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| Star Wesley Snipes' back and eye-catching head tattoo is centered on this black-and-scarlet-hued poster for Stephen Norrington's Blade |
Blade is the Daywalker, a vampire who quenches his blood-thirst medically in order to remain protector of the humans. He has to kill a lot of evil vampires from their secret, underground society, which is alive everywhere around us, as a young, fanatic leader now thinks that they should assume world domination.
Blade is written by David S. Goyer (The Unborn (2009)), based on the 1973 Marvel comics character created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, and directed by great British filmmaker Stephen Norrington (Death Machine (1994)).
Blade is a cool, cool film! Wesley Snipes (The Fan (1996)) is awesome as the suave, ass-kicking title character, and Stephen Dorff (Somewhere (2010)) is demonical as the villainous vamp with illusions of grandeur. The film is full of raw action, cool weapons and special effects, and a production design and visual concept of darkness and blood-red tones that really works.
The story is simple, but it holds water. The storyline and new action-packed take on vampires was very fresh in 1998, when vampires had not ravaged movies as unceasingly and long as is the case today.
Blade has many cool elements, like its euro-trance bloodbath in the beginning, or the immensely obese Pearl character, and its first and last 15 minutes are insanely innovative. The film is also refreshing as a superhero movie that doesn't have any sentimental romance attached to it, - and one that is bloody and disgusting as hell!
Related posts:
Stephen Norrington: Top 10: Best first-of-franchise movies
1998 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Top 10: The best action movies and TV-series reviewed by Film Excess to date
Cost: 45 mil. $
Box office: 131.2 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 2.91 times its cost)
[Blade premiered 19 August (New York) and runs 120 minutes. Snipes was paid 8 mil. $ for his performance. Shooting took place from February - June 1997 in Moscow, Russia, London, England, Vancouver, British Columbia and in California, including in Los Angeles. The film opened #1 to a 17 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another weekend at #1 and then another 2 weekends in the top 5 (#2-#3), grossing 70 mil. $ (53.4 % of the total gross). Wolfman and Colan unsuccessfully sued New Line Cinema for 35 mil. $ in the film's wake. The film's success paved the way for more Marvel films: The company's only attempt previously had been the disastrous Howard the Duck (1986). Roger Ebert gave Blade a 3/4 star review, translating to a notch under this one. The film spun a franchise, which also encompasses Blade II (2002) and Blade Trinity (2004), all with Snipes and Goyer's involvement. Marvel is rebooting the franchise in a 2023 movie with Mahershala Ali taking over the character. Norrington returned with The Last Minute (2001). Snipes returned in Futuresport (1998, TV movie ) and theatrically in Play It to the Bone (1999); Dorff in Earthly Possessions (1999, TV movie) and theatrically in Entropy (1999). Blade is rotten at 57 % with a 5.90/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Blade?
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