By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 8 seconds ago
Would you believe that one of the best Marvel movies isn’t part of the MCU and could never be made today? I’m talking about Blade 2, the blood-soaked martial arts extravaganza from superstar horror director Guillermo del Toro. If you want to see the kind of Marvel movie that Disney would never, ever make, you need to stream Blade 2 immediately.
The plot of Blade 2 is that, after rescuing his newly-vamped mentor, our titular hero has to prevent the spread of a nasty plague that can turn vampires and humans alike into mindless monsters. This forces Blade into an uneasy alliance with a group of vampires originally trained to kill him. Unless they can kill a powerful new foe with almost no weaknesses, the entire world is going to be plunged into complete and utter chaos.
A Cast That Vamps It Up
Part of what makes Blade 2 so great is its monstrously talented cast, which includes Ron Perlman (still best known to genre fans for Hellboy) as a vampire with a major bone to pick (or should that be stake?) with Blade. Norman Reedus (best known for The Walking Dead) plays Blade’s talented young weaponsmith, meant to be a replacement for his previous sidekick. Kris Kristofferson (best known outside these movies for Payback) returns as the OG sidekick who is always ready to lend his grumpy gravitas to any scene.
As with the first film, the real star of Blade 2 is Wesley Snipes, who transforms an obscure comic book character into the ultimate onscreen b****s. With all the style and verve he brings to every scene, Snipes effortlessly embodies the coolest vampire to ever bite and slash his way across the silver screen. On top of that, the actor is hilarious and makes a bloody meal out of every line reading, making this vulgar action fest one of the most quotable films in action movie history.
Directed By Horror Legend Guillermo Del Toro
Special credit also goes to Blade 2 director Guillermo del Toro, who is now horror royalty thanks to directing classic films like Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Pacific Rim. As with those movies, del Toro gives Blade 2 a breathless, kinetic panache: every fight is a ballet of blood, and every kill feels like borderline sexual in its reverie of pure, animalistic power. This is a movie that fires on all cylinders from beginning to end, and del Toro’s entry into this franchise remains the best Blade movie ever made (sorry, Blade 3 fans, but I said what I said!).
Unfortunately, Blade 2 didn’t fully sink its teeth into the critics: on Rotten Tomatoes, it has a rating of 57 percent, narrowly missing “fresh” status. Critics generally agreed that the movie did a good job of taking the most effective elements from the first Blade and taking them to the next level. However, they complained that the sequel didn’t really have enough plot or character development.
To this latter criticism, I must ask: what the heck did these guys want from a Blade movie? Frankly, I wasn’t looking for serious plot or character development. I was looking for slick action, and this sequel delivers stylish fight scenes enhanced by a killer soundtrack (the perfect combo of hip-hop and electronic music) and buckets of blood. Acclaimed critic Roger Ebert agreed: he gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars, declaring “Blade 2 is a really rather brilliant monitoring of viscera, a comic book with dreams of becoming a textbook for mad surgeons.”
Blade II Is Blade’s Biggest Success
Blade 2 has a higher (and fresher) audience rating of 68 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Furthermore, the sequel earned $155 million against a budget of only $54 million, making it the highest-grossing film in the entire franchise. This goes to show just how much general audiences loved Guillermo del Toro’s bloody, brilliant masterpiece.
Is that better than trying to ice skate uphill? Well, true believer, that’s for you to figure out!
Will you agree that Blade 2 is the kind of vulgar Marvel gorefest that could never be made today, or is this one vampy film you’d rather cut down with a sword, preferable to thrumming techno music? You won’t find out until you stream this captivatingly creepy action horror opus for yourself. Afterward, you’ll understand why the MCU is having so much trouble rebooting Blade: after Guillermo del Toro gave us the perfect version of this character, a new film and a new actor have nowhere to go but down.
