Video game aficionados and players of White Wolf’s Vampire: the Masquerade are probably familiar with the famous Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines game which departed from White Wolf canon. Long after both the game and Wesley Snipes have retreated into obscurity, I have finally watched the Wesley Snipes movie and realized that a lot of visual details in the game were taken directly from the Wesley Snipes movie. The thigh-high minidress on the white female vampire and the coruscant vampire corpses are just two small examples.
The following gives spoilers for the plot of Blade.
It’s a post-Anne-Rice Hollywood movie, so crosses don’t hurt vampires. There wasn’t any overt Christian-bashing. Blade’s need for a blood-based “serum” was not unlike heroin withdrawal.
I award them style points for the scenery and set decoration. I do not award them any points for the mediocre acting, and the action sequences were just plain silly.
Of course, the incompetent cops are all white.
Perhaps the most unbelievable aspect of the movie is that white men are wildly attracted to black women. This has not happened in any real-life situation I have observed. The black woman later meets up with her unloved ex-boyfriend in a scene that clearly inspired some sequences in Bloodlines.
The main bad guy, Deacon Frost, has an interesting pair of social tensions. Frost is a white-skinned social climber. He hates both the socially inferior whites, like Quinn, who obey his orders.
Frost demands unquestioning obedience from Quinn, even testing him by demanding that Quinn be willing to have Frost cut off Quinn’s hands for no good reason. Frost also hates the old, prestigious vampires who oppose his climb to power. Obviously, Frost represents the kind of white-skinned Yankee who typically holds a place of power in the USA; Quinn represents lower-class whites, and the old vampires represent blue-blooded traditional whites.
It’s a post-World-War-II action hero movie, so of course there has to be a superweapon. In James Bond movies, the superweapon is typically a nuclear bomb, but in more fantasy-based movies, the superweapon is often a divine-versus-infernal apocalypse.
The “vampire Bible” reminds me of the Book of Nod from White Wolf’s World of Darkness. I don’t know who started this trope.
There were a surprising number of Chinatown scenes that mixed in Japanese features, which was later imitated by Bloodlines.
The blood regeneration effect strongly resembles Bloodlines’ Blood Guardian and Thaumaturgical Blood Armor effect.
The martial arts sequences were unintentionally hilarious.
Both opponents shown take the tactic of standing quietly one full meter away from the reach of the enemy and taking turns twirling around like dancers who are trying not to hit each other.
The climactic martial arts scene has lots of kung-fu-movie flavor and takes place in a cylindrical vault that is supposed to be very old. Bloodlines stole this scene for one of its game-mission levels.
The ridiculous thing about the story is that this temple was built many years ago, in the USA, somewhere near a major city, perhaps Los Angeles or New York. If it were set in New York, it would make sense that there were vampires there in 1700 or so – hey, Anne Rice could make a story like that work. But mostly this is a movie for unintelligent people who don’t bother with issues of consistency.
At the original URL, a commenter wrote:
Brian K says:
2014/11/15 at 05:05 (Edit)
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Blade 2 is superior, particularly when it comes to the fight choreography. Donnie Yen did the choreography, and played one of the vampires, so it feels like good Hong Kong-style wire-fu wushu, whereas the original feels like bad Hong Kong-style wire-fu wushu. It’s worth checking out. Avoid Blade: Trinity like the plague, unless you really enjoy Jessica Biel’s brand of action-girl bullshit.
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If you want fantasy with a wire-fu aspect, check out Hero, House of Flying Daggers, The Swordsman, and maybe Bride With White Hair and Mr. Vampire. The Chinese/Hong Kong cinema’s influence on Western action sensibilities peaked in the late ’90’s and early 2000’s with the Matrix trilogy, Kill Bill, the Transporter movies, and the string of Hollywood movies that Jet Li made (Unleashed was probably the best of those).
Nowadays, Hollywood seems to trend toward more realistic fight scenes influenced by MMA core styles (Muay Thai, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, wrestling, boxing, and judo) with weapons work derived from Filipino knife and stick based systems. As far as foreign cinema, Thailand has put out some cool Muay Thai based flicks going back to Ong Bak, and Indonesia has put out some cool Silat films like Merantau and The Raid. Japan has put out a few cool anime-influenced live action flicks. The ninja epic Goemon is fun.
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