Review in retrospect: Blade Trinity

October 27, 2:20 PMMarvel Comics ExaminerPhil Wrede

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Blade: Trinity teaser poster
New Line Cinema

The Blade films are kind of odd ducks, even in the world of the comic book movie. Based on an established character, with some pretty substantial history behind him, "fidelity to continuity" was a phrase virtually unknown to the films that bore the name of Eric Brooks' superhero alter ego.

The first Blade film was the antithesis of most superhero films released up until that point (1998). Dark, often brutal (the film's iconic sequence, the "vampire rave," begins with a shower of blood released on the partygoers and ends with Blade setting a vampire that he's staked to the wall aflame. That vampire would later awaken and run out of the morgue, charred, naked flesh and all), and with a vicious sense of humor, Blade made a lot of money at box offices around the world. Guillermo del Toro's Blade II came out four years later to even higher acclaim, and better returns.

David S. Goyer wrote the scripts for all three Blade films, and parlayed their success into a spot in the director's chair for Blade: Trinity. While it's arguably the weakest of the series (due in no small part to Goyer's frustrating need to write what is, effectively, the same movie for the third time), inspired casting, once again, makes it a perfectly enjoyable experience for franchise fans, action enthusiasts, and those who can't get enough of their superhero movies.

While Wesley Snipes had carried the series on his muscular shoulders for two films, Blade: Trinity introduced the Nightstalkers, a splinter cell-like team of vampire hunters. The group that happened upon Blade was headed by Ryan Reynolds' Hannibal King (bearing some relation to his comic counterpart) and Jessica Biel's Abigail Whistler, "out-of-wedlock" daughter of Kris Kristofferson's Abraham Whistler, Blade's longtime partner and father figure. It seems like Ryan Reynolds has one of those "career-making," "breakout" performances every couple of years (Van Wilder, Blade: Trinity, X-Men Origins: Wolverine); they've happened often enough that he can probably safely say he's broken through (especially with the radically divergently demanding roles of Hal Jordan and Wade Wilson on his plate). As Hannibal King, the vampire-turned-vampire-slayer, Reynolds is absolutely magnetic. Everything about his performance screams "movie star," and it's still amazing it's taken him five years and counting to take over Hollywood. He fights well (taking on the WWE's own Triple H and surviving), quips well ("See, when one of us goes missing, the others, they just dial up the satellite... which is in space. And then presto. Instant cavalry."), and glowers well.

If Reynolds is the star of the film (which, based on a lawsuit Snipes filed, plenty of people thought), Biel is probably the series' best-realized female character (at least, she's the one Blade doesn't have to a) feed upon or b) assist in committing suicide). She's not given nearly as many quality one-liners as Reynolds, but she does get to deploy her bow and arrow a few times, and cut a vampire in half with a laser bat'leth (more or less). Plus, she's granted some automatic dramatic weight by virtue of the fact that her last name is Whistler.

Parker Posey's Danica Talos is a quality foil for Reynolds. She looks like she's about half a step away from flipping out and turning into a vampire whirlwind of crazy, which is good, because someone in this movie needed to appear something other than collected and determined most of the time. She's a good example of a type of casting Marvel films have generally done all right with: the not-usually action actor.

The movie kind of starts to fall apart when you get to the plot, and, frankly, to the main villain (Dracula, or, as he's called in Blade: Trinity, "Drake"). The idea that the vampires would use their influence in the human world to frame Blade and drop the heavy end of the law enforcement hammer down on him is interesting, sure, but could certainly have been done in a way that didn't require Blade to kill seven or eight vampires practically next to a busy street (the whole idea is to keep the existence of vampires a secret, right? Well, Blade dusting them in broad... streetlight doesn't go too far towards furthering that end). And as for the threat (Dracula/Drake, Eurotrash-looking Vampire Patient Zero, father of them all), not only has he kind of been done to death (moreso now than five years ago, but Dracula was played out back then, too), but the whole "quest to create a perfect vampire" story was the backbone of the previous two films, and, rather than feeling like a culmination of machinations that'd been building for years, it came off like more retread ground.

Goyer's direction is good enough, though the film uncomfortably rides the line between the more grounded action of the first film and the over-the-top antics of Blade II, and doesn't marry the best of both worlds. The more-than-frenetic editing of the action sequences is enough to drive the viewer to distraction, particularly during Jessia Biel's introduction scene, and the movie feels overwhelmingly like a post-Matrix action film (not quite as much as the previous year's Daredevil, but Neo's influence is still there in spades).

Despite its myriad problems (don't get me started on the voiceovers that bookend the film), Blade: Trinity is a good deal of fun, if you come at it from the right angle (the inclusion of funnymen Patton Oswalt and John Michael Higgins is a nice touch). If that Nightstalkers spinoff movie ever gets made, I think Reynolds is going to find himself among the upper echelon of comic book movie franchise actors (assuming he can't claim that title already).