Blade: Trinity

I didn't expect to like that much (and I didn't). Don't blame me for being skeptical. I have found sets with as much backstage drama as this did rarely make good movies. There are some good aspects to the film. But I did not watch it expecting to enjoy it. My interest was actually in whether I would take Wesley Snipes or David S. Goyer's side in the ugly feud and meltdown.

The fact that the first words in the movie are opening narration spoken by Ryan Reynolds firmly place me on Team Snipes and everything else solidified that.

Goyer is trying to launch a Blade franchise here. He knows this is almost certainly Snipes' last film, and he sets up Hannibal and Abigail Whistler and the Night Stalkers to take over the franchise via a spin-off. This is all common Hollywood practice nowadays, which is why probably so few people sympathized with Snipes at the time. But that should NOT be standard Hollywood practice. It's wrong. It's thoughtless. This is Wesley Snipes' movie, and they gave all the best lines to Ryan Reynolds, and all the best buttkicking to Jessica Biel. I understand setting up cinematic universes is common and accepted practice these days. I don't care. Blade the franchise begins and ends with Snipes. And Goyer turning him into a guest character in his last film to "pass the torch" to some younger white characters is just hubris and a little bit disgusting. Blade is the first real black screen superhero (if you are kind enough to not count Steel). You can't just set him aside in the last movie on behalf of white characters. It's absolutely tone-deaf.

And Snipes got a lot of backlash for saying so at the time (black men aren't allowed to complain about ANYTHING without white snowflakes saying they are "playing the race card"), but if this movie had been made in 2021, everyone would see Goyer's punk moves for what they were, and we'd all be Team Snipes. Which tells me it's probably a good thing I saw this in 2021.

I am very glad that the negative backlash from Snipes killed the idea of any spin-off. Snipes being pissed off was worth it for that fact alone.

About the best thing I can say for Goyer is he didn't give a sunglasses moment to Reynolds. But he didn't give one to Blade either which is another reason the movie sucks.

Also supposedly at the end the war against vampire never ends. But weren't ALL the vampires killed at the end? Why are they pretending Blade still has work to do? And how did they plan a spin-off with all the vampires dead to begin with?

I mentioned there were individual good elements. I like the tension the movie gave with Zoe's fate. We fear the worst, and we see Drake is actually smart, and has the female vampire use her as a bargaining chip against Hannibal. I love the scene where Drake asks her if she'd like to be Immortal, and that if she could stay a child forever if she wanted, would she take that gift? And she calmly replies that her friends are coming to kill him. I like that because it's the only response worth saying. And it came from a little girl whose blind mother just died which makes her especially fierce. Zoe is my Queen!

Dominic Purcell was an interesting casting choice as Dracula / Drake. People who only know him from Prison Break and DC's Legends Of Tomorrow have mostly seen him as a balding / bald character actor. In his youth (when he starred on the Fox show John Doe) he was very much a young hunk. As such seeing him play Dracula makes sense. Although people who only know the actor as Lincoln Burrows or Mick Rory would never fancast him in that part in a million years.

Unlike the first two movies there were a lot of familiar faces. I couldn't decide if the female vampire was Parkey Posey or Elizabeth Banks dressed like Parker Posey. It turned out to be Parker Posey. Who knew?

Honestly, Snipes got the rawest of deals made even rawer by the fact that the media made him out to be the bad guy for have the nerve to be justifiably pissed at pissy things. I'm as annoyed as he is. **1/2.