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Wimpy So the other
great Del Toro makes a brilliant sequel to a mediocre-to-good
comic book riff starring Wesley Snipes. The sequel,
simply-enough titled "Blade II," added to the mythology,
enhanced the stunning visuals, and just all-out coolified what
could have easily become a dull, repetitive, silly franchise.
And the David Goyer made this, which is a dull, repetitive,
silly follow-up. It's a lot like the original, more than
its first sequel, except it's like a lame version of it.
Bad dialogue, unnecessary deaths, and boring fight sequences
reaffirms what Del Toro mentions numerous times on the Blade
II DVD commentary track: Goyer's ideas are lame.
Only Goyer, apparently, could make Dracula boring.
Great casting job on that one, friend. Maybe next time you
should cast Ben Stein as the villain. It could be called
"Taking Ben Stein's Soul." As ridiculous as it sounds,
it's better than this movie.
And giving Ryan Reynolds all the snappy, wise-cracking lines
is, well, why you would cast him in this at all. The trick
is, it's supposed to sound snappy and wise-crackish. Not
poorly written and misplaced. |
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This picture is better than
anything in the movie. So, we leave it here. |
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All that
goes up...
by Christian De Matteo
Wimpy
And so it came to pass that the very movie that
not only reinvigorated the comic book movie genre, but in fact
reinvented it with the understanding that comic books weren't
always for kids and could indeed be R-Rated and ballsy succumbed
to the very pattern that had lain the genre dead and dormant for
over a decade. Blade Trinity, the third and final
installment (so they say), is an highway accident of missed
opportunities, piled and wide with promises unfulfilled, one
after the other after the other.
And I, for one, am just a little heartbroken.
I saw the first Blade in theaters, a comicbook
fan oddly unaware of this character, with a group of friends and
an ex-girlfriend I thought I could be friends with (Blade
Trinity is at least more successful in its attempt than I was)
and was completely blown out of the water by how damn cool it
was.
I saw the second movie in theaters with my buddy
Mike Flanagan, whose review is above this one, after introducing
him to the first film the night before. We both watched in
awe, marvelling at the sheer, intoxicating and unbelievable new
level of cool new director Guillermo Del Toro had brought to the
film, managing to make the second much better than my beloved
first Blade movie.
All the while I sang the praises of a man named
David Goyer who continued to churn out excellent scripts,
breathing life into a genre now in a Phoenix like rebirth.
And then I listened to the commentary on Blade
II and found, that while an ingenious and talented man, Goyer,
like a poor man's less-heady and more sober Oliver Stone, needed
an editor. All the weakest parts of Blade were his and the
strongest parts of Blade II were Del Toro's. Still with
great respect I was endlessly grateful for Del Toro's cooler
head (in every way).
And so Hollywood in its infinite moronitude,
turned over the final Blade solely to Goyer, who with a sequel
idea molded completely out of part 1 and 2 retread, managed to
create a comicbook movie that tied-up, bent-over, and raped the
coolness from the series. Part 1 had a cool Blade, a man
who was ice cold and all business. We enjoyed watching him
sullenly take pride in his business, suffering the martyr's life
all the while. In part 2, we watched Blade evolve into a
more human AND more superhuman warrior of good, showing more
personality and more likability. But in part 3, we find a
Blade so static and 2-dimentional that he all but fades into the
background of a movie named after him. Rethinking the
movie after watching it, I realized I could barely remember a
thing he'd done. How is this possible? I don't know.
Ask Goyer and the Snipes that controls him. With all the
rumors and reports of how hard to work with it and egotistical
Wesley Snipes is, one can only assume, that Goyer directed the
production and Snipes directed the Blade. An actor who,
though an act of divine mercy, was rescued from the graveyard of
B-movie oblivion by a series that definied his place in
Geek-filmdom, Snipes shows no gratitude or love for anything but
making himself look bad-ass, which he obviously has no concept
of without a good director to give him such a concept.
This Blade is a bad cartoon version of a movie character,
sillier than Jackie Chan's cartoon alter-ego with a hundred
times less charm. By the end of the movie, you don't
really give a damn if our hero, who we've worshipped for almost
ten years, lives, dies, or gets explosive diarrhea.
But that's okay, we'll just root for the bad
guys then. Hell, the villain is FREAKIN DRACULA!
That's right, Goyer decided to pull out all the stops and go for
the man himself... and then casts some random prettyboy beefcake
with the screen presence of a coatrack... which is all he ends
up amounting to, since the costume department decided to hang
the most ridiculous things on him that they could think off.
I understand Goyer wanted to go against all the prevailing
vampire/Dracula mythology (though, one wonders, why?) but I
wouldn't guess that his first instinct was to go against all
that makes him cool, attractive, horrifying and, oh, damn, what
the word?... Ah yes, INTERESTING!
Well at least there should be a cool plot...
HA!, says David "I'm taking my own series anally against its
will" Goyer, "Fooled you again!" The plot will be not only
completely uninteresting, but, better still, incomprehensible.
Little that follows the opening credit/fight sequence that all
but mimics Del Toro's great opening, will be intelligible to the
human mind. Perhaps, he seems to be thinking, the audience
will be so overwhelmed by the fact that something so good will
go so bad that they won't notice a plot that rather than
twisting, randomly just changes to a different plot, and then a
different plot, all of which are painfully cliche and none of
which will be resolved by the end credits. AND THEN...
I'll release a director's unrated cut, says Goyer through his
film, with a NEW, DIFFERENT ending, that not only ALSO won't
make sense, but will manage to also be completely different,
thereby completely f**king the going mythology.
Oh, and that final Blade thing... screw that
too, we'll leave it just like the first and second ended...
except less clear, intriguing or feasible.
Are there good things here? Sure, this
would be a completely acceptable adequate comic/B-movie deal if
it was the first in the series and no one really cared. It
might even be a pleasant guilty pleasure for lobotomized four
year olds. It's got some halfway interesting action, some
TV worthy one-liners and Ryan Reynolds (who, though I like, is
slowly caricaturing his career to death) providing the
incredibly obvious attempt at giving the movie an ounce of
personality.
Listening to Goyer's commentary, one gets the
feeling he's so excited by what he's made, like a seven-year old
peeing his name in the snow for the first time and actually
getting a whole three letters, that if the DVD's center was a
little wider (just a little) he'd make sweet love to it. I
wonder if he actually is just as not-sober as Oliver Stone,
because he certainly seems to have his beer goggles on.
Blade Trinity is the chick you wake up in a strange, roach
infested apartment, after a long night of drinking and slamming
your head repeatedly into a wall and realize that you may have
to move to New Guinea to start over with people who could
possibly again think your cool.
So we learn that the Goyer giveth, and the Goyer
taketh away. Thanks for the memories. But I hope I
don't loose anything important when I'm poking my brain with a
paperclip through my eyes and ears to try and wipe this memory
out. I'll just assume Blade was a happy little two-parter.
Oh, and Jessica Biel is f**king smoking. |
