Friday, April 20, 2012

Marvel Movie Project #18: Blade Trinity



Blade Trinity feels like a spin-off movie with the Blade character appearing only as a cameo.  That is about how involved Blade and I are in this movie.  It is no surprise to read the trivia on this film and find out that Wesley Snipes was seriously pissed about the direction of this movie and his lack of involvement, frankly so am I.  As we will get into a little further up the list, Wesley Snipes is the most likeable thing in the Blade franchise, and he needs to be.  So when you make a Blade movie and you marginalize the best aspect of the series, you are setting yourself up for a problem.

Aimee will take up the dissection, perhaps evisceration, of Ryan Reynolds, but suffice to say that he is miserable and ruins the film pretty much single-handedly.   The rest of the performances of the "supporting" cast are equally forgettable and dismissed.  Jessica Biel is likeable enough, but not enough to carry the film or make a troubled plot and script enjoyable.

The other big problem is that after Blade II, the stakes were raised so high that finding a new vampiric menace for Blade to combat becomes next to impossible.  This latest threat is beyond comprehension and requires more suspension of disbelief than should really be expected of the audience.  Not to ruin it for you, but apparently Blade, armed with a vampire killing virus, must go after THE Dracula.  There are plot twists, but they are either too predictable or they fail to twist sufficiently to keep the film interesting.  The Nightstalkers sub-plot steals too much of the spotlight and as mentioned above, Blade is so marginalized that it is barely his story at all.  Never mind the miserable vampire serum plot or the complex vampire lineage that we are supposed to follow from Dracula down to the modern day vamps, this movie somehow tries to do so much and succeeds at doing so little.

It is no surprise that the Blade franchise dies with this film.  Snipes is enjoyable as always, but due to his lack of screen time is unable to salvage the last hurrah from this series.  As a matter of fact, both Snipes and Kristofferson are very likeable and have the chemistry that made the first two movies so much better than this one.  It is everything else that makes Blade Trinity #18 on this list.

Aimee's Take

My loving husband is, as usual, quite astute in summing up why a movie doesn't really work. I agree with him entirely. I'll even go so far as to say I liked Jessica Biel's role in this film, and I'll go so far as to say that Wesley Snipes is enjoyable, as always, in this film. All the problems Stan pointed out are too much, though. There just isn't enough Blade.

Now to eviscerate Ryan Reynolds. 



I've seen him around for years. He's got that look; could be wholesome like a boy next door, could be the boyfriend who is secretly controlling, or could just be a miserable smart-mouthed asshole. He could be all three. 

He's not particularly suited for "hero" roles, which is why it's bizarre to see him in so many. He's really best suited to be the jerk-off terrible boyfriend that the ingénue dumps at the last second for the friendly, cardboard "good guy". He does seem rather well-suited to be Deadpool, but I hate Deadpool almost as much as I hate Ryan Reynolds. There's no reason for either to exist, other than to make me sad.

Ryan Reynolds plays his role as "Hannibal" about as well as you'd expect. He has all the wit and timing of your drunk Uncle Larry at Thanksgiving, rolling right through obviously bad one-liners, one after another, never stopping for breath or laughter. It isn't necessary to pause for laughter, because nothing he ever says is funny.

That's pretty much how this character is played. He's the snarky, "witty" comic relief in a movie that really needs none. Given the general lack of Blade in this film, we wind up with the comic stylings of Ryan Reynolds pretty often, leaving me to wonder when the real relief will come. As in, when are they going to kill him? 

But they don't. They want to spin this shit off into a Ryan Reynold's vampire wise-cracking fest. Luckily for everyone, this movie looked bad and was bad, and there was no reason to ever put Ryan Reynolds in a movie again. At least, not into a movie anyone would voluntarily watch. And all was right with the world.

Plus this movie has this horrible bitch, who is actually Parker Posey, an actual actress who may not stink entirely, but who manages to be worse than Ryan Reynolds, AND in also in most of his scenes. The end. 





No comments:

Post a Comment