I’ll start out by mentioning that Blade is a vampire movie. I don’t like vampires as a myth and think they are overused and often not done in clever ways. With that out of the way, on to my thoughts on Blade.

Blade – The story of the first Blade movie is all about prophecy, one ambitious vampire decides to take over all the rest to complete a prophecy that will destroy life as we know it, Blade must stop him. Fairly standard as a plot. Blade is special because he’s a vampire hunter, a human/vampire hybrid known as the Day-Walker, all the power of a vampire with his only weakness being bloodlust that weakens him if he doesn’t feed. Once again, not too far from what you expect of an action-vampire movie. Where Blade stands out is in its combat and use of blood, the movie starts off with vampires having a blood party which Blade walks into and using guns along with his sword starts killing everyone. People’s heads explode, even whole bodies just swell up and pop in a bloody mess, it’s so over the top and stupid that it becomes incredibly entertaining. Obviously Blade has allies like a haematologist and a gruff, old assistant to help him out and build character but it was the bloodiness and combat that gave me enjoyment in this one. Would definitely recommend to vampire fans and fans of extreme to the point of being silly, it just hits that point where it’s not too silly but just good enough.

Blade 2 – This one actually surprised me, Blade gets recruited by the vampires to fight some deadlier, vampire hunting, mutant vampires. It’s an alliance where nobody seems to trust anyone else, where everyone seems to have the means to kill everyone else but Blade’s clever, he works it all out and stays one step ahead. There’s not as much blood as in the first film but the combat still looks good, focusing on the movement rather than the result. Ron Perlman and Norman Reedus were new additions to the cast and both impressive in their parts and the haematologist/serum plot line has been abandoned but Blade’s gruff, old assistant is still there to help him. There’s also a special effect where people’s mouths split, it’s quite creepy and makes the monsters a little scarier. A pretty good one, just not with the awesome amount of blood that the first film had.

Blade: Trinity – This film is different from the two before it, the tone is less dark. A more talkative Blade, Blade having more allies to interact with and the addition of Ryan Reynolds give a lighter, more humorous feel to the film, the darkness is still there with examples like discussion of forcing a man to go mad and feed on his daughter but generally speaking it’s more of a laugh. There’re some decent chase scenes and some cool tricks in combat, they re-use the mouth split effect from the second film and the villain has some respect for Blade, even doing him a favour in the end. The idea for the plot is that Dracula is back, using a different name but still the first and deadliest vampire. I wasn’t a fan of some of the characters but the heroes and main villain were good. Another enjoyable one from the short series.

Extra

• The gruff, old assistant is Blade’s best friend, Whistler. He’s played by Kris Kristofferson. The bond between him and Blade is pretty good and the character is well done.
• I liked watching all the Blade movies. I liked them for different reasons and although I don’t think any of them were incredible I think they were consistently good.
• Norman Reedus being in Blade 2 is interesting as being a gamer, I’m aware of Death Stranding. That game has a baby in a little pod, so does Blade 2, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a connection of inspiration.
• Ryan Reynolds is often talked about as having a bad time with superhero films as Green Lantern and X-men Origins didn’t do much for him, I’ve never heard anyone mention his role in Blade which I thought was pretty good. I’ll have to watch Deadpool at some point.