Blade II

In Guillermo del Toro’s film, Blade (Wesley Snipes) fights the Reapers in Prague, mutants that feed on vampires too, alongside the Bloodpack, an eight-strong vampire squad first assembled to kill him. Most of the squad die one after another in a single raid on the Reaper nest. Nyssa’s autopsy shows a Reaper’s heart is sheathed in bone, and the final fight turns on exactly that. In notes printed for a BFI screening, del Toro says he watched four boxes of dailies from the first film and wanted the feel of a comic book and Japanese animation. Donnie Yen, who also plays Snowman, helped choreograph what del Toro wanted to be mostly wire-free fighting, toned down to Blade’s hard street style. By Tippett Studio’s own account, Blade’s impossible leaps and falls came from a photoreal digital double, and it laid digital prosthetics over actors’ faces for the Reapers’ opening jaws; the credits give prosthetic makeup and animatronics to Steve Johnson’s XFX. Luke Goss says Nomak’s makeup, his first prosthetic role, took about four and a half hours. A good fit if cuts from grounded close fighting to digital-double leaps don’t bother you, and you can watch Reaper jaws open in close-up. Not for anyone hoping to bond with the Bloodpack; most die in that one raid.