Old School Review: Blade Trilogy

Here we are with another old school review with the Blade Trilogy.  Blade was first made in 1998 with the final film Blade Trinity in 2004.  All three films star Wesley Snipes as the vampire hunter Blade and Kris Kristofferson as Blade's mentor and best friend Whistler.  I had the chance to watch the Blu-Ray copy of these three films last week with my two oldest daughters, 14 and 16.  My daughters ideas of vampires mostly stem from films such as Twilight and that is about it.  As I pretty much despise Twilight I thought I would introduce them to a bit different of a vampire film.  I would say that all in all they had their eyes opened to a new but old genre of vampire films and I had the chance to relive a trilogy of films that I haven't seen in ages.

I really enjoyed the story of the Blade Series.  From what I understand Blade was originally a Marvel comic book.  When Blade was a baby in his mother's stomach she was bitten by a vampire and died.  Blade was saved and ultimately became a half human/half vampire.  He has all of the strengths of the vampires but none of their weaknesses.  Scouring through the streets as a young child he was picked up by Whistler and trained to be the vampire killer that he is today.  By the first movie Blade is a full grown man with only short flashbacks of his birth and childhood.  Whistler is an old man that walks with a gimp and a leg brace from apparent previous battles we know nothing of.  Even though Blade is not fully a vampire, he must inject a serum into his body every day to stop the effects of the vampirism.

Blade One also stars Stephen Dorff as Deacon Frost.  Deacon is not a pure blood vampire but was once human and turned into a vampire.  To get to the point.  He is a cocky vampire who eventually overthrows the head vampires in an attempt to decipher ancient vampire text to unleash an apparent blood god on the world. Personally, this was not my favorite of the trilogy.  Snipes is Blade 100%.  He is the man.  He is the character but I felt that he didn't have an admiral enough foe to really make this film solid enough.  Being the first film it is totally a watch but be prepared in the future films for an overall better story.

This brings me to Blade Two.  First and foremost this film was directed by Guillermo Del Toro.  He made other films such as Hellboy, Hellboy 2 and Pan's Labyrinth.  You can really see a departure in this film from the first.  It is alike in many ways that keep it in running with the first but the special effects are way better and the overall story takes a step up.  This time around their is a mutation in the vampire community.  It is a monster that was once a vampire but now craves blood so badly that it will feed on human or vampire.  Blade is asked by the vampire community to help them track down the source of the mutants.  He is joined by a ragtag group of vampires lead by Mr. Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman.  This idea almost reminds me a lot of the group of marines from Aliens.  I really connected with that and enjoyed the film even more.  The head mutant vampire is played by Luke Goss who you can see in the recent Death Race 2.  He is a budding actor and someone to watch out for on the horizon.  Blade Two makes a giant leap and is my personal favorite in the series.  It is very much worth watching and a film you will find yourself watching again in the future.

Blade Trinity is the last film in the series and the most commercialized in my opinion.  This time around we throw in Ryan Reynolds, Jessica Biel, Parker Posey and Paul "HHH" Levesque.  The previous films held on their own with Wesley Snipes and Kris Kristofferson.  I don't know why they think they have to add a ton of new actors to the mix.  Ryan Reynolds is well Ryan Reynolds.  He has a lot of smart ass one liners and is pretty much eye candy for the ladies as is Jessica Biel whom is supposedly Whistlers unknown daughter and is the eye candy for the men.  Neither of these characters brought much to the table for me and were pretty much worthless overall.  Parker Posey plays Danica.  Danica along with her group of vampires end up bringing back to life the real Dracula to for once and all destroy Blade.  I guess the film studios kinda billed this as the final film and from the direction that things were going it was probably for the best.

Overall, all three of these movies make a good companion set to any movie buffs collection.  Is the first one weak and the third pretty much stupid?  Yes but with the Blade Two being so good they all kinda equal each other out.  I would not be surprised to see another one of these films because frankly Wesley Snipes hasn't had a hit since the last film.  That is once he get's released from prison.  If you haven't seen the films then go out and rent them or you can probably purchase the box set for a reasonable price at your local store or online.