Blade: Trinity

PLOT:

The film begins with an opening narration about Dracula:

In the movies, Dracula wears a cape and some old English guy always manages to save the day at the last minute with crosses and holy water.

But everybody knows the movies are full of shit.

The truth is, it started with Blade and it ended with him. The rest of us were just along for the ride.

The film starts with a collection of vampires looking for “Drake”, a.k.a. Dracula, they find him in Syria in a tomb where he retreated to sleep for a time. He is ultimately woken by the group.

The vampires succeed in framing Blade (Wesley Snipes) for the killing of a familiar posing as a vampire. A few days later, the FBI attack the hideout. During the siege, Whistler destroys the hideout after being mortally wounded and dying in the ensuing explosion. With his mentor gone Blade allows himself to be captured.

As the police prepare to hand Blade over to a group of vampires, Blade is rescued by Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel). The two head a group of vampire hunters called the Nightstalkers, formed by Blade’s mentor to assist him. King and Abigail reveal that Danica Talos (Parker Posey), who was the vampire who bit King, has located the first vampire, Dracula, now called Drake. Talos hopes that by resurrecting him, Drake (Dominic Purcell) will help save the vampire race by producing more daywalkers, and eliminate Blade. In his first confrontation with Blade, Drake shows a sort of affinity for Blade, as they are both “honorable warriors” (ironically, while Drake is delivering his speech about honor, he is hiding behind a baby he has taken hostage). During the chaos, King is incapacitated by Drake.

Blade eventually learns of a bioweapon the Nightstalkers had created called Daystar. The weapon is capable of killing any and all vampires in a nearby area. However, there are two catches: The first is that Drake’s blood must be infused with the virus. As he is the first vampire, his DNA is still pure, which, infused with Daystar, will make it work to its maximum efficacy. The second: the virus has a possibility of killing Blade, as he is a half-vampire.

Blade and Abigail learn of the vampire “final solution”, which involves several hundred homeless being kept “alive” in a chemically induced coma, trapped in body bags. This keeps in line with vampires needing live food sources if the entire vampire race were to take over the world. Blade has all of them put out of their misery, shutting down their life support.

The two return to find the Nightstalkers have been all but wiped out. The only exception is King who has been kidnapped by Drake and a young girl named Zoe (Haili Page), the daughter of one of the Nightstalkers. Blade and Abigail go to the Talos building to save their friends.

Meanwhile, King is chained and tortured for information about Daystar. When this fails to get any information from him, Talos threatens that she will bite King and leave him to feed on Zoe. Blade and Abigail eventually enter the building and the fighting begins. Abigail kills Danica Talos’ brother Asher (Callum Keith Rennie) and King kills Jarko Grimwood (Triple H) while Blade engages Drake in a sword battle. In the end, Blade impales Drake with the Daystar arrow, and releases it into the air, killing all the nearby vampires, including Danica Talos. As Drake dies, he praises Blade for fighting with honor and tells him that through Blade the vampire race will survive. Dying, he offers Blade a “parting gift”, he also warns him the thirst will eventually win.

REVIEW:

Blade: Trinity brings an ending to a saga started in Blade and continued in Blade II. This time Blade faces off against Dracula, who apparently is some sort of super vampire.

Wesley Snipes has said that he loves this character and would love to do more Blade movies, of course he has to rid himself of his tax problems, first, but I would love to see more Blade films myself. Especially after the bad taste the TV series left in my mouth. I’m not talking about some sort of reboot or remake, either. I want a full on Blade 4. Wishful thinking, though. Chances are if they do make another Blade picture it’ll be a remake or reboot. SAd…but true.

THe good parts of the film…well, when you have a film about vampire hunters, you’re expected to eventually bring in Dracula, so having him in the final chapter was a stroke of genius. Their sword battle is reminiscent of the swashbuckling films of yesteryear. There are a lot of explosions and technical gadgets and whatnot that bring Blade into the present, whereas in the first first film he was using alot of antiquated  weapons, primarily (that may have had something to do with the budget, though). Jessica Biel was obviously brought in to be the token eye candy ,but her character had a lot of depth to it, especially being Whistler’s daughter. There is scene after Natasha Lyonne’s character dies that Blade stands over here and tells her to “use it”. It brought to mind the possibility that now he was the mentor to her, as this was probably a similar scene he went through in his youth.

The bad…as with Blade II, they have decided to pair Blade up with a team. Now, while this team actually has good intentions and all, it just takes away from his character. It’s like The Punisher joining the Avengers, it just shouldn’t happen. normally, I’m a fan of Ryan Reynolds, but he came off as a tad annoying here. Strangely enough, the same characteristics here, he uses as Deadpool. Parker Posey just doesn’t seem to fit or convince me that she can lead this group of vampires or be a sexy vamp. Couple that with her funky hairdos and you have to wonder who she slept with to get this job. The film starts with this massive chase scene that is wicked cool, but in the context of the film, it doesn’t really click. Apparently it was meant for Blade II, but was cut, so I guess that makes more sense, but it still doesn’t fit. Neither do these random FBI agents who seem to have it in for Blade. They go through all the trouble of catching him, then after the interrogation, we don’t see them again until the last scene. Lastly, in all 3 films, Blade’s headquarters, which are located down by the pier have been infiltrated and blown up. You’d think he’d find some other kind of warehouse or something as a base of operations.

Be honest, when was the last time the last film in a trilogy was actually on the level of its predecessors? Even the final chapter of the holy trilogy, Return of the Jedi, doesn’t stack up. Does that mean its a bad film? No, but it isn’t as good as the other two films. Blade: Trinity follows that same pattern. I’m not a fan of the story, but it does make for a fitting end to the trilogy. I wouldn’t watch it as a stand alone film, though, unless you’re a woman who has a thing for Dominic Purcell or Ryan Reynolds, otherwise it is one of those films you can catch on TV. Personally, I’m a huge fan of Blade. While I didn’t love the film, I really did like it and would recommend it to anyone who is into these kid of pictures, but if you can only see one Blade picture, I’d go with the first.

4 out of 5 stars