It’s easy to forget now that comic book tie-ins are the only kind of movie Hollywood makes. But the genre was closer to Cultural Ground Zero than perhaps even sci fi in general.
The summer of 1997 brought the fan and critic-panned disaster Batman and Robin. That movie was such a debacle that smart players in the industry predicted that comic book movies, which had thrived since 1978’s Superman, would be moribund for a decade.
But for better or worse, it would only be a year until a picture came along that did for comic book movies what Nintendo did for the post-crash US video game market.
That unlikely hit was the action-horror flick Blade.
If you’re Gen Y or older, right now you’re probably thinking Oh, yeah. I remember that one. And your fondness for it is as nebulous as your recollection.
Because having just re-watched the original Blade, it’s still not clear to me why the movie was such a game-changer upon release.
The setup is simple: A vampire-human hybrid who can withstand the daylight hunts down the bloodsuckers that secretly run society.
One major distinguishing feature that sets Blade apart from prior vampire movies is its blend of action and horror – in particular its specific style of action.
In the half-century before Blade, most vampire movies were either of the Hammer horror or gothic romance types.
Sure, you had the occasional comedy. But nothing else in the subgenre featured the same slick, stylish action. From Dusk till Dawn is the closest precursor you can point to in American cinema.
Hong Kong cinema is another story. Wire-fu movies were a major influence on Blade, and it shows.
Western audiences were ready for Hong Kong style action to go mainstream, as proven by The Matrix, which came out a year after Blade and has since overshadowed it.
But you can see Blade’s kung fu DNA when somebody lands a hit, and unlike in PG-13 American style action flicks, the camera doesn’t pull away.
Other than that, the production values don’t hold up today.
The CG is bad, even by 2004 video game standards.
Speaking of VtM, Blade scribe David S. Goyer (of Christopher Nolan Dark Knight trilogy fame) seems to have taken more than a few pages from the World of Darkness:
- Vampires have a rigid hierarchy.
- Vampires in large cities secretly pull the strings behind the scenes.
- Edged weapons are more effective against vampires than (regular) bullets.
- A vampire sect seeks to resurrect/awaken an ancient creature referred to as a blood god whose existence mainline vampire society denies.
The only problem is that Blade‘s secret vampire society isn’t as convincing as VtM’s.
Here are some reasons why.
- Just biting a human is enough for a vampire to turn a victim into another vampire. So why isn’t the earth overrun with vampires?
- The fact that vampires can still reproduce naturally compounds this problem. It also leads to another issue, namely …
- Any class conflict created by the pureblood vs turned vampire dichotomy comes off as arbitrary when former-humans-turned-vampires are shown to be far more powerful than the purebloods.
- The question of what all the vampires will eat if the blood god achieves its stated goal of turning everyone into vampires is left unaddressed.
An even bigger oversight: In the course of the movie, one character discovers a cure for vampirism. The moral question of why Blade keeps killing almost every vampire he meets thereafter instead of curing them doesn’t even come up.
That omission is almost enough to push the title character out of the antihero category and into villain protagonist territory.
Not that Wesley Snipes does a bad job. In Blade, he turns in his most delightful action performance since 1993’s Demolition Man.
His martial arts scenes are still exciting, even if they feel a little choppy compared to post-Matrix fare.
And he has solid on-screen chemistry with buddy character Abraham Whistler, played by Kris Kristofferson in a scene-stealing performance.
Even the kind-of forgettable female lead is competently played.
But one weird casting choice that demands comment is the main villain role.
To be honest, when somebody says, “We need an evil, ruthless head vampire,” my first thought is not of Stephen Dorff.
It shouldn’t have worked, but to Stephen Dorff’s credit, he just manages to pull it off.
Also, I don’t care who calls it cringe, Blade’s description of Dorff’s character as “always trying to ice skate uphill” was evocative and funny then, and it’s still evocative and funny now.
Blade may have its faults, but you can’t deny that revitalized the flagging comic book movie genre.
Viewed today, it’s a definite product of its time. Hollywood was struggling to come up with something new, so they bashed Bram Stoker and the Shaw Bros. together to buy time.
And the field was so clear of competition that it worked.
As a movie watching experience, it’s OK.
You could throw it on in the background while you’re doing something else that doesn’t require your full concentration.
One of those movies.
And one reason it’s remembered at all is because it was followed up by a movie better than a Blade sequel had a right to be but worse than its director had an excuse to make.
More on that next time.
For now, get your horror fix with my award-worthy space-pirates-in-Hell novel:
