I’m going with Mark Asher. Parker Posey and Ryan Reynolds were the only mildly enjoyable parts of Blade 3. Biel was hot and all, but no reason to see a movie just for that.
IMBd seems to agree, at least on the quote front. Basically Posey and Reynolds lines. Blade: Trinity (2004) - Quotes - IMDb
Blade 3 was awful. I’m not sure how much of that was Ryan Reynold’s fault, but Wesley Snipes, Jessica Biel, and Dominic Purcell were pretty bad in that movie as well. Parker Posey was being Parker Posey, but the script was shit anyway.
The best thing in the movie was the dog.
Regarding RIPD, the commercials haven’t been terrible. The movie just looks like a generic Men in Black ripoff with James Hong holding a banana.
RIPD probably would’ve been way funnier if it was just James Hong running around with a banana pretending to fight dead people. Way cheaper to make, too.
Get on it, Hollywood!
Maybe that’s because they had nearly ALL the lines in the film, especially Reynolds. I swear, Snipes had like 1 line of dialogue for every 5 Reynolds had. I think that’s what bothered me - the film felt like Reynolds’ character was the star with Blade being a supporting character.
I’d put Blade 3 up (or down?) there with X-Men 3 as far as Most Disappointing Trilogy Closers That Followed Really Excellent Sequels..
My recollection is that Blade 2 was crap, too. More of the Highlander trajectory than the X-Men pattern.
You can chalk part of that up to Snipes. He was being a prima donna and had a falling out with the director, to the point where some of the dialog scenes they had to use a double, and would just cut to the same reaction shot of Snipes over and over.
I’m an unabashed del Toro fanboy, so that obviously informs my opinion, but I liked Blade 2 more than the first Blade. It was pretty imaginative and had some outstanding visuals…of course, CGI was still getting its sea legs so some of the more spectacular fight scenes resembled a marionette show at times, but it was still a worthy effort, imho.
Blade is great for that first 10 minutes. Once the blood rave gets broken up, you can just fast forward to the end when Wesley Snipes delivers one of the dumbest final one-liners in history.
I agree with hepcat. Blade 2 is the best of the trilogy. The CG is rough and del Toro laments the results in the commentary, but it’s got great style.
Well, that explains a lot.
Well, clearly Hannibal was meant to be the wise-cracking joker while Blade was the silent, stoic type; it was like pairing Spider-man with Batman or something. But I also got the sense that Goyer was trying to set up Biel & Reynolds’ characters as the next generation of vamp hunters with Blade passing the torch to them, hence why they got so much screentime. The problem with that is (A) Biel & Reynolds don’t have nearly the sense of menace or screen presence that Snipes does, so it was hard for me to take them seriously; and (B) according to JoshV, Snipes is a prima donna who clashed with Goyer and probably didn’t want to share the spotlight with his co-stars (quelle suprise).
I’d put Blade 3 up (or down?) there with X-Men 3 as far as Most Disappointing Trilogy Closers That Followed Really Excellent Sequels..
That’s what happens when you go from an excellent director (Singer / del Toro) to a crap one (Ratner / Goyer).
Ratner, Bay, Bruckheimer…the problem I have with them is one of sincerity. With someone like del Toro, I can be more forgiving of his missteps because they’re not the result of a money grab. He really does love the genre he’s working within. Enough so that in his downtime, he still works in the genre (I was surprised to find a rather lengthy commentary track and intro by del Toro on a Night Gallery box set I bought a while back…imagine Ratner or one of his peers doing that).
Ratner and his ilk (to me) are in it for the cash and the fame. Enough so that it shows in the construction of their stories and even the cinematography.
Wait, do people not remember the hilarious stories that came out about filming Blade Trinity? Snipes wasn’t just being a prima donna, he spent almost the entire filming sitting in his trailer smoking pot and being super paranoid. Literally every time Blade is on screen and you can’t see his face, it is his stunt double. Even when he’s talking and you can’t see his face, it’s actually the stunt double talking. And it actually went beyond that to the point where after the climax of the movie when Blade’s fake body is lying there on the ground, Snipes didn’t show up and they had to film the stunt double and put Snipes’ face on him with CG.
Bruckheimer is a producer, not a director; so of course he’s only in it for the fortune & glory! Bay is…well, didn’t someone on Qt3 coin the term “hackteur” to describe him? He sounds like he’s genuinely passionate about his work, he’s just…ummm…not terribly good at his job. [Unless his job is “make terrible movies,” in which case, he’s fantastic at it.] But at least he has a sense of humor about himself! Ratner has no “voice,” for lack of a better word for it; I never walk out of one of his films and go, “Yup, that was a Brett Ratner film, all right” the same way I do with del Toro - or even Bay, whose films definitely bear his signature.
I never even heard those stories - that shit is hilarious.
Shame the movie came out such crap, but it wasn’t (just) Snipes’s fault.
I finally caught the Jeff Bridges interview on Colbert promoting RIPD. He seemed to be in full-on “I am the Dude” mode. It was an awful interview.
We totally skipped that because his interview on The Daily Show a little while back was so bad it was uncomfortable to watch. Glad we did.
I miss The Contender Jeff Bridges. Sure, that was post-The Dude, but ever since his Oscar he’s gone total Dude. The Dude needs to shave the facial hair, slick back the hair, and dial back the act.
Did something happen to him, like a stroke or something, because I swear the older he gets the harder he is to understand.
Near as I can tell, he’s decided that he’s going to screw with the public. I’m fairly sure this incomprehensible stoner thing he’s doing is about as genuine as Colbert’s conservatism.
That is a cheap, straight to streaming/VOD sequel with basically no one famous in the cast.
The lead is most famous for that Burn Notice TV show that ended almost 10 years ago.