Blade II

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{{Infobox Film

| name=Blade II
| image=Blade II movie.jpg
| caption = Movie poster for Blade II
| imdb_id=0187738
| writer=David S. Goyer,
Marv Wolfman,
Gene Colan
| starring=Wesley Snipes,
Kris Kristofferson,
Ron Perlman,
Leonor Varela,
Danny John-Jules
| producer=
| director=Guillermo del Toro
| music=
| distributor=New Line Cinema
| released=March 22 2002
| runtime=117 min.
| language=English
| preceded_by=Blade (1998)
| followed_by =Blade: Trinity  (2004)
| budget=55,000,000 (estimated)
| awards=
}}

Blade II is a 2002 vampire action movie starring Wesley Snipes and Kris Kristofferson. It was directed by Guillermo del Toro.

Taglines:

Know The Mark.
One Man Still Has The Edge.
One man is still the cutting edge.
Last time he fought against his sworn enemies....This time he will fight with them.
Faster. Sharper. Deadlier.
When Evil Strikes, One Man, Still Has The Edge.
Let the combat begin.

1 Plot
2 Trivia
3 See also
4 External links

[edit]

Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Four years have passed since the ending of the first film, and Blade has been keeping himself busy in the hunt for Whistler, who failed to kill himself in the prequel. He has been sweeping across Russia and eastern Europe searching for his old friend and mentor, enlisting the aid of a young man named Scud to design him a new line of gadgetry and weaponry. In the first scene of the film, Blade fights his way through a large gang of vampires, leaving one of their number alive yet telling him he'll be back for him. Finding Whistler locked in a tank of blood by a cruel gang of vampires who were keeping the old man alive for purposes of torture. Blade rescues him and brings him to Prague.

Meanwhile, a crisis has arisen in the vampire community. What seems to be a more developed strain of vampirism (dubbed the "Reaper virus") is sweeping through through their ranks, giving its carriers fearsome new characteristics. The original carrier of the strain seems to be Jared Nomak, a one-time vampire who appears to have mutated. Far stronger than common vampires, the Reapers have three-way jaws, leech-like suckers and unstakable hearts encased in a thick layer of bone, making them invulnerable to any weapon barring sunlight. In order to combat the virus, the vampire elder and warlord Eli Damaskinos strikes up an uneasy treaty with Blade, proving to him that the Reapers are the greater evil and once they finish the vampire population, they will doubtlessly descend on humankind. Whilst Blade may hate vampires, the Reapers are far more dangerous and neither side can attack them without uniting first.

To this end, Blade teams up with the Bloodpack, a group of vampire warriors and assassins who were originally assembled to kill Blade. In order to obtain some measure of control over the group, Blade singles out Reinhardt (played by Ron Perlman), one of the group's more primary members, and installs a remotely-activated explosive device in the back of his head. Setting their mutual hatred aside, Blade leads the Bloodpack in the fight against the Reapers and the investigation into their origins. During this time, Blade forms something of an intimate relationship with Nyssa, the daughter of Damaskinos and member of the Bloodpack.

After a climactic battle against numerous Reapers in their hive in the sewers, Blade is apprehended by Damaskinos' forces, along with Whistler and Scud. As it turns out, the Reaper strain is not a virus at all, but rather a genetic experiment gone wrong. In his efforts to create a day-walking vampire race, Damaskinos had numerous experiments performed on Nomak, who is in fact his estranged son. He remarks that Nomak was the first carrier of the strain but ultimately flawed, seeing as he was vulnerable to daylight, as were all the other carriers whom he'd infected. Damaskinos then reveals another horrible truth—he has been creating many more Reapers, all of them incubated in the form of a fetus. All they require now is Blade's biological make-up and in order to extract this, Damaskinos plans to have Blade killed and dissected.

During his captivity, Blade attempts to activate the pre-placed explosive in Reinhardt's skull, at which point Scud reveals the bomb (which he himself had crafted) was never designed to go off. He himself is in fact one of Damaskinos' human servants (i.e. a familiar) and planned to side with the vampires rather than fighting against them. However, Blade has a trump card - he has always known of Scud's servitude to Damaskinos, and his backhanded double dealing. Activating a second switch on his remote, Blade kills the unfortunate Scud, who unluckily happened to be holding the bomb at the time. Blade fights his way through Damaskinos' henchmen, and heads towards the lead vampire himself.

Meanwhile, a vengeful Nomak has entered Damaskinos' stronghold, seeking revenge on the father who mutilated him and turned him into the first Reaper. Just before he can escape, Damaskinos is betrayed by Nyssa (who became dissilussioned with her father's extreme methods) and killed by Nomak. In order to "complete the circle", Nomak also bites Nyssa and then makes to leave, whereupon he is confronted by Blade. After a very physical fight scene, Blade finds the weak spot in Nomak's physical defences and jams his sword beneath his arm, bypassing the bone shield of his heart. With Nomak dead, Blade then carries a weak, dying Nyssa outside for the sunrise, where she disintegrates in his arms.

In the film's somewhat comical final scene, the vampire Rush left to live in the opening scene is in a London strip club, preparing to make use of one of the booths. However, as soon as the curtains open, he is shocked to find Blade on the other side of the glass, who casually remarks "You didn't think I'd forget about you, did you?", and rams his sword into his skull. Template:Endspoiler

[edit]

Trivia

Blade's quote "Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer" is from Sun Tzu's The Art of War.
Blade Trinity's opening chase sequence was originally planned for Blade II, but was scrapped because of budget concerns.
Controversy arose when Dracula (also known as Drake) in Blade Trinity was featured to have an opening jaw, just like the reapers, thus leading to the belief that Drake was "part vampire, part reaper". Though it may be the case that the reapers simply had something in common with Drake, and were the result of a particular dormant vampire gene becoming active.
Wesley Snipes was known to have used a few wrestling maneuvers during the scene where he fights the vampire guards after regaining his strength. Ironically, two years later, WWE Superstar Triple H was cast into Blade Trinity for the role of Jarko Grimwood.
In the film, the character Scud's t-shirt bears the logo of the B.P.R.D., the fictional organisation from the Hellboy comic book series and film. Guillermo del Toro directed the film adaptation of Hellboy, with Ron Perlman (who plays Reinhardt in Blade II) as the title character. Also, Mike Mignola (the artist, writer and creator of the Hellboy comics) also worked on some of the conceptual art of Blade II. Karel Roden , the Czech actor who played Rasputin in Hellboy, is one of the villain's henchmen in this film.