Nick got me the DVD of Blade: Trinity for my birthday because he knew how much I loved the original. So Saturday night, we sat down with some popcorn and Entenmann's donuts and settled in for some serious camp. Here's a not-so-quick rundown.

Wesley Snipes is great, as always. He's cool, unflinching, and he's given some new toys in this movie. There's a device that looks like a crossbow, but features some laser thing that is half as hot as the sun and can cut through vampire flesh like butter. Nothing's as cool as his signature swirly blade thing, but this new melee weapon comes pretty close. Jessica Biel plays Abigail Whistler, the original Whistler's daughter (still no mention of Whistler's mother). When Blade mentions that he thought Whistler's family was killed by vampires (which is what I thought, too), she says, no, she was born later, out of wedlock. She actually uses that term. Out of wedlock. Like anyone would ever describe themselves using the terminology of an 80-year-old televangelist. But whatever. Abigail is teamed up with Ryan Reynolds, as the grandly named Hannibal King, and they have created their own Gen X/Y vampire-slaying club. They begin working with Blade once the original Whistler...uh...becomes incapacitated.

I should tell you now that Reynolds was channeling Jason Lee when he did this film. I don't know how he did it, or how it's possible to channel someone who is still alive, but Reynolds did it. My theory is that they took an astral projection class together and that one day when they were practicing, Jason Lee got into Reynolds' body and decided to keep it for a while, just for kicks. Or maybe there was a fortune-telling vending machine thing responsible. I don't know. I just know that it happened, and that there's all this footage to prove it.

John Michael Higgins, who first crossed into my sphere of awareness with the Christopher Guest films, portrayed an evil 'familiar' who tries to publicly frame Blade as a murderous sociopath. (There is some evidence to support this.) There's also Natasha Lyonne, who portrays a blind scientist/computer geek/tasty entree. Normally a wonderful, vibrant actor, she seems awkward here and perpetually on the verge of laughter. It's like all our favorite indie film stars were at a party and decided between jello shots that it'd be fun to be in a really campy action movie. Unfortunately, the only one allowed to live up to her potential here was Parker Posey, as a fantastic vampiric Marlene Dietrich with stiletto shoes and a caustic smirk. You could just tell she was having the time of her life.

One of the many things we learn from Blade: Trinity is that vampires use Macs, and that vampire hunters listen to iPods while they're slaying (despite an obvious diminishment of external sensory input that I would think would be a disadvantage in combat). We learn that vampires are still obsessed with walking in the daylight, and that they have devised a method of feeding that will make the old-fashioned fang-to-neck technique obsolete. Twenty-first century vampires, it seems, are lazy, and can't be bothered to stop for a bite when the hunger takes them. They have things to do, you see. Unlike the libertine party kids of the first Blade, these are mostly thirty-something vampires with more adult ambitions and interests, like archaeology. And this is precisely how they discover the whereabouts of Drake (played by Dominic Purcell), the first vampire, who was born in Mesopotamia about 7,000 years ago. They uncover his hibernating body in the Syrian desert and try to persuade him to help them restore dignity to their people by killing their greatest enemy, Tom Jones. Just kidding. It's Blade, of course. At first the fanged progenitor is downright belligerent, chastising them all for making such a bloody mess of their legacy. There's a lot of "back in my day" speechifying—how the kids keep mucking up the garden, etc.—but in the end, the well-preserved Drake agrees to help them. (Incidentally, Dominic Purcell, who plays Drake, used to be on the show BeastMaster. Just thought I'd throw that in—I know you guys are fans.)

Oh, and vampire dogs. Did I mention there are vampire dogs? Not big dogs like Great Danes, either. We're talking Pekingese. Adorable little balls of fluff whose jaws suddenly unfold, insect-like, and try to devour whatever crosses their path. People have been trained by decades of cinema to be wary of the hulking, lathering, hounds-of-hell-type pooches, but no one expects little Princess to open wide and plant her incisors deep in your jugular. It's brilliant, and it ushers in some of my favorite Ryan-Reynolds-as-Jason-Lee moments.

Irrelevant Aside: I love the character Blade, but for my money, the real hero in this series has always been Whistler (Kris Kristofferson). Whistler ambles around on his gammy leg (without superstrength, or any of Blade's attributes, I might add), dies repeatedly, is resurrected for nefarious purposes, and somehow finds time to defang a throng of baddies. He's the true everyman, here. He's the Atticus Finch of Translyvania. He's the Gary Cooper of the underworld. He has the dignity of an aging monarch with the gravelly disposition of a trucker gone wild. He is the heart and soul of the series. And here's a fun fact: When original audiences watched a version of Blade II without Whistler in it, they started a riot and burned down the studio. Okay, that's a complete fabrication, but I could see such a thing happening. Whistler is just that cool.

One of the things I love about the movies is that they come alive with comic book-y ambience and visuals. With this last one, though, they couldn't seem to decide on the most appropriate tone. It's a cross between the silly battle banter of Spider-Man (more so in the comics than in the films) and the brooding gloom of dark, angst-ridden heroes like the Punisher and the Crow. You get a bit of whiplash switching between these two, and sometimes the switch occurs mid-scene.