Blade: Trinity
—Review
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections
Let me tell you a story about a trilogy of movies that became a director’s franchise. The first movie was a cool little horror movie, the second jacked up the action quotient to roller coaster levels, and the third had all the right ingredients for a great movie, but never quite came together. I’m speaking, of course, of the Aliens Trilogy (sure, there were four in that series, but I expect there to be a fourth entry in the Blade series).
Blade: Trinity is a wildly uneven film that is meant to appeal to the inner juvenile male in all of us.
Here’s the rub: I wanted to like this movie. I thought the first movie (directed by Stephen Norrington) was a serviceable entry into the series, hitting all the key points of establishing the character and his mission. The second one (brilliantly directed by Guillermo Del Toro, who went on to direct Hellboy) raised my expectations, extending the mythology of the character and increasing the action quotient. Quite frankly, I went into this movie expecting something like Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (the basis for the movie The Omega Man or The Last Man on Earth).
The “setup” (since using the word plot implies a cohesive narrative structure) sees vampire uber-hunter Blade being pursued by the Vampire Nation; a distraction, since they are really after Dracula. The movie has the feel of trying to be the closing chapter in the series, with both sides talking about finding a final solution to their enemies/problems. Blade is caught in a battle between earthly things, the law (specifically the police and federal agents) and spiritual forces, the vampires. As a hybrid of both realms, being both human and vampire, his dual nature is constantly in battle with each other. Vampirism becomes a metaphor for sin, especially in that for him, it is only the blood that keeps his “sin nature” from overtaking him. Despite his method-acting choice of keeping his face frozen as if he’s had one too many Botox injections, Wesley Snipes is having fun during this movie. So much fun that I wish he’d either do a movie based on the comic book character Black Panther or get back to doing movies that stretch his talent.
The “trinity” in question is made up of Blade (Wesley Snipes) and members of a group calling themselves the Night Stalkers: Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel) Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds). Metaphorically though, you kind of have to wonder how the spiritual (physical in Abigail’s case) father to all of them, Abraham Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), fits in. His parting observation is that when you are in a war, you can’t do it by yourself. As cool as the lone wolf routine may seem, we weren’t meant to be alone. This sets up the tricky concept of the trinity. There are three centers of consciousness, yet one being, one mission. Each person of the trinity is co-equal, yet serves different roles. The persons are at once independent and interdependent. And ultimately, the trinity is about relational unity and fellowship.
The movie gives lip service to wanting to separate the myths from the facts when it comes to vampires. It is a little known fact that every culture in the world has a variation on the idea of vampires, most predating their popularization with Bram Stoker’s “fable” Dracula. It should be noted that in Dracula, Stoker conceived the perfect “antichrist”: a creature who sought eternal life through blood, given resurrection in a new body after three days, defeated by a stake (a piece of the cross), the crucifix, baptism/holy water, or the sun’s (son’s) light. So while the movie on the one hand tries to run from the vampire’s Christian trappings, it turns around and gives their Dracula (Dominic Purcell) a more stereotypic demonic look (which draws upon the look of the strain of vampires seen in Blade II) --that is, when this incarnation of Dracula isn’t doing his Fabio impersonation. Yeah, you take him, and all the vampires, that seriously. This just added to the list of failings for the movie: to be a larger-than-life hero, you need a larger-than-life opponent. You never felt this from Dracula: it was as if the name alone was supposed to be threat enough.
For that matter, all the characters (say it with me) sucked, except for Hannibal King. He was charismatic and funny --the perfect counterbalance to Snipes’ Blade --and held the movie together. Then again, that’ll happen when you give a character history, depth, a reason for being, and good dialogue.
Put simply, this movie lacked style. The movie provided a showcase for scream queen performances as plenty of vulnerable women are given chances to shriek as Dracula bites them. It even seemed to strive to be a B-movie with some of the over-the-top performances, bad (or badly delivered) dialogue, and gratuitous shower scene. The movie tries to distract us from its lack of narrative voice with fight scenes that never build toward a final confrontation. 
Plus, someone decided that the movie ought to be loud instead of cool, since dance club music obviously sets a better mood than an actual musical score (do I need to point out the ridiculousness of Jessica Biel downloading music into her iPod so that she has theme music to kill by? Or a fighter using their ears to listen to music during a fight in the first place?) To add to the “been there” feeling of the movie, the ending plays out with an eerie familiarity if you’ve seen the first Blade. Sure, there were plenty of moments meant to be high-five moments, for instance, when Abigail stakes a vampire a little south of where my biology class taught me the heart was. Then again, all the vampires in the movie were fairly easy to dispatch. This might be the biggest “sin” of the movie: vampires that aren’t scary.
So we have characters that were underdeveloped and direction that lacked style. Sounds as if we can lay the blame for the failings of this movie at the feet of writer/director David S. Goyer.
Overall, the movie borders on being shrill and just this side of cheesy as it can’t quite escape the B-movie feel to it. With even the stand-and-cheer moments feeling forced, this movie may please some comic book fans, but lovers of vampire lore, or coherent storytelling, will be disappointed.
One might think that this story attempts to highlight the arbitrary nature of "God" and the silliness of myth and religion, but it actually points to the silliness of man’s interpretation of what "a god" wants. Anyway, the tribe decides that the god wants virgin girls in sacrifice, and the chief’s daughter decides that she should be the one to surrender to destiny. Even after the chief has a change of heart, she refuses to turn around. Well, the god spares her and asks her to live with him. She does, and so he blesses the land. Also, Jaye has a Jewish friend with whom she wants to talk about the idea of God, but her friend apparently only converted for love and doesn’t truly believe. Then, Jaye is forced, by her parents, to turn to the religion of our culture, the psychologist --- 
then only Clark Kent, do from the time we see him as a child until he fully becomes Superman. Again, to draw Biblical allusions, we see Jesus as a child teaching in the synagogue (the story of him being lost was the inspiration for the movie Home Alone), but we don’t know what he was up to until he comes on the scene as an adult. So what Smallville explores is a concept known as "the Messianic Consciousness."
First there is the issue of the level of discourse. Okay, I’ll admit my bias: I’m a writer. I don’t necessarily expect everyone to break out into Shakespearean soliloquies or anything, but unscripted dialogue is painful to listen to. More painful, in fact, than the dialogue that naturally occurs between people in “real life” because in real life, we aren’t trying to play to the cameras. Not all of us can afford to have a bevy of personal writers who hand pages to us from the bushes so that we are always prepared for witty banter. I understand that. But too many confrontations on the show ended with in-your-face screaming sessions that I’m surprised anyone kept a straight face through. Apparently--mind you, I may have been the only one to miss this memo--there is an unspoken virtue to being a tough-talking, cool-with-attitude-to-spare sort of individual. The same attitude that breeds the “when I have no real point, I’ll simply get louder” brand of discussion. It was also seen as an act of bravery to stand around and let people spew their venom all over you rather than just leave, Dave being the usual resident punching bag. Let’s have a moment of silence for the death of civility. I know, I know, no one is expecting to follow Robert’s Rules of Order, nor does politeness play well on TV. But we end up with clips of Amy waving her arms around yelling “I’m not scared of you” to a seated, and barely paying attention, Keith. We get Toni strutting around saying “excuse me” whenever she feels even the slightest bit disrespected. Both probably expecting women at home to be cheering “you go girl”. Please, don’t let me have to write the phrase “you go girl” again.
The second issues involves the ever present cameras. I am back to the on-going debate I often have with friends about reality television: are these idiots, I mean, actors, I mean, contestants playing to the cameras or are they legitimately forgetting that the cameras are there. The sad conclusion I am coming to is both. Obviously producers are in the ears of the people, hinting that if they want more camera time they have to do things worthy of it (hence the often forced drama as people blow up over the silliest of sleights. Or maybe, in our PC-indoctrinated world, people really are so thin-skinned sensitive these days). These, by the way, are the same producers that edit the pieces to then portray these over the top performers as villains (as if Beau can ever return to his friends in the “real” world and live down the slow motion image of him jumping up and down on a bed, in triumphant glee over the prospect of the demise of the Dave/Charla group).
And the cameras illustrate the number one sin committed in the hotel: gossiping. Back-biting. Slander. A sin we are rarely conscious of. I mean, let’s face it, if there really were cameras around us all the time, mostly hidden, and we knew, how long would it be before we forgot they were there? How many of us would get in trouble or would soon be confronted by friends, co-workers, or family in fits of pique, if they were allowed to view even your (and I say “your” because I never say anything about anyone. Ever.) most casual conversation about them? Ironic, considering that Christians--and upwards of 60% of the people in America would describe themselves as such--say they do believe in such “cameras”, they just call them God.
This leaves us with the Matrix-like dilemma: Do we even know what reality is? Originally, this was supposed to be a show about “hooking up or going home”. Somewhere along the line, the focus shifted so that the point became about surviving the game (exhibit A in my case that they made up the show as they went along). Exhibit B, there was no exit strategy. I mean, at the beginning it seemed that the show could go on in perpetuity, as new guests get voted on and old guests voted off. Then some exec probably whispered to some producer that reality shows had to come to some sort of end. Audiences had come to expect some sort of payoff, not a revolving cast of new people we were expected to get to know. Exhibit C, in case you wanted to know, is that only in the last few weeks of the show was there talk about there being a prize, and thus a point, to the game (a game they didn’t really know they were playing at the beginning).