Blade: Trinity (2004)

Simply Perfect

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I'm coming to "Blade: Trinity" at the end of my quest to see a bunch of Dracula movies since reading Bram Stoker's novel. The movie itself is a mess: the usual choppy action-movie editing, ridiculous fighting moves, lots of posing to look cool, inane dialogue complete with mumbo-jumbo science-y speak, a noisy soundtrack and a banal story. There are plenty of good reviews on IMDb and elsewhere that dwell more on the movie's problems and how it relates to the Blade series at large, but my focus is on its Dracula.Recently, I also viewed "Dracula Untold," which basically made Dracula into a dark superhero, or anti-superhero at worst. Another Batman. "Blade: Trinity," at least, gets that Dracula is not a sympathetic hero; he's a supervillain. Otherwise, he's nothing like Stoker's Dracula, and the movie goes to some length to explain this to the audience, so much so that it begs the question of why they'd use Dracula in the first place. He's an archetype. His long history of media representations, which the movie subsequently rejects, nonetheless, lend the movie a gravitas totally unbefitting of it. Dracula is old, evil and strong. That's all that really matters for his purposes here. Beyond that, this Dracula is a dull character.Stoker's novel and the rest of the real history of Dracula's media representations are incorporated into the movie's world, right down to Count Chocula cereal. In one scene, Dracula attacks a couple clerks running a store dedicated to Dracula and vampire merchandise. "Dracula 2000" similarly set-up Dracula this way so as to reinvent him, as well as its Van Helsing character. The Dracula of "Blade: Trinity" is remade as a typical, if underdeveloped, burly action-movie baddie. He's given a history stretching back to ancient Sumer, where he was the original progenitor of Hominus Nocturna--cue laughter. The Babylonians called him "Dagon," pronounced Day-Gone. Get it? Many other Dracula movies only go back as far as Vlad the Impaler. One went as far back as Judas, and others have made connections to Satan, which I guess would be the only ones to have an older Dracula than the one in this movie.This Dracula is supposed to be, at least according to Ryan Reynolds's character, stronger than the fictional one. Yet, his shapeshifting powers are limited to humanoid forms and to being a giant devil-looking monster. As per Stoker, but contrary to many Dracula movies since, this Dracula doesn't die from sunlight; moreover, it doesn't seem to limit his powers, as it did Stoker's Count. He's more irreligious, as he explains to a child that there is no afterlife (although, inconsistently, he also talks about Jesus dying for mankind's sins), but he still seems to dislike crosses--he orders a fem vamp to remove hers. The coffin and home soil stuff is dropped, though, so I suppose that would make this Dracula significantly stronger just for the increased mobility and security that would afford.As far as a character, this Dracula lacks motive and isn't especially interesting thematically. There's one scene where Dracula strangely bites into a fem vamp that implies sex, but that's as close as this movie comes to linking vampirism to sex, which is the most basic of connections any decent Dracula or vampire movie should make. The religion, infidelity, xenophobia, or subtext of vampirism as venereal disease from Stoker are absent. And the movie barely offers a clue as to why Dracula was in hiding in Iraq and what his reasons are for joining a vampire gang. This Dracula may be physically stronger than Stoker's Dracula in some ways, but his will apparently isn't.(Mirror Note: Also unlike Stoker's Dracula, this one casts reflections. His reflection appears in a sword in one brief clip, and his image is also reflected in the glass windows of the vampire store.)

Wesley Snipes did not possess the same screen presence he did with the previous two films. It almost seemed as if he himself was not sure why he decided to make this Blade film, and didn't seem as enthusiastic as before. This movie was just one big mess. I mean, right in the beginning, a guy "set him up" by posing as a vampire so Blade would chase him and they could film him to show to the world he kills humans. Did this guy intend to sacrifice himself? How did they know where to place the cameramen for this purpose? How would they have had the faintest idea where the revealing action would take place? Nothing about this scene made any sense! It infuriated me!The entire film has no credibility whatsoever and everything happens purely for effect or because it would look great on screen. Some of the visual effects during the action sequences are indeed fantastic, but most of them are not logical. It is overdone, to say the least. Oh, and the store attendants at the Dracula store were real dickheads! They honestly deserved their fate. The dialogue was terrible, as was the music. And if Drake is so powerful, why was he running away from Blade instead of just overpowering or killing him? Surely he could easily do that, but then we wouldn't have had a story, would we. Hmmm, this suddenly sounds good...The film only gets a bit more serious well after the halfway mark, but by that time I couldn't give a damn anymore. Wow, there's a lot of CGI breaking glass in this movie!!! Ryan Reynolds' character was a real moron and even his perfect body couldn't save it for me. This film played more like a spoof than a sequel.

I've watched all three Blade movies as part of my personal challenge to watch every Marvel movie made. I went in with no opinion or knowledge about the story.I liked the story, but I've definitely seen better story lines. What I personally liked most is the fighting scenes. Recent movies make a lot of heroes look like almost invincible gods. It doesn't look like throwing punches takes any effort or power. In Blade in saw the opposite, the fighting looked extremely real. Sometimes I could've sworn he actually hit the actors. Comparing Blade: Trinity to the earlier Blade movies, the special effects became so much better too. Huge plus to me. I rated this 6 because of good fighting and special effects. It's only 6 because some of Blade's humor was switched to other characters and the story isn't very deep. It's not bad, but not deep and sometimes obvious.

This film just didn't have anything going for it, it was very poorly acted, the action sequences were not exciting in the least, and the film as a whole just fell completely flat all the way around! The casting choices were ALL WRONG as well, Ryan Reynolds was embarrassingly bad in his role, and I'm afraid Jessica Biel was just as bad, if not worse. Wesley Snipes just acted like the whole movie, which is what he was supposed to do of course, so I really don't have any complaints there. Also, Dracula SUCKED BIG TIME in this movie, he was just Soo bland and downright boring, his performance fell flat and was very cheesy and awful. The dialogue was laughable as well, much like the acting. This movie was very hard to get through, and it was truly a waste of my time. 3/10 for Blade: Trinity. 👎🏼