In our previous review, we discussed how the first Blade film bucked the late 90s trend of loud, bloated epics to revive 80s style action in the horror genre.
The result was a fun if flawed gem that had the knock-on effect of bringing comic book movies back from the brink.
But those weren’t the only black swan events occasioned by Blade. The series it launched also managed the rare feat of spawning a sequel to surpass the original.
And credit for taking the Blade franchise to the next level lies squarely on the broad shoulders of director Guillermo del Toro.
It’s easy to forget post-Hobbit, but del Toro used to be known as a visionary maverick with his heart more in the indie scene than in Hollywood.
Just check out his first vampire movie Cronos, from which Blade II borrowed several key concepts.
Cronos might be the most imaginative vampire film I’ve ever seen. There’s still nothing quite like it.
And only del Toro could have made it.
The same can be said for Blade II.
While the first Blade contained enough wire fu action to keep viewers interested, it suffered from flat characters, a Swiss cheese plot, and a pretty boy villain who, while charming, clashed with the story’s tone.
For the sequel, del Toro not only built upon and improved the already dazzling action, he deepened the existing characters while adding a whole ensemble of new ones, each of whom has subtle but readily distinguishing depths.
The visuals deserve a word here, too. Del Toro took the first film’s muted gothic palette and immersed it in his signature Argentoesque lighting. Instead of cool blues and greens, sets are bathed in earthy golds and rich crimsons.
As a result, lighting and coloration that would have been glaring in a lesser craftsman’s hands enhance the mood, convey theme, and even support the plot. Whereas the first movie’s scenery felt sterile, with lots of emphasis on hospitals and tombs, Blade II‘s visuals feel organic.
And that’s vital to the story del Toro tells.
Blade II begins by taking the first film’s vampire-hunting-vampires premise and turning it around. We’re soon introduced to an elite team of vampires specifically trained to hunt Blade.
One of whom, in a callback to another recent review, is played by veteran martial arts star Donnie Yen.
Blade having to duke it out with a vampire spec ops squad would have been an awesome movie on its own.
Yet if you’re a fan of del Toro, you know he never gives you what you first suspect. He structures each movie like a magic trick with a pledge, a turn, and a prestige.
It’s soon explained to Blade that an even worse threat has emerged. A mutant strain of vampires has emerged. Like Blade they’ve evolved their way out of multiple vampire weaknesses, and they feed on bloodsuckers.
So for those keeping score at home, the vampire hunters trained to hunt the vampire hunter must turn to the hunter they were trained to hunt to help them hunt down the mutant vampires that are hunting them.
The fact that Blade II explains that twisty plot in like five minutes, and it makes perfect sense, is a too-often unsung credit to del Toro’s storytelling mastery.
That brings us to the movie’s main villain.
And he is everything Deacon Frost was not.
Which does mean he lacks Frost’s charm.
But on the plus side, Nomak is shown to be an apocalyptic threat more terrifying than Blade I’s blood god.
He’s resistant to even more vampire weaknesses than Blade, he’s a physical match for him, and he has a multiplying army of mutant vampires that threaten to overrun the world.
In Vampire: The Masquerade terms, if the first movie’s antagonists were a Toreador coterie seeking power through mass diablerie, Blade II’s threat are the Nosferatu’s Nictuku showing up to purge all Kindred and kine on their Antediluvian’s behalf.
But enough with the storygaming geek-out.
What makes Nomak the more compelling villain is that we know why he sets his bloody campaign in motion.
You could say that Deacon Frost had a chip on his shoulder for not being a pureblood and wanted to even the score. But he comes off as a spoiled brat willing to sacrifice everyone around him in a grand “F-you, Dad!” gesture.
Nomak’s motivation builds on Frost’s sentiment by transcending base envy. Instead, Nomak is driven by fury ordained toward revenge for a monstrous betrayal.
That’s not to say Nomak is justified, or if del Toro had told the story from the villain’s point of view, he’d be the hero.
Nope, any way you slice it, dude is super evil. More vicious than Frost by far.
Which is how del Toro threads the needle that almost no mainstream storyteller can manage these days. He gives us a villain with a relatable reason for doing evil while not glossing over the fact that he’s evil.
So with the villain covered, let’s turn our attention to the hero.
In his first outing, Blade was pretty much an amoral killing machine whose hard edges were somewhat softened by gritty gallows humor.
This time, del Toro gives him more depth through relationships with two new characters.
One is Scud, the street urchin assistant Blade took on in lieu of his old benefactor Abraham Whistler.
Tensions rise when Whistler returns and immediately locks horns with Scud. It’s another fascinating Russian doll subplot wherein Blade’s mentor comes into conflict with the character whom Blade mentors.
The son becoming the father becoming the son is a recurring theme in del Toro’s movies, and it’s done well here. With surprising results.
But even more importantly, he gives Blade a new main squeeze.
Now, I liked Blade I’s female lead. Her being a hematologist made a lot of sense, and she was a good Watson character through whom we were introduced to the vampires’ world.
Yet she and Blade never really seemed to click, beyond Florence Nightingale/Stockholm syndrome.
Blade II shows the Daywalker forming a bond with a female vampire. And their relationship is handled in a believable way as it progresses from antagonism to uneasy alliance to grudging trust to affection.
Ironically, it takes a love affair with a vampire to humanize Blade. And it works.
Earlier I said that Blade II surpasses Blade I.
And I stand by that verdict.
But, while Blade II is exceptional for a Blade movie, it’s kind of mid for a Guillermo del Toro movie.
Chalk it up to del Toro not having written it, and to studio influence.
Two items in particular give me pause.
- The prevalence of character suicides, one of which robs Blade of a hard-fought victory he’d otherwise earned
- Whistler destroying a lab full of mutant vampire embryos, which could be read as a nod to infanticide.
Del Toro makes no secret of being a lapsed Catholic, so unfortunately we can’t put Death Cult homages past him.
That said, both elements operate on pretty incidental thematic levels, to the point that it’s hard to accuse the movie of arguing for them.
Mostly, those aspects are just somewhat disconcerting. Your mileage may vary.
All in all, Blade II is the best entry in the series, with action that equals or surpasses the first film’s, plus more fleshed out characters and themes.
And while he’s kind of weird, it doesn’t seem like the director was hating on his audience. So watching Blade II is provisionally not giving attention to people who hate you.
The same can’t be said for most Current Year movies, though.
Learn how to spot them.
In the DVD commentary, during the scene where Whistler shoots the vampire embryos, del Toro gleefully says “This is a pro choice movie!” Doesn’t sound like studio interference forced that scene. Then again, I never took it as infanticide. These were literal singleminded monsters set to devour the world.
If you’ve ever seen “The Shape of Water,” you can tell he’s a VERY lapsed Catholic. Which is strange because all his films have Catholic imagery.
If possible, can you review his Hellboy movies? Maybe I read too much into them, but they seem to convey Christian messages, whether he meant them to or not.
“If possible, can you review his Hellboy movies?”
I just finished re-watching them and will review them soon.
Sam
I noted something similar in Pan’s Labyrinth. I briefly saw the Spanish version and boy the Spanish Catholic imagery comes through.
xavier
The Devil’s Backbone has more explicitly Catholic imagery, seeing as how it is about a bunch of children of Republican soldiers being kept at a former religious school. Here the imagery is felt by its absence. There is a striking shot of a classroom where a cross has been removed from the wall, but since it was there so long you can still see its image by how the paint faded.
I’ve always found The Devil’s Backbone to be the more interesting of the two movies. In Pan’s Labyrinth things are pretty clear as far as politics go: The new Nationalist regime are evil heartless fascists and the Republicans are brave rebels. In The Devil’s Backbone all the major characters are Republicans or at least working with them, including the main villain and several supporting characters who are at best complete cowards. Not only have they literally pushed religion out of the school, but they do not have any faith in their own secular beliefs either.
By all rights it should be a scathing indictment of the Republican cause; the only nominal Republicans who have any redeeming qualities are the kids who are too young to care about politics. The removal of religious imagery seems tragic to me when I watch it, not only due to it actually being sacrilege, but also because it clearly represents the characters abandoning something that their current lives show that they should have kept. But the movie is still set up as though we should somehow still be sympathetic to the Republicans, if only because they oppose the Nationalists. It’s probably only something that a lapsed Catholic could make.
The Hellboy comic is made by Mike Mignola, another lapsed Catholic. But Mignola is very well versed in Catholic tradition (in addition to his knowledge of faerie lore, folklore in general, and the pulps.) Mignola definitely does not write Hellboy from the frame of it being a fundamentally Christian story, but he is very conscious of religious themes and takes them seriously. For example, in “The Corpse” Hellboy is tasked with providing a recently deceased man a decent Christian burial as a favor to his fair folk friends (who, of course, will not set foot on holy ground.) It’s hard to imagine anything else from the last 30 years even attempting a story like that, except as a joke, but it’s treated as a serious task. Another notable feature of the comics is that many of Hellboy’s local contacts are Catholic priests, and generally they are good people.
But even though I know Mignola is not intending to write things in a “Christianity is right” frame, he tends to keep things vague and much of the work can read in that sort of way. Mignola likes to put in small hints (which get more pronounced later in the story) that Hellboy’s destiny might not just be involved with the plots of demons and the various Lovecraftian horrors in Mignola’s universe.
A lot of this was lost in the transition to the del Toro movies, but there was so much of it to start with that even that remainder left a more Catholic movie than any other superhero movie.
I visited the collection of del Toro’s memorabilia when it went touring six years ago, and while there was a lot of cool stuff in there, the editorial commentary near the end made it clear that he was not only a lapsed Catholic but reacting against Catholic teaching in a lot of his work.
He had a difficult childhood. His overzealous grandmother reportedly made him perform harsh penitential acts like walking miles over sharp rock-filled roads. His estrangement from the faith is sad but understandable.
At least he had the integrity to turn down New Line’s offer to direct Tolkien films. And his work on Hell Boy shows a vestigial respect for Catholic devotions. We should pray in earnest for his reversion.