Blade: Trinity

"Dracula: Blade, ready to die? Blade: I was born ready, motherfucker! Dracula: Motherfucker. I like that."

Blade: Trinity is a 2004 vampire horror film that is the third and final film in the Blade trilogy. It features Wesley Snipes as Eric Brooks/Blade. It also stars Jessica Biel as Abigail Whistler, Ryan Reynolds as Hannibal King, Parker Posey as Danica Talos and Dominic Purcell as Drake/Dracula. It was directed and written by David S. Goyer and had a Troubled Production. The mixed-to-negative reception resulted in a fourth film and a Nightstalkers spin-off being cancelled.

Blade is framed by the killing of a human familiar and tracked down by the FBI, that kills his mentor Abraham Whistler. Meanwhile, a group of vampires unearth Dracula, that was sleeping on a tomb of Iraq for thousands of years.

Blade is rescued by a group of vampire hunters known as Nightstalkers. They developed a virus that may kill all vampires once and for all, but need to test if it will work on Dracula, because as common ancestor of all vampires, if it kills him, it can kill every other vampires. From the opposite side, the vampires hope Dracula can help save their species by giving them his blood. From his own side, however, Dracula has contempt for everybody, but sees something in Blade that he doesn't see in his own descendants.

Directed by David. S. Goyer. Distributed by New Line Cinema.


 * Abandoned Warehouse: Blade's hide-out.
 * Action Girl: Abigail.
 * All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Drake later sneaks into Night Stalker HQ.
 * The Archer: Abigail.
 * Jessica Biel received training in archery before the film. According to her trainer, she had a natural talent for it. During the filming of one scene, the camera was behind a plexiglass safety screen with a hole for the lens to fit through. She was supposed to shoot towards the camera. They were not expecting her to actually shoot the camera right through the lens, destroying it.
 * As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The film features nearly subliminal use of Esperanto to make the setting seem a little off and vaguely foreign. This is most noticeable when Hannibal watches the Esperanto language horror film Incubus (starring William Shatner pre-Star Trek) in his hospital bed.
 * Audible Sharpness
 * Awesome but Impractical: Nearly everything about Abigail Whistler, but her situational-awareness-killing personal soundtrack is at the top of the list.
 * The UV Laser comes close second, because slicing through things like butter may sound good, but when a UV lamp hurts them and not you, and a normal sword is sufficient to dust them... why risk lightsabering yourself?
 * Badass Longcoat: It has a hole for his blade to poke out of and everything.
 * Badass Normal: The Nightstalkers, who take out vampires without the benefit of superpowers.
 * Big Bad: Drake/Dracula is well, not one: the Nightstalkers developed the virus completely independent of him and only see it using on him as an opportunity. The plan to frame Blade was created by other vampires. Thanks to the film's multiple storylines overlapping, there is no real Big Bad.
 * Bond One-Liner: "My friends are coming to kill you."
 * City of Weirdos: No one bats an eyelash at Blade's appearance when he's being hunted by the FBI.
 * Convection, Schmonvection: Although it might be hyperbole, Abigail holds a UV laser that is "half as hot as the Sun" in front of her face. To say nothing of the power requirements for that...
 * Cool Boat: Nightstalkers' base of operations.
 * Cool Car: The '68 Dodge Charger.
 * Cool Sword: A silver, impossibly sharp blade and a clockwork anti-theft mechanism built into the handle. Amazingly, it has a straight blade and is not a katana.
 * Country Matters: Hannibal calls Danica a "cock-juggling thundercunt".
 * Dark Is Not Evil: Don't worry, Karen. The leather-clad biker shooting up the hospital as he runs from the cops is here to help.
 * Deadpan Snarker: Hannibal King. He's played by Ryan Reynolds, after all.
 * Dirty Coward: Drake runs away from Blade and takes a baby hostage in order to escape without a fight and then has the gall to deliver a speech about honor and dying by the sword while holding the baby captive.
 * Esperanto, the Universal Language: Used to make the setting vague.
 * Everyone Owns a Mac: Everyone uses Mac computers, and even features a scene where Jessica Biel's character uses iTunes to create a music playlist for her iPod that she can listen to while fighting vampires (never mind that having music blaring into your ears would be detrimental to your situational awareness in a battle with undead blood suckers). More than one reviewer has commented that the film is basically a two-hour-long commercial for Apple products. See also Product Placement, below.
 * Fangs Are Evil: Blade is tricked by fake fangs in killing a familiar, seeing it as indication of the man being a vampire.
 * Final Solution: The vampire apocalypse.
 * Foil: Dracula is under the delusion he is one to Blade, constantly comparing himself to him. However, his contempt for both vampires and humans shows he is nowhere like Blade, that never harmed a man intentionally in his life.
 * Four Lines, All Waiting: Is it about vigilante Blade versus human law enforcement, the upcoming vampire apocalypse, Blade's attempt to create his own apocalypse via The Virus, or Blade vs. Dracula? Concentrating on any two of these plotlines would have worked, but not four. Wesley Snipes was reportedly very upset that the core character was lost in the plot shuffle.
 * Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: Blade himself.
 * Good Is Not Nice: Blade is a hard-ass dick, but he's also a hero.
 * Guns Akimbo: This practice is shown by Blade, Hannibal King and Abigail Whistler.
 * Hero Harasses Helpers
 * Hero Secret Service: The Nightstalkers
 * High Altitude Interrogation: A mook is dangled in an attempt to lead the protagonists to the Big Bad, but he refuses to talk. Then his cell rings. Blade answers, tells the mook it's for him, and lets go of the rope.
 * Idiot Ball: Blade is fooled into killing a human disguised as a vampire, despite having the instincts to distinguish between the two! Considering in the first movie he could smell a vampire from roughly forty feet away, and can even differentiate vampire and human by the way they move, there is no way he should have been fooled.
 * In Name Only:
 * Hannibal King. In the comics he is a middle aged (in appearance) Vampire 50s-style hard-boiled private investigator. In the film he is twenty or so year old wise cracking vampire hunter who was cured of vampirism before the film began. Most of the change is probably down to the casting.
 * Dracula is a vampire that can infect others with vampirism and has minor shape-shifting powers but that is it. No Romania, no brides, no accent, no gypsies working for him, and no signals that the other characters of the novel ever existed. In fact, Hannibal pulling the Marvel Comics' book The Tomb of Dracula and Blade being skeptic about him may be a hint that the book itself is fictional but somehow Dracula is still real.
 * Ironic Name: A werewolf named "Jack Russell".
 * Kryptonite-Proof Suit: Anti-sun excursion suits.
 * Les Collaborateurs: The vampires' various human "familiars", who knowingly aid the vampires against their own kind.
 * Lighter and Softer: This installment is much cornier than the first two.
 * Lock and Load Montage: Both Blade and Abigail.
 * Misapplied Phlebotinum: Blade rarely tries to hunt down vampires during the day - while they sleep.
 * Monster Lord: Drake-Dracula.
 * Monster Progenitor: Drake/Dracula.
 * Mugging the Monster: Vampire hoods try to molest Action Girl Jessica Biel and get staked.
 * Recycled IN SPACE!: Triple H's vampire character is basically his early aristocratic persona with a brutish side on the WWF AS A VAMPIRE.
 * The Older Immortal: Drake/Dracula.
 * Off with His Head: One of the ways to kill a vampire.
 * Our Werewolves Are Different: Jack Russell, a biker werewolf appears in an alternate ending.
 * Person of Mass Destruction: Blade.
 * Present Day: Set in 2004, the release year of the film.
 * Product Placement: All the computers are Apple brand. The fact that Abigail likes to listen to an iPod while fighting vamps is made into a character trait. There's even a little montage of her putting together a playlist. This inspired quite a few groans. Apple actually didn't pay for the product placement, but it did sold the product with sixty percent discount.
 * Public Domain Character: Dracula, though he is such a deviation of the original character he may as well be In Name Only.
 * Re Cut: The film has an extended cut with an alternate ending.
 * Smug Snake: Drake.
 * Storming the Castle: At some point.
 * Sunglasses at Night
 * Suicide by Sunlight
 * Supervillain Lair: Drake has one.
 * Trick Arrow: Abigail Whistler uses, in addition to her normal arrows, a drill arrow, plague arrow, and an arrow that can shoot around corners.
 * Vagina Dentata: Danica Talos's fangs are not in her mouth...(at least according to Hannibal King).
 * Vampire Bites Suck
 * The Virus: Daystar.
 * Wall of Weapons: On more than one occasion Blade's hideout is displayed with a prominent wall mounted arsenal.
 * Weaponized Weakness: Blade's weapons are all made of silver and garlic. His gun scopes have UV lights. He's a walking anti-vampire arsenal.
 * Weapon of Choice: Blade's... blade.
 * Worthy Opponent: Drake is far more interested in fighting Blade due to his reputation than for any reason related to helping his debased great-great-great grandspawn.