Horror.com talks with David S. Goyer

Wesley Snipes is back as the taciturn day-walking vampire hunter in the explosive third and (supposedly) final film in the Blade franchise, Blade: Trinity. The plot unfolds as follows: When his nemeses at the Vampire Nation frame him in a series of brutal killings, Blade joins forces with the Nightstalkers, a secret society of human vampire hunters — and the trail of blood leads directly to the notorious vampire of legend, Dracula (Dominic Purcell).

Written and directed by David S. Goyer, Blade: Trinity also stars Jessica Biel as Abigail, the daughter of Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), who will inherit the vampire-slaying duties that once belonged to Blade (Wesley Snipes). Ryan Reynolds co-stars as Hannibal King, one of the Nightstalkers — these two new characters open the way for more Blade-style movies, as the eternal fight between good and evil never really ends.

Horror.com attended the press junket for Blade: Trinity (see our video interviews elsewhere on the site), and we couldn’t help but notice that Blade himself was conspicuously absent. (Nothing gets past us!) According to published reports at IMDb, “Wesley Snipes has pulled out of all press duties for his third Blade movie, Blade: Trinity. The moody actor was so insistent on not talking to the media about the movie, he signed up for another film in Bulgaria as soon as shooting finished and he has been incommunicado ever since.”

To make up for the deficit, we interviewed Goyer twice: Once on camera, and once for our online readers:

Staci Layne Wilson for Horror.com: The Blade films are mainly known for their high-concept action sequences, but fans of vampires also like the scare factor. What’s scary about Blade 3?

David S. Goyer: There are some traditional scary moments in the film, definitely. We have a number of sequences in the dark, where characters are moving about and being menacing by creatures in the dark and there’s a great sequence with a blind character who’s trapped in an area with one of our bad guys. We can see what’s out there, but she doesn’t — so it’s sort of our little homage to Wait Until Dark. There’s another scary sequence with that same character’s daughter, who is only 6, who is hiding in an airshaft and the main baddie is looking for her and creeping about. So, we did have an opportunity to get in some sort of more traditional scary horror moments.

And Blade battles Dracula in this one?

He does battle Dracula, but he battles the Blade version of Dracula, if you will. Part of Blade’s success, is that we have deliberately toyed with people’s expectations of what vampires are and how they will react. So this Dracula is not your grandfather’s Dracula. He bears no resemblance to Bela Lugosi or Frank Langella or anything like that. I think part of the fun of the movie is in subverting people’s expectations of what he will be like.

Do you have a favorite Dracula?

I think Christopher Lee, from the Hammer House of Horror films. I liked how gothic and unabashedly bloody those films were, and I also liked how he was elegant but menacing. He wasn’t as sexy as the other Draculas that went before and have perhaps come later on, but he seemed brutal. I like that about him. I tend to like monsters and menaces that are truly evil and brutal because the more that you empathize or sympathize with them, the less scary they become.

I think it’s interesting that there have been three different directors for the Blade films, each bringing their own thing to the franchise. But you’re the closest, having written the character in the first place — did this help you as a director, or was it a hindrance?

It was a lot of fun. I had the benefit of the R&D (research and development) of what we’d experienced on the previous two films. I had a good feeling for what worked dramatically, and in terms of visual effects — and what didn’t work, in terms of fights. In that regard, I think I was uniquely well-suited to take over the reins of the franchise. And perhaps it was a bit easier for me than perhaps someone coming into it completely out of left field. Each of the Blade films are quite different from the others. That also really liberated me — I wasn’t trying to do a Norrington film [director of Blade], I wasn’t trying to do a Del Toro [director of Blade 2] film. I was putting my own imprint on the story.

You and Wesley are the constants throughout. As an actor, what were his feelings about doing a third one? Some actors don’t like to be locked into getting too closely identified with playing one iconic character.

It certainly feels like Blade is the character that Wesley was born to play. I think in the last decade or so, it is by far what he’s most become identified with. He hasn’t even done that much that people have seen in between the Blade films. I know that the movies are hard on him, they’re physically grueling. He injured himself when we were shooting Blade 2 and we had to stop filming for a number of months and wait for him to undergo knee surgery. He told me when we finished the second film that he thought he only had one more Blade film in him. In that regard and because of that reason, Blade: Trinity probably will the last. But you never know…

I’ve always heard that Wesley is kind of surly, but I liked him when I interviewed him for Blade 2. He was unexpectedly funny and loose at the red carpet premiere. Yet, I have heard that he takes the role deadly seriously.

Wesley on a Blade movie set is very different than Wesley in any other context. I think part of the reason he does such a good job as Blade is because when he’s on a Blade movie he really does embody that character. I mean, he’ll have an occasional get-together at his home or something like that, where he’ll cut loose. But when he’s on the set, he is pretty intense and he’s pretty quiet.

So he’s a Method Vampire, huh? He doesn’t take blood home with him to drink or anything, does he?

No, no.

He may have been injured on Blade 2, but I heard that on Blade 3 a camera was mortally wounded.

We ruined a couple of cameras on Blade 3, but one of them was specifically ruined by Jessica Beil [she plays Whistler’s daughter]. She became very proficient with the bow and arrow, and at one point near the end of the shoot we wanted her to fire directly at the camera. So she was suspended in a safety harness about 80 feet off the ground and she had to fire at the camera about 50 feet away and just as safety we put a bunch of safety glass in front of the camera and crew and things like that. The only thing that was exposed was a tiny 2-by-2 inch hole directly in front of the lens and on the first take, she fired the arrow straight down the lens of the camera.

So, after all that, was the shot useable?

It was useable up to a certain point. We also have footage of her shooting that bow and arrow, and in fact we put it on the DVD, which is quite fun.

You’re already putting the DVD together?

We’re almost done, believe it or not.

Are you a DVD-phile?

Oh, yeah. There are lots of extras on this one. We’re releasing a 2-disk set and pretty much now, you compile the DVD as you’re making the film. It’s not something that’s just done after the fact.

As a reviewer, I often listen to commentary on new DVDs. There’s really no perspective when the actors and filmmakers do their commentaries before the feature film has even hit theaters. What are your thoughts on that?

You do have perspective from the filmmaking standpoint, but you don’t have perspective in terms of whether or not the film has gained any traction with an audience, or whether or not there’s been any kind of cultural or social impact. You definitely don’t have that perspective.

Which commentary do you prefer — fresh or retrospective?

There are good aspects and there are bad aspects to that. The good thing is, if you’re closer to the production you will remember more. It’s easier to get all the various cast and crew members back together. But the downside of it is that you don’t have that sort of backwards perspective and you don’t have as much distance from it, which can also be interesting. I’ve been in the position most of the time of having recorded my commentary shortly after I’ve finished whatever film it is. That seems to be the way the studios like to do it.

I imagine there will be a special Blade retrospective DVD set someday…

We’re talking about doing a boxed set of all three and we’re talking about Guillermo del Toro, Stephen Norrington and myself doing a group commentary for all three films. I think we’ll probably get that going at some point.

Have you ever had any odd experiences with Blade fans?

There is the odd experience here and there, you know. I met a person once who said he was Blade, which was a little disturbing. We were recently at the Wizard World Con — Ryan [Reynolds], Jessica and myself — and we were doing a signing. This isn’t specifically Blade-related, but 5 Storm Troopers showed up in line to get their autographs. They were full Imperial Storm Troopers, which is kind of funny. It’s OK, though. Fortunately, I haven’t had any scary fan experiences.

I know you’re now working on Batman Begins, and that you are keeping the tone serious. But you know you’re going to tick somebody off, no matter how you treat the material.

Definitely, people are going to complain no matter what. I think the online posters are even more vociferous than the mainstream audiences. Obviously you want as many people as possible to enjoy your film, but it’s death to your project if you start trying alter what you’re doing in order to cater to them. You’re just not going to be able to please all of the people all of the time. The more chances you take, the more you risk alienating some people, but that is OK — you just kind of have to stick to doing the kind of film that you want to do and hope that it finds an audience. If you try to do it the other way around and reverse-engineer it, I think that is a sure recipe for disaster.

Do you read the reviews on your movies?

Sure, sure. All of us sort of comic booky, geeky guys do that. Of course.

And what about another comic book project of yours, Ghost Rider? I understand you’ve dropped out of the creative process, and you’ll only be producing now?

I did write a draft of it. This was back when Stephen Norrington was going to direct it. We were going to make it with Nic Cage, but the studio made a decision not to do an R-rated film. Stephen and I, we just — and I wish Mark Steven Johnson all the best of luck in terms of what he’s doing — but we just didn’t know how to tell our specific story as a PG-13 rated film. We stepped aside, and we said, ‘You do what you want to do, and we’ll do something else.’

Thank you, David, for your time. I, for one, can’t wait to see Blade 3. Good luck with it.

Thanks.

Interview by Staci Layne Wilson