Blade II

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Blade II
Movie poster for Blade II
Directed by	Guillermo del Toro
Written by	Comic Book: Marv Wolfman Gene Colan Screenplay: David S. Goyer
Starring	Wesley Snipes Kris Kristofferson Ron Perlman Thomas Kretschmann Leonor Varela Danny John-Jules
Music by	Marco Beltrami
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	March 22, 2002
Running time	117 min.
Language	English
Budget	$55,000,000 (estimated)
Preceded by	Blade
Followed by	Blade: Trinity
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

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.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Reception 4 Other Media 5 Production Notes 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] Plot

Two 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 original. 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 equipment and weapons. 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 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 into a being who feeds on the blood of vampires foremost over human blood, a process that infects his vampiric victims with the Reaper disease (albeit a far less stable version). Far stronger than common vampires, the Reapers have three-way jaws, leech-like suckers and hearts encased in a thick layer of bone at the front and back, making them invulnerable to any weapon barring sunlight. In order to combat the virus, the vampire elder / overlord Eli Damaskinos and his lawyer Carter Counan send their minions Asad and Nyssa (who is Damaskinos' daughter) to find and strike 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 vampire prototypes, intended as the next step of vampire evolution, all of them incubated in the form of a fetus. All they require now is Blade's biological make-up to give them protection from the sun, 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 disillusioned 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 defenses and jams his sword beneath his arm, penetrating his heart from the side, 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.

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Wesley Snipes	Blade
Kris Kristofferson	Abraham Whistler
Ron Perlman	Reinhardt
Leonor Varela	Nyssa
Norman Reedus	Scud
Thomas Kretschmann	Eli Damaskinos
Karel Roden	Carter Kounen
Luke Goss	Jared Nomak
Matt Schulze	Chupa
Danny John-Jules	Asad
Donnie Yen	Snowman
Marit Velle Kile	Verlaine
Tony Curran	Priest
Daz Crawford	Lighthammer
Santiago Segura	Rush
Xuyen Valdivia	Jigsaw
Marek Vasut	Golem

[edit] Reception

• This movie was the most successful of the Blade film trilogy, making $80m in the United States and $150m worldwide.

[edit] Other Media

• This film spawned a video game that was released on both the Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation 2.

[edit] Production Notes

• Blade, Blade II and X-Men are the only movies based on Marvel Comics stories that do not display the Marvel Films logo at all, since the logo was designed by Kyle Cooper for the first Spider-Man film. The logo eventually appears at the beginning of Blade: Trinity.
• The sunglasses worn by Blade in the movie were a pair of Oakley Four S.
• Matthew Schulze (Chupa in Blade II) played Crease in Blade, the vampire who loses his hand to Blade's boobytrapped sword.
• The movie is slightly disconnected to the first film. At the end of the first film, Blade is working with Dr. Karen Jensen to help him fight the vampires, and she has been a pivotal figure throughout the original Blade. However, she has disappeared in this movie, and no mention of her existence is ever made.
  • Although Dr. Jensen is not mentioned, the film makes a passing reference to Deacon Frost (the antagonist of the previous film), and that Blade's killing of him did Damaskinos a favour.
• Originally, Blade & Nyssa were to have a sex scene; both Wesley Snipes & David Goyer state this on the DVD's commentary.
• Blade: Trinity's opening chase sequence was originally planned for Blade II, but was scrapped because of budget concerns.
• In the film, the character Scud's t-shirt bears the logo of the B.P.R.D., the fictional organization 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.

[edit] See also

• Blade The predecessor to this movie.
• Blade: Trinity The sequel to this movie.
• The Blade Trilogy

[edit] External links

• Official Website
• Blade II on Marvel.com
• Blade II at the Internet Movie Database
• Blade Movies hype at the SuperHeroHype!
• Blade II Script at Horrorlair
• Information on the Blade II Easter Egg
• Variety Lawsuit Article

v • d • e Marvel Comics films
Live action	Single films	Howard the Duck (1986) • The Punisher (1989) • Captain America (1991) • The Fantastic Four (1994) • Man-Thing (2005) • Ghost Rider (2007)
	Franchises	Blade: Blade (1998) • Blade II (2002) • Blade: Trinity (2004) Daredevil: Daredevil (2003) • Elektra (2005) Fantastic Four: Fantastic Four (2005) • Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) The Hulk: Hulk (2003) The Incredible Hulk (2008) The Punisher: The Punisher (2004) • The Punisher 2 (TBA) Spider-Man: Spider-Man (2002) • Spider-Man 2 (2004) • Spider-Man 3 (2007) X-Men: X-Men (2000) • X2: X-Men United (2003) • X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
	In development	Iron Man (2008) • Wolverine (2008) • Magneto (2009) • Luke Cage (TBA) • Namor (TBA) • Ant-Man (TBA)
Animated	Single films	The Invincible Iron Man (2007)
	Franchises	The Ultimates: Ultimate Avengers (2006) • Ultimate Avengers 2 (2006)
	In development	Doctor Strange (2007) • Teen Avengers (TBA)