Review of Blade: Trinity (2004) by Rudy M — 29 Jul 2013

This movie is called Blade Trinity, but it's far from holy. After watching the whole series of Blade movies again, it is apparent that they should have stopped after two.

David S. Goyer was at the directing helm for this one. But not only there. He's also credited as writer and producer. As director, this was his second feature film. Coincidentally (or not), his first, 2002's 'Zig Zag' also featured Wesley Snipes. It's already a sign that the most recent posts on IMDB's message boards about him have titles like 'Please, stop directing movies!!!', 'Blade Trinity was horrible', 'TERRIBLE DIRECTOR !' and 'This guy sucks!!'.

But back to the movie at hand. I think it is very apparent why Blade Trinity didn't gross its $65M budget. There are 3 major problems with this film.

Problem 1 is that there were way too many uninteresting and unnecessary characters introduced in this movie. I don't know why the writer (Goyer) or director (also Goyer) of this movie thought that Snipes and Kristofferson needed Ryan Reynolds (as a diluted Hannibal King, nowhere near the original comic book character) and Jessica Biel (Whistler's illegitimate daughter??!?, a character Goyer invented himself). Maybe the producers (again also Goyer) made an executive decision. Whatever the cause may be, it didn't help this movie.

Problem 2 is a mistake that the producers of Underworld also made in their 2012 installment. Vampire hunters should not be fighting humans. These movies only really work in a world with nightcreatures, where humans are accidental victims at best.

Problem 3 is that director David S. Goyer (mentioned above) dedicated more screentime to Jessica Biel's stomach than to the title character of the movie. I read somewhere that Blade doesn't even have 100 lines. I can't even remember him saying that many.

A little research shows that Snipes and Kristofferson had a falling out with Goyer over all this. Apparently there was an earlier script that was deemed too dark by the publishing company. Maybe that's why Goyer implemented the changes that ruined this movie. There's also people claiming that Snipes was stoned in his trailer most of the time and that he alienated the whole production against him. I don't blame him if this was the case. This is easily the worst movie of the series, flushing all Snipes' previous hard work down the toilet with possibly commercial but ultimately failing decisions for this franchise.

Pros: It has Wesley Snipes as Blade.

Cons: Blade doesn't get much screentime.

Verdict: Ugh.