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Blade II is a 2002 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Blade, directed by Guillermo del Toro and written by David S. Goyer. The sequel to Blade (1998), it is the second installment in the Blade franchise. The film follows the Dhampir Blade in his continuing effort to Vampire hunter. Blade must join forces with an elite group of vampires to fight against mutant vampires who plan a global genocide of both vampire and human races.
Blade II was released in the United States on March 22, 2002, and was a box office success, grossing $155 million. It received mixed reviews from critics, earning praise for its performances, atmosphere, direction, and action sequences, although its script and lack of character development have been criticized. The film was followed by in 2004.
A pandemic is turning vampires into "Reapers", primal, mutant creatures with a ravenous thirst for blood and a highly infectious bite that transforms both humans and vampires alike. The original carrier of the Reaper strain and cause of the pandemic is Jared Nomak, who bears hatred toward the vampire race. To combat the Reapers, vampire overlord Eli Damaskinos sends his trusted servant Asad and his daughter, Nyssa, to strike a truce with Blade. Knowing humans will be the Reapers’ next target after vampires, Blade reluctantly allies himself with them.
He teams up with the Bloodpack, an elite group of vampires originally assembled to kill him, consisting of Asad, Nyssa, Reinhardt, Chupa, Snowman, Priest, Verlaine, and her lover, Lighthammer. As Reinhardt openly challenges him to fight, Blade, in response, attaches an explosive to the back of his skull to keep him in line. They investigate a vampire nightclub where they encounter the Reapers and discover they are immune to most vampire weaknesses except for Ultraviolet exposure. Nomak arrives and tries to recruit Blade to his cause, but the latter refuses. Blade fights Nomak but cannot kill him due to his immunity to his weapons before the sun rises and Nomak retreats. Lighthammer is bitten but conceals the bite from the group while Priest is bitten and in the process of turning before being mercy-killed through exposure to sunlight.
Whistler returns to the group after locating the Reaper nest beneath the sewers. Nyssa dissects a dead Reaper and learns that their hearts are encased in durable bone. Scud and Whistler issue new UV weapons for the team and a UV-emitting bomb to take out the entire nest.
Entering the Reaper nest at dawn, Lighthammer transforms into a Reaper and kills Snowman. Verlaine sacrifices herself to kill Lighthammer by exposing them both to sunlight. Chupa turns on Whistler in retaliation for Priest's death, but Whistler secretly releases a cartridge of Reaper pheromones into the air, luring a horde that kills and devours Chupa. Asad and Nyssa are ambushed, and Asad is killed. Blade saves Nyssa and detonates the UV bomb, killing all the Reapers except Nomak. Nyssa and Reinhardt manage to evade the blast, but Nyssa is seriously injured until Blade allows her to drink his blood to survive.
Damaskinos' forces arrive and capture Blade, Whistler, and Scud. Damaskinos revealed that the Reapers exist due to his efforts to engineer a stronger breed of vampires devoid of their natural weaknesses. Nomak, the first Reaper, is his own son, whom Damaskinos considers a failure. Scud reveals himself to be one of Damaskinos's familiars, but Blade, who already suspected this, kills him with the explosive he planted on Reinhardt earlier, which Scud originally thought was a dud until Blade secretly swapped it with a real explosive.
Damaskinos plans to harvest Blade's blood to develop an immunity to sunlight and create a new, invincible breed of vampires. Whistler frees himself, escapes from Reinhardt, and rescues a weakened Blade. Reinhardt shoots at the two, but Blade falls into Damaskinos' blood pool, restoring his strength. He fights his way through Damaskinos' henchmen and kills Reinhardt.
Nomak enters Damaskinos's stronghold, seeking revenge on his father. Nyssa, seeing how her father holds no regard for his own offspring, betrays Damaskinos by sealing off their escape route, and Nomak kills Damaskinos after failing to negotiate with him. Nomak then bites Nyssa, infecting her with the Reaper virus. Blade and Nomak engage in battle, and he manages to stab Nomak through his encased heart. Wanting to end his suffering, Nomak kills himself with Blade's sword. Fulfilling Nyssa's dying wish, Blade takes her outside and embraces her as her body disintegrates from the sunrise. Sometime later in London, Blade tracks down Rush to a strip club booth and kills him.
Del Toro was tired of the romantic concept of "vampires being tortured Victorian heroes" and wanted vampires to be scary again. Del Toro chose not to alter the script too much from the ideas created by Goyer and Snipes. According to del Toro: "I wanted the movie to have a feeling of both a comic book and Anime. I resurrected those sources and viewed them again. I dissected most of the dailies from the first movie; I literally grabbed about four boxes of tapes and one by one saw every single tape from beginning to end until I perfectly understood where the language of the first film came from. I studied the style of the first one and I think Norrington used a tremendous narrative style. His work is very elegant".
Stepping back into Blade's shoes was a challenge Wesley Snipes relished: "I love playing this role. It's fun as an actor to test your skills at doing a sequel, to see if you can recreate something that you did". Peter Frankfurt added that "Wesley is Blade; so much of the character was invented by Wesley and his instincts are so spot on. He takes his fighting, his weapons and attitude very seriously. He's incredibly focused, but he's also very cool and fun".
Del Toro said that "Wesley knows Blade better than David Goyer, better than me, better than anyone else involved in the franchise. He instinctively knows what the character would and wouldn't do, and every time he twists something around, something better would come out".
Filming took place in the Czech Republic, at Prague Studios and Barrandov Studios, as well as London from March 12, 2001, and concluded on July 2 the same year.
A Blu-ray version was released in 2012.
Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half out of four stars, stating: " Blade II is a really rather brilliant vomitorium of viscera, a comic book with dreams of becoming a textbook for mad surgeons". James Berardinelli gave the film two and a half out of four stars: " Blade II is for those undiscriminating movie-goers who want nothing more from a trip to the multiplex than loud, raucous, mindless entertainment".
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