The humans have a new hunter.
Blade.
I think people love the Blade series because in their own way,
they have a strange kind of artistic integrity.
This is a big, crazy, unhinged action effects...
...extravaganza.
It's a film of real scope.
Big explosions.
- Hold-on-to-your-seat action. - New characters.
Jesus Christ!
Blood-sucking mortals.
A lot more fun.
I'm a fan of vampires.
The prospect of being able to play one, I thought would be really fun.
To get the opportunity to be in Blade 3 was a huge thrill.
Precious, isn't he?
I was immediately interested when they said they wanted me to be in a movie
where there are car crashes and stuff.
I've never done a movie that's this physically grueling.
Aah!
You have to dig a little bit deeper to find that extra little...
that extra little thing.
The coolest, best, most rocking Blade movie yet.
We got something for you. There's no question about that.
I think fans are gonna love it.
Sorry I got old on you.
I see you alone...
David wrote the first screenplay, he wrote the second screenplay,
and he wrote the screenplay for the third movie as well.
At the very beginning, when I first pitched the idea of doing a Blade film to New Line,
uh, I pitched them three films, and they thought I was crazy at the time.
This was back in 1994, so it was ten years ago.
David came in, and in a way, broke the mold.
We really tried to defy expectations.
And it was kinda cool because nobody ever expects these movies to be any good.
It was the least likely to be the pioneer
of this incredible renaissance of comics to film.
Originally, the studio had envisioned doing
a much more low-budget almost blaxploitation film,
a six to eight million dollar film.
And they didn't want to take the subject matter seriously,
and I thought there was a potential
for the movie to take itself very seriously.
We reinvented Blade a bit from the comic books into the film.
We had broader strokes in terms of our reinterpretation.
He wasn't as well known as a character like Spiderman or Batman,
so we had more latitude in terms of what we could play with.
In the comic books, Blade isn't even half-vampire,
so we had a bit more freedom there to explore the character.
A lot of the vampire films, books, television shows before that
had been kind of locked in the sort of more traditional,
what I call "Anne Rice mode,"
and we turned the whole vampire world on its head.
There's a reality to it that I really hooked into.
We reinvented the vampire mythology,
so we've tried to explain how vampirism works
more, uh, by scientific means.
It's not supernaturally induced.
Vampirism is a virus that progressively mutates the body
and turns the subjects into another life form.
Vampires are essentially another species.
They can procreate. They're not undead.
So we've tried to adhere to some kind of parameters of reality.
It's not so out of the realm of possibility.
You know, there is a sort of scientific grounded history.
And there certainly is a literary history
to our knowledge of vampires, and they're fun.
- Ugh! - So the movies are true.
Bram Stoker... he wrote a good yarn.
Any time you get into the third iteration or the third permutation of a film,
you have to be sure that you're doing something different.
There aren't many good sequels,
and there are even less good third films, third chapters.
So it's really important that you keep shaking things up,
that you do something different.
In the second film, Blade teamed up with the vampires.
The third film, we wanted to drag Blade much more into the real world
and have him interact with the FBI, the local cops, and things like that.
And of course, the real world thinks he's absolutely crazy.
In the first film, there's a line
where Whistler says, "There's a war going on,
and from time to time, real people get caught in the crossfire."
That's the story we wanted to tell for the third film.
Well, the first film is almost word for word
like my first pitch was to New Line for their first film.
The second film is relatively close.
The third film originally, to be honest,
I was gonna do something much more ballsy
and set the third film 50 years in the future,
because Blade as a... an immortal, he doesn't really age.
The vampires don't either,
and I was gonna set it in a world where the vampires had won completely,
and it was much more like a Mad Max world,
and the humans were resistance fighters.
But at the end of the day, I think part of what makes the Blade films so much fun
is... is seeing all this outrageous action
play against a backdrop that is somewhat familiar.
And if we set it 50 years in the future,
it might as well have been Planet of The Apes or something,
so I decided to pull back the reins a little,
and... and the battle for the world is happening now in this film.
We're sort of at the tipping point, so it's still a world that we recognize,
but the vampires are starting to take over.
He put Blade right in our world.
We're seeing that vampires are being integrated into society
in a way that's truly frightening.
I'm hungry, and I wanna eat somebody!
We're catching fragments of a war that's spilling onto the streets.
Someone like Blade comes across as a complete psychopath.
And that's something that he's never really had to deal with.
And he's in trouble.
The one thing that... that this franchise taught me...
just go with the people who feel really passionate about...
It's not a day job.
David Goyer created the franchise,
he created the vibe of the films and the... the series,
and this is the first Blade movie he's directed.
It's the second feature he's directed,
and as the guy who has been the only writer ever on the Blade franchise,
it made perfect sense to be the next step for him and the next step for the movies.
It was my producers, Lynn Harris and Peter Frankfurt,
that suggested I direct this,
and I don't know why I wasn't even thinking about it at the moment,
and they asked me when I was about halfway through writing this third film.
And I said, "Well, let's see how the script turns out."
I... I wasn't sure how happy I was gonna be with it,
and once I finished the script, I said, "Yeah, I think I have to direct this."
It's so much fun,
and injecting the new blood of Hannibal King and Abigail Whistler
made it even more fun.
The movies have really been fun because each director has brought
a very unique individual kind of take on the material.
Norrington kind of created the... the grammar,
the vocabulary, visually.
And if you know Norrington and you see Blade,
you really see how much of him, personality-wise and worldview-wise,
is in that movie.
I think Guillermo has a completely different sensibility than... than Norrington
and was able to just use Blade and Wesley as the common thread,
but really bring his own signature to it, and that... that was fun.
It was really fun as a producer to be able to work
with two very different kinds of... of personalities
and directors and visions.
There were still things in the first two films that I wasn't entirely happy with.
There are also scenes in the first two films that got cut for one reason or another
and never made it into the movies, so this time, with the third film,
with me in the directing seat, I said, "We're gonna get those two scenes."
One of them was a scene that was cut from the first film
that appears on the DVD in the deleted scenes in a very truncated version
and answers the question of
if the vampires win, where will they get their food supply?
Well, this time, we were able to do it right,
in the way that I originally envisioned it,
in a much more bombastic way,
and I think the audiences will be satisfied with that.
God in Heaven.
The second big thing was I had an enormous chase sequence plan
and was scripted for Blade 2,
and we cut it for budgetary reasons.
This time out, with me in the director's seat, I said, "You know what?
"Damn it, we're just gonna take that entire 8-page sequence and do all of it
the way that I intended to do for the second film,"
and the studio wanted to cut it again,
and I dug my heels in, and I said, "No way. We're shooting it this time."
So I can say that we got it all.
They're very close to the way that they were scripted
both in Blade 1 and in Blade 2.
We tried to do something a little different in this film
than perhaps the previous films.
It's a little demanding because we're trying to top ourselves,
trying to give the audience more than we gave them before.
The first Blade film came out a year or so before The Matrix.
Then The Matrix came out, Blade 2, second and third Matrix films.
By the time for us to do the third Blade film,
I feel like influences from The Matrix and the Blade films
has completely permeated the public consciousness,
so you've got various other movies and TV series,
even shows like Charmed, doing wirework and wire-fu work.
Some of that's gotten old hat, and for a lot of the action,
I thought it would be interesting to take it backwards and go a little old-school.
The action'll still be devastating.
No peach-eating. No, no. Hard-core.
I insisted that most of the stunts be done practically,
that we have very little wirework,
that we have almost no digital stuntmen in the film.
We've got all the hand-to-hand combat that the Blade films are known for,
but we've also got car chases.
We've got foot chases.
We wanted to set more of the action on locations in and amongst the real world
and real people and civilians, things like that.
So we've got some other modes of action that we've never been able to play with
because we've been mostly bound to stages and set work,
as opposed to being on location.
The biggest challenge making this film is the fact that on any given day,
we might have as many as three units shooting... three separate units.
Like today, for instance, we've got three units shooting,
and that's because in order to get the film done on time
in as economical way as possible,
we've had to have a second unit shooting bits and pieces,
a third unit shooting bits and pieces,
and so coordinating all those different units
and making sure that there's continuity between them
has been a bit of a challenge.
Just being out in the community and being out in the world
and figuring out all that stuff is always a logistical challenge,
but no more so than any other action movie, is my guess.
We've worked out the kinks by now.
These things are really hard.
We love blowing stuff up.
I'm much happier when we're blowing stuff up.
Let me just say this.
Blade is the house that David S. Goyer built.
David Goyer is Blade... is the creator of Blade.
As far as I'm concerned, he is the prophet.
He, along with Wesley,
understands the character in this world as well as anyone.
Better than anyone.
David Goyer has a very particular vision,
and a deep vision... that's what's so cool about it.
It's got types of intelligence and humor that you just don't find in movies like this.
You have to hold a lot of information and people in your head at the same time,
and you have to be constantly thinking story,
constantly thinking about the details at the same time.
There's a lot to... to control,
and you have to, like, kind of be the father
over a movie like this.
It's like wrangling a small army.
Action sequences take a long time,
fight sequences take a long time.
We have to be finished pretty much on schedule.
Otherwise, we'll blow our release date.
So that is a constant sort of ticking time bomb
in the back of my head and Goyer's head.
I think that's the toughest.
Certainly dealing with very, very sophisticated physical action.
Abby. It's Drake!
Aah!
And then, lots of very dynamic personalities...
...who need to be properly managed.
This is always a challenge.
We're working days, we're working nights.
Usually, it's 12 to16 hours, so, you know...
Either we all love each other, or either we're just at each other's throats.
I'm like, "If I really could bite you on the neck, I'd bite you on the neck."
Three, two, one, action!
It's hard for a director to be able to... to coordinate all that
and pay attention to the relationships between the different characters
and develop the characters.
So far, that's worked good.
David is a very collaborative director.
He's able to articulate with the actors what he wants.
He has a language that actors need.
He's an actor's director.
He really, um, he really watches for performance
and really gives good notes.
He just knows how to communicate with them,
which is a lot different than a lot of other directors,
'cause most of them are technicians and don't have the words.
He can point you in the right direction,
and he gives me a lot of help and... and pointers
in ways that are easy for me to just grab onto and go with.
David Goyer's just... he's, like, smart.
You know, sci-fi geeky guy.
Just a truly gifted director,
and... and it goes without saying that he's a gifted writer.
He's like a painter, just perfecting the last little bits and pieces,
and then he steps back and looks at it and goes,
"Okay, I need to add this and that, this and that."
And you know at the end of the day, you got everything with David.
You really know that if... if you are at home and in bed, you got it all.
It's an odd experience, but I love it.
That's one of the things that's fun about movies
is that you never know who you're gonna be partnered with
or where you're gonna find yourself.
It's... you know, every day's a new day.
I've not met the director. I'm not really sure who that is.
Which guy is that?
We got it. We got it on.
There's nothing stopping them now.
There's me.
Shit, man, who the fuck ain't a fan of Blade movies?
I'm always drawn to anti-heroes.
There's something bad inside of me.
- Blade's a great character. - Aah!
He's a man who is unknowable.
He is a hero in spite of himself.
Not a happy camper.
He despises the whole idea of being a vampire.
Tortured.
And he's not even a particularly nice guy.
His life's purpose is to just simply kill vampires.
He's incredibly focused, incredibly intense.
He has this ability to capture the stoicism of a superhero.
Very shaded, nuanced.
The world isn't nice.
He ends up doing something for the benefit of humanity,
but humanity doesn't really care that he helped them out.
You got 20 seconds.
Not really a good guy.
Twenty.
He just knows the bad guys are worse.
In my mind, Wesley was always the perfect Blade,
so when I was writing the first film,
he was who I had in mind,
and he was first person that we went to and fortunately, he said yes.
In casting all these actors,
we look for an emotional range and a strength
and a vulnerability and a complexity...
Hide!
...that each of these characters has to have and of course, the humor.
So we pick out types that show those... those colors.
I've changed my eyes. Not bad.
Very different, offbeat, character-driven actors.
And that was the way we wanted to go with this film.
I'm a huge fan of Christopher Guest films,
and A Mighty Wind came out
and I'd always wanted to work with Parker,
and I sat down and tried to see how many people from A Mighty Wind
could I fit in a Blade film.
I thought it was so hysterical that you would take people from that cast
and plunk them down into this cast.
What's your take on all these rumors we've been hearing about vampires?
Vampires, vampires... what?
It's unusual that you get to come back three movies in a row,
and say, "Well, what can we do different with this character?
How can we make this character grow?"
Aah!
The third film is a story about Blade transitioning
from a heroic figure to a mythic figure.
Blade is gonna go through a tremendous emotional transformation here.
I felt it was important that Blade come right up against mortality,
so Whistler does die, and then Blade is forced to team up with these kids.
Who the hell are you people?
He can't believe that this is the card that he's been dealt.
Sounds like rejects from a Saturday morning cartoon.
They're not as well-trained, and they're not as powerful as Blade,
and they lose their cool sometimes.
I'm pretty sure we saved your ass back there.
Then it makes Blade angry and it makes Blade frustrated
that he has to rely on these kids,
and it also makes Blade feel out of place.
Rookies.
I think Wesley is a perfect Blade
because he's well trained in the martial arts.
It comes to him naturally.
He has an innate understanding of action and movement and dance.
But he's also a classically trained actor.
And even though Blade is a man of few words,
so much of what Wesley does with Blade
he... he imbues with all these beautiful little nuances.
He has a certain flourish to the way that he does things
and a certain snap to his step.
Kill you? Motherfucker, I'll kill you!
I'll just enjoy it better.
It's very distinct to him and to that character.
Most of it's physical, in the same way
that someone like Clint Eastwood will imbue the lead character in Unforgiven.
It's always a challenge with me to try to have Blade speak as little as possible
in the first act.
I try to have him speak less than ten lines
in the first half an hour of the film.
It takes a talented actor to be able to pull that off.
There are certain things that are written in the script,
and then there are certain things than an actor brings to a role.
And Wesley is very much fused with the creation of that character
and his persona.
Wesley Snipes is Blade.
There's really very little distance between he and the character.
Wesley is kind of a Zen warrior himself.
He imbues that character with this sense of warrior-like severity
and also a real sense of humor...
Oh, it's you,
...and lightness.
Forgot my sword.
Cootchie-coo.
Couple that with his personal dedication to the study of martial arts,
his expertise, his knowledge, sense of history and tradition,
and you really end up with Blade.
You'd be hard-pressed to find anybody else that could play that role.
Blade finds himself face to face with his destiny,
and then he has to fight the vampire of all vampires.
Ultimately, there's a... there's an ending,
and Blade realizes what his whole purpose in life is...
was... had been.
Hannibal King and Abigail are very different
and really, I think, cool additions to the Blade universe.
And it's fun because, I think, again they'll defy audience expectations a little bit.
They'll be a surprise.
Of course, it doesn't have the range of a sword.
And it's also fun because they defy Blade's expectations.
You're kids.
You're not ready to roll with this.
Blade doesn't really know how to deal with them.
Like it or not, we are all you got.
And that's a fun thing to watch.
You might wanna consider blinking once in a while.
My relationship with King is very special
because it's kind of the only family that she's got.
We have this, like, brother sister bond
because we started this whole thing together.
He hates me, doesn't me?
Yeah.
The interplay between she and Ryan...
Thank you.
...is sexy and fun...
I brought your toys.
...and energetic.
Try to keep up.
It has been brother and sister in the past.
I think now that they're in this really intense situation...
Eventually, Abigail found me.
...when you read between the lines,
there's definitely some intimate sexual tension going on.
And that's basically turning a frown upside down.
I think at the moment a little more brother and sister
but could possibly turn into something a little bit more intimate.
Abigail, the lost daughter of Whistler himself,
she understands how awful the enemy is.
She's really peeved that the vampires are after her family,
and she's gonna take her revenge.
Ugh!
She can fight the vampires just as well as all the men in the movie.
It's really wonderful to play an equal...
Scream if this hurts, chica.
...physically and mentally.
- Ugh! - Aah!
Abigail Whistler is a woman of very few words,
and so she has to imbue that character
with a lot of physicality and a lot of presence,
and again, it's something that's very difficult to do,
and she does it very well.
The scenes that she's in, she completely owns,
and she definitely gives Wesley a run for his money.
She really idolizes Blade...
Are you all right?
...and looks to him as a replacement father
because he's been such a factor in her life
even though she hasn't met him until five days ago.
Don't let it turn inward.
She's also kind of a... a closed character.
She has a couple of really wonderful vulnerable moments.
...I'll just die.
Zoe?
Whistler.
Jessica Biel... she has given this film a tremendous grace.
Not only that, you have Ryan Reynolds.
Ryan brings something which is also very interesting...
a jovial street-wisey attitude to that film.
Hannibal King is an acerbic vampire hunter.
This dog has a bigger dick than you.
You suck your own dick with that mouth?
I was talking to her!
What's different about Hannibal as opposed to Blade is
Hannibal's defense is humor.
And somehow, I... I don't picture you teaching karate at the local Y.
And also, Hannibal King sometimes serves as the audience's proxy,
because he doesn't view himself as an action hero
in the way that Blade obviously does or even Abigail Whistler does.
He's just a normal guy that kind of got caught up in these horrific circumstances.
Her fangs are located in her vagina.
So it's fun to play this character that doesn't take himself so seriously
to the point where he's just always got this mean face on,
and he's just blood and carnage everywhere.
He's also got this very unpredictable light side
that comes out at certain moments of the movie.
I ate a lot of garlic, and I just farted.
Ryan is a terrific actor.
Silent but deadly.
He writes a lot of his own material,
and he and I have had a lot of fun working together
and coming up with little beats for Hannibal.
Your hairdo is ridiculous.
Acting with Ryan Reynolds has been, like, the cheekiest...
I've never seen acting with anyone so incredibly cheeky.
How about you take a sugar-frosted fuck off the end of my dick?
I mean, he is just... has those lines and he just spits 'em out
and he's... he's really funny.
It's in my right ass cheek.
And I also just love the fact that when... when it comes time to go to battle,
he's... just like flips into this one-note killing machine.
And King can kick ass,
but he kicks ass with a certain degree of irony.
That's a hard thing to master,
but it's like falling off a log for Ryan.
It was fun to sort of play a character that has these two sides.
- Aah! - Aah!
Dracula?
Even Blade was, like, "Come on. Dracula?"
Aah!
You know, he's a... he's a real badass.
He's so bad.
Dominic plays Drake 'cause he's really... he's just creepy.
He's just plain creepy.
Jimmy Morrison on steroids.
He's made me believe that this character is 7,000 years old.
There's just something in his eyes besides red contact lenses.
It's hard to get away from the fangs and the... and the eyes and stuff,
but I just wanted to bring a different slant to Dracula.
He carries a certain low-boiling rage.
He... he could be a threat.
He's a good physical anchor for Blade
and somebody who will do well when they're fighting one on one.
When Blade and Drake come together, it's just a clash of the Titans.
The best of the best.
Blade is invincible, you know,
but, uh, I think he's met his challenge.
Dominic is absolutely a great nemesis.
Aah!
The ending of the film is intriguing.
We see for the first time a redeeming quality in Drake.
I don't need to survive the future.
He does something very special.
And that is one of the things that really attracted me to the part.
The humans have a new hunter.
Blade.
Danica Talos is played by Parker Posey.
My role in it is to be the... the female vampire... the heavy one...
Uhh!
- Ooh. Did I hit you? - No.
...who gets to gnash her teeth and hiss and...
...and just kind of...
We used them.
...you know, go all out.
...to flush you out.
She's hilarious and scary
and gets to do some physical action which she's never done in a movie before.
I like your tattoos.
Do they mean anything?
Her energy's so completely different from Wesley's.
Are you tired?
When the two of them are together, it's interesting to watch.
You're weak.
I just thought it'd be fun to play someone who wasn't human,
who had been around for 500, 600 years,
try to make her kind of a snob,
blas�... nothing's fun anymore after a certain point.
You know, to bring that kind of attitude in there, that kind of arrogance.
I'm gonna go in.
All the old vampire movies and, you know, those characters are, like, creepy
and just to be really creepy... at the same time, um, arresting.
She's also the one that made me a vampire.
King was kind of my pet for a while,
and I would tell him to do things and he would... he would...
He would, you know?
'Cause that's the kind of relationship Danica has with... with guys.
You know, it's very, uh, sadomasochistic and...
She's basically bored.
I mean, you know, she's been around for 500, 600 years,
just trying to have... trying to make it interesting, you know?
He basically lives to kill her.
Maybe it's time I joined the game.
Cut.
Drake... Dracula has come into their lives now
so she's... kind of like a weird kind of love story
that they have between each other.
That's how I look at it, but, you know.
Cut.
Drake wants to beep Danica.
He's been asleep for 6,000 years, so I think it's pretty understandable
that... that would be one of the first things to go through one's mind.
He has this relationship to sunlight that it... it doesn't harm him,
so that becomes a metaphor for love and respect.
I mean, love and respect in these two vampires.
There's no romance between Drake and Danica.
Well... not really. I... I wouldn't think...
The way I'm playing it, there isn't.
She's waited a long time for a man to really come
and... and sweep her off her feet
and to have fun with and be able to spend time with
and you know, she respects him and I thought that was really funny
and almost cute aspect of the... of the script.
I think people are kind of fascinated with vampires
because, well, they can live forever and they make a moral choice.
It's a vanity choice to be able to live forever
and... and feed off of other people,
but I think subconsciously, the reason why people relate to it
is that it's a metaphor of addiction,
of insatiable desire, of... of arrogance.
I don't know what it is about vampire movies that people like.
I'm not really big on killing anybody.
But if you have to kill somebody, it might as well be a vampire.
The weight that Kris carries as a man, as an actor, as that character,
I think really has always given the movie a great grounding.
And the connection works so well between Whistler and Blade.
I see you alone, surrounded by enemies.
Kinda like a father son relationship.
And I don't have a hard time with that, having eight kids myself.
Killing humans is messy.
You better hope nobody ID'd you.
I like Whistler's loyalty to Blade.
- Friends? - Yeah.
You remember those?
He doesn't beat around the bush,
and he is a pretty direct commentator on what's going on.
How about this one?
He unfortunately dies in this movie,
but he's come back to life before, so you never know.
Dude, you're dead.
What Jessica and Ryan and Dominic are going through,
that's... that's, uh, training.
Uh, what I did was research.
I did actually go down to The Braille Institute in California.
I mean, it was amazing to witness how together and...
It was great to not feel sorry for them
and to not feel uncomfortable.
You know, just going and walking around,
there was one lady... Carmen, who actually was, uh,
I guess she ran the institute, and just seeing how put together she was,
you know, like that she was in a suit and that she was wearing mascara.
She was just really...
I... I mean, there was no, like, pity there.
...boost DayStar's viral efficacy...
It's not the kind of thing where, like, just 'cause you're blind,
you can't figure anything out.
Biomedica Enterprises, taq polymerase,
bone marrow growth supplement, genetic sequencing enzyme.
I've never taken an acting lesson,
so I actually took my first acting lesson for this movie
just to, you know, make sure that I didn't do that, um, like, "I can't see you."
I want you to hide, okay? Like we talked about.
Go on.
Get out of here, Zoe!
Hide!
God damn it, Zoe!
Triple H... I mean, what a marvelous man.
Uhh!
Fucking ass-raped!
Jarko Grimwood is a skinny bookworm type guy.
Aah!
One of the things that makes the WWE Superstars
so adept at getting into acting and films and other versions of television is...
Cute, huh?
...we go out on... on a weekly basis and put ourselves into characters
that we have to invest ourselves in emotionally.
Fuckface!
Something... we have to tone it down a little bit
'cause, you know, when you play for 50,000 people that are...
quite a distance away in the rafters,
y-you... you know, you have to be larger than life,
so you have to tone it down a little bit for the cameras...
You're not so big.
...'cause it's more intimate, but I think we're... we're well-trained for the role.
Aah!
We got him.
It's a real mixture of people, and I think just by bunching them all together
and being able to put 'em all in a movie should be interesting, you know?
Dr. Vance... John Michael Higgins. Genius.
I think somebody here wants to talk about vampires.
I think in Hollywood, you end up playing bad guys a lot
if you speak well, if you have language,
because bad guys are, you know, educated,
which is a very bad thing in America, apparently.
Symptoms of this disease are remarkably similar to classic vampire traits.
When his usefulness expires,
I become a victim of hideous special effects.
What kind of a movie is this?
I've always wanted to die a horrible death,
and for some reason, this morning they shaved my chest.
It's kind of exciting, actually.
I'm gonna go home to my wife and be like a male stripper.
- The call has already been made. - Don't fuck with my thing!
There's a team from the hospital effecting the transfer immediately.
I'm still not sure why they did it.
Do you think it was sexual?
God, I hadn't thought of that.
No one's thought of me as a sexual being for 20 years.
He's psychotic.
I had a wonderful actor by the name of Mark Berry.
He was my reader.
He did a terrific job.
He would read with every actor that came into the room,
and he landed a lead role.
The only vampires I'm worried about are the ones passing the bar exam.
Overall, it's by far the most exciting ensemble we've had in a Blade movie.
All right, Vance, what the hell do you know?
- Realization. - Yes.
Abby, it's Drake!
It's just a terrific, terrific ensemble cast, and we're very excited.
Ryan, Jessica, Dominic.
They were all training a good three months before they started shooting.
Every day, four hours a day, seven days a week.
You wanna really believe that Abigail kicks ass.
You wanna really believe that when she goes after four or five vampires,
you believe that this girl could take down several large men,
and you believe it of Ryan, you believe it of Dom,
and certainly, you've always been able to believe it of Wes.
I think it's got something to do with how we view superheroes these days.
You haven't got a six pack and a big chest and shoulders,
people don't buy it somehow.
Wesley's always in sort of phenomenal shape
and is a martial artist and is well-skilled and very well-trained.
I work out every day.
I'll do something... either some calisthenics
or you know, some, uh, pilates, some stretching, some kicking,
a little boxing, you know, a little yoga.
A little sleep.
You should get more sleep. That's the key.
The trainer, before we started the film,
wanted to pack on about ten pounds on me and muscle up.
You know, you gotta be able to lift people over your head
and throw them around and fight blood-sucking vampires.
I've had to go through a lot of serious training,
and it's been really fun.
Lots of weight training, lots of cardio, lots of running.
Lean down, gain more muscle, lose body fat.
I would work out for an hour and a half,
doing like 45 minutes of cardio and then a full hour of weight lifting.
Then I would go to an hour of martial arts,
and then an hour of archery, and then I would fall asleep.
That would be an everyday thing.
Both Ryan and Jessica were beautiful physical specimens
before they started training,
but Ryan's at something like 3.8% body fat.
Jessica's at, like, 8% or 6%... something insane.
Now, you and I are probably at, like, 48% body fat.
So they're on, like, a whole different plane.
And it shows in the movie. I mean, they're ripped.
We're on this very high, intensive protein complex carb diet.
It's all about the diet and the exercise, I really have discovered.
Getting up in the morning, having oatmeal and then a protein shake
and then eating two hours later...
I mean, I'm having to eat every two hours.
Eating three big meals a day? Not good.
Your metabolism is slower.
What you really would love to do, in a perfect world,
is have six to eight small meals a day.
Tub of tuna with... with vegetables and then chicken breast with lettuce,
and then protein shake and then protein bars,
and it's, like, ugh!
I'm eating drywall and, um, woodchips, mostly.
Give me a pizza!
So you'll already be there.
They've also been training with fight specialists, fight coordinators.
I was the fight choreographer AKA the fight guy.
And I was in charge of putting together a lot of the fights and the action.
They each have their own skill set and their own martial art specific training.
Dominic has been doing a lot of sword fighting.
Ryan has been doing a lot of just sort of straight martial arts and boxing.
Jess has been doing a lot of boxing, kickboxing, archery,
and they've all been doing shooting.
Before Hong Kong came in with the more stylized fighting and action like that,
you didn't need it so much, but now it's gotten a little bit more stylized
and there's techniques to be learned and techniques to be taught.
And a lot of the actors, also, now wanna do their own action,
so since the actors are doing it,
they have to have somebody to train them,
they have to have somebody that knows that type of stylized action,
so you need fight choreographers now.
People make it up, but it doesn't turn out so great,
so... so it's good to have somebody that has some kind of background.
Their training has been consistent of movement work
as far as stances go,
kicks, throwing punches, a little sword work.
And they've all been great.
I've had to go through a lot of serious training.
Working with Jessica's been... what can I say?
It's been incredible. She's awesome.
She's a great physical specimen, number one,
and she's got a great attitude.
And she's capable of doing almost anything we throw at her.
Martial arts training... not one specific martial arts,
but the whole gamut of all different kinds.
We used one move from savate
and then we used another move from wherever.
I mean, right next to each other.
And a lot of boxing, too.
It's very much like raw street fighting.
She started training as soon as she got the role,
and she kicks ass.
I mean, you know, we didn't have a huge amount of time to prepare with her,
so I called up one of the fight coordinators
and I said, "How are we doing? How's Jess? Is she gonna be ready?"
He goes, "Oh, man."
She's got knowledge.
She's gifted.
I was in like a month early, which is not a lot of time.
Not a lot of time to train for a movie like that with a lot of action,
especially as much action as they had to do.
The archery was the hardest.
It's really specific.
Positions and how... how high your elbow is and how you squeeze your back.
You squeeze your back in a way that you've never felt before
if you've never done archery before,
and it's incredibly difficult to get used to that.
So I'd say archery has been my most challenging
and the martial arts has just been fun.
I mean, very hard and gets you very sore,
but that's just really fun for me.
She's a very quick learner.
She's been able to go toe for toe, step for step right along the way.
She's been awesome.
The fight training has been really interesting.
I just found it to be like a dance. It truly is a choreographed dance.
It's a deadly dance.
That's pretty much it.
You can get hurt.
If you remove the... the aspect of violence out of it,
it... it really is beautiful.
I used to do chop-socky films myself as an actor,
so I kinda brought what I learned from the Hong Kong guys here,
and then now I'm teaching it to other people.
I have a huge appreciation for what these people do.
The trainers that we're working with, Chuck Jeffreys and Clay...
they're so talented.
What they do that's so interesting, that no other martial artist
that I've ever met or have ever worked with has done this before,
has taken something from our own lives and applied it to this.
So he knew that I take ballet, and so he explained to me,
"In this spinning hook kick,
I need to spot my person before I throw the kick,"
and he was trying to get me to look at the person and I never did,
and h-he was, like, "Spot them," and it made sense to me.
And like Dominic, who plays Drake, he's a golfer and he plays cricket.
And Dom has to work with all these swords,
so Chuck says, "Now hit the cricket ball."
Depending on their skills and what they do already,
we'll build a fight sometimes based off of what they already know,
so they correlate.
So if you're a good golf guy,
then we'll say, "Okay, you gotta do a sword in this movie,"
which like Dominic had to do sword,
and he... he likes golf, he likes cricket, tennis.
Okay, we'll build it off of that.
So at first, his movements are more tennis, cricket, stuff like that,
but as we keep going and going and going and adding the violence to it
and adding the technique to it, it becomes sword fighting,
which ends up being his style.
None of us have ever worked with swords or knives,
or you know, martial arts... any of this stuff.
So that's how it's becoming really easy for me.
He's making it like a dance.
He's making it like steps in a routine, so I can understand it.
And then he will personalize it for Ryan, so Ryan can understand it,
and... and so forth for everybody else.
Ryan's been an incredibly pleasing student also.
He's very capable of doing what we need him to do.
His character's a little less flashy than Blade or Abigail or any of the others.
He's more or less a brawler and kind of a jokester.
He's just taken to it like it's second nature also.
They really get into it.
They've taken it very seriously.
They're in phenomenal shape.
Ryan and Jessica have been incredible students.
They've progressed rather well.
You know, we were very surprised and very pleased.
Fifty percent of what they're doing is the fight.
The other 50% is acting.
You look so distraught!
I worked with Parker Posey in the interrogation room.
And then, when you can't stand it anymore...
She's, you know...
She's a very interesting individual.
...so distraught!
The special training has been a revelation in torture.
It's impressive to see how hard they've worked and how far they've come.
All I've ever really done are comedies before,
so this was something totally new for me,
so it's a tough thing when you work a 14, 15-hour day,
and then you have to get up at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning
and go lift weights for two hours and then go to work all day.
So it's been hard. It's weird, you know.
My body doesn't feel the same.
I can't... you know, nothing fits the same way.
It's all a little strange, but... but you get into it, you love it.
And in... in the long run, you're so thankful and grateful
that you had the opportunity to change like that
and really jump into a character.
I feel really good.
I... I'm definitely in the best shape I've been in my whole life.
How can you feel like a million bucks when you're in shape
when you're always exhausted?
Like, when you're always working out,
you never feel what it's like to be, you know, fully strong.
I just always feel like,
"Whoa, God, my chest feels like somebody, like, drove a truck over it."
You know? So what's the point? I don't know.
It's really hard. Yeah.
I might just go and light up and have a cigarette now.
- This is all prosthetics. - Yeah.
We've got a prosthetic six pack on him.
It took four hours to apply.
I'm actually a four-year-old Asian peasant girl.
Yeah.
These action movies are getting harder and harder, you know?
I mean, I like the character, but I could tell you, you know,
I'm getting a little sorer and sorer every day.
Right from the get-go, David did want to do something new and fresh for Blade.
Working with David all along has been great.
Very open to new ideas.
He's very specific about what's important to him,
but also gives you enough leeway to experiment and try something new.
He's allowed me a lot of freedom to really challenge myself
and experiment with my team,
trying to get the most dynamic sets we possibly can.
I'm always really eager to provide references
and my thoughts on how things might look or how things could work
and David is a really great collaborator in that he's... he really seeks that out.
Tyruben Ellingson is one of the best in the business.
He's worked on Blade 2, and he was the first person I called.
He's responsible for the design of a lot of the weapons.
He had some influence in the costumes and Drake's armor.
He comes up with all sorts of fascinating ideas.
The design aesthetic is always with the vampires, very high-end,
and with Blade and Whistler,
it's very much like "Get the job done. Let's strip it down.
Let's just make it work."
So that kind of established the two kinds of designs.
As production designer, I'm in charge of presenting all the environment settings,
sets, and locations to tell the story.
David had written this third script with a completely new vision,
compared to the other two movies.
This one being written as a very modern approach to vampires in the city...
a modern city, a dense city, a corporate city...
and the vampires, corporate blood-suckers,
live on top of this city and kind of reign the world from there.
You'll see in the approach to the design, we actually threaded through
this very modern layer of architecture and set design and set dressing...
...through those kind of departments of city officials and the police departments...
very sleek and very modern and clean.
That all relates stylistically to The Phoenix Towers,
so you get a sense of perhaps the vampire control throughout the entire world.
And then things like the Nightstalkers', uh, Blade and Whistler's safe house,
and our other hideouts, they're very textured and edge-city,
so we'd have a great contrast between what the vampires were in control of...
very stylized society of the vampire world...
and then this battling force
climbing the mountain to slay the dragon on the hill kind of approach.
We're standing now in The Phoenix Towers.
As scripted, David described a modern space of steel and glass,
so that was our first initiative.
And then the action described in the script
was very kinetic and vertical,
so we wanted to design a set that had those elements,
so, uh, we found one of the biggest stages in town,
and, uh, we're able to go vertically as well as lengthwise
to really spread out the action.
And with the three characters... Blade, Abigail, and King...
wanted each of them to have a zone where they could battle,
and then with the verticality,
David had scripted large falls for the characters as they fought.
This entire structure was completely engineered
so this large truss pretty much hangs from the... from the building.
We had to first study the building, make sure it was still structurally sound,
and then calculate, obviously, the weight
and what kind of loads we would add to the building to support our truss,
and we have it down to the pound
on how much we can actually hang off the building.
This building was used to build all the bridges here in Vancouver at one time.
That's why it's called The Bridge Studios.
They're digging on our bridge that we have built inside.
Early on in development, they were thinking perhaps it was two locations.
I proposed this one large set to contain all the action,
as opposed to break it up between two separate sets,
so all the characters would end up in one big space.
I always thought it'd be great to have this one main element of a truss
cutting through the set
to allow Abigail to, in all the action,
essentially to traverse through the set and find itself in one place.
This here is the truss that Abigail will have her action sequence on.
We're average about 40 feet above the studio floor.
And each one of these triangles will have a piece of glass in
to obstruct her clean shot.
This ramp system, Blade will come up and fight vampires all the way up
until he reaches the third level, which is the conference room,
where Blade will face off with Drake, kind of in an old western stand-off,
with the large conference table between them,
work their way across to this exterior rooftop
and then that fight is designed now to fall off that rooftop
and land in the exterior plaza below.
So the whole set was designed to move the action towards this final moment
of that final arrow shot.
The other interesting thing about vampires is they get killed by UV light,
so the penthouse... the Phoenix Tower penthouse...
being on top of the world is... the irony is it's closest to the sun.
So we approached it as if they moved into this large cap tower
and actually had to retrofit sunscreening devices
and so we... we looked at sun reflectors that NASA may use.
Pulling that thread through the design,
we were able to create new and exciting textures on walls.
This whole place is designed as a sunscreen, basically.
And all the surfaces you see are to block sunlight.
That's why you see layers of thermal screening, reflective materials,
uh, and other, uh, textural fabrics and things.
Danica, being the queen bee of it all, has the most elaborate system.
There's a scene where Drake threatens Danica with sunlight,
so we wanted to have a... a louver system
and fire light down through it so it feels like an exterior wall.
The Nightstalkers, because they're the humans,
they don't... they're disenfranchised.
They don't have as much money as the vampires.
They lead a more of a ragtag existence,
and so their worlds are a little bleaker, a little more cluttered.
The Nightstalkers' headquarters is this barge that was a... a restaurant
for Expo '86 and has been sitting off the coast of Vancouver for years,
and I got to thinking, "What if we drag this barge into port
and turned it in our Nightstalkers lair?"
And it's just a shell with windows,
and we're putting in all the technology, all the weapons, the armory...
everything the Nightstalkers do to slay vampires.
Mmm. I'm impressed.
Welcome to the ziggurat.
These stairs will play as two things...
the base of the ziggurat stairs,
and then when we get to the top,
we'll double it as the top of the stairs as well.
So this is the staircase after it's revealed
that, uh, the vampires go down several flights of stairs,
and we pick 'em up coming down into the other set piece
where they find Dracula several stories underground
over on this side.
Obviously a work in progress,
but this staircase here is where the vampires will continue down
and we've crumbled this set to show that it's thousands of years old.
We've done a very crude version of early cuneiform with carved artwork,
and then also, Drake's glyph is hidden amongst all this cuneiform,
for those who want to pause the DVD and find it in the movie.
Aah!
All these walls come right up to these columns to enclose the whole set,
so they're just pulled off now so we can shoot into the set,
making the set feel larger than it actually is.
Flashlights and lanterns and that's pretty much what's gonna light this set.
So we want to make it very textural so when the flashlight goes across it,
there's always something going on and it doesn't flatten out on us.
What's this chicken scratch?
Construction crew's pretty small to do a set like this.
Get some great artists who can carve foam,
and then it... it goes pretty quickly,
using very simple tools and chainsaws even to, uh, rough it in.
And then the paint team will come in
and add actual sand to really tie it in to the location.
A costume designer's job is to come up with concepts
in conjunction with the director and the actors and implement them,
whether that be designing from scratch and having costumes built,
or finding items and putting them together in unique and interesting ways.
A psychological journey, really, into the mind of a character,
because it's basically how they choose to present themselves to the world.
And it says so much about who they are as a character.
Every choice that we make helps the actor become the character.
At the beginning of any project,
one thing that I like to do is pull together a lot of images...
comic books, swatches of fabric, color samples.
I put them together on character boards.
With that, I then would start the sketch process.
I also worked a lot with Ty Ellingson in the beginning
for some of the other characters, like Drake.
It was important to us that we not do the same look
that we did in either of the other movies.
Make it a little bit more bohemian,
a little bit more worldly, a little bit more multi-cultural,
take elements that were high fashion
because the vampires are a super sort of slick group
that obviously, are very vain and narcissistic
but also, just show their history throughout the timeline.
Here we are in my wardrobe truck.
This is my dog Hunter, the mascot of our department.
Don't mind the zipper down the side.
A vampire got her.
In terms of Blade's costume, I did want to play with different textures
and the way light hit it.
We then covered with a mesh fabric,
which is very much a fabric used in a lot of protective gear in various sports.
And these are the buckles that attach to this scabbard back piece.
This scabbard holds his sword.
We developed it on this rotating element here,
so that when it's on Wes' back, he can actually push the bottom
and the whole sword rotates to the side
so that he can actually lift his sword up.
And it's amazing that Wesley can do this.
He's the only man alive that can.
With the new design for the Blade jacket,
we dyed Thai silk.
It starts with a saffron color,
and then ends down at the bottom with a rich burgundy.
This was taken from Buddhist monks and the colors of Thailand.
You're not ready to roll with this. I mean, look at the way you're dressed.
Blade has very stylized costumes.
He is a superhero.
He has arrived at superhero status.
The Nightstalkers are still scrapping it out
as more of a grassroots organization,
so there's lots of elements of the costumes...
their protective wear and stuff like that... that are things that we found in the world
that we just sort of augmented and changed to work for them.
This actually is a vest that's used by jockeys.
It's a padded vest, and it's in case they get thrown off the horse,
to protect them from any sort of injuries.
It's articulated, it moves really nicely,
and on Ryan's hot little body, it looks really super sassy.
When we first see Abigail, she's dressed like a waif
and becomes this super cool killing machine,
and it was really neat because
actually, one of our producers didn't even recognize her
when she was sitting in her chair.
- Uhh! - Aah!
Some of our first ideas for Abigail
were that we thought she could be in Army Navy pants and little T-shirts.
I really wanted there to be elements in Abigail's character
that kind of hearkened back to the fact that she is Whistler's daughter.
From those first ideas, we kind of morphed her a little bit along
into a bit more of a punched up version of those things,
making sure that her clothes fit her quite nicely
so that they looked good,
also making sure that they fit her in a way that she could be an ass-kicker.
Aah!
We see the arc of her character start going a little bit more comic book
when she starts hanging with Blade a little bit more.
I pulled in the colors of Blade's world into Abigail's world
to start showing kind of their relationship together
and the influence that Blade has on Abigail.
We thought there should be an irony with some of the characters,
and we brought that out in King's character most of all.
Evening, ladies.
This one I wanted to look a lot like the street art that you see
on the sides of the walls of buildings.
Like, this guy just took a couple of spray paint cans
and some masking tape and he made himself this bull's eye...
just an in-your-face type of thing.
We took this otherwise normal, everyday, run and punch guy
and made him this superhero, kind of, in a way, against his own will.
He fell into the role because he had bad taste in women.
Her fangs are located in her vagina.
Here we are with Danica.
Danica's pieces are very much based on ethnic influences
and also the fashions of today.
Those pieces are very modern,
but the shapes and the colors are derivative of other places
and other times.
We went to Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan,
where I had one of my assistants purchase
a couple of really lovely, super, super high fashion suits.
It's her version of being a regular person, at the tune of several thousands of dollars.
Let's roll, please.
We actually copied a dress that we had bought
that was really, really beautiful on her body,
but I really, really, really wanted it in this amazing color,
especially with Parker's amazing contacts that they put in her,
which are this amazing blue-green.
These vibrant blues and greens just really, really looked striking with her.
Fantastic.
We purchased most of Danica's costumes in New York City, actually.
These were purchased pieces, but we took them and changed their shape
and brought some of the super fun lining out to the front of it,
and this has the kimono sleeves.
One of the ideas that Parker had, which is brilliant,
was just getting a bunch of animal skins...
not fur coats, but animal skins...
and she drapes them on
and wears them in some perverse ways, which are super cool,
like pulling the tail through the eyeball, stuff like that.
You know, stuff that a vampire might do.
With Drake, we didn't want to go too over-the-top.
We didn't want him to be too super slick,
but we also didn't want him to be too hippy-dippy.
He had to look like the king of the vampires.
It was his accessories that created that look.
His jewelry immediately made Dom feel like Drake.
Whenever he puts his jewelry on,
it's, like, he's arrived, he is the character.
This is the underpinnings to the full suit of armor that he wears as the beast.
Quite an exciting costume.
Blade.
Ready to die?
It goes something like this.
Dom did a lot of work practicing his sword work,
and so it was really important that with this armor,
he could move and function really well.
We really wanted to highlight that he's been around pretty much forever.
This arm here has elements that hearken back to samurai and other time periods.
We have some encrusted jewels in here.
We've done some aging with various acids.
The gauntlet hand has both metal and it has elements that are bronze.
And it's just aged down and battle-scarred.
Everything that I'm doing is permeated by the ideas and by the mind...
the incredible mind of David Goyer.
The real world, real people, being on location.
They just look so beautiful, these movies.
It's not glossy, it's not shiny mirrors.
There's a very rustic, earthy color.
I felt that the first two Blade films had a very distinctive look from one another.
The first movie was very in the world.
The second movie went underground.
It became a little more stylized, a little more unto itself.
This movie aims to go back into the world.
A third film also should have a very distinctive look.
Gabriel Beristain shot the last movie, he's shooting this one,
and I think one of the reasons why he was excited to come back
was to work with Goyer.
Here we have David Goyer, who is the one who has adapted this story
into this wonderful script,
telling me, "I want you to create something completely unique for this film."
- This is urban. - No!
This is gritty. This is... this is a film that happens in the city.
This is a film that for first time, Blade confronts and kills real people.
So it takes Blade to completely different level.
And it takes the photography and my camera work
to a completely different level.
The locations define our palette.
We are taking all the range of colors because that is what the city is.
The rustic colors, the earthy, are very important for certain areas.
But at the same time, when you come out into the city,
you are into the big glass and metal.
For first time, you're gonna see bright sets and an explosion...
not an explosion of color, but yes, an explosion of light.
And... and because it's... it's the whole environment
in which Blade is gonna be entering emotionally,
I want my lighting and the cameras to really respond
to those emotions that this new Blade is going to be confronting himself.
His approach to shooting the film
was to have these very dynamic moving cameras.