what happened to Karen from the first movie, anyway?

Actually, the concept of the reapers seems cool, but as our main villain, Nomak leaves something to be desired. I think some disliked Deacon Frost in Blade simply because he didn’t appear very imposing; Stephen Dorff’s not exactly a massive dude. However, in a weird way, that made Frost even scarier; since Dorff backed his menace without so much muscle, he became more ominous and chilly. Nomak receives less exposition and development and fails to become half as interesting as Frost.

The other new characters didn’t do much to make me forget those from the first flick either. As Blade’s new almost love interest Nyssa, Leonor Varela looks lovely, but she provides a very stiff presence. And what happened to Karen from the first movie, anyway? At its end, we learned that she would team with Blade to help develop new vampire-battling tools, but she receives absolutely no mention in the sequel. They bring back a character who should have died in the original and leave out the one who deserved to be along for the ride! I guess they wanted some romantic tension between Blade and Nyssa, and that would have seemed awkward if Blade had an old lady.

Despite these problems, I did enjoy Blade II. No, it didn’t seem as fresh and exciting as the original film, but it offered plenty of charms of its own. The action occasionally appeared derivative of other movies, but director Guillermo Del Toro moved things along at a fine clip and made sure that the fight sequences never repeated themselves. Blade II offers an experience too violent and gruesome for a mass audience, but those who dig this kind of comic book action should get a kick out of it.