Blade II
Directed by Guillmero Del Toro
Starring Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristopherson, Luke Goss, Ron Perlman, Leonor Varela, and Norman Reedus.
I’ll never forget the fall of 1998. I had just returned to Augustana to start my final year, but there was still one last movie I wanted to see to complete my summer vacation: Blade. For months, I had been reading about this Marvel comics movie on the horizon when and was looking forward to it. I became even more excited when word came that it was actually good. But, I was back in school, and it looked like I wouldn’t get to see it. Lucky me, though, the Augustana Students Union had rented the local multiplex for a “welcome back” evening and one of the five films available to me was…Blade. I saw it. Loved it. Dragged Chuck to it a few weeks later. And now, four years later, the sequel is upon us.
It’s two years after the first movie, and Blade (Snipes) has tracked his mentor Whistler (Kristopherson) to Prague. Turns out Whistler didn’t die at the end of the first film. He was turned into a vampire, and other vampires kept him barely alive and beat the crap out of him whenever they felt like it. After his daring rescue, Blade takes Whistler back to his lair, where we meet Blade’s new weapons designer, Scud (Reedus), who has a penchant for The Powerpuff Girls and always has a joint dangling from his lips. But, just as this trio is about to go out and kill some vampires, they meet up with Nyssa (Valera), a representative of the vampire nation. There is a new threat on the streets: the reapers, led by Nomak (Goss). Reapers are a new strain of “super-vampire” that can feed on the blood of both humans and vampires. Nomak and his reapers must be stopped, and the vampires can’t do it alone. So, they enlist the help of Blade. Blade soon finds himself fighting along side a group of vampire commandos originally trained to kill him, and led by the sadistic Reinhart (Perlman). Can Blade and the vampires stop Nomak? Will the reapers overrun the Earth? Will Blade fall in love with Nyssa? Was Whistler successfully turned back into a human, or does he still have “the thirst?” And what does Eli Damaskinos, leader of the vampire nation, have to do with it all?
Aliens with vampires is a good way of summing up this movie. There’s a lot of walking down corridors with reapers preparing to jump out at you. And that’s not a bad thing. You can also tell that The Matrix has come out since the first Blade because the martial arts are truly more advanced since the last film. The reapers themselves are a cool concept, and Goss is particularly creepy as their leader. It’s also nice to see Blade has loosened up since the last film, and it starts to look like he’s having fun with his job. However, my only one problem is, just as we’re coming to the end and gearing up for the explosive finale, it starts ripping off the first film! That’s just the curse of sequels, I guess. But, when all is said and done, this film is just a good, scary, fun movie.