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Review Archive
FILMS
Blade: Trinity (2004)What goes up must come down. Sadly the Blade franchise didn't escape this rule. The original (directed by Stephen Norrington) was great. The sequel (directed by Guillermo Del Toro) was even better. But the third and, presumably final, chapter in the Blade saga (written and directed by David Goyer) is disappointing.
Before I get too far into this review though, I should point out that my friend Matt thought it was OK. And it was OK. It's just that, unlike Matt, I'd seen and loved the first two installments (also written by David Goyer, by the way). I really wanted to like this one, too. For so many reasons. First I think Goyer is a good writer for this genre. The storylines of the first and second movies are solid enough. Second I like Wesley Snipes as an action hero. He's a good actor. And he has a legitimate handle on the action (having a strong background in martial arts and more than enough charisma not to stand there staring blankly between fight scenes). Lastly I like Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds (Abigail Whistler and Hannibal King, respectively). I'd even go so far as to call myself a "fan" of Reynolds. (I thought Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place was completely hysterical, mostly thanks to Reynolds' character.)
So what went wrong?
Quick synopsis. (Warning: Spoilers. I'm going to skip the details, but here's the bare bones crux of the matter). The vampires, led inexplicably by Parker Posey, are fed up with losing to Blade (even though the overall tone of the movie is that the vampires are winning). So they decide to locate and raise the first. The alpha. Dracula (played by Dominic Purcell in most scenes and a whole lotta CGI in the others). Simultaneously they expose Blade to the media and law enforcement, so he has the humans to contend with as well.
So what do you do when you're exposed to enemies on all sides? Get some allies. Enter the Night Stalkers led by King and Whistler. The rest of the movie is essentially a showdown between these two groups. In fact it feels a bit like one of those strategic computer games where you choose a team, nation, or whatever. And each team has access to a "special character" unique to them. For the Night Stalkers, their special character is Blade. For the vampires, it's Dracula (or Drake, as he's called).
OK, that analogy was pretty geeky, even for a review of a kung-fu vampire movie. Quick, think of something "cool" to say. ... Hey, how about that Ron Artest, eh? What a loon! Good one, Stuart. An NBA reference. Genius! Good, now move on...
Back to my original reasons for wanting to like this movie. David Goyer's previous storylines have been good, as I mentioned. Neither Blade nor Blade II had particularly revolutionary storylines. But they were both good, solid frameworks to support both horror and action. Blade: Trinity's plot isn't necessarily weaker. So I think most of the problems lay with the direction. Unfortunately in this case, Goyer was responsible for that as well. It's not dreadful. Far from it. It's just not as good as I'd hoped. The pacing seemed off to me. There were scenes I really didn't need to see. For example, I don't need to see people getting into and out of cars. I didn't need to see it the first time. And I sure as hell didn't need to see it the third time. I don't need to see them approach a building either. Just skip to the relevant bit. They come into the building and find ... whatever.
The MTV-style editing, with quick frenetic cuts or long cuts in slow motion, takes a lot of flak from more traditional critics. But for an action movie, I really think there's a lot of merit to that approach. Action movies aren't about showing us the nuts and bolts of getting from point A to point B. I don't need to know that Blade and Whistler have just pulled into the parking lot to know that they weren't home when the shit went down. They weren't shown when the shit went down. And their reactions when they discover that the shit went down will tell me everything else I need to know. A slow motion shot of them running through the front door to discover what happened skips this nonsense in the parking lot and gets us right where we need to be next.
Conversely, there were other scenes that felt like Goyer knew we were supposed to be somewhere else and we'd better get a move on. So the movie makes big leaps that probably should have been developed further. The worst example is when King is giving Blade his orientation at the Night Stalkers' hideout. "We have a piece of Dracula's armor, so we've been able to determine what he must look like." Er, what? I was impressed when on C.S.I., Nick Stokes is able to determine that a small piece of metal came from a spur. I'm completely in awe that these guys were able to determine the facial features of a monster thought to be completely fictional for thousands of years based on nothing more than a bit of his armor. Now that's good detective work.
Next, Snipes as Blade. The first two Blade movies were a perfect showcase for Snipes' evident physical abilities. As a martial arts enthusiast, I'm really impressed with Snipes. (Nearly as impressed as Snipes is with Snipes.) He's got a strong background in various styles, including the highly acrobatic capoeira (a Brazilian dance/fighting style), karate, and the Filipino martial arts. (Snipes' friend and choreographer for the first movie was Jeff Ward, a stuntman and Pekita Tersia eskrima exponent). As a result, Blade is able to convincingly deliver spinning kicks, rapid-fire hand and foot combinations, and fluid sword movements as he works his way through droves of the undead.
Regrettably, Snipes seems to be losing a step. If not him personally, then I have to chalk it up to the direction again. But in the first two movies, there was always that moment when Blade had just had enough. That shot where the camera lovingly pans around to show Blade's full badassity as if to say, "Yeah, it's on!" And then the mooks would start pouring into the room to obligingly get kicked through windows, staked to walls, and otherwise dispatched.
Blade: Trinity has all that ... technically. But it's much less thrilling. Blade still walks through an army of mooks. But the shot is too tight to really tell what's happening. That's a shame with someone who actually knows what they're doing performing the action. Action aficionados aren't daft. We know what's up. The choreography matters. In a fight scene, it does matter how you get from point A to point B. I don't just want to hear mooks go "Ugh!" and disappear off screen. I want to watch Snipes flow from one movement to the other. That's the joy of employing guys with real martial-arts experience.
If this complaint doesn't make any sense to you, just imagine if someone took your favorite Gene Kelly movie and re-edited it so that all the dance numbers centered on Kelly's grinning countenance, with the scenery constantly changing in the background as he danced past lightposts, storefronts, and surprised onlookers. It'd be pretty frustrating, yeah? You want to see the actual dance, right? Right. Moving on.
Blade also seemed to rely on the guns and gadgets more in this movie. It was frustrating to watch him point and shoot at various vampires who seemed content to stand there and get hit, run toward him and get hit, or (if they felt like making it difficult for him) dive through the air and get hit. There was no sense of relation in these scenes. And it's not simply a question of gunplay. Look at John Woo's HK filmwork. Almost exclusively gunplay, but it's still staged as a dance. Opponent's move in harmony with one another, so that the whole scene looks engaged (for lack of a better word). In this film, the choreography seemed more forced.
Next, Ryan Reynolds as Hannibal King. Reynolds is funny to me. Laugh-out-loud funny actually. I'm just not convinced that this character called for laugh-out-loud funny. It takes some of the darkness away from the situation. Here's the odd thing though: I enjoyed Reynolds' performance. I laughed. I even enjoyed the newly buffed out Reynolds' fight scenes. (I do wish he'd had more opportunities for over-the-top gunplay though.) It just didn't feel, er, congruous I suppose. I would have liked to see Reynolds used less for comic relief and more for legitimate action with a humorous edge.
Speaking of comic relief, did we learn nothing from Jean Claude Van Damme's laughable Universal Soldier: The Return?! Pro wrestlers (Triple H in the case of Blade: Trinity) don't work if they're there solely as a sight gag. Yeah, they're big. And yeah, it's theoretically funny to watch big guys get hurled through windows just to stand up, dust themselves off, and say something like, "I hate that guy." (Note: I said theoretically funny.) I'll even accept that it could perhaps be funny to watch said huge guy toss one of the protagonists around like a ragdoll. Only one problem really. I didn't think it was funny. Maybe that's just me. I'll let you be the judge.
On to the visuals. Blade II broke new ground with the visuals for the reapers. Their almost insectile pincer-jaw things, coupled with the tentacle-like tongue, added a dimension of horror back into a franchise in which vampires aren't just known or recognized. The Blade universe is lousy with vampires. They're freaking everywhere. So Goyer and del Toro are to be congratulated for managing to reintroduce a sense of the alien into that storyline. In Blade: Trinity, Goyer again attempts to present a new type of threat.
Dracula is the first. The perfect vampire. "He never evolved because he never had to." And he's been worshipped by various names and various cultures for centuries. The Babylonians knew him as Dagon. The Eastern Europeans knew him as Dracula. And we know him as Drake. On those occassions that we see Dracula in all his monsterous glory, it's pretty striking visually. I did dig the monster design. But it was undeniably influenced by the reapers of the last movie. The insectile jaw for instance. That's cool though. Dracula looked good. (I thought he'd have a bigger sword though. Have at that, Freudians!)
Less impressive was the pomeranian with exactly the same disjointed jaw and sucker tongue as the reapers from Blade II. Yep you read that right. The vampires apparently decided it'd be a lark to genetically engineer their lap dog with the "reaper strain." Whatever. It was done mostly for comic effect. And I have to admit that watching Hannibal King react to the dog did make me laugh. But I wasn't really there to laugh.
I know that, as a general rule, I should talk about the movie that was made and not the movie I wish had been made. But a quick note about Guillermo del Toro. Originally, he'd been interested in doing a third installment of Blade. Under the condition that it involve the world being openly dominated by vampires. Sounded to me a lot like the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (which has already been turned into two movies, Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price and The Omega Man with the always unforgettable and frequently hysterical Charlton Heston). But I have no doubt that in del Toro's capable hands, it would have been well worth the retread.
Blade: Trinity isn't awful. It just doesn't live up to its potential or its predecessors. And as a huge fan of the franchise, I found that difficult to accept.
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