Average Action. NOT better than the original

Rating: Null/10 (3 April 2002)

The original blade suffered a bit from it's pre-matrix release. It started off very strong, with the bloodbath club being a very cool visual (and one that is never topped, in B1 or B2). But after that it just slowly drifted downhill, nothing too drastic, but it was just kind of hard to care....
Flash forward to blade 2: It starts weakly with a boring, uninformative voiceover and a pretty poor pre-credit sequence. It picks it up with a few good fights (almost always then ruined by some VERY DODGY cgi work) and then goes totally off the rails at the end with plot twists (or HOLES as they are normally called) all over the place.
I think my biggest problem with both movies is Blade himself. He is cool, too cool, he almost never breaks into a sweat, has no real emotions, says almost nothing, is so much stronger and faster and better than the vamps (and even the super-vamp reapers) that you never really feel he is in danger, never really care that much.
Also, his singleminded "kill all vamps" attitude seems as wrong as the attitudes of the villians, the vamps have made pacts, compromises and treaties, but he just wants to kill them all.
Blade 1's plot was more straightforward, but made more sense and worked much better as a film plot, i would guess that blade 2's plot was taken from the comics, as it seemed to have been highly compressed. Lots of new characters (that we hardly meet, can anyone name more than 2 of the Bloodpack?), lots of competing sides (but we get no sense of the rivalries, or histories). and plot holes galore.
what is the dramatic point in being made to team up with your enemies if a:you have never heard of them, b:you knick the leader's butt in the first 2 secs making him look a wimp and c:they almost all die in the 1st 5 minutes of the first mission?
and what was with the, supposedly touching, ending. are we supposed to think blade cared about that vamp chick? why? surely if she lived he would just have staked her? why did she want to get bit anyway?
And i can't believe they wasted donnie yen that badly... sigh.
On the plus side, Luke Goss (i can't believe it was him) was a cool baddy, whistler was always a cool character.
Having said all that, it was a fun mindless film, and even with all those minus points it gets a 7 out of 10. but it could have been so much better. unfortunately it is already disapearing from my memory, by next week i doubt i could tell you anything about it. :(