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Blade the Series!?!

Umbran said:
Please pardon the following rant....

I am sorry, but no. If Blade 2 had restricted itself to "magic", it'd have been fine. But their pseudoscience was horrible enough to completely ruin the show...

"They have hearts encased in bone." (As if mine is not? Let me introduce you to this thing called a ribcage!)

"They don't have jawbones, so they can bite harder!" (Um, guys, let me give you a little physics lesson on leverage.)

"And since they drink blood, when you give them anticoagulents, they explode." (Funny, I have lots of blood in me, and I don't explode...)

Ugh. Sorry. I'm done now...


While I am not a doctor, I was under the impression that the ribs don't completely cover the heart, they are little sticks put together (with the sternum in the middle). Which allows someone to drive a stake through them pretty easily. In the new vampires, the ribs had complete grown togther in the front, making staking a vampire hard (from the front).

The actual quote is "It has bifurcated masseter muscles. Overdeveloped, allowing for a much stronger bite". Then she talks about the jaw. "The jaw structure remains the same. But there's no mandible bone."

The anticoagulent was in the first Blade. It's explained that it makes vampire blood explode, though the why isn't explained other than it's an "energetic reaction". So vampires don't explode because they are "full of blood", it's because they are full of vampire blood.


Anyway, pretty much every movie and TV show has errors in science and the way things are done (like law/police shows). I know that errors in space science/astronomy bug me, so I can understand, but the ones in Blade seem pretty minor to me as a non-doctor.
 
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Heh. My problem with Blade 2 wasn't the bad science (which I can forgive). It was the bad script.

Nothing about the romantic subplot worked. It made no sense for the characters, it wasn't written well, and it dragged the rest of the movie down a few notches.
 

Hmmmm. I didn't see it as a romantic subplot, more of an Enemy Mine sort of thing. Developing a mutual respect for your enemy who turns out to be more honorable than you thought. Personally, I thought it was quite touching and about the only sort of thing you can do with Wesley Snipes's acting ability (he's sort of cut from the same mold as Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal).

As I watch it again, one thing I really like is that someone actually hurts their hands from friction from sliding down something. That's a pet peeve of mine - you always see people slide down things, especially ropes, without wearing gloves and suffering no ill efects. But in reality, you'd tear up your hands doing so. (A friend of mine did that in college while drunk, and actually permanently crippled his hands).
 

Whenever you begin to compare realism (and physics) with a science FICTION movie/TV show, obviously you are going to find errors and end up not liking it. I guess you don't like Star Wars because they have "laser swords" that would never work. Or Star Trek because they have a Warp Drive that is only based on theory. Or any other multitude of sci-fi which has similiar "problems".
 

trancejeremy said:
While I am not a doctor, I was under the impression that the ribs don't completely cover the heart, they are little sticks put together (with the sternum in the middle). Which allows someone to drive a stake through them pretty easily. In the new vampires, the ribs had complete grown togther in the front, making staking a vampire hard (from the front).

Yes, Umby's reading a little too much into the vampire anatomy lesson. The reaver's hearts have a reinforced ribcage. As you point out, the standard issue human ribcage doesn't do such a great job.

Their jaws have powerful muscles. No big whoop there.

Dunno what the reference to the anticoagulant is about, but clearly Blade vampires have some kind of volatile anatomy, which is why sunlight and silver fry them.

Personally, I liked the pseudoscientific approach to vampires, rather than them being undead. I mean, if a creature has to consume something to exist, then it seems intuitive that it should have some living, vital element to your anatomy. The blood shouldn't just go into a non-functional gullet and sit there.
 

trancejeremy said:
Personally, I thought it was quite touching and about the only sort of thing you can do with Wesley Snipes's acting ability (he's sort of cut from the same mold as Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal).

Wow. You are so wrong about his acting ability that it's not even funny. Before he started doing action movies in ernest he gave solid perfmances in SUGAR HILL, THE WATERDANCE, ONE NIGHT STAND, DISAPPEARING ACTS and JUNGLE FEVER. Granted most of these movies came out before BLADE and are geared toward black audiences, but check out his supporting role in THE WATERDANCE for a good example of his acting ability.

He's alot like Tom Cruise, who chooses to fall back on his smarmy grin rather than actually act, but when he does act he's damn good. BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, MAGNOLIA, COLLATERAL even in THE LAST SAMURAI he's pretty good.
 
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ShinHakkaider said:
He's alot like Tom Cruise, who chooses to fall back on his smarmy grin rather than actually act, but when he does act he's damn good. BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, MAGNOLIA, COLLATERAL even in THE LAST SAMURAI he's pretty good.
Yeah, but I hate Tom Cruise. Comparing Wes to him just turns me off. At least make an effort to compare Wes to Laurence Fishburne (or if you need a white guy, Russell Crowe) so I won't puke.
 

trancejeremy said:
The actual quote is "It has bifurcated masseter muscles. Overdeveloped, allowing for a much stronger bite". Then she talks about the jaw. "The jaw structure remains the same. But there's no mandible bone."

Three things - 1)Without the mandible, the jaw structure is hardly "the same", unless you consider "missing the entire lower jawbone" to be "the same". 2)The basic reason to have bones is to give muscles leverage to act. Overdevelop them all you want, if the mandible isn't there (and, as stated there are no other major structural changes) you're basically trying to bite with a floppy piece of muscle - like your tongue. 3)The masseter muscle is the muscle anchored on the skull and mandible that gives you biting power. Splitting the muscle in and of itself doesn't add anything, especially when the thing it is supposed to pull on isn't present.

Heck, without the mandible, what are their lower teeth anchored in? Muscle? That's supposed to be stronger?

The anticoagulent was in the first Blade.

Yes. It was bad then, too. But it was plot-relevant, and it just wasn't in a collection of other things large enough to annoy me.

]Anyway, pretty much every movie and TV show has errors in science and the way things are done

Yes. But there's passive, and there's active. In most cop shows, for example, the wrongness is on the level of getting aswers back more quickly and accurately than is possible in the real world. But they don't belabor the point. They don't give you inaccurate details of genetic analysis, or something.

In Blade, they went out of their way to tell you exactly how it was wrong, and to no purpose. The scenes describing all this didn't need to exist. In no way did they add to the action or tension, and in no way altered the plot. They could just have said "they're tough", and had the freaky mouth-splitting CGI, and left it at that. But no, they couldn't leave well enough alone.

I can accept bad science if they need it to move the plot interestingly. I can accept it if it is complete gobbledigook (like Treknobabble). But if it doesn't actually add to the story, and is actively against what the real world says, it bugs the heck out of me.

Now, as a general note folks, next time someone says "please pardon the rant", consider actually doing so, letting it slide. Rants are generally given by someone who's not in a particularly pleasant state of mind about the subject. Nitpicking is rarely going to make them feel better, or have them suddenly see the error of their position, especially when that position is a matter of opinion and taste.
 

I just hate "virus vampires." I want undead, cursed corpses who rise from thier graves at night to feed on the living.


To paraphrase From Dusk Til Dawn: I dont care how crazy they are, psychos just DONT explode from sunlight.
 

Umbran said:
Now, as a general note folks, next time someone says "please pardon the rant", consider actually doing so, letting it slide. .

Well, as a general note, when someone says something is one of their favorite movies, and then you proceed to bash it unfairly, you should expect the fan to try to refute your nitpicking.
 

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