Queen is for Girls and Blade
is for Boys:
A Review of Queen of
the Damned and Blade II
By Stine Fletcher
Queen of the Damned. Dir. Michael Rymer. 2002.
Blade II. Dir. Guillermo del Toro. 2002.
If movie news proves true, Queen of The Damned and Blade II will be the only vampire fare at cinemas in 2002. And meager fare it is, but at least each film will manage to satisfy one portion of the population in a shallow sex-oriented kinda way. QotD is obviously the chick flick of vampire films for the year, featuring the androgynous Stuart Townsend as one of the fave vampire characters for women, Anne Rice's Vampire Lestat. While short on plot, this movie at least exposed a lot of luscious male and female flesh. And for the guys? For the men whose girlfriends dragged them to QotD so they could leer at Townsend lounging half naked in a bath of rose petals (now don't you want to grab that DVD ladies?), Guillermo del Toro brings us Blade II, a macho guy flick full of lots of ninja martial arts action and little else (there's a hot girl in it, but she remains clothed from toe to fang throughout). Neither is destined to become a classic, but fans of martial arts films may find Blade II helpful to kill a couple of hours, and fans of Anne Rice and the ethereal Goth vampire scene will have ample eye candy with QotD.
We'll forgo the traditional habit of ladies first and begin with Blade II. Sequels often never live up to their hype, and Blade II had stiff competition with its predecessor. Blade, drawing its main character from scattered issues of Marvel comic books where the character was first introduced, featured a well-developed plot, a great script and strong characters, including a strong female lead. Hematologist Dr. Karen Jenson, played aptly by N'Bushe Wright, comes off as strong and intelligent. She is not simply a cardboard love interest for the hero. Indeed, her interest in Blade and his crusade helps to gain the audience's sympathy for the main character. She brings sensitivity and depth to his muscle and fight. She also completely disappears from the plot of the sequel with no explanation. The viewer must instead put up with a misplaced rescue attempt of Whistler, Blade's inventive sidekick from the original. Blade had intimate connections with his fellow characters in the prequel. Whistler found him at adolescence and helped him live with his hunger, and together they form the crusade against the evil that is vampirism. Blade saves Jenson from a vampire attack and is attracted to her from the beginning of the film. Early plot points even show familiarity between Blade and one of vampire villain Deacon Frost's minions, making their conflict an amusing one throughout the film. The vampires are denizens of the cultures of heroin chic and big business. These vampires inhabit worlds that are familiar to the audience, and Blade's intimate links with his fellow characters makes the audience sympathetic to the character development. We care about what happens to these characters and we care about the climax of the movie.
Blade II, however, is made up of strangers. Blade's mechanically inclined sidekick is an annoying teenager whom the Blade of the prequel would never have given the time of day. His love interest is nonexistent until the cardboard female lead dies. We know nothing about her to make us grieve her demise. None of the ninja vampires are sympathetic or amusing as characters. The characters of Blade II are unmemorable, impressing the audience only with the fact that they are often CGI rendered beings and nothing more. While Blade had odd plot points, such as the spontaneous spewing of Russian, Blade II simply had no plot. Why a Germanic vampire has ninja progeny in the first place, who knows? The sequel feels more like anime, but anime is for cartoon viewers. Moviegoers want a good story, and that means a good coherent plot. Vampires don't generally break into martial arts battles for lengthy minutes for no reason. Making them do so does not enhance a plot, but may entertain martial arts fans. Turning real actors into CGI cartoons for big climax fight scenes does not make those scenes any more memorable. Its actually insulting to those real persons involved--that their skills are so minimal, a computer must do the work. The work of Bruce Lee and movies like The Matrix have proven that real humans can perform excellent fight scenes that aren't riddled with bizarre camera angles that confuse the viewer and choppy inconsistent body movements that are only distracting, not amazing. For a good example of the use of CGI and martial arts in a movie, see The Matrix. Martial arts are part of the plot; they do not replace the plot. The actors performed their own fight scenes and were filmed in front of a green screen, and CGI was used to accent and enhance their tangible actions. A natural flow of camera angles is maintained. CGI rendering is synthesized with live action and is not an end in itself. CGI and fancy fighting may sound good, but these elements alone do not make a good movie.
Unencumbered by technical expectations and with nothing macho to prove, QotD can languish in its chosen purpose, to bring to the screen Anne Rice's book of the same name, the third book in the Vampire Chronicles. Thus, QotD has a ready-made developed plot to manipulate. The movie captures the essence of Rice's vampires. They are beautiful wealthy creatures dwelling in a world of ethereal luxury. And thus QotD has an aesthetic to draw from, and the movie shows an alluring aesthetic indeed. The movie's visuals are its most attractive feature, along with its soundtrack. Movie scores made up of songs by bands instead of being orchestrated often fail. The music for this soundtrack, however, fits perfectly with the movie's meilleu. Accompanied by Nu Metal pieces, Lestat s character prances across the screen, the rock idol every woman wants. The movie is simply alluring to watch and listen to--if one simply languishes along with the characters and does not pay too close attention to the movie's lack of depth and major plot holes.
Eye and ear candy aside, QotD is shallow in its story line. The movie severely compresses elements from both The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice. While elements from The Vampire Lestat are necessary to make the plot of the movie work (they are a necessary knowledge for the third book in the Vampire Chronicles to work for the reader), these elements cannot come together well in a movie under two hours in length. The story is hurried, as the reader must absorb Lestat's vampiric transformation, his rise to stardom, and the connection and consequences of his actions with the other characters, characters that are hardly developed by the end of the film. The characters of vampires Louis and Armand, familiar from Interview with the Vampire, are nonexistent. While the creators of QotD had to distance themselves from this first movie that was not of their making, they left out two important characters form Lestat's lexicon of companions, and left audiences with unnamed vampires fighting the final battle against Aaliyah's character Akasha, Queen of the Damned. Like Blade in his sequel, Lestat is left to dwell among strangers with no motive. While Aaliyah is billed as a main character, she appears only briefly. While news tells us she died shortly after the film was made, the movie's lack of a coherent plot makes it seem she died before work on the movie was really finished. We get no sense of why she is destroying humans and vampires alike and why Townsend's character joins her as her consort. Why Jesse loves Lestat so much is a mystery. The worst failing is the final scene. Maharet, Jesse's vampire aunt, is joined by vampires who are not named, but are nonetheless depicted as important in fighting the final battle against Akasha. We have no motive for why they are present, and since we do not know who they are, we do not care if they perish. It does not matter who wins this battle, but it was pretty to watch.
I plan to buy the DVD of QotD. The visuals are enthralling and the soundtrack is great (and is well worth the CD purchase). The movie offers an aesthetic entertainment similar to a large luxurious bath. Townsend take us away! For ladies in the family way, Aaliyah is also nice to browse. They really did have to glue on the costume. Ah reader, maybe I just preferred that movie because the characters were scantily clad? Judging from the verbal encouragement and enthusiasm of male audience members during the showing of Blade II (The guys loved it in my town, and they drive John Deeres, they ought to know!), we can guess which gender will be pursuing that video release, the gender that had the most preference for martial arts movies in the first place. While each movie will offer some entertainment to its viewers, neither lived up to its hype. Viewers will get some enjoyment, but Lestat and Blade would not be pleased.