esley Snipes, who cut his teeth in the vampire genre with the hit 1998 movie Blade, returns in the sequel Blade II as the ultra-cool half-vampire, half-human slayer. The sequel, based on the Marvel Comics series Blade the Vampire Hunter, aims for bigger thrills, darker chills and a creepier breed of bloodsucker, the actor and producer said.
In addition to reuniting with his Blade co-star Kris Kristofferson, Snipes teams up with new director Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican-born helmer who sharpened his skills on the 1993 Mexican vampire movie Cronos, the giant-cockroach movie Mimic and last year's acclaimed Spanish-language gothic horror film El Espinazo del Diablo (The Devil's Backbone). The duo took a moment recently to discuss Blade II with Science Fiction Weekly. Blade II opened March 22.
Wesley Snipes, can you talk about all the different martial arts styles that you used in the film?
Snipes: We just wanted it to be creative. [I] trained in a lot of martial arts styles, worked with a lot of different and good martial artists. So we thought, "Well, you know, since Blade is already a kind of hybrid type of a film, mixing genres, mixing styles, mixing music genres, why don't we mix the martial arts styles as well?" [Bringing co-star and fight choreographer] Donnie Yen in [gave] us a little bit of that Hong Kong flavor, like you see in some of the opening scenes. And then move from there into more of the Wesley Bronx/Brooklyn style stuff as the film progresses, and he gets a little more emotional. We ain't got time to pose. It's about handling it and getting it done. So we put everything in there. I threw everything in there. The criteria was that it had to make sense and be in sync with the emotional state of the character at the time, and that it just couldn't be there for the sake of being there.
What input did Donnie Yen have as fight choreographer?
Snipes: He's a master martial artist. I give him much respect and props. We didn't get a chance to use him in the fullest capacity that we would've liked to, because of the character he played [Snowman]. But we appreciated him. He helped very much in that opening sequence. They actually laid all that out, and I came and added the whole Blade energy to it.
How many hours did you spend training for this film?
Snipes: I trained every day. There are no hours. Now I don't really count them like that. When I wake up I do some maybe qigong, start with a little yoga or whatever. Then if I feel like throughout the day I'm going to stretch, I'll stretch, want to throw kicks, throw kicks. I like actually working out at night, because my sign is Leo, so I'm kind of disposed to that night energy.
Did you get injured while shooting the film?
Snipes: I got stabbed in the hand. I got a bruise up here [points to forehead]. I think I got a little fracture. War wounds. I'm not trying to be Jackie Chan. I'm not interested in Jackie Chan's lifestyle. I don't even understand Jackie Chan's lifestyle. Why would you want to do some of that, man?
How has your character changed from the first film to the second?
Snipes: Blade is much more comfortable with himself this time. But he's still scarier, which is fun to see. ... I became more relaxed with the character. You know, I had the chance to go home and look at it and analyze it and say, "Hey, my man's a little uptight." Well, he had issues, you know? ... He had problems. We resolved those problems by the end of the [first] movie, when he has to drink blood. He's accepted his duality. So now he can, like, keep his moves and enjoy it.
And he comes close to having a love interest this time, doesn't he?
Snipes: Yeah, that fundamental, primal thing is still in him. One goal he hasn't conquered yet. In III, my man's getting laid, I'm telling you that! ... When we open the movie, I might be in a brothel with, like, six or eight vampire chicks [laughs]. ... I think the way we're going now is very good. I think we are in a good space. I think the audience is more engaged. I think he has a lot more references that people can relate to now. What that means for the story, I don't know next. It'd be nice to have some more female vampires.
With two Blade movies under your belt, and the upcoming Black Panther, you seem to be taking on a lot of comic-book roles. Are you a comic-book fan?
Snipes: No. I'm illiterate, man, when it comes to that.
What was the difference between Stephen Norrington's direction on Blade and Guillermo del Toro's on Blade II?
Snipes: Guillermo's a much more seasoned director—a much more seasoned filmmaker—specifically in the area of horror films and suspense, which is a very unique sensibility as a filmmaker. So he was much more comfortable coming in, knowing that he was doing a film, knowing that was going to have the concordance and the elements that he's mastered.
You served as producer as well as star on both Blade films. What aspects of the production did you have your hands in?
Snipes: Everything. Everything. You know, in the last couple of films I've done, what people don't know is that you have editors, you have producers, you have studio executives, you have businessmen, you have the marketing people who have nothing to do with the acting, nothing to do with the art—don't even care about that—making decisions about the final product. And then you walk down the street, and people go, "Wes, that film was whack!" And I'm like, "I know what you mean, it was terrible!" ... But it's outside of our control. Now we're moving to get a little bit of that control so that at the end of the day, if it wins, the applause goes to us; if it loses, the boos go to us. It's all good.
Guillermo del Toro, how did you get involved in the this project?
del Toro: Well, the idea was really to do something different than the first movie. I mean, I came on board after the third try by [screenwriter David Goyer] and [producer] Peter Frankfurt. Originally I was not interested in a sequel, because basically, I don't like directing things I don't write. But I had Devil's Backbone already as a prospective [project] to do, and I said to them, "The first thing is, I will do it if you wait for me, because I'm going to do Devil's Backbone first." And then the studio was talking about maybe pushing Devil's Backbone after Blade II, and I said, "No, no, no. Let me do Devil's Backbone first, and then we'll do Blade." Because that way I will have my personal movie, my personal little movie, out of the way. I'll have my whole fantastic experience of doing something I control 100 percent. That's very dear to me. And then I'll go and play with the big toys, you know? Which is completely different and requires a different set of skills, political and artistic. And they were accommodating enough to do it.
I jumped on board with the idea of bringing to this movie a different set of values—visually, texturally and even in terms of tone—than the first one. I wanted this to be more fun and lighter, in a way, but scary—much scarier than the first one. [I wanted] the colors and the palette to be much more comic-book, or a Japanese anime type of thing, and the camera to be a little bit more crazy than the first one in a way. And you know, when I had my interview with Wesley, we talked, and he agreed with me, and I agreed with his ideas. He said, "I think Blade would be having fun with what he does." I said, "Absolutely. I love that." Because Blade was already a very brooding character in the first one, and in this one he seems to be lighter. He seems to be more nimble, even physically. And he gets to do more in this move than in the first one. ... We structured it so every fight would have a little story, and it would be completely different in terms of style in camera and fighting style than the next one. You know, like the first fight with the motorcycles is a pure action scene; then the second fight with the guys on the ramp is a very martial-arts-oriented fight; then the fight with the vampire ninjas with swords is a duel, like old-style martial arts and Errol Flynn rolled into one, but with really hyper, hyper version of that, and so on and so forth. Each one was created as a little set piece with a story.
What made you, a respected independent filmmaker, decide to direct the second film in a previously established film franchise?
del Toro: I work on the movies I feel passionate about. I absolutely am not for hire. If I was for hire, I would have done ... Alien[: Resurrection], which was offered at one point to me. But I have a lot in common with the Blade universe, and I felt I could bring stuff to it that would make it fun. And hopefully I did. I mean, I think that if the movie feels different from the first one, and it feels fun and feels scarier and it feels visually different, then I did my job. ... I don't go, "Well, I'll do a giant bug movie, and then I'll do a personal movie, and then I'll do a vampire movie with Wesley Snipes." I really cannot plan that. I really went into Mimic thinking I was going to make both a big movie and a very personal movie. Unfortunately, I believe that was not the case. In the case of Blade, I must say I learned from Mimic what battles I could win, and they were not thematic. So thematically, Blade II is far removed from my usual thematic concerns, but visually it's my movie.
Are you surprised at the positive response this film is getting?
del Toro: You hope that people love it as much as you do. But it's not always the case, you know? I'm happy people feel about it kind of the way I feel about it, which is, it's a great ride. Usually, when [they] say a movie is fun, and you go see it, and it is not fun to watch—movies that are supposed to be quick, fun rides that last two hours and 20 minutes—you go, "Please, please, just take me out and shoot me." I'd rather make the movie as short as possible—not try to pretend that we were doing Dostoyevskian characters. The characters were drawn on the go. It was almost like a '70s action film in that sense. The philosophy of it, and the narrative philosophy of it, was a very lean machine, very efficient. Everything in the movie was on the go, which is completely different from anything in terms of sets of skills of things that I've done before.
Would you consider doing Blade III?
del Toro: If we agree on the take that David and I are proposing, yes. Which is, the vampires have won and the whole world is basically a milking factory of humans feeding vampires. It's like a concentration camp for humans. And if that is the world, I would love it, because then you can take it to a new level of nightmarish visuals that the movie will need, that the franchise will need.
This film is very visually dark; was that intentional on your part? What difficulties does that present?
del Toro: Well, I have made kind of a career decision to shoot movies that are really black, really dark, because some of my favorite paintings being Goya, Rembrandt, Caravaggio. The people I love the most in the painted world work with really solid blacks. I always wanted in doing movies to try to capture the things that live in that darkness. And from Cronos on to Blade II, the one thing that you have to do is work with a very brave cameraman, work with a really fast film and also work with a really clear concept of color and texture and composition. The approach to designing Blade is very graphic. It's almost like a comic book that has one pass of color and then one pass of ink, like two processes. And when we were designing the costumes, the sets, everything, the cameraman and I knew what things to hit to make the composition beautiful, but with very little information. So if you see in the movie, when something is illuminated, it is something that is deliberately looked for to be illuminated. ... It's a technically difficult thing to light and to design, but in Blade we came to be so fast that we were doing 70, 85, 90 setups a day with that style. Because we got to be really quick, the cameraman and I.
Also in this issue: Richard Matheson and William Stout
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