Blade (character)/Headscratchers


 * Deacon Frost is running around with his super sunscreen. But wait... What about his eyes? Or the inside of his mouth? Or the skin under his hair?
 * He's a walking corpse. I see no reason why he couldn't cover all those places with screen too. It's not like he has to care about irritation.
 * The Vampires in Blade are specifically stated to be the virus kind (not the mythical walking corpse one) and no kind of sunblock is going to keep out out all UV radiation. The whole scene didn't make much sense- one smudge or missed spot and he is toast, also the implications for the setting of such a substance are completely ignored afterward.
 * Yes, vampirism in this movie is a virus. The climax of the movie also features the villain performing a magical spell and becoming an immortal god made of blood. Trying to fall back on science to insist you caught them in an error ain't gonna work.
 * So vampires need to feed on humans because their blood can't support hemoglobin (the stuff that transports oxygen through your body and is kind of necessary to live), so if Frost summons La Magra, which turns EVERYONE into a vampire, what are vampires supposed to feed on?
 * This is explained in a Deleted Scene where Frost reveals a pilot idea to keep humans in cold storage. This idea was reused in Blade III.
 * It's actually referenced in the first scene of the movie. Those aren't cows in the freezer.
 * Another instance: being born with a "genetic defect" does not make your condition any less treatable with a gene-rewriting retrovirus than someone who acquired the mutation later. May stray into Plot Hole territory.
 * Because all genetic defects and retrovirus-induced conditions are exactly the same, and should act the same, right?
 * And another in Blade II: couldn't have the ninja-vampires just...I dunno...knocked? And disabling the cameras probably wasn't the most friendly way to say "hello",
 * They were the Blood Pack. They wanted to fight Blade and see how good he was. Note that they don't actually call off the attack until the fight reaches a stalemate.
 * Abigail Whistler wears an ipod to fight. Apparently it gets her 'in the mood' which is a great explanation for completely cutting off your ability to hear in a fight with super powered creatures possessing super senses. You'd obviously want to handicap yourself in a fight like that, right?
 * I've always thought that the Nightstalkers were supposed to come off as stupid (Blade even calls them on it) This is why they die a lot.
 * For that matter, does it bug anyone that it should have been called Scooby Doo: Trinity? Think about it, Abigail is Daphne, Sommerfield is Velma, Zoe is Scooby and Hannibal is definitely Scrappy...
 * What about Shaggy and Fred?
 * Hannibal was definitely Shaggy, not Scrappy. He wasn't nearly as annoying, and had nothing to do with them. Hell, other than a few tiny traits, those were nothing like them, that's a pretty bashful way of thinking about them. As for the original question, its not that she's an idiot who wants to handicap herself, its that, basically, they're still new to this slaying thing. As seen by her breaking down after two particularly traumatizing events. Each one was a little dorky or strange, because they were still relitivly young compared to Blade, whose been doing this for a long time. As far as they see it, get some silver, garlic, or UV tech, go out looking for Vampires, and start killing.
 * Why do none of the elder pureblood vampires try to fight their way out of Frost's temple, or shake off his guards? They seem entriely complicit in his plans, even though it is clear that he intends to kill them. You'd think none of them had any superhuman capabilities (or even much of a survival instinct).
 * I've got this pet theory that Authority Equals Asskicking isn't true for all vampires. Yeah, settings like the World Of Darkness drone on and on about nightmarishly powerful elders, but I think it's just as likely that a vampire born to power will never actually bother to "work out" their super powers, combat skills, and other personal protections skills since they're surrounded by bodyguards, just like politicians in real life.
 * There's another question; where were the elders' bodyguards? The way the film shows it, Frost pretty much just politely asks them to come with him so he can sacrifice them, and they just go along with it with no resistance whatsoever. Nothing is ever seen or mentioned of any other pureblood vampires protecting their leaders (purebloods also supposedly possess powers that turned vampires don't have, a detail which widens the plot hole by its absence). Also, when Dragonetti catches Frost in an off-limits area, why does he do nothing to punish him or stop him?
 * Whistler says that "There's something happening in the vampire ranks. something big". It sounds to me like Frost is gathering followers, most likely with a promise of equality for turned vampires, as that seems a sore point between vampires. The House of Erebus seems far too arrogant and snobbish to realize that their servants are being turned against them. As for why Dragonetti doesn't punish Frost for trespassing? Maybe Frost is already an uncommonly powerful vampire, seeing as he can dodge bullets while other vampires are ashed by Blade's gun. Frost is no longer intimidated by the Elders and that scares them.
 * Note that this is a bigger advantage than it might seem. All the exotic special powers in the world don't matter if Deacon Frost can simply respond with "I go first and kill you dead before you can do anything meaningful." Doesn't explain why the elders just stayed in their assigned ritual spots, though.
 * If Blade knew that Scud was a traitor the whole time, then why didn't he kill him earlier? It's not as if Scud's betrayal gave him any kind of advantage. For that matter, why did he seem surprised when the bomb didn't work, and why didn't he detonate it when it was still in the vampire's head?
 * Keeping Scud alive means Blade can backtrack his communications to the other vampires. Its actually a fairly common technique in the intelligence community to hide the fact that you've discovered an enemy mole and use him to ferret out his contacts, feed them false information, or otherwise use him against his handlers without them realizing it. As for not detonating the bomb, Blade probably didn't expect Scud to actually tamper with it, and had to switch detonators. By the time he switched detonators, Scud had the bomb instead.
 * Blade outright says, "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.".
 * Plus, to keep his cover, Scud keeps having to design effective vampire-killing tech and stuff that actually makes Blade more effective. It probably made Blade grin like hell to think of using stuff made by a vampire groupie to kill vampires, and grin even bigger to think of eventually killing Scud himself with some of the stuff.
 * In the second film, the vampires need to team up with Blade in order to destroy the new, superpowerful vampires. Alright, fair enough. When they go to a vampire nightclub, Blade expresses disbelief since he can't see its sigil, causing the vampires to state that his activities have forced them to adopt more secretive methods. Makes sense. Then they explicitly teach him how to see through their new line of defense. Wait, what?
 * They can just come up with something else. Though I have the hilarious image of 'em putting sigils on dozens of likely-looking buildings in every city. The actual nightclubs will be hidden behind a party supply store.
 * Desperate times. They need Blade's help to defeat the super-vamps and they're already running on a severe deficit of trust. If Blade had asked them how they know this place is a vampire club and they had said "just trust me, it is" Blade would have become suspicious. He might have concluded that the story about the super-vamps was all an elaborate charade and the moment he stepped through the door of the "club" a hundred machine guns would open up on him or something.
 * They also appear to need a special device to see in this spectrum in the film. In Blade the Series, though, they just have to focus a little to see in UV.
 * They were planning on betraying him the whole time. Even Nysaa, whose only shock was that Nomak was her brother and, thus, that her father was prepared to kill his own children; though she had come to respect Blade, she seemingly knew both that the Reapers were designed and that they were going to harvest Blade's blood. They are Genre Blind, but not Too Dumb Too Live.


 * In the first film after Blade rescues the little asian girl instead of helping her find her parents he just tells her "go home". How does he know that Frost didn't kidnapped her from like 100 miles from her house? I can excuse not taking her to the police but...damn Blade, at least ask her if she's hurt after being THROWN THROUGH GLASS! Don't just be a douche-bag!
 * That's kind of his main character trait.
 * If the girl had been kidnapped from a 100 miles away she probably would have said "I don't know how" or something when Blade told her to go home.
 * Why would Frost go that far to kidnap someone? He's based in that city, so why would he go 100 miles out of his way to grab some random kid when there's gotta be plenty in the nearby area. Hell, if I'm not mistaken, that scene took place in/near a playground. He probably grabbed her from just offscreen.


 * In the second movie, its fairly obvious that Vampires are redeemable and are not necessarily Always Chaotic Evil. They're more akin to drug addicts and criminals. If they got their fix, a peaceful solution could easily be found. For instance, humans could donate blood at certain pre-determined levels and the vamps pledge to not kill humans. Yet, no one ever seems to suggest or even think of the possibility of a solution like this.
 * Individual vampires might be redeemable, but the vampire hierarchy and organization isn't willing to acknowledge humans as equals, which this would imply. The leaders are power hungry, arrogant, and they want to have power over humans.
 * Blade does lose any character development he might have gained in the second film, but his quest to destroy vampires is still pretty justified. Even though every German soldier in WWII wasn't a true believer, they were still fighting to support an evil empire. Vampires that support their society's evil actions must be fought like enemy combatants. We also don't see any hint that there are peaceful vampires who only feed on voluntarily donated blood. If there are, then Blade's not going after them.
 * What it really boils down to is that Blade's a Heroic Sociopath who enjoys killing vampires for its own sake. This makes sense, as Whistler's entire quest for vengeance stems from victimization by a vampire drifter. Blade's basically just the extension of Whistler's desire for revenge; it's not surprising that he doesn't consider the idea of seeking coexistence since he's been taught since very young that vampires are altogether monstrous and unworthy of life, and that killing a turned vampire is an act of mercy. The second movie is in fact the only time Blade ever is introduced to vampire culture and has to consider the idea that they are individuals as well. Evidently he decided that although Nyssa was perhaps an exception, vampires still, on the whole, deserve a painful death.
 * The overwhelming majority of vampires are clearly depicted as remorseless psychopathic serial murderers, and even the "redeemable" ones like Nyssa are likely responsible for hundreds if not thousands of deaths, and she still was part of a plot to betray him. Turned vampires seem especially bad which is likely in part because they are usually chosen from familiars, ie. people who want to be evil bloodsucking monsters, so they pretty much do deserve a painful death. The vampire cultural in Blade II is downright terrifying- genetic experimentation, nightclub with murder and feeding, arrogant Mad Scientists out to make vampires even more dangerous....even most of the individual vampires are utter dicks. And they barely age, are murder to kill, and secretly rule the world and engage repeatedly in homicidal debauchery. He's not a Heroic Sociopath for killing them.
 * We don't see Blade killing any vampires that are getting their blood through nonviolent means.
 * At the end of the second film, Blade has to let Nyssa die, as she is infected by the Reaper bite from Novak, to finally kill off the Reaper strain. But...during his little "tour" through Vampire HQ, Novak munched on a good few dozen people. There'd be loads of Reapers downstairs, ready to start the whole problem up again.
 * All those people were explicitly confirmed to be human 'familiars', which CAN be drained by Reapers- but only vampires who get assaulted can become Reapers. Presumably human familiars are less likely to betray Damaskinos than vampire goons.
 * How do you know it doesn't work on humans?
 * Because the lawyer specifically says "The vampire victims don't die. They Turn." Plus, you don't KNOW that Blade didn't go back through the entire building re-murdering every single one of them. The film cuts to black.
 * That doesn't mean Humans don't turn, just that vampires do. Nyssa was emphasizing the threat that the reapers posed, so that Blade would care about stopping them before they munched on all the vampires first. On the other hand, how easily a human would turn into a reaper is still open to question. A vamipre can turn in as little 20 minutes, but a human's body doesn't change as quickly (e.g. no regeneration). I'm probably thinking too far into this, but maybe the reaper virus can only work on a vampire because they can mutate fast enough and survive the process.
 * Near the beginning of the first film, the police seem pretty cavalier about shooting at a man carrying a hostage. Half a dozen officers unload multiple clips (inside a hospital, no less) without any apparent consideration to the woman he was carrying away. They even have one officer using an assault rifle which he would have to assume would go right through his target (if he hit) and the woman.
 * I always wondered if those cops weren't really working for the vampires (knowingly or maybe some unknowingly) and were told to kill Blade with no regard for Karen's safety.
 * Truth in Television. There are often severe problems with cops getting very trigger-happy when someone has angered them or they feel "threatened", and don't have a lot of problems with firing into a crowd at times.
 * In the first movie, why is the ancient vampire temple located in the suburbs of a major American city? This temple is supposed to be so old that the vampire council doesn't even remember it. It is described in the dead language on the vampire scrolls that are at least thousands of years old. Are we supposed to assume that the vampires, descending from Drake (from Blade 3) in the middle east or Europe just wandered over to North America to build their temple and it just so happened that a few thousand years later a major American city was built right next door and apparently somebody built a modern entrance/exit over it that Blade and the girl exit through at the end of the movie? Also, the bowl/sink that collected Blade's blood looked a lot like stainless steel. The temple had to have been found in order for there to be that modern door. That would make it one of the greatest archeological finds in history so it would be hard to keep it secret. Don't say the discovery was covered up by the vampires because the council didn't know about it.
 * It's possible that Frost found it and had these things put in. Apologies if that is retarded due to some plot point this troper is forgetting; it's been about a year since I last saw the first one.
 * It's not the actual temple, it's a replica that Frost had built. The blueprints for it are shown earlier in the movie and it's mentioned several times that Frost is building something big.
 * When Nyssa examines the Reaper, a species that has never been dissected before, she describes it in a way that she would a lecture that she's done a hundred times. How the heck is she supposed to know that only the tongue carries the virus?
 * She probably has access to some biological knowledge of the Reapers, considering that thy were created by the vampires. Damoskinos probably forwarded what they knew about the Reapers' biology to the team, so she would have some working knowledge of their capabilities.
 * In Blade I, Blade drinks blood for the first time in years and becomes powerful enough to fight through Frost's army of vampire mooks. Thing is though, he kills many of them by punching or kicking them a few times, and that's apparently enough to turn them to dust?
 * Actually we hear snapping and see him breaking a few necks, presumably thats enough to dust some of them?
 * Blade appears to gets a dramatic boost to his physical strength after consuming blood; look at what happened after he got dumped in the blood pool in the second movie. He was literally killing Damoskinos' familiars with flicks of his wrists. So, after drinking blood, Blade probably was strong enough to kill vampires with his bare hands just by punching or kicking them.
 * So... if it started as a mutation from Dracula... what the HELL was La Magra and all those winged demon vampire spirits in the first movie?
 * Perhaps Drake was La Magra's answer to Adam?
 * And this is WITHOUT the actual script version of La Magra. Where Frost becomes a, well, a force of nature. A blood-storm that would allegedly turn everything in his path. La Magra is just a really powerful vampire. The concept of a "soul" is really never brought up again in the movie series.
 * If the Daystar nanovirus kills all vampires in the world, and Blade then repopulates the species, then why are there purebloods who are up to 600 years old in Blade the Series? I realize the series isn't canon, but they deliberately mention certain events from the third film (like Blade prefering inhalers to injections) and then proceed to ignore it.
 * The series isn't canon? Ah well, either way, there is a mention that the Daystar virus wasn't nearly as effective as the Nightstalkers thought it would be.
 * In the second movie the vampires attempt to dissect Blade in order to obtain "the key" to his unique condition. Wait, don't they know that Blade was born the way he was because his mother was biten at her preganancy?
 * They may know that, but a direct analysis might let them directly recreate the condition genetically instead of going through all that tricky setup.
 * A tricky setup that would do absolutely no good for vampires that already exist.
 * They want his blood so they can replicate the unique daywalker traits, and apply them via genetic therepy to all vampires. The whole point of the movie is that they tried that already, and kinda-sorta failed with Novac.
 * When Blade rescues Karen from the hospital he trows her some, what, 10 meters across the roofs? How did she survive it with all her bones intact? I guess there was something soft on the roof, I couldn't make it out in the dark, but the sound her body made on impact implied a solid surface to me.
 * And bear in mind that even then, she dislocated her shoulder. Blade then pops it back in on-screen.
 * It was a canopy of some sort that cushioned the impact. Underneath it looked like cardboard boxes and carpets.
 * What was the villains' plan in Trinity? They go dig up Drake and then... they keep him in a room. They don't seem to discuss anything all that important with him, and they do not study his physiology or anything. What was the point? We also get the vague idea of vampires taking over and putting people into storage to be used as sources of blood, but no explanation for how they would do this on large scale.
 * Dracula is basically Blade with Shape Shifter powers and a penchant for blood. I assume they believed that, by bringing him back, let him feed a little, and then let him wonder the streets to see what the world is like, they believed they could convince him to kill Blade for them so they could get on with their final solution.
 * Why, when the Blood Pack prepare to go down into the sewers, do they make so few adjustments to their armory? They saw small-caliber bullets having little effect on a reaper except when coming en-mass from a high-powered machine gun, and melee weapons being next to useless, yet Blade and Nyssa stick to their handguns. Reinhardt ditches his stake-gun for a pair of bladed guns while Lighthammer and Snowman keep their melee weapons! If they knew their weapons were only good for physical damage, they should have switched to magnums.
 * Blade outright states that the guns are only for hurting the mutants long enough to deploy UV-grenades. Even if they don't kill them, bullets still stun mutants and you need them to stay in one place in order for the grenades to work. Ditto for cutting them up. Magnums are simply upscaled versions of other calibers, they don't work differently than other bullets. Going out and buying new weapons and ammo (especially since theirs is handmade) probably wasn't worth the effort of having to empty 50 (instead of 60) bullets into a baddie to open him up for a grenade. Also, Reinhardt doesn't ditch his stake-gun, he merely happens to hold the machine-pistols in his hands during the Lock and Load Montage- he is seen using his shotgun/stakegun during the hunt. As for the hammer and katana guys- it's better to have someone very skilled with a melee weapon who has superstrentgh and possibly decades/centuries of experience with them than the same person with a gun. Especially since they have proven themselves able to at least temporarily hold of a mutant during the night club fight.
 * It bugs me a little that Blade could even fight Dracula. It's been established that Blade becomes more powerful when he drinks blood (ie. the first and second movies), and that Blade was roughly comparable to Drake in terms of power. Now, the only difference, really, is that Drake has drank literally GALLONS of blood before that fight. Drake should have stomped him flat in half a second.
 * Blood only rejuvenates him; Blade has physical limits, and he is rarely in his prime because he doesn't drink human blood. It really just how strong he would be if he regularly drank blood. How much blood he drinks is largely irrelevant. He doesn't become more powerful when he drinks blood; he is just an utter Badass and blood just makes him even more Badass than normal. The only reason a normal vampires isn't in his league is because the average normal vampire isn't a Badass, just a Jerkass with superpowers.
 * Why the hell does Nyssa peacefully let herself be bitten at the end of the second movie? She could at least have tried to run... I mean, dammit, 10 seconds later and Blade woulda saved her hot sorry ass.
 * Because she wanted to die. She expected her brother to kill her, not turn her into a Reaper.