The genre of the comic book movie has always been a tough one to handle. There are certain aspects of plot and action that comic books can get away with but movies just have a tough time dealing with due to pesky little things like physics, dying actors and other such real world constraints. However, the one hallmark of all comic book movies that make it is the fact that they somehow find a way in which to bridge this gap and make the comic book style action believable to the viewing eye. This is not to say that Blade II captured this ideal, this is just to say that this is what it was attempting.

Movies of this nature don't tend to produce much thought. However, in writing my review for this I actually had a couple of things that were almost warranted in putting down. So, instead of thinking them out quite well and using them somewhere else, I figured that my half-baked ideas could be put here, and then maybe a few people would tell me how crazy they were so I could just forget about them and rest assured that I am thinking up stupid things that other people thought of and dismissed long ago (well, i know that the second thought has been thought before, but not necessarily the first one).

the derivative of any function x, such that x is a successful movie...
OK, so Newton had no idea about movies when he was thinking up many of the tenants of calculus, but there's still a point here

Though its tough to take a mathematical concept and apply it to rating movies, I think that the derivative movie deserves a little bit of mention in this aspect. If you don't know calculus, just take my word for it here, and if you do, please ignore the obvious problems as this wasn't meant to be perfect.

If you define a movie as a sum of its parts, you could say that the movie Blade could be considered f(x) = (action)^2 + (plot) + (vampires)^2. The derivative of this function would be f_prime(x) = 2 * (action) + 2 * vampire; please note the lack of plot in this function. Thus, in the first movie you got (action)^2, which means that you had some really, really good action. In the derivative movie, you get twice as much action, which is of poorer quality. So this is where I was going with all of this, for any aspect of the original movie, your basic derivative movie is going to give you a good amount more of the same thing, just at lesser quality.

Thus it is with Blade II. Instead of being a movie in its own right, it decided to take the path of derivative movie, doing very little character development beyond the first movie and just taking what succeeded in the first movie (not realizing that it was a sum of the parts, rather than the individual parts), adding more of it (but at a lesser quality), and calling it good.


Target Market Factor
Blade II, while it was stylized much after a comic book, takes many turns which move it toward a more modern target market of kids who are in their early college years and late high school, yearning for the lives of these vampires (both in the unnatural sense, and the more physical sensuousness)

As we were exiting the theater, my friend turned to me and said, "You know, a lot of what was going on in that movie could be summed up in one word, target market." I had to sit back and think about that for a second, and then I realized how correct he was. You see, the biggest problems that we were having with the movie didn't have to do with the massive plot holes, bad acting, or cheesy action sequences (ok, so they bugged me a little bit); rather, it had more to do with an indiscriminate pandering to the target market, of which we were no longer a part.

Perhaps it was rubbing salt on the wound that we were getting older. Perhaps it was the fact that we took part in many of the activities before they seemed derivative and washed out. Perhaps it is the fact that I'm just getting to be an old codger and will be referring to everyone as a whippersnapper from now on (I am, after all, at the ripe old age of 25 now -- ancient in the standards of this movie's target market).

Get to the point already
OK, I've rambled on for quite some time about various different facets of my liking this movie or not... I think I might give you my final thoughts on the film here. This could otherwise by construed as a collection of more specific observations on the film

If you can't tell from my two bigger observations, I both found this movie completely derivative of the first one, offering me no large palatable piece that I could take home as original, and I found myself painfully aware that I was no longer part of the target audience for this film. However, besides these two long winded and, most likely, completely run-on ideas, I actually kind of enjoyed this film. Let me run down through a few good and bad things for y'all....

If somebody went to this movie expecting more than action and vampires, I guess they were sorely mistaken. Though the original offered a little bit more, if you boil it all down, we are here for vampires and the kicking of posterior[1]. Since we've boiled this down to what we care about (even still, I'm going to complain about the plot later, it wouldn't be the same if I didn't), let's discuss both of those...

Action
I tend to like action just as much as the next person. However, I have to stipulate some stuff with this. I like good action. Any dork can put together some fight scenes, with some explosions and call it an action movie. However, it takes some really good choreography and special effects to make an action movie actually memorable.

Choreography is perhaps the most underrated part of action sequences [2]. That being said, I thought the choreography of the action sequences in this movie left quite a bit to be desired. It was definitely a step above the action sequences you would see in a random action flick, but I felt that they fell short of the one's that I remember in the original Blade and they quickly became stale. I think the choreographers thought they would spice it up a bit by adding some wrestling style movies (most notably a suplex and an atomic elbow drop). Personally, I thought they were for the sake of spectacle alone, offered nothing to the sequences except a cheap thrill, and took more away from the movie than they added to it. However, if before pulling off the atomic elbow drop, Nomak would have hit his elbow properly and signaled the move... I would have given it much more credit and perhaps sung its praise until my dying day [3].

The next part I should talk about is the special effects, and most specifically the CGI enhancements to the fight scenes. In my mind, and hopefully the minds of others, the whole point of CGI is to be unnoticed and make people think whatever was modeled was real. The people in Blade II had a tough task ahead of them, as they were forced to simulate comic book style action using humans and CGI, not exactly an easy task to accomplish. Well, apparently the task was more than the animators were up to, because I felt that the scenes which took advantage of the CGI were completely obvious and there was no point in its use where I thought it was successfully kept subtle like it was supposed to be. It was completely obvious and blatant at every turn.

So, to sum up my thoughts on the action. In comparison to the best action sequences that I have seen, Blade II doesn't stand a chance, and most likely won't be remembered beyond its run in the theaters and the New Releases section in the video store [4]. This was another strike against the film.

Vampires
The only other real reason to see this film was because of a deep devotion to vampires (or to the comic book itself, which most likely has to do with a devotion to vampires). Well, you weren't completely disappointed here, as you had quite a few vampires (though they seemed to act more human than anything). You got to see an Overlord Vampire who was really evil, and really disgusting looking, but really didn't do much beyond that, so you just got to look at someone walking around and trying to look a lot like Gary Oldman in Dracula.

The one area where the vampire lust succeeded however, was in the design and detail associated with the Reapers. They were sufficiently creepy and scary looking to make up for the lack of cool vampire stuff in the rest of the movie. The plot behind their creation was rather weak, but I'm going to leave that out of here and let the watcher decide that one for him/herself.

Plot
OK, I couldn't make it through the review without talking about the plot... here is my rant...

First off the plot is, as I explained above, really non existent and weak. The only good thing about it, was that they found a way to bring Kris Kristopherson back into the movie, which was both good and bad. It was good, because I liked him, it was bad because it really didn't serve any good purpose (other than a weak attempt at a rivalry between him and Scud), and they reduced him to a complete "cool sidekick" stereotype who seemed only to be around in order to offer hillbilly quips here and there and generally be a bad*ss.

Second, this movie followed formulaic plot even more than its predecessor. The vampire brat pack was filled with every stereotype that a group of its composure should have (complete with Asian guy who has wicked martial arts skills, and really doesn't talk; to the undeveloped sexual relationship between two of the members). There was also the scene where Blade has to get to blood[5] in order to survive and then come back to destroy the opposition, and is shot on his way there, only to be revived by the blood in such a manner as to be ready to destroy all. Finally, there is the formulaic ending, where the idealistic daughter of the uber-evil vampire betrays him, and is in turned nearly killed in the process, only to die watching her only sunrise in the arms of the compassionate Blade (please... insert retching noises here).


Final thoughts, I promise
OK, I realize I have long overstayed my welcome here, so I will now leave you with a few parting words and be on my merry way.

Before I go, there are a few things that I should really say here. The first of these is that I didn't completely and totally hate this movie, I only mildly hated it. I'm never going to own this movie unless someone gives it to me as a gift, and then I feel bad about giving it bad lest they come over to my house and ask to watch it, leaving me in that awful predicament of either coming up with a good lie as to how it is not there (such as there was an immediate need for a DVD sized frisbee in jump starting a car to take invalids to their dialysis machines), or to tell them the awful truth about my thoughts on the movie. However, this is not to say that it is completely and totally without merit. There was plenty of action there, and there were plenty of vampires, and Kris Kristopherson said many funny things.

But let's all be honest here... this movie isn't going to win awards for anything. I will admit, however, that I had troubles coming up with my final thumbs up or thumbs down rating, as I did enjoy myself at the movie, yet I would feel somewhat guilty about sending someone to this movie with my full recommendation, hence my final recommendation would have to be the "thumbs down".



Footnotes...
1 --I apologize for this blatant use of lame language, however, I can't remember how to get around epinions censor program right now
2 --Up until recent times that is, since the advent of Jon Woo in Hollywood, it has been getting its proper due
3 --If you are unaware of the proper way to signal an atomic elbow drop, you need to watch more wrestling. You do this by holding your elbow out (with a clenched fist facing toward you face), and then slapping the under part of the elbow twice before dropping it upon your opponent. The complete disregard of this rule by Nomak made me cry foul, and I would have to have awarded the match to Blade by disqualification (if he hadn't already won).
4 --Which, these days, seems to be about 3 years, so it has awhile to die out
5 --There seemed to be a plot hole here. All that Blade needed was blood, there was a fresh guy who had just been shot (but most likely not dead) by Whistler, yet they used neither his blood, nor Whistler's blood to revive Blade, for some reason he need to be immersed in a fresh baptism of blood in order to be revived...

Recommended:
No