|
Snowman_McK posted:The thing that has aged incredibly well is just how crazy Snipes plays Blade as. He's not a surly good guy so much as a bad guy let loose on other bad guys. It is committed to the idea of him being a monster. This is always what makes the movie interesting to me compared to the modern era of comic book movies: Blade isn't really a hero. He's a monster killing other monsters, it just happens that vampires are monsters who feed on humans, so we perceive him as a good guy. He has a handful of connections to the human world (Whistler, Karen Jensen, various side characters we see snippets of) but that's about as far as his sympathy or concern for people extends. Every current Marvel hero (and like half the villains) are portrayed as inherently good people in extraordinary circumstances. Blade is just a dude waging his own war in a way that's just slightly more moral than the monsters he's fighting against and anything that gets in the way of that is collateral damage. It's a shame that Marvel seemingly has no interest in folding the Blade franchise into the current Marvel universe, although given their adherence to certain themes and aesthetics maybe it's for the best.
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2015 16:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 08:43 |
|
|
Rap Record Hoarder posted:It's a shame that Marvel seemingly has no interest in folding the Blade franchise into the current Marvel universe, although given their adherence to certain themes and aesthetics maybe it's for the best. It would loving suck and take all the style and interesting parts of the character out so they could sell toys to (man)children.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2015 16:42
|
|
|
Rap Record Hoarder posted:This is always what makes the movie interesting to me compared to the modern era of comic book movies: Blade isn't really a hero. He's a monster killing other monsters, Not at all. Blade isn't a monster. He doesn't kill innocent humans, cares about Whistler, and endures some pain to take a serum that prevents him from harming innocent people in bloodlust. He absolutely fuckin' hates vampires and their familiars, will torture and kill them, but has a moral code that is pretty standard boilerplate good guy outside of that. When Deacon Frost threatens a little girl he backs off until they hit an impasse and after she gets tossed into traffic he ends up saving her and letting Frost get away. A monster hunting monsters wouldn't bother with that.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2015 16:47
|
|
|
Best part of the series is in Blade 2 when they are on the way to Vampire HQ in the helicopter and Blade reveals he's wearing a poo poo-ton of explosives under his coat.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2015 17:31
|
|
|
Basebf555 posted:Best part of the series is in Blade 2 when they are on the way to Vampire HQ in the helicopter and Blade reveals he's wearing a poo poo-ton of explosives under his coat. Nonsense, the best part of Blade II is Scud's death. It's not a dud, Scud. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2015 18:28
|
|
Immortan posted:Nonsense, the best part of Blade II is Scud's death. It's not a dud, Scud. The best part is when they introduce the Bloodpack and everyone looks just like Tim Bradstreet painted them. It's still one of the best attempts I've seen at bringing a specific comic book 'look' to life on the screen. e: gutted they weren't standing in front of a brick wall though
|
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2015 20:45
|
|
|
Snowman_McK posted:The thing that does mark it as an early comic book movie is how much exposition is in it. At the time, you can see the film makers didn't know how much they can trust the audience to keep up with, and so we get lots of scenes making sure we get exactly how Blade and his world work. By comparison, things like Guardians of the Galaxy and Winter Soldier spend about two minutes on exposition and trust you to keep up. I think that's mostly just lovely direction. Although Guardians wasn't directly poorly, it's just that we're following an idiot who's as lost as we are so let's dive into this world with him, etc. At least the first Iron Man and the suit tests, there's constant wold-building there too.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2015 21:44
|
|
ME
|
Immortan posted:Nonsense, the best part of Blade II is Scud's death. It's not a dud, Scud. WRONG! "CAN YOU BLUSH!"
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2015 22:37
|
|
|
I love Blade, it's my favorite comic book movie by far. But man, I hate Blade 2 and Blade Jessica-Biel-iPod-Killing-Playlist-Edition.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2015 22:46
|
|
|
Jack's Flow posted:I love Blade, it's my favorite comic book movie by far. But man, I hate Blade 2 and Blade Jessica-Biel-iPod-Killing-Playlist-Edition. You cock-juggling thundercunt.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2015 23:12
|
|
|
I don't know how you guys didn't like blade 3. Dracula was shown amazingly. Went to sleep for 1000s of years because he was sad all his vampire children were weak and only getting weaker. Fights blade and sees he is the true vampire.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2015 23:20
|
|
|
Man the CGI blob explosion was the part I liked the least in the whole movie. It looked bad in theaters.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2015 23:36
|
|
|
He kicked a freakin syringe!!! Who cares about a cgi blob
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2015 23:42
|
|
|
I was thinking as I read this thread that it's really surprising that they haven't decided to remake Blade yet. Then I looked it up and found out Blade is a Marvel character. Given the output of the MCU it's hard to imagine Marvel greenlighting an R rated movie with buckets of blood, swearing and violence. I don't think I realized until recently just how much more bloody and violent a lot of my favourite 80s and 90s movies are compared to contemporary action movies. Fat Lou posted:I feel that it mostly holds up pretty well. Most of the cgi only lasts for a brief amount of time and is moving quickly so it does not stand out that horribly. I admit that the way the vampires turned into skeletons as they died looked awesome when the movie first came out and most of the CGI is quick enough that it doesn't bother me but I also think it comes off as a bit cheesy when you show it to somebody who didn't enjoy the movie back when it came out. You're right, though, that I was being a bit unfair saying it aged poorly. What I was trying to say, though, and what I stand by, is that the CGI was nowhere near good enough to support an entire boss fight with Frost as a whirling blood tornado. It would have looked ridiculous and they were right to stick with the ending that happens in the film, even if there's something slightly off about Wesley Snipes being physically challenged by Brad Dorf.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 01:05
|
|
|
Helsing posted:I was thinking as I read this thread that it's really surprising that they haven't decided to remake Blade yet. Then I looked it up and found out Blade is a Marvel character. Given the output of the MCU it's hard to imagine Marvel greenlighting an R rated movie with buckets of blood, swearing and violence. It's very bloody, much bloodier than any of the recent Marvel stuff, although I haven't seen Daredevil yet and I've heard that show is fairly brutal in the action scenes. Blade is also one of those 90's action movies where the protagonist is either shooting at or beating up uniformed cops, something that's very hard to get away with in the current culture. Even as much as people distrust cops now there's still a lot of deference given to police unions and such. You can't show a hero beating the poo poo out of police in riot armor any more. A Blade film could be super interesting in the modern context of police brutality, distrust of government, hyper-connectivity and media saturation, etc. but given that Marvel is very much set in their ways as far as how movies are structured and the tone there's not much hope for something that really stands out. Not to say that you couldn't make a good Blade movie without violence, swearing, and bloody action, but it'd be a completely different beast and probably be nowhere near as well thought of as the original. Although if they got Udo Kier and Kris Kristofferson to come back, and gave Donal Lough a bit part where he wore cornrows, that would go a long way. I always found it interesting that apparently Krisofferson had a huge problem with all the swearing he had to do in the movie, even though he hits that gruff old man note perfectly. Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Jul 9, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 01:49
|
|
|
Tezcatlipoca posted:It would loving suck and take all the style and interesting parts of the character out so they could sell toys to (man)children. Agreed, though I would kill for like a separate ultra violent MCU they can use for Punisher/Blade/Ghost Rider/whatever. Of all the many things wrong with Blade Trinity, the most perplexing is that the first ten minutes ape Norrington's style, then Del Toro's. Like with Cameron doing Aliens a consistent but gradual shift is set up from a very stylish director's style into David S. Goyer's. But then the rest of the movie looks hyper bland. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Jul 9, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 01:52
|
|
|
Neo Rasa posted:Agreed, though I would kill for like a separate ultra violent MCU they can use for Punisher/Blade/Ghost Rider/whatever. I think this was a thing for like 5 minutes back around the time the Ghost Rider movies got made. The second Ghost Rider movie even has the "Marvel Knights" placard in the opening credits, which was the imprint that a lot of the harder edged comics were getting published under at the time. Unfortunately, given the stinker quality of the Ghost Rider movies, the Marvel Knights thing probably got axed permanently in favor of the more lucrative, family friendly stuff. Daredevil and Winter Soldier are probably about as edgy and/or violent as the MCU is going to get for the time being, although we'll see how the Punisher series shakes out.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 01:55
|
|
|
They did that awful Man-Thing direct to video movie too which I believe also used the Marvel Knights imprint. But man I would have loved if they kept doing DTV Punisher flicks every couple of years, even if they had different actors/etc. doing them. Make me nostalgic for the 90s when you could go into the video store every week and rent the raddest movies with Billy Blanks or Don Wilson or whatever. Bloodfist series.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CKjzBFMF1w Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Jul 9, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 02:02
|
|
|
Part 2: Blood Rave 0:02:05-0:11:00 Load up the blood rave soundtrack before reading the blood rave post.    Meet Racquel(Tracy Lords) and Dingus. I am calling him Dingus because I have no loving clue what it is and I am not about to look it up. Anyways, right out of the gate he proves that he is the gooniest of goons by referring to his dick as a "heat seeking missile". Unfortunately for him, vampires are not warm, so he is going to miss his target by a country mile. Racquel does her best Tyrese impression by starring directly at him and driving for like a minute solid and takes him to a...  meat warehouse! Dingus just is so excited to see all this meat and still does not really suspect anything because he is a dingus. This scene is great though, because how blunt it is in it's execution. He is meat, duh. All the meat cutters are emotionless as they just stare are him.  The first point where he has any real confusion is when he says "What the gently caress?" when he sees a number of bandaged up dead people suspended in plastic bags. The amazing thing is that he is so daft that dead bodies are not enogh for him to overcome his id. Raquel talks to the Russian bouncer and they are in to the club.     The entire scene is just bathed in a blue tint. The only thing that goes against this is Dingus's, quite appropriate, red rain jacket. It is not a hard and fast rule in the movie, but bright red normally means something bad is going to happen in the near future, particularly when the color is attached to someone. Raquel quickly leaves him on his own to be pushed around and stared at by the entire club. His enjoyment quickly turns to annoyance as Raquel pushes him away in order to dance with Mercury(Arly Jover). He then runs into Frost and at the height of his annoyance he declares "gently caress I need a drink".  He notices a drop of blood fall on his hand.  That soon follows with...  a lot more. Alright, lets just take a little look at the historical significance of "blood rain". It has been written about in literature since the Iliad. In that, Zeus used it in order to warn of slaughter in an upcoming battle. Almost all of the times it is used in literature it is to warn of massive bloodshed in the future. It was also thought to be demonstrations of godly power. Both of these literary uses of blood rain fit exactly what happens in the movie from Frost trying to seem like a god to Blade's entrance into the movie.    Once everyone is suitably soaked in blood Dingus quickly realizes that he is in a room full of monsters. They push, hiss, and roar at him, but mostly they don't really attack him initially until of one individuals decks him hard enough to drop him to the ground. Once he is on the ground then he is kicked and clawed as he tries to crawl his way to some sort of escape.   Suddenly, he crawls into Blade. Blade is wearing all black and does not have a single drop of blood on him. At this exact time the music dies down and you can get a bunch woos and general excitement from the crowd, but that quickly dies away as the crowd recognizes that Blade is there.  Murmurs of "that's him" and "that's the day walker" are heard as most of the aggressive posturing from the vampires quickly evaporates into most of them backing off and generally being scared. Some random vampire decides to attack him and Blade pulls out a shotgun and shoots him in the chest, causing him to dissolve into bones and then dust.   Some vampires attempt to attack him, but most run away. The ones that do attack him end up dust thanks to is shotgun, stakes, and machine pistol. I love the way that this cgi looks. No, it might not be perfect, but the way it looks in motion between burning into ashes and convulsing it is so brutal.    After Blade takes out the DJ, Quinn(Donal Logue) shows up. This is one of my favorite casting choices ever. Blade pulls out his sword and takes care of business some more.   After all of Quinn's minions are dispatched he comes at Blade and Blade pins him to a wall with a stake fired out of his shotgun. This fistpump is seriously on par with the iceskating line in my mind. It is just so goddamn hilarious.  Blade mentions that he is getting tired of chopping up Quinn and that this time he will try fire. I love this little relationship that they have because Quinn is completely useless against Blade and yet Blade just uses him to get under the skin of Frost by returning Quinn burned, missing hands, etc. It is like a sick game of tag for Blade.  As blade is leaving he runs into Dingus. Without even skipping a beat he checks to see if he has been bitten on the neck. That aspect always kinda bugged me because it is not like a vampire needs to bite you anywhere in particular, and with Blade throwing out the idea of crosses etc the movie still keeps that tradition alive. The main reason, I feel, they do though is because it is the most obviously sexually intimate place that could reinforce the vampires' sexual nature.   The cops show up are most mostly unphased by this whole scene in front of them and casually the fire fighters put out Quinn. Blade meanwhile disappears into the darkness of the night. Even though that this is pretty much the most memorable scene in the entire movie it does not really go downhill afterwards. I feel that it stays steady throughout between the scenes with Pearl, the Book of Erebus, the burning of Dragonetti, and the entire final scene. It is an amazing setup for the movie as a whole. You are introduced to the brutality that Blade is able to have while at the same time not dispatching any vampire that does not directly threaten him first. Also, he goes out of his way to check to see if people are turned or not. Because of this, he is not a complete monster. He still has some level of humanity, even if it is buried deep underneath his hardened exterior. It sets up the vampire's culture pretty well, at least the culture that Frost is incubating, in that it is all about hypersexualized youth who are all about the things your parents warned you about. The main difference is switch out drugs and booze with murdering innocent people for blood. Its all in good fun though. As stated in this thread this movie is really bloody and violent. It is odd that this is the movie that kicked off the comic book movie crazy, although, it was not until Spiderman that comic book movies really started to do work in the box office. Also, I feel that Blade was a huge influence on The Matrix. Between the dress of Blade along with how a lot of the action was filmed it seemed that The Matrix aped it in a lot of ways. It should be noted that in the "universe" of The Matrix there are vampires in Reloaded if I remember correctly. To talk a little about the exposition of the movie I don't even feel there is THAT much of it. I mean, from about 10 minutes in until 30 minutes in when you are at Blades place and when you see the meeting with Frost is pretty much all that you get. Even then there is an action scene in the middle of it. That exposition really does not seem overwrought at all since it introduces Blade, Whistler, Karen, Frost, Vanessa, and all of the old order of vampires. All in all it is pretty quick to jump right back into the action at hand.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 02:57
|
|
|
You know, when I first saw this film, I don't think I noticed that Frost is in this first bit at all.
marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Jul 9, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 04:26
|
|
|
Lazy film makers and bad actors not actually making Stephen Dorff inflate and explode, ruining my immersion. I hope someone got fired for that blunder.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 04:34
|
|
|
I think the CG for the skeletonizing ash deaths most of the vamps get looks, honestly, pretty great, especially for the time. But the blood inflation explosion was ugly and bad. Like they ran out of budget for the big pay off. Would have looked better if they just painted Dorff's face on the back of a swollen tick and injected it with hydrogen peroxide.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 04:36
|
|
|
That fuckin fist pump tho I really need to rewatch this
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 05:52
|
|
|
The smile when he first pulls out the boomerang is the best. Like Blade says later in the film, he's basically only "happy" when he's killing vampires. I remember in the letter section of every Marvel comic a few months before it came out Stan Lee was like flipping out about how amazing the Blade movie will be. You could tell it wasn't general "of course he has to say it's good" speak he would just write these rants about how Blade is an unstoppable vampire destroying juggernaut, how badass Wesley Snipes is, etc. he was legit thrilled. After seeing the movie on opening day, he was definitely right.Lotish posted:But the blood inflation explosion was ugly and bad. Like they ran out of budget for the big pay off. Would have looked better if they just painted Dorff's face on the back of a swollen tick and injected it with hydrogen peroxide. They need to use this as an effect in a future Ant-Man film. The CG dissolving skeletons were awesome at the time, everyone was hype at that. Tons of vampire movies came out before but the level of ferocity happening over and over again with how they're killed in Blade was unheard of. I think that at the time too even the Frost exploding wasn't seen as bad just because the amount of hype you were at when you watched that movie for the first time in 1998 was unstoppable. It's a great effect because, on a technical level, it is dated, but the speed it happens at and the way they're shown is so perfect. I remember they made a point of improving it though in Blade II, though I think the reality was more that the effect happens less there in general and more to major characters since so much more of the cast Blade is interacting with instead of immediately killing are vampires compared to Blade 1. They tried to sell a different take on it as an improvement. In the end, while I love the look of Blade II, it really put some of the weaker effects in the spotlight. 
Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Jul 9, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 15:09
|
|
|
Jack's Flow posted:I love Blade, it's my favorite comic book movie by far. But man, I hate Blade 2 and Blade Jessica-Biel-iPod-Killing-Playlist-Edition. i agree with you 100%. the vampire explosions are worse in the 2nd and 3rd. the vampires are badasses in the first film, only blade can handle them and by the 3rd a skinny white girl is kicking their asses. you are right and correct.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 19:49
|
|
|
space-man posted:i agree with you 100%.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 20:20
|
|
|
space-man posted:i agree with you 100%. I agree the first one is by far the best but Blade II was a lot of fun as well. The vampires in the second one didn't seem like they had superhuman strength because they were going against the Reapers. Also Jared Nomak was an awesome followup to Deacon Frost. Agreed that everything about Blade Trinity was utter trash though.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 20:44
|
|
|
Yea unfortunately because of how much of poo poo pile Blade 3 was, Blade 2 tends to get lumped into the "lovely sequel" category along with it. But Blade 2 was thoroughly entertaining and also expanded the Blade character's world in a really cool way. After the first two the Blade franchise was very well thought-of and people were anxiously awaiting Blade 3. Its an example of what a bad sequel can do, it can poison your memories of earlier films that you liked at one time.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 21:32
|
|
|
I really do need to revisit Blade 2 in the future. I think the last time I saw it was like close to 10 years ago. I seem to remember liking the art style of it, but the movie as a whole never really stuck with me for some reason.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 22:15
|
|
|
I like Del Toro a lot, but I haaaaated Blade 2. Everything about the tone was just so gross and cynical, and the CG looked horrendous even at the time. It's been so long that I hardly remember anything about it, though. I haven't even seen 3.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 22:24
|
|
|
The CG was "better" in some ways but revisiting it, it reminds me of rod puppet in Alien 3, like something is off with the lighting of the sets vs. the CG itself so it looks really weird. At the time it worked for a lot of people (myself included) because this was before Underworld and Matrix Reloaded and a lot of similar stuff came out, so just actually seeing these super powered characters cut loose on each other at the end was enough. I feel like it's aged worse than Blade 1 which is basically a film without a flaw. I liked the costumes and stuff in Blade II. They were really simple but worked, those two assassin vampires, Asad and Nyssa (sic?) especially.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2015 23:56
|
|
|
Serendipitous timing: http://deadline.com/2015/07/wesley-snipes-blade-comic-con-interview-blade-the-player-1201472733/Wesley Snipes posted:DEADLINE: Well, will you be bringing the vampire hunter back? Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Jul 10, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2015 01:22
|
|
|
As I remember, the only really egregious CGI in Blade II is the opening fight. I remember thinking the CG puppet fight was horrible when I first saw it. Thankfully they quickly dropped the cgi ninja fighting. Still a criminal under-use of Donny Yen though.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2015 01:29
|
|
|
The end fight looks terrible too, there are shots where they go full CGI and it just looks like they inserted character models from like Kakuto Chojin into the film, and it looks sooo bad.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2015 01:42
|
|
|
Shame too because the makeup is awesome and the sets were cool but oh hey a CG Castlevania monster doing a flying elbow drop from fifty feet. More so than the CG spotlight ninja fight that scene really should have been done with stunts and wires.Rap Record Hoarder posted:Serendipitous timing: http://deadline.com/2015/07/wesley-snipes-blade-comic-con-interview-blade-the-player-1201472733/
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2015 02:06
|
|
|
Rap Record Hoarder posted:Serendipitous timing: http://deadline.com/2015/07/wesley-snipes-blade-comic-con-interview-blade-the-player-1201472733/ I just hope we get to see Blade fight Dracula's Space Galleon he launched from his Moon Castle on the big screen.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2015 04:57
|
|
|
It's also just possible that Wesley Snipes doesn't know what year it is. He may think it's 1997 and he just left the meeting.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2015 05:06
|
|
|
Well I just went and bought a Blade blu-ray thanks to this thread. I am sure I won't be the last.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2015 06:58
|
|
|
Literally just watched Blade 3. It's not that bad. A few questionable things (Killing off Whistler, the ipad, etc) but on the whole it's still pretty drat fun. Hope Blade 4 happens, and is as fun and good as the other Blades.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2015 07:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 08:43 |
|
|
Shima Honnou posted:Literally just watched Blade 3. It's not that bad. A few questionable things (Killing off Whistler, the ipad, etc) but on the whole it's still pretty drat fun. Its fun to watch Ryan Reynolds trying to piss of Snipes but on the whole its a really bland movie. And it did itself no favor by having the opening narration start with "movies are full of poo poo."
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2015 10:46
|
|
