The sauce… it’s gone… Snipes was right, this script did not deserve him. You know what makes the Blade movies work? Blade. He’s always the coolest and smartest guy in the room. The mole thinks he’s been playing him? Nah, he’s been playing the mole the whole time. Here his super senses can’t tell when a human puts on some Halloween fangs. The plot is set in motion by making Blade a chump. The Blade movies are in a whole other world than ours- you don’t need to bring in the FBI or questions like ‘what does the human world think of Blade?’ Who cares! And you especially don’t need Ryan Reynolds doing a dry run of Deadpool and a vampire hunting Hawkeye.

Goyer has his pet characters he’s trying to set up for a spin off, and they just don’t measure up. He can’t direct for shit either, and the fight scenes suffer for it. Abigail’s big third act fight feels weighty or weightless from moment to moment, and fittingly enough King’s fight with Triple H has several punches you can tell don’t connect. And Snipes just isn’t here. He’s going through the motions with every line, and you can’t blame him. There’s no iconic fight scenes or poses here. You can’t just slot a stunt double in for Snipes and call it a day. He’s so integral to what makes these movies work. Without him, there’s nothing here.

It’s not that others characters can’t be cool. Whistler’s cool! He’s killed off in the first act because Blade’s decided to stop caring and we need to put over the two new kids, but he’s cool! He’s competent, he can take out a vampire or two with quick thinking and planning. But he’s not Blade. Blade is the only guy who can do this. Once you have humans all of a sudden keeping up with vampire strength and speed and take out whole groups, it dilutes him. Blade doesn’t even have an arc, just a lazy aside about the thirst always winning. You won’t get to see that besides the unrated cut, and even then it’s an ambiguity that hasn’t been set up. You don’t feel it. Blade doesn’t let these people in, as he shouldn’t. There’s nothing here. No wonder the series ended here. This blade is just too dull.