Marvel Media Mania: Blade Trinity

Blade Trinity is the third and final film in the Blade series starring Wesley Snipes.

I remember seeing Blade Trinity in the theaters. I remember being really disappointed and not liking it very much. Watching it again, I found myself wondering why I had such a strong negative reaction. While it's not great it certainly isn't horrible either.

The film starts with a cool introductory scene where we seen vampires played by Parker Posey, Triple H, Callum Keith Rennie (of Battlestar Galactica fame) and others discover a resurrected Dracula. Unfortunately, this scene is directly followed by a boring television interview with an interesting but insignificant character played brilliantly by John Michael Higgins. It's only after this boring and exposition heavy scene that we get to see some Blade action.

Whistler dies but it isn't a very memorable death. It is pretty cool to see Blade fighting police and losing. The interrogation is funny at times like when Blade says to the cop he's killed exactly 1,182 people (not vampires - humans who work with vampires). Seeing Blade psychoanalyzed by the psychiatrist was funny.

A lot of people have problems with the Nightstalkers characters. This group are suppose to help Blade take down vampires but they approach things from a different angle. They're working on biological warfare to take out all vampires instead of killing them one a time which is a losing battle. The two primary Nightstalkers are Abigail (Whistler's daughter) and Hannibal King. King was a vampire but somehow was "cured." The film is a little fuzzy on this point. Whistler was cured of vampirism in the second film and it just doesn't seem to fit with the vampire lore at all. But, at least for King, it does fit with the comics continuity. Anyway, I didn't have a big problem with either character. I actually really liked Hannibal's wisecracks. He's really funny. But maybe that's the problem some people had with this film - it's tone is much lighter than the previous Blade movies.

Some cool concepts are introduced in this movie such as the blood farming facility and the vampire supervirus. Seeing vampiric dogs was cool... why did they look like the Reavers from the second film? Weren't the Reavers super-bad vampires that the rest of the vampires wanted to kill?

Probably the coolest supporting character is a little girl named Zoe. She brazenly tells Dracula off and delivers her lines with a steely look in her eye. The cast in this film is really amazing. Besides the actors mentioned previously this film also had Kris Kristofferson, Ryan Reynolds (in his FIRST comic book movie!), Dominic Purcell, and Jessica Biel.

All in all, it's a somewhat likable action movie but it lacks emotional weight and the tone and mood are wrong for a Blade film. I did like the little nods to long-time Marvel fans such as the don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it Fantastic Four "4" shirt one of the Nightstalkers is wearing.

1LR Review - 8 out of 20 - It's a Miss!