Blade Trinity (2004)

Blade Trinity (2004)

 

Release Date: December 8, 2004

To answer the question posed at the end of the last entry, no. The Daywalker cannot go 3 for 3, as Blade Trinity is a disappointing step down from the first two films.

This time around, a group of vampires led by the dastardly Danica Talos have revived Dracula, who celebrates by making the screen flicker and giving the viewer a seizure. Dracula’s true form is, to quote Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator, “One ugly motherfucker!” so he takes a human disguise and changes his name to Drake. Drakeula, if you will.

Blade is doing the same thing he always does, killing vampires, but Whistler is concerned that Blade is getting reckless and sloppy. He’s proven right when the FBI trick Blade with a fake vampire and follow him back to his hideout. Whistler is shot in the chaos, and he decides they’ll never take him alive, so he presses the self-destruct button and blows up the hideout. Blade doesn’t take the opportunity to escape and instead comes quietly. Quick assurance, Whistler died in Blade 1, but came back in Blade 2. That doesn’t happen this time. He really is dead now. The reason why will become apparent soon.

The FBI handlers interviewing Blade are all familiars working for Drakeula and Talos who plan on handing Blade over to them, but their plans are put on hold when Blade is rescued by Whistler’s daughter Abigail and her annoying friend Hannibal King. They are members of the Nightstalkers, a younger and sexier group of vampire hunters here to replace the distinctly old and unsexy Whistler. Blade is miffed at being shoved out of the limelight in his own movie, but he reluctantly works with them anyway, secretly planning to sue their asses later. Vampires and FBI goons give chase, but the former give up when resident big tough vampire, WWE wrestler Triple H, re-enacts the scene from Terminator 2 where the T-1000 runs after a speeding car and gets an arrow to the eye for it (must… resist… Skyrim joke…), while the FBI give up after Abigail tells them she’s a Katniss cosplayer; an impressive feat, given the Hunger Games didn’t exist yet when this film came out.

The Nightstalkers announce that they have created a virus that can kill vampires, but the virus needs Dracula’s blood for maximum effectiveness. To draw him out, Blade and Abigail go to a vampire blood farm and turn off the machines keeping the victims asleep. They don’t stick around to open the bags though, so I don’t really want to imagine the scene once the hundreds of people wake up to find themselves slowly suffocating in giant plastic bags. The plan has the desired effect, and for his move, Drakeula goes to the Nightstalker hideout and kills everyone there except Hannibal King and a little girl who is kept around for the purposes of being adorable, who are taken hostage.

Drakeula, Talos and Triple H take turns beating up Hannibal King in what is the most enjoyable scene in the movie, but unfortunately all good things must come to an end, as Blade and Abigail arrive to rescue King, and fight the vampires. Blade fights a horde of mooks before fighting Drakeula, leaving Abigail to deal with the rest of the nameless horde. For his part, King gets to fight vampire dogs.

Bender enjoys laughing at mutated dogs and will continue to do so whenever they appear.

He then gets to fight Triple H and eventually defeat him, but Talos attacks him while he’s distracted. Abigail and Blade work together to inject Drakeula with the virus, which goes on to kill every vampire in the world, saving King’s bacon since Talos succumbs to the virus before she can finish him off. Drakeula takes his defeat surprisingly well, and disguises himself as Blade to get the FBI off his back. Of course, he then drops the disguise upon reaching the autopsy table, which makes the disguise rather pointless and implies Drakeula is not actually a vampire, but a troll.

The key problem with this film is that most of the characters are weak. Talos is a terrible villain. The only thing she does after reviving Drakeula is get angry and shout a bit after being thwarted. While doing this, she doesn’t come off as intimidating or frightening the way some people can when they lose their temper, she comes across as a three year old throwing a temper tantrum because they’re not allowed ice cream. Sidelining her in favour of Drakeula is a sensible decision, but he isn’t that much better himself. Dracula is a blatantly obvious opponent for a vampire hunter to fight, and this portrayal isn’t unique or interesting enough to make up for that. He comes off as a repeat of Deacon Frost from the first film, with elements of Novak from the second film, but lesser than both of them.

The protagonists are just as bad. Blade sleepwalks through the film. The unprofessional on-set antics of Wesley Snipes during the film’s production (which are well documented elsewhere, so I won’t go into that in depth) suggest he didn’t want to be there, and it shows in his quarter-assed performance. Blade’s reluctance to work with the Nightstalkers is mean-spirited, even taking Whistler’s recent death into account. At least he had a good reason to be reluctant to work with the Blood Pack in the second film. He was smart enough to see that they were going to betray him the first chance they got. Blade not working with the Nightstalkers comes off as him being a prick for no reason. Whistler is equally bored for the brief amount of screen time he has, which causes his death scene to lack emotion, even though they managed it in the first film well enough. Having this second death be an explosive set-piece may have also had something to do with that. Hannibal King is an obnoxious tool and extremely annoying. Scud in the second film was obnoxious, but at least it was funny then because Whistler disliked him as much as the audience did. Not so this time. When the character’s most enjoyable scene involves him being beaten up, you done goofed. Thank goodness for small mercies then, as Abigail is at least tolerable. She doesn’t steal the show or particularly stick out, but she is definitely the least worst character here.

The plot could have done with another draft to streamline things, as several elements are introduced, only to never come up again or not be used to their full potential. For example, the vampire virus could possibly kill Blade since he’s half vampire himself, but nothing happens to him over it. He doesn’t become even slightly ill when it is activated, and he doesn’t address the possibility of his death when the point is first brought up. Drakeula is immune to sunlight because of reasons, and Talos wants his help to make all vampires immune. This never comes up again after the initial mention. Talos has vampire teeth in her vagina, if a passing mention is anything to go by. Fortunately, someone out there decided a vagina with teeth was too good an idea to waste, and made their own film about it.

The psychologist familiar character is wasted when Drakeula kills him for a disguise. He could have been used to turn the populace against Blade, as well as keeping them in the dark about the existence of vampires, which could have helped the vampires feed and advance their agenda in secret. A possible angle of Drakeula’s disgust at vampire merchandise, also goes nowhere, which is disappointing as there could be something to the idea of seeing a traditional vampire’s reaction to something like Twilight. The scene doesn’t seem to be played for laughs either, like when Disney’s Hercules did it.

Speaking of laughs, there aren’t any. Unfortunately, that isn’t for lack of trying, as there are plenty of inane jokes throughout, many of which are courtesy of Hannibal King. Not only are these jokes not funny, they are actively unfunny, testing one’s patience with every punchline.  Any humour came from unfortunate lines in the script having reality subtext applied to them, and are therefore entirely unintentional. For example, Blade complaining about being replaced by Abigail becomes funny as Blade was demoted to extra thanks to Wesley Snipes’ behaviour, with Abigail and King’s roles being increased to compensate. This film isn’t as gruesome as the first two, but there’s a significant increase in profanity to make up for that. King and Talos in particular use the word Fuck every other sentence, which doesn’t make them look any better. The word loses all meaning thanks to their abuse of it and becomes just another means of annoyance.

Blade Trinity is a metaphorical wooden stake through the heart of what used to be an entertaining little series, what the Resident Evil movies could be if they weren’t terrible. The only thing Wesley Snipes being sent to prison for tax evasion did was make the death official.

Next Time: A Fox executive’s dream comes true.

Bonus: The ending used in the film was one of three planned endings. The director’s cut ending had Blade give up fighting his nature and go full vampire, while Drakeula escaped.  The novelization ending had Blade start fighting werewolves since there no vampires left. This ending was scrapped from the film because the filmmakers feared that audiences would see it as a ripoff of rival movie franchise, Underworld, which has vampires dressed in black leather fighting werewolves.