The Blade Trilogy (Mighty Marvel Movie Month)

“So give them blood, blood, gallons of the stuff,     give them all that they can drink and it will never be enough…”

You may or may not have noticed, but vampire fiction hasn’t been doing itself that much favours as of late. I’m sure I don’t need to really get into the Twilights of the world, as, by now, we’ve all done our respective shares of ragging on the influence behind the literary  masterpiece that is Fifty Shades of Gray.

….. Nope. No joke here. They’ve all been made at this point. Moving on.

With all the crap that the genre has had to got to lately, it’s easy to forget that movies like What We Do In the Shadows and Only Lovers Left Alive have come out recently. Hell, we’re barely a decade removed from one of the more celebrated vampire sagas in recent memory.

Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Obviously.

Just kidding. Boy, you’d think Mel Brooks would be chomping at the bit for some form of redemption after that movie. No, I’m talking about the Blade trilogy, you guys.

Blade was the the second major Marvel release after Howard the Duck, and, if you’ve read my review of that goddamn atrocity, you know that Blade looks like friggin’ Citizen Kane. Is it as good as that? NO. But, audiences seemed to enjoy it, and it got two sequels, Blade II and Blade: Trinity, with the former being the best-received (Marginally) and most profitable of the three.

The three constants throughout the trilogy are: Writer David S. Goyer (Of the Dark Knight trilogy), Wesley Snipes, in his best known role as the title character, a half-human, half-vampire force of nature who specializes in killing the evil cabal of vampires that control the world, and Kris Kristofferson as Abraham Whistler, Blade’s mentor and partner in vampire killing.

The first movie was released in 1998, and, y’know, it’s alright. The basic premise has Blade an Whistler meeting a woman (N’Bushe Wright), who was bitten by a vampire, and who needs to find a cure ASAP. In addition to that, Blade fights against the aforementioned vampire illuminati…

OPEN YOUR FUCKING EYES, SHEEPLE!!!!!!!1111!!!!!!!

… As well as a dangerous individual within this sinister cabal named Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff), who is making a power play that would essentially be game over for humanity.

Any discussion of the Blade trilogy has to begin with Blade himself (Or Eric Brooks, as he is called once in the first movie), Wesley Snipes. I’m not exactly a Snipes connoisseur (The only other movie I’ve seen him in is Major League, which he was great in), but man, did he really bring it to these movies, not so much in acting ability (Although he’s not bad), but in sheer badassery.

If you question why he’s wearing sunglasses indoors, he will shove his boot so far up your ass that he’ll end up kicking the inside of your face.

I have no idea how big a fan Snipes is of the original character, but I think he would have to be, considering that he not only stars as Blade, but also helped produce every movie of the trilogy, and worked as a fight producer for the first two movies. And if you’ve ever seen one of the fight scenes from either of the first two movies, you know that the latter credit is especially impressive. If only he put half the effort that he put into his fight scenes into paying his goddamn taxes.

When it comes to the performance on its own, Snipes is a pretty solid action star which, honestly, is all that’s really needed. Kris Kristofferson is also good as Abraham Whistler, playing more or less your average gruff, tortured older mentor. Nothing to write home about, but it works. Stephen Dorff is a lot of fun to watch as the villain, which is good, because the character himself isn’t all that interesting (None of these characters are, really).

The Goyer-penned script is solid, action movie generic, and while I have to dock it some points for being so unspectacular, it works fine when you really get down to it.

Where this movie comes apart is when a couple scenes that don’t make a whole lot of sense occur. One of the two examples that spring to my mind is the scene where Blade and Frost are confronting each other in a very public place, and Frost is holding a child hostage. During this standoff, they are talking (Rather loudly) about vampires and the extermination of the human race…. And none of the many people who walk by, clearly within earshot, react at all. That’s… Really fucking stupid. This isn’t the Dream World in Inception, real people react to shit like that. Especially when it evolves into a full-blown action scene. That scene was bullshit. It took me right out of the film.

There’s also a scene involving an interrogation of a morbidly obese vampire, and I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something unpleasant about it. Bitch and moan, bitch and moan, I know, but something about that scene really rubs me the wrong way.

Also, N’Bushe Wright is really, really fucking boring.

After the success of Blade, it’s only natural (Well, natural in Hollywood) that a sequel was released in 2002. Goyer, Snipes and Kristofferson were on board, but the director, Stephen Norrington, was replaced by an upstart Mexican director who was making his first American movie.

The director’s name? Guillermo del Toro. I fucking love Guillermo del Toro.

In the sequel, Blade and Whistler are forced to team up with a team of vampire warriors (Led by Leonor Varela and Ron motherhugging Perlman) in order to stop a new breed of monster that feeds on both humans and vampires.

While del Toro wasn’t ever going to do much to overcome the average dialogue and uninteresting characters and motivations, he brings a lot to the action scenes and, while he’s a lot more restrained here than in, say, Hellboy  and Pan’s Labyrinth, he does bring some notable creativity to the character and monster designs.

Aside from that, I’m not that sure why I liked Blade II so much more than the first movie. The script is just as mediocre, the characters are just as underdeveloped (Albeit, memorable. I’m looking at you, Ron Perlman), and while the action is better, it’s not by a huge margin.

I guess it comes down to the fact that, while they’re essentially the same movies, I bought into the world of Blade II a lot more, if only because Blade II didn’t have the unnecessary scenes (And one super boring character) that plagued the first movie.

Actually, let’s be honest. It’s all Ron Perlman.

Two years later, the inevitable third movie was released, titled Blade: Trinity. This movie has Blade facing off against the baddest vampire of them all, Dracula (Dominic Purcell) or “Drake”, as he is called for some stupid reason. In order to do this, he unwillingly joins up with the Nightstalkers, a group of vampires led by Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds.

Out of the whole trilogy, Trinity was the one that was the most harshly criticized of the trilogy, but I was still optimistic, as it’s not like the first two movies were critical darlings, and I like the first one fine, while I just about love the second one.

As it turns out, my optimism was sorely misplaced. This movie is a dumpster fire.

Much of Trinity‘s problems can be traced back to the fact that this movie had a very troubled production. Guillermo del Toro didn’t return as director, so the writer, David S. Goyer, took on double duties as writer-director. Snipes wasn’t too happy about this. Understandable, considering  Goyer’s spotty track record (Which remains spotty today). However, instead of handling it in literally any other fashion, Snipes decided to handle it by holing up in his trailer when filming was supposed to be taking place, smoking weed literally all the time, and generally being a giant dick, calling Ryan Reynolds a cracker (Unironically) and choking out Goyer, at one point. Yikes.

In actuality, Snipes was a time traveler who was trying to stop Green Lantern from ever happening.

Snipes was absent for so much of the filming that they actually had to use body doubles to a ridiculous extent. I guess I’ll give them some credit, I didn’t figure that out until I read about it later, so that’s a point in its favour, I guess.

Also, Ryan Reynolds is Ryan Reynolds, which is awesome. Otherwise, Trinity is trash.

It’s obvious that nobody cares in this movie. The acting is bad, the action scenes are poorly done (Thanks to Snipes not being on set, I’m guessing), and the script is really, really bad.

Also, that is not Dracula. I’m sorry, but I’m not buying it.

Even Snipes (Who is high) and Kristofferson are really bad, and the latter is phoning it in to a pretty serious degree, which doesn’t surprise me, considering he’s in it for around a collective ten minutes throughout the whole damn movie.

Logical fallacies like the ones found in the first movie abound, and as you would probably would guess, there isn’t near enough good stuff to distract me from the flaws.

For example, the action in this movie is kicked off by Blake’s murder of a Familiar (Human servant of vampires), which apparently garners interest from the police. That’s weird. The hundreds of Familiars that he killed in the first two movies didn’t garner any interest at all.

Also, there’s a scene where Dracula (Sorry, “Drake”) sneaks into the Nightstalker’s base, and, since he can shape-shift, turns into somebody who I’m not going to reveal, but it doesn’t make any sense.

God, this movie is so stupid. At least it’s still a better story than, you know, that other vampire series.

Overall: The first two Blade movies are good fun, perfect for action and horror (-ish) fans everywhere. The third one can go die in a hole.

Blade: 7.0/10

Blade II: 8.5/10

Blade: Trinity: 3.5/10

Huh. Tim Curry in Legend got ripped.

TV Reviews Are Back!!! (Attempt #2) / Mighty Marvel Month Update

My body’s the readiest.

I’m almost done typing my Blade review, and I plan on continuing with Mighty Marvel Movie Month even if it kills me, but I realized that there are actually a couple TV shows that I want to watch. Specifically, Daredevil and Game of Thrones.

I realize that this didn’t go so well for me the last time I tried this, but when you consider that I was trying to review Gotham, The Flash, Legend of Korra and the MLB playoffs at the same time, it’s no real wonder I failed. At least this time GoT is only once a week, and Daredevil is gonna be released on Netflix, so I can review the whole series at once if I so desire.

So, that’s happening.

In addition, Mighty Marvel Movie Month (Dear god, I’m tired of writing that) will keep going, but it’s probably going to bleed into May, because there’s no way I’m going to be able to work much faster than I already am, especially with school.

..Um… That’s all. bye.

The Punisher “Trilogy” (Mighty Marvel Movie Month)

“Grrr…. I’m brooding!”

Okay, so I’m in the middle of watching all these goddamn comic book movies, and I’m still going to review them all, but there are just a ton of these films, and I only have so much time. So, in the interest of actually getting my opinion on these movies out before May 1, I’ve decided to review any movies from the same series in one post. Reboots will usually constitute their own entry (For example, the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies will have a separate entry from the Marc Webb movies).

Is this a cop-out? Absolutely.

However, even though all the Punisher movies are technically reboots, I’m still going to do an all-in one review. If you’ve seen these movies, you would know why I would want to dedicate as little time to these movies as possible.

That may actually be a little bit harsh. While these films aren’t exactly high art, they’re not as awful as some people say they are. None of them are good, don’t get me wrong, but none of them are atrocious, either. It’s just that I don’t think that the character of the Punisher lends himself particularly well to movies.

But, as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself. Who is this “Punisher” schmuck, anyways? Well, in the early 70’s, the famously campy, albeit influential Silver Age of Comics was coming to an abrupt end, with Gwen Stacy’s death in Amazing Spider-Man #121 (31-year old Spoiler alert.). Marvel Comics was starting to veer towards darker, more adult storylines and one of the results of this slight change in direction was a character named the Punisher making his debut in Amazing Spider-Man #129 (February 1974).

The Punisher’s real name is Frank Castle (Born Castiglione, but changed, because god forbid a superhero be Italian, or anything). Comic backstories are prone to frequent alterations, but Castle has more or less remained constant throughout the lore. Long story short, he was a war veteran who was in Central Park, enjoying a beautiful summer day with his wife and children when a turf war between two crime syndicates broke out and, in the crossfire, his family is gunned down.

Frank finds that hobbies are a good way to keep his mind preoccupied. However, instead of, say, stamp collecting, he decides to engage in the slightly less popular hobby of engaging in a one-man war against crime. Unafraid to torture, maim and frequently kill his victims without hesitation, his uncompromisingly black and white worldview was somewhat unusual for his time, and the character grew in popularity, appearing alongside, and frequently in conflict with, Spider-Man, Daredevil and Captain America. Eventually, he got his own ongoing solo comic, and he’s considered a mainstay of the Marvel Universe.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the Punisher, per se, but he’s a pretty cool character, if not a particularly interesting one. Why this guy warranted three movies (Two of them reboots) is beyond me, but I’m not here to speculate, I’m here to annihilate (I’m both disgusted and feeling extremely self-congratulatory about that rhyme). So, what are the movies like?

Well, they’re all very much products of their respective times. For example, the first Punisher movie (The second film based on a Marvel comic) was released in 1989 and starred Dolph Lundgren, and it was very much like any other 80’s action movie starring Dolph Lundgren. It’s cheesy, it’s over the top (Albeit in a very gritty, brooding way) and the story takes a backseat to the action, and to Dolph Lundgren looking cool riding a motorcycle whilst dressed all in black.

This isn’t a bad thing at all, if you’re into that sort of deal. I was  born in ’96 so, uh, I’m not so much. That doesn’t mean I hate this movie, though, I just don’t see a lot of value to it.

Dolph Lundgren doesn’t contribute anything to the character aside from, again, looking cool dressed in black and shooting mobsters. As an action star, sure, he’s fine, but other than that, he’s pretty nondescript.

In fact, this whole movie is pretty nondescript, aside from a couple things. Specifically, Louis Gossett Jr’s solid performance as Punisher’s ex-partner, and Barry Otto as Punisher’s homeless sidekick, which is the most annoying thing I’ve seen since Tim Robbins in Howard the Duck.

Distinguished company, for sure.

Also, the main villain in this movie is a Yakuza boss played by Kim Miyori and she’s alright in the role, I guess, but the movie really leans on the whole “Japanese” aspect of her character. Seriously, during the climax of the movie, there’s an entire scene where she dresses up like a geisha and does a dance. Uh…Okay… What was the point of that?

You know, besides morally reprehensible racial profiling.

Dolph Lundgren also has a couple of almost-nude scenes, so, uh, take that how you will.

Also, no skull logo? Fucking bullshit.

Punisher’s second attempt at movie fame and fortune had to wait for fifteen years, when The Punisher was released in 2004, was directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, starred Thomas Jane as the titular character, and John Travolta as the main villain. It’s the only origin story of the three movies, and is also the least violent.

It’s also, weirdly enough, my favourite of the three movies, but. again, that doesn’t necessarily make it a good movie. As adverse as I am to the term “guilty pleasure”, this movie is pretty much the exact definition of that.

To this movie’s credit, the portrayal of the Punisher is much improved over Lundgren’s. Tom Jane may not be as well known, but he’s generally seen as one of the few positives of this movie. He was even well received by the fanboys, reprising the role in the great 2012 Adi Shankar-produced fan film known as The Punisher: Dirty Laundry. Out of all the Punishers, he’s probably the best, and is the most interesting part of this movie. But, therein lies the main problem of The Punisher. Too much of the film is focused on boring, unfocused characters like John Travolta and his family.

My god, are these villains fucking boring. If Travolta had gone super over-the-top, it might have salvaged the mob-centric moments, but no, he phones it in, and the rest of his underlings are bland, generic mob villains.

While that does take away from the movie to an unacceptable extent, it can only do so much to diminish the awesomeness of lines like these:

Candelaria: Vaya con Dios, Castle. Go with God.

Punisher: God’s going to sit this one out.

…

Punisher: Those who do evil o others- the killers, therapists, psychos, sadists- you will come to know me well.

…

Punisher: I have work to do. Read your newspaper every day and you’ll understand.

Rebeccar Romijn: Which section?

Punisher: The obituaries.

Goddammit, I could predict all of these lines halfway through, and they’re still fucking awesome!!!

Going back to my point of these movies being products of their times, if you’ve ever seen early 2000’s superhero movies, there was a trend to make them more serious, in order to show that comic book movies could be taken seriously. Sometimes it worked (X-Men, Blade) and sometimes, it was pretty fucking bad (Daredevil, Hulk). Punisher definitely leans towards the latter, but it’s not leaning that way horribly enough to ruin the movie.

Punisher: War Zone, on the other hand.

JESUS H. FUCK!!!!!!!

If the brutal violence of Sin City had a drunken hookup with the colour palette from The Matrix, their love child would still be about ten times more pleasant to watch than this movie. I mean, obviously, I don’t give a shit about brutal violence (A picture from Kill Bill is my Twitter profile, fer chrissakes) and dark, dreary environments can add a lot to a movie (See: Every non-Schumacher Batman movie). War Zone takes it waaaaayyyy past the point of enjoyment. People get bumped off left and right, not a smile is cracked throughout the whole movie, and the villains aren’t just violently over the top or appealingly psychotic- they’re fucking unpleasant and depressing.

And yeah, I get it, a Punisher movie isn’t going to be all sunshine and blowjobs, but this definitely wasn’t the way to go. I’m  sorry to say so, but if, in order to make a movie faithful to the source material, you have to make the movie a fucking drag of an experience, then guess what? You don’t make the fucking movie!!!! I really shouldn’t have to say this, but just because a movie is dark, does not make the movie any better.

To hell with apologists. This movie’s a fucking turd.

War Zone isn’t all bad, though. I really like Ray Stevenson as Frank Castle, and the action scenes are very, very well done. Other than that… Shit, I dunno, one of the guys from Arrow is here, he’s pretty good.

Overall: They’re all guilty pleasure movies, at best, but aside from the last one, they’re not awful, and you could do a lot worse. However, as we’ll learn next time, you could also do a hell of a lot better.

The Punisher (1989): 5/10

The Punisher (2004): 6/10

Punisher: War Zone: 4/10

Mass murder has never looked so damn sexy.

Howard the Duck (Mighty Marvel Movie Month)

You’ll believe a duck can blow.

To kick off Mighty Marvel Movie Month, I watched the very first movie based off a Marvel Comics character. However, unlike DC, who released the rights to their A-list characters to respected filmmakers right off the bat, Marvel handed over character rights to a respected filmmaker (George Lucas), but the character itself was a bizarre choice: An anthropomorphic, cigar-smoking, ill-tempered duck named, well, Howard the Duck.

For those of you who don’t know, Howard the Duck made his comic book debut in Adventure Into Fear #19 (December 1973) and became something of a cult character thanks to his strange, existentialist sense of humour, appearing semi-regularly until finally getting his own series, and (Thanks in part to the movie) eventually fading back into obscurity until his cameo appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Fun fact: Voiced by Seth Green.

Having admittedly been born after the character’s heyday, I’ve never personally been a huge fan of this fucking weird character. If I wanted to read about a combination of Daffy Duck and Sartre, I would… Probably be too far gone at that point. Whatever, give me Spider-Man or Deadpool any day. Absurdism can bite me.

Around the height of Howard’s popularity, George Lucas, in between writing jobs in The Temple of Doom and Willow , decided to try to adapt him to the big screen, as this was a point in time when George still cared about storytelling. So, he got his American Graffiti co-writer to direct, and casted some good, young talent to star, including Tim Robbins and Lea Thompson. The movie opened on August 1, 1986 and, long story short, bombed at the box office and is considered one of the worst films ever made. And yeah, it’s pretty fucking bad, you guys.

So, what’s the plot? Well, unbeknownst to humanity, there exists a parallel universe known as Duckworld, in which anthropomorphic ducks are the dominant species. In this world, there lives a washed-up wiseass named Howard (Voiced by Chip Zien). If you thought that Jar-Jar Binks was the most annoying thing George Lucas has ever put to screen well, you’d still be right, but Howard the Duck is up there.

If Donald Duck had FAS…

Anyways, out of goddamn nowhere, a portal opens up and Howard is flung out of Duckworld and into our world. Cleveland, specifically. More specifically, the 80’s.

Even more specifically, movie 80’s.

In Cleveland, he meets an aspiring rock star (Lea Thompson), the oh-so appealing and not at all bone-crushingly stupid love interest, who is the third most annoying character, after Howard and a pre-Shawshank Redemption Tim Robbins, who is the “Jar-Jar Binks” of this movie. A movie that has a fucking talking duck has someone even more annoying than said talking duck. Let that thought sink in, why don’t you?

George Lucas didn’t write this script (Shocking, I know), but honestly? I think the movie would’ve been much better off if he had hijacked it like he did the Star Wars prequels.

You heard me. I would’ve preferred the writer who wrote Anakin and Padme’s god awful romance. I feel unclean just typing that.

This entire movie’s dialogue is just about completely comprised of in-jokes, eye-rollingly bad innuendo, and all the duck-related puns you could ever want, and then some. I almost would’ve rather the writers had just written an existentialist movie, like the comic book, if only because I love me some absurdist philosophy, but I guess that wouldn’t have made that much money, and it’s not like this movie bombed at the box office or anything.

…Oh.

 On top of being irritating as all get out, Howard doesn’t look very good. I’ll give this movie some credit, though. At least it didn’t go the Smurfs route of having a CGI character in a live-action world. That said, even if they had gone that lazy, lazy route, it probably could’ve turned out better than this monstrosity.

“I was born a freak… KILL MEEEEE!!!!!”

There isn’t a good performance to be found among the human actors, although I think they could be forgiven for not caring. Lea Thompson sucks, although I think anybody would suck if they were asked to read lines like “This is Earth, I think.” Tim Robbins was… Just, so fucking weird, man. Thank god things worked out for him.

Jeffrey Jones (Ferris Bueller’s principal) is the antagonist, and he’s terrible as well. Although, it could just be that I don’t think that Jeffrey Jones could ever play a character creepier than Jeffrey Jones already is.

The only way that this movie could’ve ended up enjoyable is if it had just decided to revel in its own unapologetic campy strangeness, and to an extent, it tries to do just that, but, damn, in terms of visuals, this movie is pretty dreary! For such an idiotic movie, it’s very dark (Visually, not in terms of content) and very unpleasant (In terms of imagery). You’re more likely to be disturbed than amused, honestly, and for a movie in which a talking duck has an electric guitar solo, the more disturbing scenes really don’t fit.

The fact that no “Duck Berry” puns were made at this point is merciful, really.

Apparently, this movie has picked up a tiny cult following, and that completely baffles me. It’s not, say, Batman & Robin bad, and I wouldn’t even place it in the twenty worst movies I’ve ever seen. Shit, I’ll even admit to chuckling at a couple of the less atrocious lines (And some of the more atrocious ones, if only out of sheer exasperation). On the whole, though, it’s just god awful, and I came out of this experience a worse person because of it.

Overall: What could I possibly say about Howard the Duck that hasn’t already been said a million times? Don’t subject yourselves to it, you guys.

Rating: 2/10

Oh, speaking of which, almost-bestiality. Pleasant, right?

Mighty Marvel Movie Month

My alliteration game is off the goddamn charts.

For the past week or so, I had been suffering through the worst case of artistic blue balls that I’ve had since I started to write somewhat consistently. Nothing I was drafting, aside from my pretty damn good critique of Boyhood (Humility is not one of my more prominent qualities)  was amounting to much more than a mediocre rough draft in my notepad, and the only things I was posting semi-consistently were frigging quotes, which, again, I really shouldn’t be using to replace original content.

So, I decided to retreat to my mind palace and figure out just what exactly the hell I was going to do next. None of the movies coming out interest me in particular, Game of Thrones isn’t till April, DeathMatches take too long to set up…. I guess the new Avengers movie is coming out soon, so I could do some Marvel-related thing, but what, exactly? It’s a little early to do a Top 10 Marvel Whatever list, and  think everybody and their moose have made a Top 10 superhero list…

And then, it hit me like Suge Knight. A stroke of genius unlike the world has ever seen before. What is it, you ask?  Well, for the next month or so, until the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron, I will review every single Marvel Cinematic Universe movie that I haven’t already reviewed.

…At least, that was my original idea.

See, there aren’t quite that much Marvel Cinematic Universe movies as it can sometimes feel like, and I’ve already reviewed a fair bit of them. So, the next logical step?

Review every single movie starring Marvel characters, obviously, be they MCU or not.

Before starting, for those of you about to claim hat I’m ripping off CineMassacre’s Monster Madness and Nostalgia Critic’s Disneycember (Albeit, with the written word)… You’re right. I thought it was a cool idea, and I decided to do something similar with something I really care about, specifically, a bunch of costumed Ubermensch saving the world from the greatest threats humanity’s ever seen.

Of course, by “the world”, I mean “New York”.

The only problem with this? There are a goddamn ton of these movies, and there are only so many days until Avengers 2, with so many hours of free time at my disposal. So, I won’t see movies that I have already reviewed (Guardians of the Galaxy, Days of Future Past, etc.). Not only that, but I’m only reviewing movies that had a theatrical wide release (No animated movies, no serials, etc.) as well as only movies that are based off of characters from the main Marvel comics imprint. That means no Kick-Ass (Which is published by Icon) or Men in Black (Aircel Comics). If this upsets you, then a) you get upset at strange things, and b) bite me. It still adds up to 32 movies, what more do you want from me!?

My first review, being of the first ever movie based off of a Marvel character, should be out within the next day or two, and, surprisingly enough, this film does not start one of Marvel’s ticket characters, but instead stars an obscure hero known as… Wait, what does that say? Howard the-

…. Oh no.

God help us all.