Blade: Trinity ending: how was Blade almost cured?

Blade: Trinity is often called the most disliked film in the Blade trilogy, but I don't think it's all that bad. Yes, it's pretty cringey, but it's not terrible.

Released in 2004, Blade: Trinity was written and directed by David Goyer and stars Wesley Snipes as Blade, alongside Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds. Below I go through its biggest Easter eggs, production stories and the endings it almost had.

Blade: Trinity opens in Dracula's tomb in Syria, not Iraq

Right away, Blade: Trinity makes history as the first film in the Blade franchise to open with the Marvel page flipping animation, acknowledging Blade's Marvel Comics roots. The story then begins with the House of Talos arriving by helicopter in the Syrian desert to visit the tomb of Dracula. That's ironic, because Blade made his first appearance in Marvel's Tomb of Dracula #10 in 1973, where he went head to head with Dracula himself.

The team that descends into the tomb includes Danica Talos, played by Parker Posey, her brother Asher Talos, played by Callum Keith Rennie, Jarko Grimwood, played by the wrestler Triple H, and a vampire named Wolfe, played by Paul Anthony. One of them even takes the time to flip off the sun on the way in.

The script originally placed Dracula's tomb in Iraq. The filmmakers were forced to move it to Syria because of how unlikely it was, at the time, that those helicopters could land there without being shot down by Iraqi or American anti aircraft missiles. Inside the tomb are inscriptions in ancient cuneiform, a language used by the Sumerians and one of the earliest forms of writing humanity knows of.

Later we learn that Dracula, called Drake in this film, was born around the fifth or fourth millennium BCE, making him roughly 6,000 to 7,000 years old. As a growing 7,000 year old boy, he bites the head off Wolfe before revealing his monster form to Danica and the rest of her group.

Blade is framed for murder in a city the film never names

The film then moves to the streets of a vague city it never names. I'm pretty sure we're supposed to assume it's something like New York, but we do know the movie was filmed primarily in Vancouver, British Columbia. Blade starts this very mediocre movie with a bang, blowing up C4 at a vampire hideout. He uses his Heckler and Koch USP Match pistols, which we saw in Blade 2, plus a new chain saber knife that Whistler built so he can throw and retract the blade with ease.

The fleeing vampires grab their cars, forgetting that Blade still drives the same modified 1968 Dodge Charger that appears in all three Blade films. Unfortunately, Blade is too good at his job and kills a human familiar working with the vampires. Danica is nearby filming the whole thing, and once she puts it online, the news frames Blade as a maniac murderer on the loose.

She does that on an old iMac, and there's lots of Apple product placement in this film. Abigail later uses iTunes to build a vampire killing playlist on her laptop, and nearly every computer in the Nightstalkers' lair is an iMac. Back at headquarters, Blade thanks his mentor Whistler for the knife, and Whistler chastises him for killing a regular human and warns of consequences to come.

Those consequences are brewing at the FBI's regional headquarters. Blade's wanted flyer lists him at 175 pounds, with his date and place of birth unknown. As FBI agent Ray Cumberland follows a news story on the confrontation, we learn that Blade went on to kill at least three other people while escaping after killing that familiar.

Drake, the tabloid theory and a cameo from the cinematographer

Over with the Talos family, Danica, Jarko and a new female vampire named Virago slow walk to Drake's feeding chambers. On their infrared monitors, Drake's victim shows considerably less warmth, since a giant vampire monster has been draining their blood. Drake spends most of the film in the form of actor Dominic Purcell, saving the time and effort of applying the monster costume every time. After Danica tells him about the only other daywalker on the planet, he agrees to kill Blade for them.

Whistler then picks up a tabloid with the headline about a gun toting psychopath captured on film, alongside a photo and FBI drawing of Blade. At the top of the page is a story about an alligator eating an entire family, not even sparing the family dog. Part of me wonders if this universe's tabloid is owned by vampires and stories like that are their way of covering their tracks. Another headline claims the Mafia plans to colonize Mars.

Little does Whistler know that the magazine vendor is a government spy working with the FBI. That vendor is played by the film's director of photography, Gabriel Beristain. We then cut to a talk show whose host is apparently named as a nod to American horror writer Bentley Little, author of The Revelation, The Summoning and The Haunted. The host interviews the police chief, played by an actor who went on to play a US Navy admiral in season one of Agents of SHIELD, and forensic psychiatrist Edgar Vance, played by John Michael Higgins.

Jessica Biel's Abigail Whistler and her dangerous UV bow

As those men trash Blade on TV, Whistler tells him he can't do this alone anymore, because he's no longer just fighting vampires. Meanwhile, a gang of vampires follows a woman and her baby into the subway, calling them a combo meal. The woman turns out to be Whistler's secret daughter, Abigail Whistler, played by Jessica Biel from 7th Heaven. She's a vampire hunter with high tech gadgets just like her father, and she uses a UV laser arc bow and a fake baby to take out the skateboarding vampires.

Later Abigail says her bow burns half as hot as the sun. The sun burns at around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, so the bow would be around 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, about the same as a welding arc. Holding it so close to her exposed skin is extremely dangerous, and she should probably not do that.

When Goyer was writing the script, he originally envisioned Abigail as Rachel van Helsing, who first appeared in 1972's Tomb of Dracula #3 as the great granddaughter of vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing, Dracula's arch nemesis. Because a Van Helsing movie starring Hugh Jackman was in development at the time, Goyer dropped that idea and made her Abraham Whistler's daughter instead. That's close to the same thing, since Abraham Whistler was based on Abraham Van Helsing.

Whistler is then seen rubbing his wedding ring, thinking of the family he's lost to vampires, right before the US government comes knocking. The agents prove too much for him and Blade, and a fatally wounded Whistler blows up their headquarters with himself inside, largely to keep the government and the vampires embedded in it from getting his sensitive intel.

Blade's FBI interrogation and Hannibal King's comic book roots

In FBI custody, Blade reveals he has killed a grand total of 1,182 would be vampire familiars. I thought that was interesting, because knowing the exact number of humans he's killed shows Blade cares about the human casualties of his war. Edgar Vance interrupts to ask Blade about his mother and whether they were close, which triggers his anger. That makes sense, since in the first Blade film his reunion with his mother was uncomfortably close.

Vance then reveals he's been a familiar for five years, sedates Blade and sends in Danica. She asks if Blade's tattoos mean anything. He doesn't answer, but it has been revealed in the past that Blade usually gets new tattoos to commemorate a particularly memorable vampire slaying.

Then Ryan Reynolds arrives as Hannibal King to save the day. King debuted in Tomb of Dracula #25 in 1974 as a private investigator from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, whose life was upended when he was bitten by Deacon Frost, the same vampire who bit Blade's pregnant mother. In Blade: Trinity, Hannibal was instead turned by Danica and then cured by Sommerfield. In the comics, he swore never to drink blood from a living human and became a vampire detective, meeting Blade in Tomb of Dracula #44 and fighting him in issue #45.

The two eventually teamed up to form the Nightstalkers in 1992's Nightstalkers #1, alongside Dracula's descendant Frank Drake, with the goal of destroying Dracula. The Nightstalkers became a precursor to the dark defenders known as the Midnight Sons, with all of them becoming part time members of that group.

The Nightstalkers: Patton Oswalt, Natasha Lyonne and the Daystar virus

The film's Nightstalkers look very different. Alongside Abigail and Hannibal, there's Dex, played by Ron Selmour, and Hedges, played by Patton Oswalt, who would go on to play the Koenig brothers in Agents of SHIELD, Pip the Troll in 2021's Eternals, which also featured Mahershala Ali's Blade, and voice MODOK in the MODOK series. Natasha Lyonne plays Sommerfield, with her daughter Zoe also part of the group.

Blade roasts them almost immediately, saying they look like rejects from a Saturday morning cartoon. That's ironic, since Blade and Whistler made cameos in the 1990s Spider-Man animated series. He then asks if they think vampire hunting is a sitcom, and the film cuts to Biel and Oswalt, two actors famous for sitcoms, 7th Heaven and The King of Queens.

Hannibal keeps his vampire kills organized in volumes, with Kicking Ass Volume 2 sitting by his mouse. Reynolds gained 25 pounds of muscle for the role. He also pulls out Tomb of Dracula #55 from 1977, marking his first ever fourth wall break in a Marvel movie. Comics have appeared in Marvel projects since, including X-Men comics in 2017's Logan and Marvel comics in a lawyer's office in episode 2 of 2022's She-Hulk.

Drake visits a gothic vampire shop selling Dracula lunchboxes, where an employee eats Count Chocula off the shelf; a Dracula decal even appears on a vampire's motorcycle at the start. Sommerfield then reveals the Daystar virus, named after a poetic word for the sun. The theory is that Dracula's blood could perfect it into a virus that wipes out vampires. Hedges wears a number 4 shirt referencing the Fantastic Four, and his triple barrel shotgun, a modified Winchester 1887, was later reused in Stargate Atlantis, Eureka and Altered Carbon. He also explains Drake can shape shift into humans, but not a bat or a wolf.

The scrapped Underworld crossover and Goyer's postapocalyptic Blade idea

Speaking of vampires and wolves, after Blade: Trinity, New Line Cinema apparently planned a crossover with the Underworld franchise, something Underworld star Kate Beckinsale revealed herself. That idea was scrapped when Marvel Studios got the rights to Blade back in 2012.

One of Goyer's first ideas for this film was a postapocalyptic future where vampires had taken over the world, but it was a little too bleak even for Blade. I feel like that's a great idea Marvel Studios should consider for an Old Man Logan type of scenario for Wesley Snipes' Blade. It would be a pretty great way to send him off, the way Fox did with Wolverine in Logan, but that's just me.

Wesley Snipes, David Goyer and the troubled Blade: Trinity shoot

The script Goyer did produce was received poorly by general audiences, and he experienced a deep depression after that reaction. One of the biggest reasons he would call Blade: Trinity the worst experience of his career was the drama between him and Snipes during the shoot. Apparently, Snipes at one point refused to talk to Goyer altogether, communicating only through Post-it notes that he signed off as Blade.

Snipes went full method on this production and wouldn't respond to anyone who didn't call him Blade. According to Patton Oswalt, even though the film didn't turn out as well as everyone wanted, the fact it was made at all was a triumph given the chaos. That drama ultimately led Snipes to sue Goyer and New Line Cinema, feeling he wasn't allowed to fully act as one of the film's producers and unhappy with his reduced presence alongside two other central characters.

I'm pretty sure Goyer would have avoided that lawsuit if one of the earlier directors had made the film. But Blade director Stephen Norrington passed after not being a big fan of Goyer's script, and Blade 2 director Guillermo del Toro was busy adapting Hellboy for the big screen in 2004.

Drake's first meeting with Blade is one of the lamest in comic book movies

As the Nightstalkers gear up, Abby builds her playlist, with artists including Fluke, Jurassic 5, Underworld, DJ Krush and DJ Shadow. After Blade interrogates a familiar by dangling them upside down, Batman style, the group heads to Edgar Vance's Vance Institute. On the way, Hannibal tells Blade to try blinking once in a while, a line Ryan Reynolds improvised. During the fight with security, something like a Captain America shield appears on Hannibal's back, though the design doesn't match, so it could be a bullseye.

They find Vance drained by Drake, who demands Blade show him what he's made of, then immediately runs away, using a human baby as a distraction. In my opinion, this is probably one of the lamest first interactions a hero and a villain have ever had in a comic book movie. I'm not sure what Goyer was thinking here.

Back at base, Abby has a flashback in the shower to the story Whistler told Blade about his family in the first film, which is weird, because she wasn't there for it. The script also originally had an intimate scene between Abby and Blade, but it was never filmed.

Blade: Trinity's original ending would have cured Blade

Hannibal, recovering from injuries, has William Shatner's 1966 film Incubus playing, a movie about a man battling demons. He asks Blade what he'll do if the Nightstalkers wipe out every vampire, and Blade doesn't answer. We do know the original screenplay ended with the Daystar virus curing Blade, who throws his sword off a cliff into the sea and walks into the forest fully human for the first time in his life.

Goyer decided against that, instead giving us what I'd call the first ever postcredits scene in a Marvel Comics production, with Blade cruising off in his Dodge Charger to slay more vampires. Later, Sommerfield traces the vampires to a company called Biomed at 529 Waterfront Drive, USA 10002, with the city left out completely. I'm not sure why the film refuses to name its city, but at least we know it's in America.

The vampires' human blood farms are a concept Goyer apparently recycled from a deleted scene in the first Blade film, where Deacon Frost stored humans in a similar way. While Blade and Abby confront Virago and the chief, Drake kills Dex, Hedges and Sommerfield and kidnaps Zoe, leaving the Ralph Waldo Emerson line "immortality will come to such as are fit for it" written in blood on a plastic curtain.

Triple H, a broken camera and the final battle with Drake

Abby channels her anger into archery training before the rescue of a kidnapped Hannibal. During that sequence, Jessica Biel destroyed one of the film's $300,000 cameras. It wasn't her fault: she was directed to aim for it, and the director didn't think she'd hit it from 50 feet away.

This was Triple H's first film role, and it was originally quite limited. New Line Cinema loved his performance so much that it expanded the part, which is why we see him threatening Hannibal with a vampire Pomeranian. It was the second Marvel film with genetically altered dogs, after the previous year's Hulk, in which David Banner altered his dogs. Instead of using vampire powers on an unarmed human, Jarko hits Hannibal with a running powerslam, though Hannibal eventually gets the better of him.

In Blade and Drake's final battle, Dominic Purcell performed the sword fighting choreography himself rather than a stunt double. Blade stabs Drake with one of Abby's Daystar arrows, the virus goes airborne, and Danica and the rest of the vampires in the building die. Respecting Blade's fighting ability, Drake offers a final gift by shape shifting into Blade to help him escape the authorities, and humans confirm vampires exist when the shape shift wears off in the morgue. There was even an alternate ending, set six months after Drake's death, that was meant to tease a darker spinoff with Abby and Hannibal.