BLADE II: The Dark Knight Returns

Blade II (2002) – Directed by Guillermo del Toro – Starring Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Ron Perlman, Leonor Varela, Norman Reedus, Luke Goss, Thomas Kretschmann, Danny John-Jules, Donnie Yen, and Tony Curran.

BLADE II is one of the most successfully stylish films I’ve ever seen.

Even if the story sucked (and it doesn’t), I could watch BLADE II and enjoy it simply for how cool it looks, moves, and sounds. With Guillermo del Toro stepping into the director’s chair for Stephen Norrington, the BLADE franchise loses a bit of its grittiness and gains some flash in return. The main elements still remain, however: BLADE II is an R-rated superhero/horror film full of violence and blood, and Wesley Snips and Kris Kristofferson still provide the rock-solid narrative backbone.

One of the best decisions made concerning BLADE II was to tell a new story instead of simply redoing the first story; the stakes are amped up here, first by having Blade (Snipes) searching for his mentor/mechanic Whistler (Kristofferson) and leaving a trail of dead vampire bodies throughout Eastern Europe. When he finds the old man, Whistler is being held in a vat of blood, the vampires regenerating his body after they bit him and he offed himself in the first film. Blade brings Whistler to his temporary HQ, which he now shares with a new tech guy, Scud (Norman Reedus), and forces him on a one-night detox that does, admittedly, feel like a bit of a plot contrivance to get us from where we started to resetting the old Whistler. The film builds on this idea, though, teasing us with the possibility that Whistler’s vamp time has altered his allegiances.

The new HQ is attacked by some vampire assassins who are dressed in such a way that they now look like early costume designs for del Toro’s later Hellboy, Hellboy 2, and Pan’s Labyrinth films.

All of this happens within the first few sequences of the movie, and you can already tell that del Toro is going for a more stylish approach to the material. In the first BLADE, there was an attack on Blade and Whistler’s HQ by some vampires, and just like last film their current HQ is some kind of abandoned factory. The attack itself is rendered very differently this time around, however, as del Toro makes these vamps highly trained assassins, so there’s lots of jumping and flipping, lots of sword fighting and kicking, and lots of visual flair, both in terms of how the action is filmed and in the film’s color palette. Del Toro likes to paint his scenes with highly saturated colors to balance off all the darkness that’s unavoidable in a movie with vampires.

The two attacking vamps (dressed in head-to-toe black leather and goggles) reveal themselves to be Nyssa (Leonor Varela) and Asad (Danny John-Jules), and there’s a nice twist in that they’re coming to Blade to ask for his help. They bring him to meet one of the Big Bad Vamps, Eli Damaskinos (Thomas Kretschmann), who tells Blade there’s a new breed of mutated vamp out there who are feasting on vampires. Blade, of course, doesn’t see an issue with this, but then Damaskinos makes the point that when the Reapers are done feasting and turning regular vampires, where else are they gonna go except to eat humans?

It’s a rather simple but highly effective premise as Blade and his enemies are forced to work together. Nyssa and Asad have been training and leading the Blood Pack, a group of vampire assassins that are being trained to kill Blade. Nobody is happy about this, but the vampire Reinhardt (Ron Perlman) takes the lead on the anti-Blade rhetoric, and it’s a wise move because Reinhardt is, well, because Reinhardt is Ron Perlman. Perlman and Snipes have great chemistry together, in that Perlman is taller, grunts louder, and looks perfectly willing to stand toe-to-toe with Blade. Reinhardt functions as the Evil Whistler, in many regards, as they’re both the old curmudgeon/mentor figure of their respective units. One of the best aspects of BLADE II is simply listening to Whistler spout profanities around at Blade, Scud, Reinhardt, and anyone else who gets in his way.

BLADE II expertly uses action sequences to advance the narrative; instead of having a bunch of set pieces in between all the killing to build the plot, BLADE II is just as likely to introduce story elements inside the action sequences as it is during the downtime, such as questioning Whistler’s allegiances or introducing a subplot concerning Nomak (Luke Goss), the first Reaper, not killing Nyssa during a big Blood Pack vs. Reapers fight. It’s a simple but highly effective storytelling technique, as it makes the action exist for reasons beyond the cinematic coolness of watching vampires and Reapers and half-vampires and humans kill each other.

By having two enemy factions working together, the constant question is not if there’s going to be a betrayal of the uneasy alliance, but when the two sides are going to betray the other. Eventually it’s Blade who gets taken out by the Blood Pack, and then he, Whistler, and Scud are brought to Damaskinos’ lair, where Scud reveals he’s one of Damaskinos’ familiars. Blade knew this, of course, and there’s a good bit of comedy as he detonates a small bomb that had been connected to Reinhardt’s skull. Scud is all, “Ha, ha, B, it’s a fake!” and then outs himself as a spy, and Blade tells him, “No, it’s not,” and then triggers the bomb, causing Scud to explode.

It’s a pretty funny moment in a movie without a lot of funny in it. Most of the humor comes from the characters trash talking each other, and it provides the right amount of levity to all of the serious talk focusing on the Reaper problem.

The ending sees Damaskinos revealed as the creator of the Reaper virus and then everyone kills each other, with only our heroes making it out alive. It’s fitting that the film sets up Damaskinos as the father of Nyssa and “father” of Nomak, as their dysfunctional unit eventually sees all of them dead, while the dysfunctional family of Blade and Whistler survives.

BLADE II is another excellent edition to the Marvel catalog, and one that only gets better with repeated viewings.

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: I’ll Not Be Doubted by Some Pipsqueak Tuft of Ginger and His Irritating Dog

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) – Directed by Steven Spielberg – Starring Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Tony Curran, and Toby Jones.

I don’t have much history with Hergé’s Tintin, so I come to this movie rather clean – no preconceived notions, no emotional history, no expectations of any kind. I have so little history with the character that if you had shown me a picture of Tintin, I could have told you his name, I could have told you he was a Hergé creation, and … that’s it. I knew so little about Tintin that I didn’t know the name of his dog. I didn’t even know Tintin was a journalist. Heck, I didn’t even know he was an adult; I thought he was a 15-year old kid or something.

So, yeah. I’m rather blank on this topic.

That said, it’s hard not to get excited about a project that features the combined talents of Steven Spielberg (director), Peter Jackson (producer), and Steven Moffat (co-writer), especially when all three men have plenty of other projects on their creative plates. Since they’re working with an established property, it’s a pretty easy leap to see that this project must have been a labor of love for them.

And that’s really what ADVENTURES OF TINTIN feels like to me – a love letter to a character and series. (Hergé and his drawing of Tintin even make an appearance in the film’s opening scene.) TINTIN is a beautifully rendered film and a completely satisfying adventure about a journalist (Jamie Bell) and his sidekick dog (his name is Snowy) who track down a missing treasure. What I love about the movie is how it manages to feel both large and small at the same time. For all of the globe-trotting and treasure hunting, it’s also a simple story about a dude and his dog who get caught up in something beyond what they had ever anticipated would come from buying a model of a 17th century ship at an outdoor market.

Tintin buys the model of the Unicorn and instantly one man (Barnaby, an FBI agent is disguise) tells him to get rid of it and another man, Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel Craig), offers to buy it from him at any price. There’s no reason for Tintin to keep the model other than he likes it, but the efforts of these two men make him realize there’s something unique about the model. He takes it home to study it, but the ship is broken when Snowy and an interloping cat get in a tussle and tear through the apartment. A small metal cylinder falls out of one of the broken masts, but Snowy isn’t able to get Tintin to see it and it slides under a dresser.

After heading to the library to do research (with Snowy in tow) on the ship, Tintin returns home to find the model stolen and his apartment ransacked. Tintin’s response is to do the pure boy adventurer move – he goes to Marlinspike Hall, the country estate of Captain Haddock, the former captain of the Unicorn. There’s a great bonding scene between Snowy and the estate’s guard dog which allows Tintin to break into the estate, and once inside he is set upon by the estate’s butler and Sakharine. Tintin sees a model of the Unicorn and assumes it’s his, but then Sakharine reminds him that his model was broken, while the one before him is in perfect condition.

Upon returning home, Snowy is finally able to get Tintin to look under the dresser, where he finds the cylinder. Inside the cylinder is an actually a rolled-up parchment that contains a clue to a missing treasure. The FBI agent returns but gets shot by unseen assailants, and Tintin gets kidnapped and brought about Sakharine’s ship. The best part of this sequence is Snowy’s determination to not let the kidnappers get out of sight, and the loyal dog ends up sneaking about the ship and helping Tintin escape and partaking in the adventure.

On the ship, Tintin meets Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), who’s kept in a state of permanent drunkeness in order to all Sakharine full run of the ship. A whole slew of adventures happen after this – on the ship, in a boat, on a plane, in the desert, on the docks … it all moves swiftly and effortlessly as Sakharine and Tintin compete to find the third model of the Unicorn for the final piece of the riddle. There’s an historical parallel at play in TINTIN: Haddock is the descendant of the original Captain Haddock, who sunk his ship so it wouldn’t fall into the hands of Red Rackham, who just so happens to be Sakharine’s ancestor. Eventually, Sakharine is captured and Tintin and Haddock find a part of the sunken treasure in Marlinspike Hall, and agree to keep looking for the rest, setting up a sequel that Peter Jackson has said he wants to direct.

ADVENTURES OF TINTIN is a wonderful film, fun and fanciful, full of life, energy, and brilliant color. TINTIN is Spielberg’s first animated movie (though he shot much of the film using motion capture), but the world he (and the digital artists at WETA) create is alive and beautiful. While I didn’t read the TINTIN stories as a kid, it feels familiar to the stories I did read. The adventure narrative is preposterous but the characters are grounded, and because they feel real it’s easy to follow along with them on this crazy ride. Despite all the darkness at play in the film with the near-constant threat of violence, a wondrous sense of optimism and permeates the movie.

I’ll be buying TINTIN for the collection and I’m already looking forward to Jackson’s sequel.

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: You Spoke Once of Wanting to Meet Your Demon

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) – Directed by Stephen Norrington – Starring Sean Connery, Naseeruddin Shah, Peta Wilson, Tony Curran, Stuart Townsend, Shane West, Jason Flemyng, and Richard Roxburgh.

What’s most disappointing about THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN isn’t that it’s awful, but that Stephen Norrington comes really close to making an honest-to-goodness good film. But LOEG isn’t a good film; at best it’s a diverting afternoon watch for me, and the hope I have is that it’s the afternoon watch for plenty of kids, who then explore these characters in other venues. Because LEAGUE is a little boy’s dream come to life; watching the movie is like watching what a little kid sees in his head when he plays with all of his various toys at once.

As you know if you’ve been kicking around the Anxiety for a bit, I don’t judge films by how well they stay true to the source material; I judge them on their own merits, and if they fall short I’ll sometimes look to the source material to try and figure out what went wrong. LEOG isn’t the comic book, and if you come to this movie wanting the Alan Moore/Kevin O’Neill series to pop to life on the screen, you’re not going to get it. Norrington’s film treats these characters as pulp heroes instead of Moore’s more literary take on them; Moore gives us people who are largely on the downside of their careers, while Norrington seems obsessed with the eternal vitality of characters. Moore is interested in what happens to the characters after they leave the pages of the novels we’ve read, while Norrington’s interest is largely to create an actual all-star team. There’s nothing inherently wrong with Norrington’s approach – it just ends up less successful than I’d like.

It’s 1899 and the world is on the brink of a World War. Some evil dude called the Fantom is attacking both the Brits and the Germans, who blame each other. The Brits have a secret plan, though. They’re going to assemble a new version of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the key to this plan is recruiting legendary adventurer Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery) to head up the mission. A British government agent heads to Africa, where Quatermain is busy hanging out with some other old fogeys. Quatermain doesn’t want anything to do with the Brits. But then some mysterious cowboys show up and start shooting and blowing things up, so Quatermain decides he’ll help.

Quatermain heads back to England, where he meets M (Richard Roxburgh), Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), Mina Harker (Peta Wilson), and Rodney Skinner the Invisible Man who they don’t call the Invisible Man because they couldn’t secure the rights (Tony Curran, who played Vincent Van Gogh in one of my favorite all-time DOCTOR WHO episodes: VINCENT AND THE DOCTOR). M gives them the rundown of what’s what and they’re off to recruit Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend). Dorian doesn’t want to sign up, but then some more of the Fantom’s men attack, and so he does. We meet Tom Sawyer (Shane West), a member of the U.S. Secret Service who slipped into the ranks of the Fantom’s men so he could get into Dorian’s house and find out what’s what. After capturing Mr. Hyde (Jason Flemyng), the League jumps into Nemo’s ship, Nautilus … and the film grinds to a halt.

So far we’ve had a few mediocre action scenes, but at least the film is moving somewhere. Part of the problem with LEOG is that the CGI is so false looking; I never feel like I’m in a real world here. Now, that’s not a deal breaker because LEOG is so clearly a fantasy. Because it’s a little kid’s fantasy, realism is never really on the table.

Once we get to the Nautilus, the film starts moving the pieces around the board; every character gets a bit of screen time and the film’s mystery starts coming into focus. Unfortunately, this is the most boring and uninspiring part of the movie. Mina and Dorian have a sexual history and if this were a more adult movie there might be something here. Unfortunately for me, it’s not and so the two characters allude to their shared past without generating any heat. They’re both immortal with qualifications: Mina is a vampire and Dorian can’t ever look at a particular picture of himself or he’ll die.

That picture leads to a pretty hilarious (maybe unintentionally so) exchange between Gray and Quatermain. When they were back at Dorian’s house, they climb some stairs that are lined with pictures. There’s a big empty spot right in plain view, to which Quatermain remarks, “There’s a picture missing,” and Dorian replies, “You don’t miss anything, do you Quatermain?”

Back on the ship, Quatermain and Sawyer are bonding and the scenes almost work. The problem is Shane West’s Tom Sawyer, who’s Southern accent feels like someone doing a Southern accent rather than someone who’s from the south. Again, though, this plays into the idea that this whole movie is really just a kid pushing his toys around in his backyard somewhere, and doing a southern accent himself. Quatermain has lost a son in the near-recent past (which is why he has no love for the British Empire) and starts to treat Sawyer with some fatherly affections. They bond over guns because they’re men, and the film’s best and worst scene comes at the same time. On the deck of the massive submarine, Sawyer comes across Quatermain when he’s shooting his rifle. Quatermain gives him a hard time about being American, which means his shooting strategy is to keep firing until you hit something. Quatermain shows him how to shoot his way, to take your time, to take account of the weather and then wait … wait … wait …

Sawyer decides to take this moment to not only ask about Quatermain’s dead son, but to ask, “Did you teach your son to shoot like this?”

While the camera remains focused on Sawyer, we can see Quatermain exit behind him. It’s a great moment for Quatermain and a decidedly stupid moment for Sawyer; what’s even more of a juxtaposition is that Norrington makes such a correct choice in how he barely shows Quatermain walking away, but such a dumb decision in how Sawyer asks the question. It makes me cringe at how ham-fisted West’s performance is and yet appreciate how professional Connery’s is, with Norrington’s direction caught somewhere in the middle.

The League starts to notice all sorts of things are missing, and so everyone naturally blame the Invisible Man because he’s a thief.

The Nautilus gets to Venice where the Fantom is going to blow the city into the water to start World War I, and the film starts to pick up a real pace again. There’s a bunch of solid if unspectacular action sequences that generally take too long to get through. Take the scene in Venice – the League piles into Nemo’s white sports car as the Fantom’s seemingly endless supply of henchmen fire at them from atop the roofs. How the henchmen knew what rooftops to be in is besides the point, of course – they’re there because the film needs them to be there. The scene is okay but overlong, and at some point you wonder if anyone went, “Jeez, it’s just a car driving down the road getting attacked from above. Maybe we should, I don’t know, give the bad guys a car?”

It’s in Venice where the team is successful in stopping the Fantom and also learns that the Fantom is really M. It’s a nice twist, and it’s probably the film’s best blend of characters from multiple stories from multiple generations. We’ve got M giving Connery, a former Bond, orders, but then M turns out to be Moriarty, the legendary nemesis of Sherlock Holmes. It’s clever and sets the film spiraling through the second half. M’s plan is to take a piece of what makes everyone special and then manufacture a new army of augmented soldiers; his spy turns out to be Dorian instead of Skinner. M is blackmailing Gray because he’s got the magic picture that Gray can never look at, but Gray doesn’t exactly seem conflicted by this turn of events.

The acting in LEAGUE is completely over the top – again like a kid might do playing with his action figures. The only actor who doesn’t fall in line is Connery, who spends the bulk of the film stalking through the film like a very angry, very old man. He snaps at M, at Nemo, at Mina, at Tom- hell, at everyone, and delivers a mean punch whenever he can.

Post-Venice, we get a bunch more decent if not memorable action sequences until we get to the film’s climax. It’s a good old fashioned storming the castle finale, and it ends when Sawyer uses Quatermain’s shooting technique to kill Moriarty as he tries to make his escape. Hooray.

I’d put THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN in the same class as a film like Van Helsing; they’re good and you can get some thrills out of them, but in the end they just don’t quite become what they could be. Everything in LEOG a bit too clean and phony looking, the acting and writing both play it broad, and the action sequences merely fill a role rather than wow me.