Blade 2 is what Resident Evil should have been

[J.R.]

From every preview I've seen Blade 2 is a gory, dark action flck with buckets of blood and awesome action sequences. Maybe it will dull the pain left in my head from RE.

[Future Blob]

  I just got back from Blade 2, and IMHO it's not half the movie the first one was. Most of the plot I guessed before pretty long, and it had both a lot of expository talking and an opening narration..I classify it under "Movies that didn't need a sequel."

   There were some fun action scenes and effects though, but I just felt it was missing something.

   I liked RE MUCH better, personally, but to each his own I guess.

[AkiraTubo]

It isn't half the movie the first one was?

Whoa, the first one hardly qualified as a movie at all!

It had that awesome opening battle, then nothing else happened.  Well, Blade did kill the vampire "god" with EDTA there at the end. *yawn*

If the second one is worse . . . I've got friends taking me to see it on my birthday and I can't disappoint them.

[Mofo Rising]

Well, let me just say things as I see them.

The original BLADE is just about as good a action/comic-book/video-game movie as you'll ever see.  Take a basic premise, and vampires is as basic as you get, and throw them into a "let's kick ass" formula with a bad-ass superhero as a star and BLADE is what you get.  Forget that there's no real depth, action is what you want, action is what you get.

And for such a crappy comic, which Blade most certainly was, this is very good.

BLADE 2.  Well, we run into some of the problems inherent in sequels.  The characters, now familiar to the audience, are played up a bit.  Blade, a character of unrelenting grimness in the first movie, has been exaggerated in the sequel.  At times he even seems to be having fun.  A mistake in my book, as it detracts from the "bad-ass" formula.

But the good points of the sequel far outweigh the bad points.  If you think about the first movie, it really isn't that bloody.  The focus is the action.  Not so in the sequel.  The director really went all out.  I heard that Mike Mignola (of Hellboy fame) was part of the art direction of this movie.  It shows.  This movie is a paean to gore.  Every chance the director gets he showcases another way that the human body can be horribly mutilated.    Say what you want, the fact that the director got away with this level of bloodshed in a mainstream movie is impressive.

So, if you want to directly compare this movie to the first one, it may seem the worse for wear.  Sure, the plot may be predictable and the action gratuitous.  I view it more as a lark for genre fans.  Look at all the Asian cinema influences.  Anime fans will see a lot of their favoite scenes played out live action.  And the blood never stops being piled on.

As you can tell, I was impressed.  I don't think it'll play much on mainstream tastes, other than "Yo, that was some f**ked up s**t right there."  But if you know the gore genre, I think you'll enjoy the way they play with it here.

Hell, the movie is popcorn cinema, but for that type of movie it doesn't come much more screwed up than this.  The main plot-line, while predictable, does not pull any punches.  If you're looking for an extravaganza of blood, violence and improbable fight scenes, BLADE 2 is your movie.

Now if only my local arthouse theater hadn't pulled THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE. . .

[AkiraTubo]

"The original BLADE is just about as good a action/comic-book/video-game movie as you'll ever see. Take a basic premise, and vampires is as basic as you get, and throw them into a "let's kick ass" formula with a bad-ass superhero as a star and BLADE is what you get. Forget that there's no real depth, action is what you want, action is what you get."

Hehe, two people can see the same thing so differently.  I was bored out of my mind while watching Blade.  Even when something did happen (a rarity) it was still boring, aside from that first battle.

What they say is true: it takes all kinds.