Screenwriter David S. Goyer had a few different ideas for a sequel to the 1998 hit Marvel Comics adaptation Blade. At one point, he wanted the vampire slaying title character (played by Wesley Snipes) to fail at thwarting an apocalyptic event at the end of the first movie, leading into a Blade II that would have dropped Blade into a "Planet of the Vampires" scenario where vampires ruled the world and humans were kept in concentration camps. But Blade succeeded at stopping that, so another idea was to bring in another Marvel character, the anti-hero Morbius, "the living vampire". A Morbius cameo was even filmed for the ending of the first Blade, with director Steven Norrington as the character. But then that idea was scrapped, too.
The story of Blade II ended up being a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" situation. Just like the X-Men would work with their enemy Magneto to face a bigger threat in 2003's X-Men 2, in 2002 Blade decided to team up with vampires he would usually stake on sight.
Snipes said he wanted Blade II to be "scarier and freakier" than its predecessor, and they found a director who could definitely pull that off: Guillermo del Toro, who was not only the best choice for a blend of horror and superhero action, but also happens to be a vampire fanatic, so he could bring a lot of knowledge and ideas on how to handle the sequel's bloodsuckers, as well as the creatures that are considered even worse than vampires, forcing Blade and the vampires to join forces against a common enemy.
Those creatures are called Reapers, and they're said to be the result of a mutation in the virus that causes vampirism. The first Reaper is Jared Nomak (Luke Goss), who prefers to feed on vampires when he's thirsting for blood. The vampires he bites also become Reapers, and within 72 hours of becoming a Reaper himself, Nomak has already created 12 more Reapers. Blade wouldn't mind this so much, but the Reapers aren't going to stick to feeding on vampires. They're going to branch out to humans eventually, and with the rate they multiply and how often they need to feed, this could very quickly turn into another apocalyptic event.
Nomak first shows up on the vampires' radar in Prague, and Blade also happens to be there at the time, following the trail of his mentor Abraham Whistler (Kris Kristofferson). You thought Whistler was dead? So did everyone else who watched the first Blade movie, but Goyer pulled a fast one on us. He followed the notes of David Fincher when he wrote the first script, and Fincher had said Blade needed to "kill his father, his mother, and his mentor" over the course of the film. The father in this case was the vampire villain Deacon Frost, who bit Blade's mother while Blade was still in her womb. The mother was Blade's actual mother, who became a vampire from that bite and stayed by Frost's side for thirty-one years. But the mentor, well, Goyer found a way to kill him and keep him alive at the same time. Whistler was attacked and bitten by vampires in the first movie, and when Blade couldn't finish him off Whistler took matters into his own hands. Somehow Whistler managed to shoot himself but still turn into a vampire, and then he was abducted by other vampires that have been moving him around the world - Moscow, Romania, now Prague. They torture the old man, then submerge him in a tank of blood so he can heal and they can start the process all over again.
Although Blade II came out three and a half years after the first movie, only two years have passed in movie time. Blade is finally able to rescue Whistler in Prague and is seemingly able to cure him of his vampirism by injecting him with an "accelerated retro-virus detox" and making him go cold turkey from blood in one night. Suspicion over Whistler's true alliance will linger over most of the movie, but it's still fun to have Kristofferson back in the role, even if the character probably should have been left dead.
In Whistler's absence, Blade has been assisted by a young fellow called Scud (Norman Reedus), who has taken over Whistler's job of maintaining Blade's vampire hunting equipment and designing new weapons for him. They may have the same purpose in life, but Whistler and Scud don't get along very well. Honestly, I never liked Scud very much, either. I always found him to be kind of irritating, and therefore didn't become a fan of Norman Reedus until watching him on The Walking Dead.
One awesome thing about Blade II is the fact that there is very little downtime in its 117 minutes. It starts off by showing Nomak munching on vampires, then moves on to an extended action sequence in which Blade rescues Whistler. Blade has just gotten Whistler detoxed when his lair is raided by a bunch of vampires who are dressed up like modern tech ninjas and have come to offer him a truce so they can take on the Reapers together. This truce comes from Damaskinos (Thomas Kretschmann), an extremely old, Nosferatu-looking vampire who's part of the ruling body of the Vampire Nation. For two years, Damaskinos has been training a group of vampires called the Bloodpack, whose original purpose was to hunt Blade. But now that there's something more dangerous to vampires than Blade out on the streets of Prague, Blade and the Bloodpack strike up a tenuous alliance.
The Bloodpack consists of Damaskinos's daughter Nyssa (Leonor Varela), Asad (Danny John Jules), Reinhardt (del Toro regular Ron Perlman), Chupa (Matthew Schulze, who actually had a small role in the first Blade as a different vampire called Crease), Snowman (Donnie Yen), Verlaine (Marit Velle Kile), Lighthammer (Daz Crawford), and Priest (Tony Curran). Several of these vampires are clearly just Reaper fodder, dull characters who just go into battle sporting guns. Snowman stands out because he has a sword and is played by Donnie Yen, a martial arts movie legend. Reinhardt stands out because it's Ron Perlman, and he has very antagonistic interactions with Blade. Lighthammer whacks enemies with a large hammer, which is awesome (and I'm sure it's not light). And Nyssa makes an impression because she grows to respect Blade, and becomes something of a love interest. In fact, Blade and Nyssa had sex late in Goyer's script, but that didn't make it into the finished movie.
Once Blade and the Bloodpack are working together, we get two extended action sequences. One is set in a vampire nightclub called The House of Pain, and the other follows the Reapers down into the sewers of Prague. A lot of Bloodpack members fall along the way, but a lot of Reapers are exterminated as well, and del Toro did an incredible job of cutting between multiple different action scenes within these sequences. Blade and the Bloodpack members split up when raiding these locations, so several different characters are shown facing off with Reapers at the same time. I can never watch The House of Pain sequence and see the way del Toro edited the action without having flashbacks to an infamous review written by Harry Knowles in which Knowles went on and on with an analogy that equated del Toro's filmmaking skills with his presumed sexual skills. It was quite inappropriate, and unforgettable.
Del Toro went into Blade II knowing that one issue with the first Blade was that it had its best action scene right up front. Nothing that followed was quite as cool as that blood rave sequence. So del Toro wanted to make sure that the sequel would have great action throughout, and he certainly succeeded. Since this was a new era in special effects - we had seen CGI stunt doubles in 2000's X-Men, and would see more of those in Spider-Man later in 2002 - del Toro was also able to include some moments in which Blade and his fighting opponents pull off some inhuman movements, which they should be capable of, since Blade is fighting vampires and Reapers and he's a half-human, half-vampire hybrid himself. Unfortunately, these CGI doubles don't always look all that realistic. It was early days for this technology.
Del Toro also made the Reapers come off as a serious, and seriously gross threat. While Goyer originally envisioned them as shapeshifters that would be able to grow mouths on any part of their body, del Toro drew inspiration for their design from Eastern European vampires, which were said to have a bloodsucking stinger under their tongues instead of fangs. Reapers have stinger-tongues, and they're also lacking a lower mandible, so their jaws are able to split wide open for optimal sucking. Like ticks, these things also excrete excess fluid while eating, pumping a disgusting liquid out of glands on their backs. They're tougher to kill than vampires as well; they're immune to silver and garlic. The only way to destroy these things is with UV light.
With almost nonstop action from beginning to end, Blade II is an incredibly fun movie to sit through, and del Toro did a fantastic job bringing it to the screen. He has made other movies along these lines (Hellboy, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Pacific Rim) and he has made more prestigious movies (Crimson Peak, The Shape of Water), but as far as I'm concerned this is the most entertaining movie he has ever made. The action is great, and it's cool that the movie does not shy away from its comic book roots. The concept of the Bloodpack, the sight of Blade and those characters going into battle together, it doesn't get much more comic book than that.
In the end, I might still prefer the first Blade, because that movie was sort of a revelation when it was released in 1998 - "This is what Marvel movies could be like!" And that movie was a big deal for me and my friends on home video. By the time Blade II was released, we were graduating high school and going our separate ways, so we didn't get to hang out and watch this one over and over like we did the first Blade. But even though I didn't have those memorable personal experiences with Blade II, it still holds up as an excellent sequel. It was one of my most highly anticipated movies of 2002, and it did not disappoint at all.
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