<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Just so you know, I LOVE the first movie and Blade 2 was one of my most anticipated movies of 2002 (along with Austin Powers, Star Wars, Spidey, and The Two Towers), so I was there first weekend.
Everything I loved about the first movie was comprimised in the second. Story? The first one had a cool main plot with a lot of great background story being flushed out in nice, subtle ways. The second had a neat main plot, but the background crap was just that, crap. You COULD forgive that since the first had built up the world so much, but you need the rest of the movie to make up for it. Characters? Pfft, not even close here. Whistler was Whistler, but Blade had MUCH more depth in the first. He wasn't just a badass, they also really flushed his human side and did a great job of making him into a very tragic hero. In the second, he was just "cool" Blade, badass only. Everything else didn't matter. Also, the Vampire group was "meh". There was lots of them and since there was so many, all were 2D characters aside from the girl (who was FUCKING hot, BTW). They didn't even give closure to the doctor character from the first film either, who was a surprisingly strong female character (we don't get too many of those in movies nowadays). The female vampire from the second wasn't really that strong, she just acted tough, which is what they do with female roles nowadays to give them fake depth. As cool as Nomak was, he just didn't have the on-screen presence of Frost. A lot of that had to do with the fact there was a second main enemy (the father vampire) and they had to split the time among the two, so neither was as good as they could have been. And considering just how good Frost was, it was a letdown, albiet a smaller one.
And if you want to talk about the fighting sequences, I just flat out prefer real action sequences (yes, they were sped up a bit, but that's not a big deal) to super CG-enhanced ones. I mean, the CG in the second was ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE. It was too much. They were like a kid in a candy store, using CG in place where they didn't need to just because they could. Having said that, the fight sequences were fairly neat, just not nearly as good as the ones in the first.
At the end of the day, it was a weaker film than the first in every way. To me, it was the characters and story of the first that made it one of my fav action flicks. The sequel wasn't horrible, just horribly disappointing.</div>
I was there on that fateful day, were you?