Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

While out doing errands the other day, my sister calls me, requesting that dad and I go rent a movie; Dumb and Dumber for her boyfriend, and something else “not totally stupid.” Though it’s not totally stupid, Blade Trinity wasn’t all that and a bag of chips either. But hey, we hadn’t seen it so we figured, why not?

An attempt to play it, a return to the video store, two cleanings, two more attempts to play it, and a final successful attempt on my computer later, my little sister and I were the only ones to see the movie all the way through. Beware rental places – some people just don’t know how to take care of CDs and instead they let their kitten play with it.

Anywho, Blade (Wesley Snipes) is known as the Day Walker; he’s a mix of human and vampire, an unfortunate event that occurred when his mother was bitten while still pregnant. If you watch the first movie, you’ll see all this. For years vampires have been hunted down by Blade, along with their familiars (people who aspire to be vampires but are still human – just doing the dirty work). Finally the vampires have had it with Blade. Time to bring in the big guns; they awaken the first vampire of them all. Dracula, a.k.a. Drake.

Blade has a few problems as now the FBI is after him for killing so many people, and now there’s been a setup that lands Blade’s face on the evening news. With the FBI tracking him down, vampires in league with some of the higher-ups, Blade has to team up with the Nightstalkers, vampire hunters with extra cool toys. One of them, Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds), used to be a vampire, and the other Abigail Whistler (Jessica Beil), is the daughter of Blade’s mentor. They’ve got a little secret weapon that can kill all vampires – they just need a bit of ole’ Drake’s blood first.

The first Blade was cool, entertaining, and managed to be plausible. The second one, Blade II was okay, but it wasn’t all that great. I think Blade Trinity could have easily beaten out #2 had it not been for several little things that just added up into a big pile of “Well, now this doesn’t work…”

Good Things
At least Wesley Snipes agreed to do another Blade movie. We all know just how lame sequels and such can be when the main character is suddenly played by someone else. So they get points for at least having the same actors for the same characters (this goes for Kris Kristofferson as Whistler also). And Snipes has always been a good Blade, though he has a few tweaks this time around.

Ryan Reynolds – it’s simple. I love him. Yes, a lot of the dialogue he had was inexcusably lame, but since it is Ryan Reynolds and he does a great job of being a smartass, he manages to pull off a lot of them without too much of the lameness seeping in. He does a pretty good acting job in other areas as well; injury and pain, being very ticked off, upset, etc. I’d like to see him in some more movies to see where he can go. Did I mention that he’s got a great body? Yow. Oh, and I really did love the section when he had been captured and Danica (evil female vampire in charge) told him she had the perfect torture for him: turn him into a vampire again, wait until he was going insane with thirst, and then bring in a little girl he knew to feast on. A.) Great idea, and B.) loved the look on Ryan’s face. If only the rest of the movie could have been up to par with just that piece.

The plot had several good points. The method they came up with killing all vampires isn’t all that far-fetched, credit is due for the use of actual scientific components (such as the materials vampires were buying for creating DNA and such, as well as the elastic protein – my sister majors in all this stuff so she got a kick out of it and claimed she could make a vampire, haha). And the whole Dracula idea wasn’t bad either, except as much as I liked the guy playing ole Drake, he didn’t quite look the part of human who lived thousands of years ago. Unless he just picked that form, but he showed up looking that like all decked out in his old armor and such sooo... And I always want to know how these things learn English...

Bad Things
*grimace*

Gadgets – these people somehow have the money and supplies to make stuff better than what Area-51 has pumped out. Cool, but, uh, how is this possible? Look, I can only suspend my belief so far, okay? And Patton Oswalt? The comedian is making this stuff? No, I’m sorry, but no. I like Pat, but I just don’t buy it. Especially with all that “tough” acting going on – it just looks stupid.

Acting – I give credit to some, but overall it’s like a lot of the characters/actors are trying to look/act tougher than they should be. Jessica Beil for example. She could have been much better, but her “I’m a badass vampire hunter attitude was too much for me. And the iPod thing? Could they have advertised that any more? And are you seriously going to kill vampires while listening to music? That right there made me want to stake myself.

Script – I don’t know how much of this is ad-libbed (wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of Ryan’s lines were), but as I’ve said already, some of the things that were said were just downright ridiculous. It goes hand in hand with the tough acting, so the combo was icky. Along with all that, there was more use of the word “fuck” than in the past two Blade movies combined. Now personally, I don’t give much thought to swearing, but I know other people do, and I also feel it changes the feel of things. It was unnecessary for the most part (except when Ryan is faced with a vampire Pomeranian dog, then it’s almost required to say “What the fuck?”). Even Blade was spouting off more than normal and it took away from the character. And though vulgar, I do have to give a point to Ryan's insults - very creative.

Characters themselves – We have a secret hideout so the vampires can’t find us. We also have security surveillance and plenty of high-tech gadgets. But we’re too stupid to put up motion sensors and then take it one step further and have the blind member of the group in the surveillance room with all the monitors. Or how about this? We’re vampire hunters, we wear all this weaponry and go around killing familiars in broad daylight. Blade is wanted by the FBI, but we still stroll on down the street decked out in our gear where everyone can see us, and then we break into a building where if the cops showed up – and should have since we attacked just about everyone in the building and left the one behind the security desk with the phone conscious – we’d be captured again, easy as pie.

Yeesh. It could have gone over so well. Did I mention that airborne viruses make noise like little chittering birds? Or that the ending was kind of flat?

This was a two CD set so all the extra goodies are on the second CD. It’s just your usual junk – trailers, people chit-chatting about the movie, bloopers (that weren’t all that funny – except a few of Ryan’s bits), and an alternate ending that I’m glad they didn’t use because it was, ah, pretty bad.

Not magical, but not totally crappy. I recommend it under the following pretenses: you like watching Blade kill vampires, you like Ryan Reynolds, you think Jessica Beil is sexy, or you just want to see Ryan faced with vampire dogs (that was the funniest part in the movie). It’s a mix of good and bad stuff, so watch at your own discretion.

NT

P.S. By the way, for you wrestling fans - Triple H happens to be a vampire in this (you can even see some of the wrestling moves in the fight scene between him and Ryan).

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV

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