Headscratchers / Blade (1998)

• Deacon Frost is running around with his super sunscreen. But wait... What about his eyes? Or the inside of his mouth? Or the skin under his hair?
  • He's a walking corpse. I see no reason why he couldn't cover all those places with screen too. It's not like he has to care about irritation.
    • The Vampires in Blade are specifically stated to be the virus kind (not the mythical walking corpse one) and no kind of sunblock is going to keep out out all UV radiation. The whole scene didn't make much sense — one smudge or missed spot and he is toast, also the implications for the setting of such a substance are completely ignored afterward.
    • The fact that Blade could smell the sunblock on him from about six feet away means that he was slathered in the stuff. And the protection it conveyed was only temporary.
    • Yup, it was probably the strongest stuff on the market, or even stronger if we assume Deacon has access to stuff the vampires are developing that's not actually for the human market. And it still only gets him about a minute or two in sunlight.
  • If you look at how Nyssa turns to dust in film two it seems likely that Vamp eyeballs carry a high immunity to sunlight; burning only after her body had nearly completely combusted.
  • He could have also been wearing clear, full-eye contact lenses to help shield him, and the inside of his mouth is in shadow from above. He also never goes out in *direct* sunlight when wearing the SPF-1000 - he wears it just before dawn on the beach with Dragonetti(when the pre-dawn rays are only making the latter start to blister and smoke), and pointedly confronts Blade under a canopy of trees in Chinatown on a cloudy day. When the sun actually rises in the beach scene, he's already put on a full motorcycle helmet with a dark visor.
• Why do none of the elder pureblood vampires try to fight their way out of Frost's temple, or shake off his guards? They seem entriely complicit in his plans, even though it is clear that he intends to kill them. You'd think none of them had any superhuman capabilities (or even much of a survival instinct).
  • Perhaps Authority Equals Asskicking isn't true for all vampires. Yeah, settings like the World Of Darkness drone on and on about nightmarishly powerful elders, but I think it's just as likely that a vampire born to power will never actually bother to "work out" their super powers, combat skills, and other personal protections skills since they're surrounded by bodyguards, just like politicians in real life.
    • There's another question; where were the elders' bodyguards? The way the film shows it, Frost pretty much just politely asks them to come with him so he can sacrifice them, and they just go along with it with no resistance whatsoever. Nothing is ever seen or mentioned of any other pureblood vampires protecting their leaders (purebloods also supposedly possess powers that turned vampires don't have, a detail which widens the plot hole by its absence). Also, when Dragonetti catches Frost in an off-limits area, why does he do nothing to punish him or stop him?
    • Whistler says that "There's something happening in the vampire ranks. something big". It sounds to me like Frost is gathering followers, most likely with a promise of equality for turned vampires, as that seems a sore point between vampires. The House of Erebus seems far too arrogant and snobbish to realize that their servants are being turned against them. As for why Dragonetti doesn't punish Frost for trespassing? Maybe Frost is already an uncommonly powerful vampire, seeing as he can dodge bullets while other vampires are ashed by Blade's gun. Frost is no longer intimidated by the Elders and that scares them.
    • Note that this is a bigger advantage than it might seem. All the exotic special powers in the world don't matter if Deacon Frost can simply respond with "I go first and kill you dead before you can do anything meaningful." Doesn't explain why the elders just stayed in their assigned ritual spots, though.
  • Mercury ashes one of the Elders on the spot when he steps out of line during the ceremony setup; the rest are probably curious enough to take their chances participating in the ritual(which may or may not kill them, for all they know) rather than guaranteed immediate death.
  • The first answer is almost certainly correct: These special powers the Elders have are nothing more than propaganda designed to keep the masses in line. Look at Damiskinos in the second film who is supposed to be the oldest and wisest and therefore strongest correct? Yet he dies just as easily as all the rest. True he was going up against a genetically engineered Super Vampire but there wasn't even a hint of being superior to a standard Vamp when at worst he should have been Blade's equal and at best he should have displayed something approaching La Magra style abilities.
• I After Blade rescues the little Asian girl instead of helping her find her parents he just tells her "go home". How does he know that Frost didn't kidnapped her from like 100 miles from her house? I can excuse not taking her to the police but...damn Blade, at least ask her if she's hurt after being THROWN THROUGH GLASS! Don't just be a douche-bag!
  • That's kind of his main character trait.
  • If the girl had been kidnapped from a 100 miles away she probably would have said "I don't know how" or something when Blade told her to go home.
  • Why would Frost go that far to kidnap someone? He's based in that city, so why would he go 100 miles out of his way to grab some random kid when there's gotta be plenty in the nearby area. Hell, if I'm not mistaken, that scene took place in/near a playground. He probably grabbed her from just offscreen.
    • Blade's friend works in Chinatown and that girl is clearly Chinese. Frost grabbed the nearest child to him at the time.
• Near the beginning, the police seem pretty cavalier about shooting at a man carrying a hostage. Half a dozen officers unload multiple clips (inside a hospital, no less) without any apparent consideration to the woman he was carrying away. They even have one officer using an assault rifle which he would have to assume would go right through his target (if he hit) and the woman.
  • I always wondered if those cops weren't really working for the vampires (knowingly or maybe some unknowingly) and were told to kill Blade with no regard for Karen's safety.
  • And, you know, this is a Marvel Universe-based film. Trope Codifier for Humans Are Bastards. How many times has Magneto been proven right again??
• Why is the ancient vampire temple located in the suburbs of a major American city? This temple is supposed to be so old that the vampire council doesn't even remember it. It is described in the dead language on the vampire scrolls that are at least thousands of years old. Are we supposed to assume that the vampires, descending from Drake (from Blade 3) in the middle east or Europe just wandered over to North America to build their temple and it just so happened that a few thousand years later a major American city was built right next door and apparently somebody built a modern entrance/exit over it that Blade and the girl exit through at the end of the movie? Also, the bowl/sink that collected Blade's blood looked a lot like stainless steel. The temple had to have been found in order for there to be that modern door. That would make it one of the greatest archeological finds in history so it would be hard to keep it secret. Don't say the discovery was covered up by the vampires because the council didn't know about it.
  • It's possible that Frost found it and had these things put in. Apologies if that is stupid due to some plot point this troper is forgetting; it's been about a year since I last saw the first one.
    • It's not the actual temple, it's a replica that Frost had built. The blueprints for it are shown earlier in the movie and it's mentioned several times that Frost is building something big.
• Blade drinks blood for the first time in years and becomes powerful enough to fight through Frost's army of vampire mooks. Thing is though, he kills many of them by punching or kicking them a few times, and that's apparently enough to turn them to dust?
  • Actually we hear snapping and see him breaking a few necks, presumably thats enough to dust some of them?
  • Blade appears to gets a dramatic boost to his physical strength after consuming blood; look at what happened after he got dumped in the blood pool in the second movie. He was literally killing Damoskinos' familiars with flicks of his wrists. So, after drinking blood, Blade probably was strong enough to kill vampires with his bare hands just by punching or kicking them.
• What exactly is the Record Keeper? How could a Vampire get so horrifically obese? How does he feed?
  • If I recall correctly, in the making video, they say that the other vampires bring children to him. Combine that with a sedentary lifestyle over the centuries and...
    • Truly one of the most vile vampires in the series.
  • The cop familiar mentions over his radio that he was making a deliver to Pearl (the record keeper) when he encountered Blade. If he doesn't eat children, he definitely gets his blood packets delivered.
• In the first movie Blade visits the hospital where they brought Quinn to finish the vampire (he says so). Wait, if he was going to kill Quinn anyway, what the point of setting him on fire and then leaving him instead of killing him right away? What the hell did Blade think would happen except for Quinn harming more people and probably escaping before he could get to him (like he eventually did)?
  • Blade's first encounter with Quinn has him saying something like, "You just don't stay down. I'm going to try fire this time," indicating he thought/hoped that the fire would do in Quinn. But the paramedics arrive before that can happen and put Quinn out. Then Blade has to finish him off, because his first method, the fire, was cut short.
  • I wonder if he'd tried, oh, I don't know, chopping Quinn's head off, like he did in the finale.
  • I think he's been trying to get to Frost via Quinn. Quinn is just a servant, one that Blade knows about and can chase again and again. Blade says he's been tracking Frost for a long time. He only killed Quinn when he had found Frost himself.
  • It could also be somewhat interpreted as Blade trying to make him suffer an agonizing death (by fire), but the paramedics/police interrupting them.
• In the first movie, in the scene inside the temple, the blonde vampire girl kills one of the vampire elders when he pisses her off, but they needed all twelve alive for the ceremony. Did they brought a spare just in case? If this is the case, the movie doesn't seem to make it clear. Or maybe I didn't catch it because was confused by all the different characters on screen.
  • Maybe they didn't, and as a result, the ritual was left incomplete and Frost only became semi-godlike, thus allowing Blade to beat him. Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!
• In the opening act, when Blade raids the Bloodbath rave, several random partygoers recognize Blade and attack him, despite being unarmed while Blade is covered in body armor and weapons. And the security team that responds to Blade's attack is not much better equipped, as they possess light arms and no protection themselves. Why are these vampires so willing to throw away their unlives for virtually no gain, as they clearly know who he is and therefore would know how outclassed they are compared to him.
• How did Pearl supposedly eat all those kids if he can't even walk? Did Frost bring them to him?
• Deacon Frost's plan is to summon the Blood God, which will turn all humans into vampires. Why would a vampire want to do that? It would be like a lion turning all its prey into lions. If everyone in the world is a vampire, who will the vampires feed on?
  • It was originally explained that he keeps refrigerated humans to feed on, but this was dropped for being too expensive. It was realised in Blade: Trinity.