Dir: Guillermo del Toro
2002
****
1998’s Blade was a risk of New Line Cinema and an
important test subject for Marvel Studios. It was a hit – and every hit needs a
follow up. New Line and Marvel got to work on a sequel right away, hiring David S. Goyer once more to
write the script. In the most ridiculous career choice of all time, Stephen Norrington, director of
the first film, turned down the offer to direct the sequel. Rubbish for
him, but brilliant for everyone else, as New Line production president Michael De Luca decided to
hire Guillermo del Toro as his replacement. Goyer and
producer Peter Frankfurt both admired director Guillermo del Toro and believed
his dark sensibilities to be ideal for Blade II. Frankfurt first
met del Toro when Frankfurt's design company, Imaginary Forces, did the title
sequences for Mimic. "I admired Mimic and got to know
Guillermo through that film," says Frankfurt. "Both David Goyer and I
have been fans of his since Cronos and were enthusiastic about him coming on board.
Guillermo is such a visual director and has a very strong sense of how he wants
a movie to look. When you sign on with someone like Guillermo you're not going
to tell him what the movie should look like, you're going to let him run with
it." Like Goyer, del Toro has a passion for comic books. "Guillermo
was weaned on comic books, as was I," says Goyer. "I was a huge comic
book collector... my brother and I had about twelve thousand comic books that
we assembled when we were kids, so I know my background." It was the
perfect marriage, with Del Toro keeping it dark but intensifying the
comic-book feel to the story. Del Toro chose not to alter the script too much
from the ideas created by Goyer and Snipes. "I wanted the movie to have a
feeling of both a comic book and Japanese
animation," said the director. " I resurrected
those sources and viewed them again. I dissected most of the dailies from the
first movie; I literally grabbed about four boxes of tapes and one by one saw
every single tape from beginning to end until I perfectly understood where the
language of the first film came from. I studied the style of the first one and
I think Norrington used a tremendous narrative style. His work is very
elegant." Stepping back into Blade's shoes was a challenge Wesley Snipes
relished. "I love playing this role. It's fun as an actor to test your
skills at doing a sequel, to see if you can recreate something that you
did,". Years later, after the third Blade film, Snipes openly admitted
that Blade II was by far his favourite of
the three movies. I think everyone agrees and the film was a success. The story
takes place two years after the events of Blade, a pandemic
known as the "Reaper virus" has spread through the vampire community.
Infected vampires are turned into 'Reapers', a mutation of vampires, immune to
all vampire weaknesses with the exception of ultraviolet light, who kill humans
and turn any vampires they feed on into more Reapers. Unable to contain the
Reapers, Vampire Lord Eli Damaskinos (Thomas
Kretschmann) sends two emissaries, Asad (Red Dwarf’s Danny John-Jules) and his
daughter Nyssa (Leonor Varela), to seek
the aid of vampire hunter Blade and his team, consisting of weaponsmith Abraham
Whistler (Kris Kristofferson reprising his role) and
Blade's new assistant Scud (Norman Reedus). Blade
has since recovered Whistler, who had been held captive and tortured by the
group of vampires for 2 years (since the end of the previous film). Whistler
had been turned into a vampire by them, and after returning to their
headquarters, Blade gives Whistler an anti-virus vampire serum to revert him
back to human. After meeting with Damaskinos and his human familiar, lawyer
Karel Kounen, they cautiously agree to help due to the danger of the Reapers'
uncontrollable hunger and rapid mutation. Asad then introduces Blade and his
group to The Bloodpack; a group of vampires trained for the sole purpose of
killing Blade. In addition to Asad and Nyssa, The Bloodpack consists of
Reinhardt (Ron Perlman), Chupa (Matt Schulze), Snowman (Donnie Yen), Verlaine (Marit Velle Kile), her lover
Lighthammer (Darren Crawford), and Priest (Tony Curran). To keep them
in line and after Reinhardt's racially charged remark, Blade humiliates
Reinhardt and plants an explosive charge on the back of Reinhardt's head. On
Blade's advice, the team starts by investigating a Prague located nightclub
frequented by vampires. When they do encounter Reapers, they soon discover
their weapons and powers are completely ineffective. Blade is forced to kill
Priest after he becomes infected, Lighthammer is wounded (and infected but he
keeps this to himself), Whistler deserts his post, and Scud barely survives a
Reaper attack by using UV lights to scare them off. Jared Nomak (Luke Goss of Bros.
fame), 'Patient Zero' of the Reaper strain, attacks and nearly kills Blade
before a burst of sunlight forces him to retreat. Whistler appears, and says he
has been tracking the Reapers to a central nest in the sewers. The dissection
of a Reaper corpse which was trapped by an electronic hatch reveals that most Reapers
tend to burn out within twelve hours if they do not feed, as well as having an
additional layer of bone, which surrounds and protects their heart. Having
learned of this 'Achilles heel', prime weakness, he and Scud create UV
projectors for the team. While searching for the nest, Lighthammer succumbs to
the infection, killing Snowman and chasing Verlaine up a manhole ladder before
both die of light exposure when Verlaine removes the manhole cover. Chupa turns
on Whistler and attacks him, only to die when a group of Reapers attracted to
his scent tear him apart. Whistler survives an encounter with Nomak only
because he reveals the truth of his condition and situation to Whistler so he
can inform Blade. Asad is ambushed, dragged underwater, and killed. Using a
special UV emitter bomb pack, Blade kills all of the Reapers with the exception
of Nomak and rescues Reinhardt and Nyssa, but is betrayed by Damaskinos and his
people, who stun Blade unconscious. After Damaskinos' betrayal, he reveals that
he created The Reaper virus in order to create a new race of vampires based on
Blade and that Nomak is in fact his son. Scud turns out to be a familiar loyal
to Damaskinos, who also works with Reinhardt. Blade turns the table on Scud,
saying he always knew of Scud's true allegiance, and kills him with the bomb he
had placed on Reinhardt, earlier. Damaskinos then orders his scientists to
dissect Blade so they can learn how to replicate his abilities. After escaping
his captors, Whistler brings Blade to a blood pool, where he regains enough
strength to kill Reinhardt and his men. Seeking revenge, Nomak tracks
Damaskinos to his private heliport and kills him. He then bites Nyssa,
infecting her with the virus while drinking her blood. Blade confronts Nomak,
and after a ferocious battle, defeats him. With his now-broken sword, Blade
stabs it through the side of Nomak's chest and into his bone-protected heart,
slipping it through the bone plates on the side. Nomak then commits suicide to
end his suffering by shoving the sword all the way into his wounded heart.
Fulfilling Nyssa's dying wish, Blade takes her outside, where she dies while
watching the sun rise before she can fully change. The movie ends with Blade
in London, where
he kills Rush, a vampire he encountered earlier in the movie. It is a vast
improvement on the first film, with loads of fun new characters. Any film is
improved by having Ron Perlman in it and it was a great surprise to see Danny John-Jules in a big
Hollywood action film. The casting of Luke Goss as a villain is the
decision that had most Brits worried but he was really good – worlds away from
his boy-band persona of the 1980s. Marvel knew after Blade II that they could
succeed and repeat the process, they dropped the ball with the
third installment but still, they knew they were onto something and
their characters could work on the big screen. The other thing we
have to thank Blade II for is the confidence it gave Del Toro to make Hellboy.
It was clearly on his mind and if you look carefully he even hints as much by
making Scud wear a T-shirt featuring the logo of the
Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, a reference to Mike Mignola's Hellboy comic.
Two years later, Hellboy was made, featuring Ron Pearlman in the lead role.
Blade II is a great superhero/vampire/comic-book movie and still stands up
against some of the better MCU films today. It’s just such a shame they made
such a mess of Blade III.
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