he third installment in the vampire franchise, Blade: Trinity, brings back Wesley Snipes in the title role of the Daywalker who hunts bloodsuckers. But this time around he is joined by two new kick-ass slayers: Abby, the daughter of Blade's mentor, Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), played by Jessica Biel, and Hannibal King, a former-vampire-turned-hunter, played by Ryan Reynolds. Behind the camera, avowed comic geek David Goyer, who wrote the scripts for the previous two Blade movies, gets the chance to direct one for the first time.
Blade: Trinity picks up the story of Blade, who has been targeted for harrassment by the vampire clans. Framed for murder, Blade is captured, then rescued by Abby and King, who are part of a new young breed of vampire hunters called Nightstalkers. Together, they go after the vampire bitch queen Danica Talos (Parker Posey), whose band of the undead has resurrected the ultimate vampire: Dracula, now called Drake (Dominic Purcell), who holds the key to a vampire armageddon.
Biel, Reynolds and Goyer took a moment recently to speak with Science Fiction Weekly about Blade: Trinity, which opens Dec. 8.
Jessica Biel, what kind of training did you do to get in shape to play Abby?
Biel: I was in the gym six days a week, a couple of hours a day. And then [an] hour of fight training, an hour of archery and a super-strict diet through the whole movie. ... Heavy weight lifting. For bulk. To bulk up in the beginning, and then once I got to a certain size, it was more of a maintaining [thing], and lots of cardio to lean as much as you can down. That's why I had those striations ripped down my muscles, because we worked to build, and then maintain, and then leaned it out as much as we could.
Did you ever wonder if you could really do it? Did it ever cross your mind?
Biel: No. It didn't. It didn't cross my mind, because I've been working out forever, so the gym for me is not a chore. It's a stress relief, it's something that I enjoy a lot. And that, I mean, I was getting paid to work out. I couldn't think of a better thing. I think I questioned my choreography sometimes, when we planned out all of these amazing fight sequences with, like, "Kill 13 guys at once." And, you know, show up on the day and kind of cross your fingers and hope that ... you can get it done, and it looks right and my punches look right ... It's a weird thing to throw a fake punch.
You get to work with some cool new weapons, including what looks like a bow with an ultraviolet laser where the bowstring should be.
Biel: Well, you know that we really did have an issue with that thing, because there were two different ones, and I would hold it up, and then we'd have to stop and then replace it with the big one, and then replace it with the small one, and then the computer graphics, I mean, the CGI would work later, but it was really kind of a pain to get that thing working.
Some of that choreography is so fast. Can you talk about shooting something like that, how long it takes you to do that?
Biel: My last fight scene, which is cut in with Wes's scene, the fight scene, ... I think that took two days to shoot, because we shot it in one long master, basically. And it was 13 guys, and it was one after another after another after another. ... It worked much better for me to keep doing it in one big ... whole sequence than to chop it up, because ... you lose your momentum coming from one person to the next. ... I was also working with the best stunt people ever. I mean, they sold everything. I mean, if I gave kind of a crappy punch, they still sold it like I knocked them out. So it was really half our stunt people's fault that it looked so great. ... But it was 14, 15 hours one day of just fighting all day long, and after the day, I was just wiped, every muscle. So I almost threw out my back. I mean, you get to a point where you're like, "Holy crap, I don't know if I'm going to survive it." But it was awesome. It was so much fun. I had such a good time doing it.
Did have any injuries during shooting?
Biel: No, I didn't, not really. ... I have kind of a weak back anyway, and I got a bit of a chiropractic adjustment, which kind of cleaned me right up. So I think that it could have been really bad if we hadn't just taken care of it right away. But I didn't really have any other injuries, besides my knees and my shins. I looked like I had been hit by a sledgehammer. I was just bruised up and down, because, you know, colliding knees with shins and hitting the corners, it was just a mess of knees hitting things. But that's it. I was really lucky.
Can you tell us a little about working with Wesley? Somebody said that he stays in character for the whole movie. Is that true?
Biel: That's true. ... All the time that we were on set or in a trailer or wherever he was we were seeing him, he was Blade. I can't describe it any other way. He was just serious and very intense and quiet and not really communicative at all. I mean, that was what he needed.
It really, really helped all of our dynamic on screen, because we didn't know each other. We weren't supposed to know each other. We were all awkward around each other, and it was perfect. Because that's what it was in real life. ... He didn't say a whole lot to me, to be honest with you.
Was it hard to keep a straight face with Ryan on the set? Was he cracking jokes a lot?
Biel: Yeah. Yeah. ... But David Goyer's the prankster. ... What didn't he do? No, it was actually kind of fun. ... No one's ever played any jokes on me, except this movie, and it was like joke after joke after joke. ... [In one scene,] I kill all these SWAT guys, and they're all lying on the floor. And so for, like, weeks and weeks, we had all these dummies, dressed in SWAT gear, lying on the floor. And you know, you just get used to stepping over them, and they're everywhere. They're all over the set. And so of course one of our prop guys gets dressed up, lies down on the floor, and I didn't know it, and David pulls me over, and he's like really serious, and he says, "I need to talk to you about something." And I'm thinking, "Oh, s--t, what have I done? Did we shoot something? What do we have to do?" And he says, "We have to reshoot something." And at the right time, ... the guy who was on the floor grabbed my leg. ... [I] scream, everyone laughs. ... And then also, he loved this, it was his favorite. I'm walking around with my flashlight and my gun, and I'm looking for [another character], and I have to look in a meat locker. Well, that just sent him, you know? He hid in the meat locker, and ... it's take three, and my gun is so heavy and my arms are shaking and I'm looking, and I open this meat locker, and it's "Rowrr!" And it scared the s--t out of me. And ... I didn't know really what to do, and I'm screaming, and he's laughing, and the whole crew's laughing, and he goes, "Go on, go on, keep rolling."
There's some talk of spinning off Abby and Hannibal King into a Nightstalkers movie. Are you signed for spinoffs?
Biel: Um, I think so, yeah.
In another scene, you shoot an arrow directly at the camera. Didn't you actually shoot that arrow into the camera for real?
Biel: I did. I busted, like, a $300,000 lens. ... David loves this. He thought this was so great. ... [In the scene,] I'm standing up, and Drake is turned into his gnarly monster guy that he is, and he's got Wesley, and he's up, he's holding him by the neck, and I'm up there. I'm up 40 feet away from camera. They've put all this ... Plexiglas up to block anybody getting hurt. Everyone's [moved] away [from the camera]. ... They couldn't get the shot they wanted. They wanted [the arrow] to come straight next to [the] camera, instead of diving down. And I was like, "Look, ... my coach said either [tighten up the bow] or let her aim at [the camera]." ... Gabby [Gabriel Beristain], our [director of photography], was like, "It's OK. Aim at the camera." And I was like, "I don't know, Gabby. I don't want to do that." ... And I just aimed and shot that lens right on the first take. And it'll be in the DVD, because I literally ... shoot it, you see the camera goes pfft! And you hear it. And I'm just like in slow motion, and I start to laugh and point, and then everybody just dies, and our poor camera assistant's like, "Oh, my God! My lens!" So now he has to call the studio and explain what happened. It was awesome, though.
Ryan Reynolds, you did a lot of improvisation in this film, coming up with some of Hannibal King's jokes?
Reynolds: Yeah, well, David definitely imbued a sense of humor in Hannibal King, which is what attracted me to this in the first place.
You worked hard to get in shape for this movie?
Reynolds: I can never work out like that again. That was pretty intense, but ... it slowly goes away. I'm 10 pounds lighter [now] than I was in the movie, but you know, we put on a little over 20 pounds for the role specifically. David asked me when I first met him, he said, "Can you do that?" So I said, "Absolutely!" So full of s--t, I had no idea if I could do that.
You did a lot of weight-lifting?
Reynolds: Yeah, more weights than I could ever dream of. I can hear the clink of barbells in my head still. It was intense. We'd do two hours of weight-lifting a day, then an hour of fight training, and then you'd go shoot for 15 hours. The shooting was a workout, you know? You're getting tossed around like a midget with Triple H. You know, it looked like midget-tossing. ... I thought I was big. That guy ... .
You have a big fight scene with professional wrestler Triple H [Paul Michael Levesque], who plays a vampire henchman. How much of that is really you being thrown around?
Reynolds: All of it, because— [and] I mean this with some humility— ... we'd gotten in such shape that they couldn't find stuntmen who looked like us, Jessie or I, so we just did them. And that little space is so small that ... you're going to know it's a stuntman if you get somebody else.
So what's it like to be pounded by Triple H, then?
Reynolds: I recommend it for everyone. It's fantastic. Very character-building, for one. It's very painful, for another. These guys [pro wrestlers] don't know subtlety in the physical sense, so when he picks you up and throws you, he picks you up and throws you. And the floor was cement, because I had to slide every time he threw me, and we'd established that early on in another sequence we'd shot in there. So there was no way to put a rubber floor down, as much as we tried. We begged them to. We put one down; it just didn't look right. I'd bounce off the ground. So we'd go back to the cement floor. So it was hell. We shot it, I think, in four or five days, just that once sequence, and kept going at it. Two grown men wrestling around.
Did either Triple H or Wesley give you any advice?
Reynolds: I think they both said on the first day—I'll never forget it—"Stay the f--k out of my way."
Was Wesley's attitude helpful to you?
Reynolds: Oh, yeah, like, I mean, it's perfect. We are contentious to begin with, our characters. We're fighting on the same side against a common enemy, but we're adversaries as well, so it really helps. ... The less he gives me when I'm popping off, the more it feeds me, the more it inspires me. There's a [scene]—it was something I begged David to let me do—where he's just thrown some guy off of the roof, and I wanted to say to him—because I'd never actually seen Wesley blink— ... something about that to Wesley while we're walking away in this badass shot. And David was torn, because it was kind of one of those real trailer moments, where the three of us are all walking, looking all badass. ... Hannibal's like, "You ever think of sitting down with somebody, maybe having a little bit of share time? You know, working out some of these childhood demons? I see you were in a little bit of a shame spiral out here when you threw that guy off the roof. And also, you might want to try blinking once in a while. It's just a thought." And, you know, it's just when Wesley looks at you when you're saying that kind of stuff, it just feeds you. You're like, "He looks like he's just going to turn you into some kind of ... pulp in about two seconds."
Is this a character you'd like to play again if there's a Blade 4?
Reynolds: Well, there won't be a Blade 4, but I'm signed on to do a Nightstalker spinoff. ... Anyway, if there was a Blade 4 I would not be a part of it, but I am signed on to do this property that Marvel owns, which is the Nightstalker franchise.
Are you signed for one or two?
Reynolds: I'm signed for one.
David Goyer, it was weird to watch this movie and see two people [Parker Posey and John Michael Higgins] from Best in Show in it.
Goyer: I love independent films. I mean, Natasha Lyonne's also in it, and Eric Bogosian. ... I think it's really interesting when you take actors like that and put them in mainstream action movies, because I think they bring an energy to it that it's not just the same old same old. ... When I first suggested Parker Posey to New Line, that was the only time they kind of raised their eyebrows. But ... I loved her. I think she's a little controversial with the audience: You either love her or you hate her in it, but I kind of feel like she's the female version of what Stephen Dorff was doing in the first one. John Michael Higgins, I thought he was insanely good in the movie. But when I called him, he said, "My God, why do you want me in this movie?" And I said, "Because you'll be great." So that's one of my favorite scenes in the film, ... when he's giving Blade that psychiatric evaluation. And he ended up having such a good time.
[Posey] came to me first, which was kind of funny. We were in New York, and we were casting, and we heard that Parker Posey wanted to come in. And she came in, and I think it might be on the DVD. We videotaped the meeting, and I said, "You don't want to be in this movie. Come on, why would you possibly want to be in this movie?" And she said, "Well, I want to be a trailer-trash, ghetto vampire chick." And in her Parker way, she said that. And I said, "There's ... not a chance in hell that you're going to do this movie. If we offer you this role next week, are you telling me that you're going to do it?" "Yes, I promise." "Do you swear?" "Yes, I promise."
And it goes on between the two of us for about 15 minutes, and finally, I called her about four days later and said, "All right, I'm offering you the role. Are you going to do it?" And she said "Yes." I still said to New Line, "There's no way she'll do it."
What's Wesley like when you're working with him?
Goyer: When you're working and writing it before the movie begins, he's Wesley, and generally our script meetings have been fairly limited, because they're mainly about him cutting dialogue. I mean, he doesn't have a lot of dialogue anyway, but ... he would talk about haikus. Have Blade say as much as possible in as few words as possible. So we would trim the dialogue down, and then later on he gets involved with a lot of the conceptualization of the fight sequences and things like that, and the weapons and the design of the weapons. ... But once you shoot, he's Blade. ... One time I got a note from him signed "Blade."
What about these rumors that he's not happy with the handling of the film and wrote this letter? What's the real story behind that?
Goyer: You know, there was definitely some drama on the set, I won't deny it. ... It was similar to the drama on the other two movies, and the only difference is a little more of that leaked out. There has always been a certain amount of drama on the movies. ... When you direct a Blade film it's not like Fried Green Tomatoes. It's definitely a full-contact sport, and ... there are a lot of personalities involved and a lot of egos involved, and definitely sometimes you go head to head. And the only difference in this film is that I was doing it, as opposed to [Blade director Stephen] Norrington or [Blade II director] Guillermo [del Toro]. But at the end of the day, Wesley's always been happy with the final product.
What did you learn from the other two movies about directing a Blade movie?
Goyer: I think I was uniquely well prepared to direct it, because I've been through, as the writer, two other films. So I knew what worked and what didn't work, and I knew where the other guys had run into problems, whether it be a stunt or a visual effect. ... One of the things that Wesley and I talked a lot about was the Nightstalkers and how they should dress and how they should carry themselves. And my whole point was that they represented a different breed of vampire hunters, and they weren't like Blade, so they shouldn't dress like Blade, and they're much more cavalier, and that was definitely a heated debate.
But I think that one of the reasons why the movie is successful is that the movie is funny. ... You needed the fact that you had those two different viewpoints in order to create that humor, which Wesley understood. I mean the scene where Ryan's asking him, "Why don't you blink?" ... I mean, obviously, Wesley's in on that. ... But my point is let's just push that as far as possible, because they're apples and oranges. ... One of my favorite moments in the movie is when Blade sort of crashes through the skylight to save the day, and Hannibal King is all chained up there, and Blade just leaves him there. Because that's Blade.
Can you talk about this Nightstalker spinoff that you're contemplating?
Goyer: Well, you know, there aren't any specific plans for one per se, but we have a contingency plan. So if it's successful, if the audience wants it, I mean, it's entirely possible. There could be a Blade 4. There could be a Nightstalker. There could be a combination of both. And we won't do it unless the fans really want it. ... I do have an idea for a story, but there's no script or anything like that. We just wanted to wait and see how people react to it.
As a director, you were able to include scenes in Blade: Trinity that were cut out of the first two films?
Goyer: There are two scenes in this movie, one that was supposed to be in the first one and one that was supposed to be in the second one. ... One, the blood-farm scene in this, I had written for the first film, and we shot a crappy version of it that frankly was so bad we didn't put it in the movie. ... And then I wrote it again for Blade II, and it was cut for budgetary reasons. And the car chase in this I had originally envisioned for the opening in Blade II, and that was cut for budgetary reasons. And when it came time for me to direct, I said, "Screw it, I'm putting it in the movie." And Norrington called me up—he saw the movie the other day—and he said, "God, ... you got the version of the blood farm that we were supposed to do."
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The cast and crew of Legend of Earthsea
