dirty monkey bugspray fun

Blade II is more ballet than Shakespeare, and more WWE than ballet. But unlike professional wrestling, Blade II is crafted with skill, art, and tremendous talent.
Director Guillermo Del Toro mentions more than once throughout his very engaging, often hilarious commentary that the first Blade was the set up, so all the character stuff is out of the way. Blade II, in its turn, is pure fun.
Sure, he says, to look at it logically it's complete bullshit, but it's not supposed to be a logical movie, it's supposed to be two hours of blood and fists entertainment, which is exactly what it is.
In Blade one it was established that there was an underground society of vampires, intermingling with the real world, almost like its own company or country with its own internal politics. It was established that there was a new rung on the food chain ladder, and that vampires were the top game. Except for Blade, who was partially turned while in the womb. He has all the strengths of a vampire, but none of the weaknesses save bloodlust.
Blade II turns even that notion on its head. There's a new strain of vampires, , the Reapers, more primal, more viscious, more powerful, and they feed on other vampires and humans alike.
The reapers have their own secret, which isn't very complex, but best left to the film (the plot is so slim, best leave it to be discovered). But in finding this secret, Blade teams up with an elite team of vampire warriors, the Bloodpack and hunt down and destroy the Reapers before their plagued blood spreads further.
And that's basically it. At the beginning Blade finds the "thought dead" Whistler alive (surprise, surprise) and thankfully not a vampire. Blade alsor has a romantic interest in one of the Bloodpack, but really, it's all a simple tinker-toy construct upon which a dozen incredible action sequences hinge.
Really, it's all about the crash, bang, pow... but it's really cool crash, bang, pow. The behind the scenes featurettes on the two -disc set provide some insight into the process of creating a lot of the gore and grappling, and Del Toro in his commentary tells how using animatics and cg interchangably really helped the film (once you cannot tell which is which, that is the point where you start believing).
The Del Toro commetary is one of two on the disc, the other star Wesley Snipes and writer/producer David Goyer chime in. But really Del Toro steals the disk with his charming spanish accent, his razor sharp wit, and his passion for the work he does, all of it. Referenced in the commentary (as well as the 80 minute documentary) frequently are his past works (Kronos, Mimic, and Devil's Backbone) and how he advanced as a director because of them. Listening to Del Toro speak, one gleans insight into the process of making a comic book movie proper. You begin to understand why so many others have failed and yet he got it so right. His knowledge of comics, art, and cinema collide to produce a fantastic looking film, and a supremely enjoyable live-action comic.