Blade: Wesley Snipes’ Daywalker Is Still One of the Coolest Marvel Characters Ever To Appear Onscreen
”Comic book movie” used to be a phrase that rolled eyes back en masse. Granted, that’s not too different from now now — just for entirely different reasons. Critical flops and commercial embarrassments… this was the legacy of all cape flicks not called “Batman” or “Superman.”
Until, that is, Wesley Snipes took a bite out of the box office.
By the time Stephen Norrington’s came out in 1998, the most notable comic book movie franchises were DC-based. Both had signed off (for now) with fourth entries that were widely reviled. (Understandable with Superman IV, but Batman & Robin would at least appreciate in camp value as time went on.) The only place comics succeeded to any degree was in small-screen animated shows, which varied wildly in quality.
The late ’90s had a very specific, yet familiar, vibe for teen boys. Lots of leather, loud thumping music, martial arts, and bloody violence. Guess what movie ticked all those boxes in the late ’90s?
(Okay, sure, The Matrix — but that came later!)
Blade took the Marvel comics character of the same name (who recently marked 50 years since his introduction) and gave him a never-cooler Wesley Snipes as an avatar. Blade is a human/vampire crossbreed who hunts undead bloodsuckers. He can walk in the daylight without a severe case of ash dandruff, but he’s still weak for the need to feed.
In the movie, Blade tries to foil a particularly edgy vamp named Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff) from unleashing the Blood God. It also follows Blade protecting a bitten doctor named Karen Jenson (N’Bushe Wright) and his relationship with surrogate father Whistler (Kris Kristofferson). The dynamic means we get to see the more human side of Blade as well as the ass-kicker.
Anyone who grew up watching this
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