Aug 25-31 Natasha Lyonne Week: There’s a new season of her weirdo mystery of the week coming out (I can’t remember the name rn, you can look it up) and she’s been steadily delivering chuckles for decades now.
Blade: Trinity is so weird.
Wesley Snipes was unhappy with the film’s script and the original director’s choice. David S. Goyer, who wrote all of the movies in this franchise, replaced the director of the film, which Snipes also hated. Snipes then refused — allegedly — to film some scenes, so that’s not even him in the movie, but instead a stand-in or CGI. And really, this is a Blade movie more about Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel) than Blade. Hell, we get to watch Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) die yet again, Blade get his ass kicked numerous times and have to get through the origin of Dracula (Dominic Purcell) more than see Wesley Snipes kick ass.
Patton Oswalt — yes, he’s in this — told the AV Club that Snipes “was just fucking crazy in a hilarious way” and “wouldn’t come out of his trailer” and only came to the set for close-ups. “Everything else was done by his stand-in. And he tried to strangle the director, David Goyer. We went out that night to some strip club, and we were all drinking. And there were a bunch of bikers there, so David says to them, “I’ll pay for all your drinks if you show up to set tomorrow and pretend to be my security.” Wesley freaked out and went back to his trailer. And the next day, Wesley sat down with David and was like, “I think you need to quit. You’re detrimental to this movie.” And David was like, “Why don’t you quit? We’ve got all your close-ups, and we could shoot the rest with your stand-in.” And that freaked Wesley out so much that, for the rest of the production, he would only communicate with the director through Post-it notes. And he would sign each Post-it note “From Blade.””
Goyer told The Hollywood Reporter, “Let’s just say I have tremendous respect for Wesley as an actor. He used to be a friend. We’re not friends anymore. I am friends with Patton and I worked with Patton since so … I don’t think anyone involved in that film had a good experience on that film, certainly I didn’t. I don’t think anybody involved with that film is happy with the results. It was a very tortured production.”
In 2020, Snipes told The Guardian, “Let me tell you one thing. If I had tried to strangle David Goyer, you probably wouldn’t be talking to me now. A Black guy with muscles strangling the director of a movie is going to jail, I guarantee you. This is part of the challenges that we as African Americans face here in America — these microaggressions. The presumption that one white guy can make a statement and that statement stands as true! Why would people believe his version is true? Because they are predisposed to believing the Black guy is always the problem.
And all it takes is one person, Mr. Oswalt, who I really don’t know. I can barely remember him on the set, but it’s fascinating that his statement alone was enough to make people go: “Yeah, you know Snipes has got a problem.”
I remind you that I was one of the executive producers of the project. I had contractual director approval. I was not just the actor for hire. I had au-thor-i-ty to say, to dictate, to decide. This was a hard concept for a lot of people to wrap their heads around.”
Also: Snipes sued New Line Cinema and Goyer, “claiming that the studio did not pay his full salary, that he was intentionally cut out of casting decisions and the filmmaking process, despite being one of the producers, and that his character’s screen time was reduced in favor of co-stars Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel.”
In turn, “Snipes was sued by United Talent Agency for allegedly failing to fulfill agreements to pay commission to the agency on his earnings.”
Anyways, this movie has Parker Posey and Billy Tallent — I mean Callum Keith Rennie — as twin vampires Danica and Asher Talos, who frame Blade for murder and kill Whistler, taking him off the board until he’s rescued by the Nightstalkers, who are Hannibal King (Reynolds), Abigail Whistler (Biel), Sommerfield (Natasha Lyonne, yes really) and Hedges (Patton Oswalt). They’ve created sunlight bullets and a weapon called the Daystar that can wipe out all vampires.
Somehow, this is a movie that has Kristofferson, Lyonne, Françoise Yip, Triple H, Eric Bogosian, John Michael Higgins, James Remar and sometimes Wesley Snipes in a film about genetically removing vampires from the face of the Earth. It’s also filled with scenes in Esperanto, including the movie Incubus being viewed. Huh?
This was followed by a Blade TV series that had Sticky Fingaz from Onyx as Blade, which I love the concept of, and plans for a Deacon Frost prequel and an Underworld crossover that both got cancelled because Blade is now part of the MCU, even if we only heard his voice in The Eternals and by the time he was in Deadpool and Wolverine, Snipes being Blade again proved that “There’s only one Blade.”
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