Marvel Mondays #23: Blade 2 (2001)

Unlike its predecessor, I didn't see Blade 2 first time around. I'm not sure why to be honest - I'm guessing that while I thought the first film was decent enough, the prospect of a sequel just wasn't that high up on my to-watch list. As with a few other films though, this blog has given me an excuse to check out a film I overlooked first time round. Let's see if it's any good, shall we?...

Released four years after the original "Blade", the sequel sees Wesley Snipes returning as the titular Daywalker and Kris Kristofferson back as his sidekick Whistler. "But hang on," I hear you say, "didn't Whistler die in the first film?"

Which I guess is as good a place to get started - we find out in the opening sequence that even though Whistler killed himself with a shotgun, it wasn't enough to prevent him subsequently rising and turning into a vampire. Blade has been hunting him down in the intervening years and finally tracks him down - it turns out that the vampire gang who kidnapped Whistler have been holding him hostage to continually drain his blood. Blade offs them, rescues Whistler and injects him with a serum which reverts him back to his old self. Okay, plot hole alert - if it's that simple to reverse being vampirised then why has Blade never tried this on himself? Weird...

We also find out that Blade has recruited a new sidekick in Whistler's absence called Scud (Norman Reedus a good decade or so before he found fame in "The Walking Dead") but it turns out he's a bit cack-handed at security as the hideout gets invaded by two vampires named Asad (Danny John-Jules aka Cat from Red Dwarf!) and Nyssa. However, they aren't here to pick a fight with Blade but have come in peace with a request for help.

Blade is taken to the vampires' leader Damaskinos (Nyssa's dad) who explains that a disease called the Reaper Virus has been spreading through the vampire community. The Reapers are a new more powerful breed of vampire led by Jared Nomak (Luke Goss from '80s teenie pop band Bros!) who feed on normal vampires. Unlike normal vampires they're immune to silver, holy water and garlic with sunlight being their only weakness. They also have a cage of bone around their hearts which makes staking them incredibly difficult.

Blade reluctantly agrees to help Damaskinos out and is placed with a group of vampires known as the Bloodpack led by grizzled veteran Reinhardt (Ron Perlman pre-"Sons of Anarchy") and also including Japanese swordsman Snowman, Scottish brawler Priest, street thug Chupa, Samoan giant Lighthammer and his girlfriend Verlaine. Inevitably, it's something of an uneasy alliance with Reinhardt and Chupa in particular appearing to detest being forced to team up with Blade and Whistler.

The team's adventures see them start off by going undercover at a nightclub in Prague before heading off to find the main Reaper nest. Of course, en route there's plenty of death, blood, gore, backstabbing and scheming but I'm not going to give any spoilers here - you'll just have to give the film a spin and watch it yourself. It's certainly decent enough to warrant you doing so and like its predecessor, it shouldn't cost you too much to locate a second hand copy somewhere.

To be honest, you could probably copy and paste about 90% of the stuff I wrote about the first Blade film here to get a summary of my thoughts on Blade 2 - however, I will admit it's slightly the better of the two. The plot feels a bit meatier with more of a storyline to (pardon the pun) get your teeth into. It does suffer from arguably being a bit too long and rambling for its own good and, like the first film, the fight sequences look a bit dated sixteen years later but if a simple no-brainer gorefest is what you want then this should satisfy you nicely. It's also quite interesting to see the likes of Reedus and Perlman in the days before they were household names.

Wesley Snipes would return for a third and final Blade film in 2005 but as we'll see when we come to review it, by that point the wheels were well and truly falling off the franchise with Snipes allegedly having fallen out with the director and only doing the film because he was contractually obligated to do so. We'll see what the results of that were in a few weeks' time but I wouldn't get your hopes up if I was you...

FINAL SCORE: 👹👹👹👹👹👹👹 (7/10)

CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE

1. Men In Black (1997) (8/10)
2. X-Men (2000) (8/10)
3. Blade 2 (2001) (7/10)
4. Blade (1998) (7/10)
5. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
6. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
7. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
8. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
9. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
10. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
11. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
12. Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD (1998) (4/10)
13. The Fantastic Four (1994) (4/10)
14. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
15. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
16. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
17. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
18. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
19. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
20. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
21. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
22. Generation X (1996) (2/10)
23. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: A second visit from the Men In Black which unfortunately sees the scriptwriters phoning it in somewhat...