At the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel Entertainment took a victory lap while presenting an upcoming slate of new films and television series. They had just released “Avengers: Endgame,” the culmination of a fifteen-year game plan to build a cinematic universe that adapts the interlocking series composing Marvel’s publishing wing. The Steve Jobs-esque “one more thing” at the end of the panel? Mahershala Ali, a few months after winning his second Academy Award, sauntered across the stage wearing a baseball cap with “Blade” emblazoned above the brim. He said the first call he made after getting that statuette was to MCU head honcho Kevin Feige. The sought-after actor was shooting his shot, signing on with a brand that was hotter than ever, to bring the iconic vampire-hunter back to the big screen for the first time in over a decade.
Fast forward five years, a global pandemic, two union strikes, two directors, countless writers, and multiple release date changes. Not a single frame of the picture has been filmed. The industry trade magazines have reported all causes for the delayed production, but one lone reason stands out among the chorus of red flags. It’s the little matter of the project’s end goal. Ali, it is said, sees “Blade” as his “Black Panther,” his opportunity to lead a culture-shaking moment at the movies. But that’s not what made the original “Blade” special.
In the late nineties, Wesley Snipes, a much bigger movie star than Ali, if a less critically lauded one, was trying to make his own “Black Panther” adaptation with the late filmmaker John Singleton. When that production fell apart, he hopped over to take the lead role in New Line Cinema’s “Blade,” a straightforward actioner about a vampire-hunter who was, himself, a vampire. Based on Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan’s “Tomb of Dracula” comics, Blade was seen as a blaxploitation anachronism. At various points in development, the studio wanted the project to skew more comedic, like a parody, at one juncture even considering racebending Blade to be played by a white actor. But by the time Snipes had joined, screenwriter David S. Goyer had written a sleek, postmodern sci-fi picture grounding the concept of vampirism away from the romantic and mystical tenor of most bloodsucking films of the time.
From his page and with director Stephen Norrington’s guiding hand, “Blade” was a serious motion picture, but not one that took itself too seriously. In the film, Blade wages a war on vampires, an ancient race of beings operating from the shadows with their tendrils behind all manner of corruption. In most cities, they own the cops and hold an uneasy alliance with the humans in power to continue keeping their lives and their ways a secret. Deacon Frost is a nightclub owner who hatches a plot involving an ancient prophecy about a “blood god” so the vampires can usurp the humans and inherit the earth once and for all.
The film is not without its own interesting ideas. Within the secret society, there is a class divide between pure bloods who have been vampires since birth and ones who were turned later in life. It’s presented as the difference between being part of a species or just the carrier of a sexually transmitted disease. Similarly, with vampires categorized as othered, Blade’s status as someone born with all the strengths of a vampire, with none of their weaknesses to silver and sunlight, leads to some amusing exchanges that stretch the metaphor of him being something of a halfbreed. It feels like the X-Men comics influenced Goyer more than any of the pages Blade actually came from.
But none of that is what people remember. That’s not really why the film was such a surprise box office smash in 1998 when it was released. Where Ali presently seeks to make a “Blade” film that would stand as something important, socially relevant, and progressive-minded, Snipes is only interested in being a badass.
Take the film’s iconic opening “Blood Rave” sequence. A young man (Kenny Johnson from “The Shield”) is brought to a secret club event by an attractive woman (porn star Traci Lords) that turns out to be a vampire party. As pulsing electronic music throbs through the underground space, the sprinkler system erupts, raining blood down on its excited inhabitants, leaving the humans tricked into attending drenched and terrified. The mass of predators parts to reveal Blade in tactical gear, a leather trench coat, and shades. He flashes a grin before systematically decimating vampire after vampire with guns and a sword. It is one of the most thrilling prologues of any film from that decade or any decade.
Set aside the inner conflict about his attempts to quell his own thirst for human blood, the strange affection he feels for a leading lady (N’Bushe Wright) that reminds him of his mother, or the fatherly relationship he shares with Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), much of what seems to be driving Snipes’ memorable performance is being and looking as cool as humanly possible.
Look no further than the commentary track for “Blade II,” the film’s equally cool if slightly less iconic sequel. While Goyer dishes on behind the scenes secrets, Snipes repeatedly interrupts him to point out how tough he looks in the film’s many well-choreographed fight scenes. Like a small child excitedly pulling at his mother’s dress to show her a cool flip, Snipes mouths along to every punch and kick, making verbal sound effects for every landed blow.
By the time the third entry in the franchise, “Blade: Trinity,” was released, Goyer had moved his way into the director’s chair and tried to make the series expand. He added extra hunters, played by Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds, with an eye toward a spin-off and sought to make the picture more extensive and more elaborate than its forebears. But he and Snipes famously fought over creative control, leading the star to hide in his trailer a lot, smoking weed. The man who once prided himself on doing as many of his own fights as possible now let a stunt double do as much of his work as allowed. Every major fight scene is cut erratically because of how few close-ups of Snipes’ iconic visage were captured on set.
Universally considered the worst of the three films, it is also the picture that most closely resembles the franchise-minded approach Disney has steered the Marvel brand in for years. “Blade” and its success came at a time when Marvel as a publisher wasn’t much distant from declaring bankruptcy, and Marvel itself, at the time lending out its intellectual property to other studios, didn’t profit from a hit that wouldn’t exist without its source material.
When Disney’s MCU makes movies, they are overly fussed-over, manicured pop culture objects, focus-grouped into oblivion, and carefully orchestrated to become the topic of discussion through sheer force of will. But they’re not cool. For all his talent, Ali lacks the undeniable charisma and singular presence Snipes imbued Blade with.
Our man Wesley has never won an Oscar and likely never will. But “Blade” will endure long after those fleeting critical darlings have faded from the cultural memory.
“Blade” is available to rent or own on all digital platforms.
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