Let’s Talk About Farscape Instead! By Christina Harlin, your Fearless Young Orphan II (2002) Directed by

After rediscovering the original Blade and being surprised at how good it was, I was deeply disappointed at this sequel, which aside from an impressively creative director and the return of felt like one loud, interminable chore. You’re not going to seduce me with elaborate outlandish fight scenes, Guillermo, especially when they comprise 85% of the movie, feature characters I could care less for, and have absolutely no tension in them. Technique is nice, but it’s not going to get it done for me, especially not in bulk.

Blade, the half-human, half- hunter of vampires, is still pissed off. Now he’s pissed off because his mentor/adopted father Whistler (), who appeared to have died in the last film, is not dead but is being stored in red gelatin in a vampire fridge. Blade rescues Whistler and gives him the vampire cure (the one Karen made in the last film?), which works easy-peasy, and then introduces him to the new mechanics guy, Scud (). Scud and Whistler disagree but will work together for Blade’s sake! We’ve covered two fairly lengthy fight scenes by the time that Blade & Friends are invited to help the vampire counsel or whatever fight against this “new evil,” a mutant vampire/Venus flytrap type guy called Nomak who drinks vampire blood and spreads his Nomak-infection to humans and vampires alike, I think. Actually I was having trouble paying attention by this time. Boredom will do that to a girl. The vampire club has been training a team of generically badassed vampire warriors for years with the intention that they should kill Blade, but now this team is offered to Blade so that they can all join forces and kill Nomak. is the leader of the gang, because Ron Perlman, etc. etc. He and Blade are pretty pissed off at each other and compare the sizes of their dicks in every subsequent scene, which includes about six hours of fight scenes and, I’m not sure, either the movie ended or I lapsed into a coma. No, wait, there were credits rolling, and my comas don’t run credits. So the movie must have ended.

If this film tried to recapture the style of the first installment, it seemed more like satire to me, and none of the first installment’s marvelous characters were allowed to play. We have no adequate replacement for the brilliant Karen, and Whistler isn’t allowed to do much of anything except growl, and Blade is forced to be a smug little showoff for the vampire clan when I really can’t see his character lowering himself to such childish behavior. We don’t even have a good villain. Nomak is nothing but a gnarly special effect, the vampires are sulky and generic, and Ron Perlman is just Ron Perlman, etc. etc. He’s just about the laziest badguy ever, waiting past ample opportunities to rid the world of Blade in favor of “plot twisting” He’s hideous, yes, but his dental hygienist loves this guy. when the script says it’s finally time to do so.

You can stop reading now. I doubt I’m going to say much more about the movie, except to give it a pretty lousy Fangs score. I’m thinking a 2/10, because vampires are mentioned – but the fact is, this is no more a than it is a zombie film or any other sort of mutating-plague movie, and nobody’s vampirism seems to matter overmuch. It’s just another name for superpowers that could have been caused by damn near anything else- a spider bite, or gamma rays, or what-have-you.

The rest of this discussion is going to be me, doing the writing equivalent of enjoying the sound of my own voice. While I was trying to watch Blade II, I became distracted by FaceBook of all things – I flipping hate FaceBook, but it’s good for a few purposes. One of its uses is to send me updates about Dragon Age: Inquisition, which better come out before I die or I am going to wreak hellish vengeance on the world. I love that franchise – well, I pretty much love anything that Bioware has done. Their games are my favorites. Did I ever tell y’all about the time I almost stayed home from work so I could find out what happened next in KOTOR? Oh, haha, I guess I just told you about it right there; that was the whole story.

I’m a little in love with most of the Bioware voice actors, the men and the women too, I mean, when it comes to sexy voices, I don’t discriminate. Wait, I’ve lost my train of thought. Oh yes, I was saying that I get updates on Inquisition and I guess they’re having some kind of voice acting contest. I think voicing a character in a Bioware game might be the coolest thing ever. I’m thinking about entering because if there’s one thing I’m sure they’re looking for in voices, it’s my Midwestern-white-trash twang. Anyway this little snippet I saw featured a video of Claudia Black, who voices the silky- bad-girl Morrigan (a friend of my Gray Warden’s to the extent that I let my fiancé impregnate her with a demon-baby just because she asked nicely). This reminded me of the TV show Farscape, because of course Claudia Black was on that show, and then I thought, “Oh snap, Netflix has all the Farscapes available for streaming and I love that show!”

So last night, I watched the first two episodes of Farscape, and you know Isn’t this interesting? The cast of Blade II looks as if they could BE on Farscape. what? They’re just as good as I remembered, and that was even before the show got really kickass awesome, which it totally did. It is probably my favorite sci-fi TV show ever (coincidentally, one of its creators was Rockne S. O’Bannon, who helped create the TV show Cult which we are also discussing this week). Another FaceBook post informed me that this month is the 15-year anniversary of Farscape’s first episode’s air date. The coincidences are getting a little overwhelming, amirite? Guess I know what I’ll be doing in my spare time for the next couple months: 88 episodes of Farscape and then The Peacekeeper Wars to finish it off! When am I going to have time to watch the three movies per week that I like to discuss? Don’t worry, my dears (both of you). I am a pro at this kind of organizational juggling, and if there’s one thing I can guarantee, it’s that I will find the time.

So, my thanks to Blade II for leading me to a Bioware contest and the rediscovery of Farscape. Would I have learned these things if Blade II hadn’t bored me so thoroughly? I think not. This is why boring-ass movies will always have a place in the world, I guess. Maybe I should give it another Fang as a prize. Nah, why bother? 2/10 Fangs. If you’re a huge fan of pointless but complex fight scenes, then this might be the greatest movie you’ve ever seen. And we’ll be doing Blade: Trinity soon despite my better judgment.