Blade III should be rubbish. Frankly that Blade or Blade II were any good beggared much belief and was basically due to rather flashy direction and surprising conviction in the casts. You can dress up the vampire mythos in as much flashy clothing as you like (or ugly clothing a la the Blade films) but in the end it does boil down to group X killing group Y because of some perceived difference.

Blade: Trinity (to give it its improper title), raises the stakes (ahem) by giving Blade the means to wipe out all vampires. This genocide gives the Blade absolutely no pause for thought, not that anything really seems to make him think. Nor does it concern his new mates, who perhaps should consider the moral implications more since one pf their number is a “cured” vampire. If vampires can be cured and turned back into humans, then isn’t wiping them all out potentially mass murder of a huge scale*? The film again does not think about this, instead resurrecting the worst version of Dracula since, well Van Helsing.

To consider the Blade franchise one should only consider Kris Kristofferson’s mentor character Whistler. Killed in the first film to provide Wesley Snipes with extra motivation, he came back in the second film having been turned into a vampire and then cured. After pulling out all the non-logical stops to resurrect him, Blade III discards him after ten minutes, to provide Blade with motivation again (and a reason to hook up with the characterless but purty “Whistler’s daughter” a hitherto never referred to plot device). Noisy, silly and hinging on a plot twist which suggests that Dracula himself is a bigger threat to vampires than Blade is (he finds the modern breed as personified by Parker Posey a bit too kooky and indie film friendly). Nothing makes sense, and makes no sense in a rather dull way. Blade III should have been rubbish. It succeeds beyond all expectations.

* The big problem inherent in Buffy when it became clear that some vampires were nice and sappy, and led to the actually villains being demons in the end.