.” or “The problems of two people don’t amount to a hill of beans.” as flawless lines of cinematic gold but for me it will alway be Reynolds bellowing “You cock juggling thunder-cunt!” at a fittingly stunned Posey.
In many ways, thanks to virtually everyone except Goyer and Snipes, this movie falls nicely into the so bad it’s good column – make that so AWFUL it’s good because how can you take a movie with a vampire pomeranian fucking seriously – but you can’t help wonder at what might have been if the two driving forces of this movie hadn’t utterly fucking hated each other.
In his farewell outing it seems Blade has become dull…
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