Note to aspiring directors, if you are having troubling getting someone to give you the go-ahead to helm a feature, write a script, stay on board for the sequel and, as Hollywood protocol demands, you’ll be handed the reigns for the closer of the series. This surefire formula has occurred countless times and, from a marketing perspective, is an obligatory executive freebie which makes the person behind the desk appear squeaky clean by the end of the day as no one’s the wiser (as the pocketbook remains bulging). By granting the person who has diligently labored to assure the financers another vacation on the writer’s tab (the product of blood, sweat, starvation, etc.) and, with the franchise’s reputation established, there is nothing to lose considering the film–from its conception–is running off into the sunset without looking back, that is, unless the suits lose a cash cow of a writer if the individual isn’t given his or her just dues. Of course, such a scenario doesn’t bother with the trivial questions of whether the screenwriter can direct or has any business behind the camera because, audience be damned once again, it doesn’t matter. The shop’s closing, the effectiveness of the advertising is bringing in the last of the day’s customers and, once we close for the evening, that’s the end of it folks. File any and all requisite complaints in the oblong metal receptacle by the door on your way out.
This sad truth in cinema is once again witnessed in David Goyer’s final chapter in the Blade trilogy, Blade: Trinity. Unlike other franchises of note, it should be no surprise that the story to end all vampire tales serves as its own antithesis. From most every possible perspective, the film fails miserably as it bumbles along attempting to satisfy sponsors via product placement first and foremost, the director’s ego second, all before the audience and the story becomes a faint memory for feigned consideration.
After being framed by familiars, Blade (Wesley Snipes) is rescued by two human Nightstalkers, Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel) and Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds). Their aide is needed once the King of Vampires is brought back to life, Dracula (Dominic Purcell).
If you are going to usurp two films-worth of vampire menace, introducing the paterfamilias of the undead might well be the proper direction to go (albeit, a tad ambitious if not pretentious) yet, in so doing, it would help the narrative’s plausibility rating if the character was made frightening, beginning with refusing to modernize his name by having the figure go by the nickname “Drake,” thus insinutating that this is the type of person you might elbow up next to at the bar and, between beer nuts, chat about baseball as opposed to say, running like Hell in order to get away from. It doesn’t help that our antagonist shops at the Gap either. Perhaps it is in the viewer’s best interest that the King of the Vampires is allotted so little screen time because, like someone who exhibits equal prowess to his good-guy counterpart, visually implying that a supermodel poses even the slightest threat to a character established as being a “suckhead” executor par excellence might be a bit much.
True to the formula of diminishing returns in respect to sequels, the film opens with the very, very mundane discovery of the ultimate evil in, guess where, Iraq. When a production opens by capitalizing on the evening news’s psychological imprinting to save time, insult doesn’t begin to explain what the viewer should prepare him or herself for. As such, the highlight of the entire feature is getting a brief glimpse of a criminally overlooked masterpiece, Leslie Stevens’s Incubus. Of course, not only is the feature’s merits overlooked by Blade: Trinity’s target audience–fraternities and teens as they ignorantly quip “Shantner!” as they rib one another–but, indubitably, upon most involved in the making of the film. But, then again, I highly doubt that a demographic was cited in that Biel’s fuck-me getup is juxtaposed in Goyer’s testosterone anti-date movie by two flashes of what used to be Reynolds’s treasure trail.
Given the franchise’s proclivity for such, it should expected that Goyer bypasses every opportunity (though they are becoming sparser with each installment) to impart meaning. After Guillermo del Toro danced around race in Blade II, perhaps afraid of contending with the ethics of the historical dilemma, the concept of the “Final Solution” in respect to the vampire race’s verdict upon how to contend with humanity is breeched–but then forgotten. As close as the director gets to examining the Nazi proposal is the police chief uttering that the undead are “Doing the country a favor” by taking the homeless off the streets in order to sustain a ready supply of blood via a blood farm. Of course, since the advent of the vampire, the logistics of such seem readily apparent to anyone alive or dead, but–of course–only a final installment can humor such a notion given the pragmatic nature of such all but eliminates the call for action. We’ll ignore the head-slappingly eschewed open door of a little girl named Zoe (Haili Page) being read from L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, works which would easily permit a motif by which to explore class structures (a potential compliment/juxtaposition to the theme of the hierarchy of race). Of course, the film’s goldmine at its open, in which the director could have chased the theory that Blade is insane, is . . . well . . . .
And, again, the last call of any horror series is signaled once the threat allows for humor. As such, sarcasm drips from the mouth of Hannibal King (perhaps the worst naming of a good guy in all of the genre) but this should come as no surprise as he walks alongside what we were reassured twice over to be the impossible: one of the slain daughters of Abraham Whistler (Kris Kristofferson). Hence, much like the seventh Xerox of Michael Keaton’s character of Doug Kinney in Harold Ramis’s Multiplicity, Blade: Trinity rubs off the already dull sheen off of its predecessors as it lapses into the lethargic rut of a father battling the son (Stephen Norrington’s original) amid even more Nosferatu/Predator hybrids (à la Del Toro’s sequel). One gets the impression that, not only was no one trying during the making of the feature, but that nary one person actually gave a damn.
Thus, Blade: Trinity (hopefully) end the less-than-epic Blade films, a franchise which unrelentingly opted for the easy way out at every turn as it fled from every single inadvertent challenge it posed, much like the traditional figure of Horror’s Final Female. Three-hundred and fifty minutes and well over 100 million dollars later, nothing is accomplished outside of audience insult. And to think of how many other lukewarm efforts could have been made in the meantime by which we could have at least passed the time.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
