Revis­it­ing Blade II: Guiller­mo del Toro’s slick super­hero B‑movie

While X‑Men and Spi­der-Man are often cred­it­ed with mak­ing com­ic book movies cool, it was real­ly Blade that start­ed the trend. While the genre had suc­cess­ful out­ings through­out the ​’80s and ​’90s, it also churned out duds like Barb Wire, Spawn, Steel and The Phan­tom with alarm­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty – even the Bat­man fran­chise shot itself in the foot with the Joel Schu­mach­er fias­co Bat­man & Robin. Blade was the out­lier, deft­ly side­step­ping the campi­ness that had spoiled so many adap­ta­tions while turn­ing an obscure com­ic into an era defin­ing action movie.

Blade’s suc­cess guar­an­teed a sequel, and Guiller­mo del Toro was hired to direct. The Mex­i­can film­mak­er had a rough time with his first Eng­lish-lan­guage effort, Mim­ic, a styl­ish but flawed hor­ror movie where del Toro found him­self tor­ment­ed by pro­duc­er Bob Wein­stein, who tried to fire him mid­way through pro­duc­tion. While del Toro’s career has almost been defined by jump­ing from big-bud­get fare (Pacif­ic Rim, Hell­boy) to small­er, more per­son­al films (The Devil’s Back­bone, Crim­son Peak), he doesn’t dis­crim­i­nate between them. To him, a sil­ly B‑movie can have just as much mer­it as a pro­found dra­ma – it’s all about execution.

Blade II could eas­i­ly have been a work for hire job. All del Toro had to do was fol­low the blue­print set by the orig­i­nal, make it look slick and move on to the next assign­ment. Instead, he infused it with his recur­ring themes and hall­marks – sym­pa­thet­ic mon­sters, goth­ic archi­tec­ture, gross autop­sy scenes – and made an art­ful­ly designed work of B‑movie trash. The sto­ry is slight, the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters unde­vel­oped and there’s a roman­tic sub­plot that gen­er­ates less heat than a faulty radi­a­tor, but that doesn’t mat­ter since the ride is so well crafted.

The set­up finds vam­pire hunter Blade forced to team with the Blood Pack, a mer­ce­nary vam­pire group who were trained to kill him, so they can stop the Reapers togeth­er. These pale-skinned freaks are an evolved strain of blood­suck­er, mak­ing them feast on both human and vamps alike. They’re also near unkil­l­able. These night­mare crea­tures are clas­sic del Toro cre­ations, with their jaws grue­some­ly split­ting open to reveal an eel-like suck­er – an image that still retains the pow­er to shock and repel.

Blade II is an action movie first and fore­most, and del Toro makes sure that the view­er gets their money’s worth. Every set-piece is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, jump­ing from grace­ful sword fights to bru­tal, limb snap­ping brawls. The direc­tor also want­ed the film to resem­ble an ani­mé like Yoshi­a­ki Kawajiri’s Nin­ja Scroll or Demon City Shin­juku, giv­ing it a car­toon­ish hyper-real­i­ty where char­ac­ters can walk the streets heav­i­ly armed, or vil­lains can be bisect­ed with the sim­ple wish of a sword.

There’s rarely been an actor bet­ter suit­ed to a role than Wes­ley Snipes to Blade. Not only does he have set of act­ing chops, but Snipes has also been train­ing in mar­tial arts his entire life, lend­ing the fight scenes bone-crunch­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty. He also gives Blade a dead­pan wit that makes him easy to love. The film doesn’t have much time for the Blood Pack itself, with only Ron Perlman’s burly hench­man mak­ing an impres­sion, while the leg­endary Don­nie Yen is wast­ed as a mute swordsman.

The film has dat­ed in some key areas. Most of the cast is clad in trendy Matrix-style leather gear, the sound­track choic­es are ques­tion­able and the CG hasn’t aged par­tic­u­lar­ly well. Despite all this, del Toro’s sig­na­ture style shines through. It real­ly feels as though he’s hav­ing fun while also using the bud­get at his dis­pos­al to teach him­self how to shoot action, as well as exper­i­ment with con­cepts and tech­niques he has since mas­tered. The reapers are a pro­to­type for the blood­suck­ers in his tele­vi­sion show The Strain, while lead vil­lain Nomak’s trag­ic arc is recy­cled and fleshed out with Hell­boy II: The Gold­en Army’s bad­die Prince Nua­da – Luke Goss even plays both roles.

Blade II’s box office suc­cess effec­tive­ly set del Toro on the path to Hell­boy and beyond. Yet, per­haps under­stand­ably, it seems to have fall­en through the cracks as far as apprais­ing the director’s career is con­cerned. Still, viewed 20 years on, every­thing from its dis­tinct visu­al style right down to strik­ing details such as vam­pires kiss­ing with razor blades makes this super­hero sequel one of the most curi­ous entries in del Toro’s extra­or­di­nary back catalogue.