Review of Blade II

Blade II (2002)
4/10
It just sucks
22 April 2006
This sequel takes out everything that was good about the first film and adds in stuff that doesn't work at all. The marvelous action scenes are replaced by traditional Hollywood fights where you have no clue of what's going on and several times the director feels the need to use unrealistic CGI just to replace his actors. You can easily tell the difference between actors and the CGI versions of them, especially in this film. Trust me. Especially dumb is the scene in the beginning where Blade fights against another vampire, and it is shown from the side as if it was some kind of Mortal Kombat video game. You'll have to look hard for a dumber action scene, actually.

The Blade series is here turned into something much less mature and adult and into something that is even more dumbed down than the original (which was no Casablanca, but still good). Action at exactly every corner, lots of shooting and fighting and screaming. But no character. You don't really care for anyone in this film, not even Blade. Why is that? Because Blade is no longer the animal he was in the first film, he's much more refined here. He takes time to meditate, he actually lets a wounded vampire go and he does a lot of unnecessary sword moves for no other purpose than to get the audience to watch Wesley Snipes make his moves. In several scenes, Blade flashes his sword around despite being completely alone. Instead of cutting of a tube, he raises his sword and slashes in the air for five seconds before actually turning to cut the tube off. Why? It just looks dumb. Let's not forget the dumbed down rap music and hip characters they threw in. Compare the young and cool Scud to the old and weathered Whistler. Whistler kicks ass, whereas Scuds constant hip remarks are just annoying. Why didn't he die in scene one?

The visuals are very colorful. The colors are: Red and blue. That's it, you won't find any other colors here. It gets very tiresome after awhile, and the visuals are further damaged by the constant use of CGI even when it's not necessary! A lot of times CGI blood is added, or cgi characters. It just looks bad. Period.

Also, vampire lore is changed. The vampires no longer put up a fight at all, instead they die just by a single gunshot wound. In the original, Blade actually had some trouble beating a few vampires and was taken down by a few of them in some scenes! Here, they go down dime-a-dozen and one wonders why we have to go through two hours of Blade just kicking immense ass in action scenes that are rehashed over and over and over again.

Let's not forget the obvious plot holes and character mistakes. In one scene Whistler, an old vampire hunter, knocks out a vampire villain, grabs a sword and then... Takes off? Why the hell didn't he just turn that sword on the already knocked out vampire and save Blade some trouble? What kind of vampire hunter does NOT kill an evil vampire when he has him under his blade? Stuff like this is abundant all the way through, and makes you sit uneasy in your seat.

Also, the villain is nowhere near as characteristic or colorful as Deacon Frost in the original. It's just a bald headed, pale super vampire who can take out anyone except for Blade. We don't give a crap about the stupid sub plot they threw in about him, or any of the other stupid subplots.

Gah, it hurts my head just thinking about this mess. Avoid.
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