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''By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.''

 

20 years ago, ‘Blade’ paved the way for ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘Logan’




Article From Forbes.


I didn’t realize when I walked into the theater to see Wesley Snipes’ Blade on opening night 20 years ago that I was watching history in the making. After suffering through Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.’s horrific The Avengers the week before, I watched the New Line actioner and was just grateful that it was a solid piece of three-star pulp fiction. While the Stephen Norrington-directed and David Goyer-penned vampire action flick is (justly) credited with kickstarting the second wave of modern superhero cinema, it was also groundbreaking in another equally important fashion. By being a star-driven horror action flick first and a comic book superhero adaptation second, it paved the way for what would be the natural evolution of the modern comic book superhero movie.


Blade ushered in a new era of present-day comic book superhero movies that weren’t just period pieces based on pulp heroes that your dad liked. That’s not an insult, as I love Mask of Zorro, Robin: Hood Prince of Thieves and Dick Tracy. But the reaction to Tim Burton’s Batman, which was as much a 1940s pulp noir as a superhero movie, was not to adapt classic comic books but rather the 1930s to 1950s pulp heroes of yesteryear (The Rocketeer, The Shadow and The Phantom) Save for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1990, it wasn’t until New Line’s Spawn that we had a present-tense superhero movie that was a hit among today's kids because it was a current popular comic book.

Blade (and Spawn) ushered in a new wave of modern-day and present-tense superhero movies like X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman Begins that replicated the four-color spectacle and became (almost by default) rooted in post-9/11 ideas about American heroism and the security state. The mini-wave of minority-led superhero comic book flicks (Men in Black, Steel, Spawn, Mask of Zorro, Blade, Black Mask) came to a near-complete end between Blade: Trinity in 2004 and this year’s Black Panther. Save for exceptions like Will Smith’s Hancock (still the biggest wholly original live-action superhero flick with $624m worldwide) in 2008, the notion of a superhero flick centered on “not a white guy” ended right as the non-Batman superhero movie asserted itself as a potential A-level blockbuster.

But the other big way that Blade changed the game didn’t happen overnight. Unlike a lot of the big superhero movies that followed, New Line’s 1998 hit was a star-driven genre flick first and a comic book superhero movie second. Yes, this was a time when comic books were less mainstream and less respectable (2.5 years later we had M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable which opened with a text screen explaining that, yes, lots of folks read lots of comic books), but the distinction stands out even more today. Blade was successfully sold as an R-rated, action-packed and blood-drenched vampire horror-action movie that starred Wesley Snipes in his element. That it was based on a Marvel comic book was beside the point and secondary to its success.

Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight made waves in 2008 for fully appropriating the modern-day crime drama and heist thriller within the sandbox of the Batman versus Joker fable. He melded a comic book superhero movie with a Michael Mann meets Sydney Lumet melodrama. If The Dark Knight jumpstarted a slow wave of “genre flick first, comic book movie second” adaptations, it was a decade behind Blade in that specific regard. Every “superhero movie-plus” flick that would follow, including much of the post-Avengers MCU catalogue (Captain America: The Winter Soldier as a conspiracy thriller, Ant-Man as a heist flick, Spider-Man: Homecoming as a teen comedy, etc.) owes a debt to Blade for showing that you had to offer more than just “Hey, it’s based on a comic book!” as your hook.

That’s especially true now that superhero movies are the definitive modern-day tentpole of choice. If anything, now that superhero movies are so pervasive that they are no longer special, it’s essential that they offer more than just four-color spectacle. So the most popular superhero movies of late are the hard genre appropriations, be it X-Men: First Class (a Cold War-era spy flick), Logan (a western), Black Panther (a Godfather meets Skyfall meets The Lion King hybrid) or Wonder Woman (a World War I-era war tragedy). Conversely, those without a genre (think Justice League or Amazing Spider-Man 2) tend to suffer by comparison. The embrace of explicit genre appropriation both allowed the superhero movie to evolve and get a leg up on the pretenders like King Arthur or Solo.

Twenty years ago, Blade was an R-rated, Wesley Snipes vampire action movie that happened to be based on a comic book. If Guillermo del Toro’s Blade II leans deeper into gothic horror while the Goyer-directed Blade: Trinity feels like a grindhouse 80’s action flick, the entire trilogy stood out by appropriating differing genres way before it was cool. Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine trilogy did likewise a decade later (a 90’s Cannon flick, a samurai melodrama and a western) and the MCU became genre-driven after The Avengers. But ten years before Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight earned raves and record box office making a crime drama disguised as a superhero sequel, Wesley Snipes’ Blade ushered in a new wave of modern-day comic book movies and taught all of Hollywood how to ice-skate uphill.

 

Hulu is bringing back "Veronica Mars"

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/veronica-mars-revival-works-at-hulu-1136515



The "Veronica Mars" film from 2014 was good, so I'm in.

 

It wouldnt be the same. The magic was in her youth and no young actress has her personality. Itll be interesting to see how it develops.

 

The Man in the High Castle, based on Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel, is set in an alternate universe where the Axis Powers won World War II, but as we enter Season 3, the boundaries between worlds seem likely to blur further.

The new season kicks off 5 October on Prime Video, nerds.

 

Worst casting decision for the character and seriously never got over them making that episode where she beat Superman in a fight.

 

Is we checking for this film later this year?:

I think I would've slept on this film earlier this year, but I've been binge-watching Showtime's "The Tudors" & The CW's "Reign" this summer & both of those shows are tied into this movie real-life historical storyline wise, so it's now a priority for me.

 

Does this mean Lucy is coming back. lol.

It kind of makes sense to me if he is now older, in which he is. She is younger than him, faster, stronger, ect. But don't get me wrong I'am well aware of this being a super liberal, feminist show so I'm pretty sure with the way they wrote it was to cater to liberal feminism.

 

She's 12 years younger and he had way more time to absorb the yellow son and its not just the strength she's wildly inexperienced compared to him.

 

Game of Thrones has ruined "castles and queens" stories for me. Every time I watch one of these shows or movies I keep waiting for a dragon to fly over.

 

lol. That's what happens when you do it better than everyone else.

 

What??? She beat SUPERMAN in a fight? Was he suffering from acute kryptonite poisoning? Seriously what was their justification for how that could possibly happen?

 

He was under some sort of spell if I'm remembering right.

 

Superman was under the influence of Red Kryptonite, which makes Kryptonians act opposite of their normal nature.

Also take into account from a storytelling / character POV, Superman being the paragon of virtue that he is, even under the influence of Red Kryptonite may have let himself be defeated because no one would/should have been able to stop him otherwise.

 

Yeah okay. I can buy that actually. That's classically the line on Superman when he's not himself. There was a really good comics story where Poison Ivy mind controlled him into fighting Batman. Batman remarked that he was alive only because Supernan was fighting against the mind control the entire fight.

Same justification happened in an episode of Young Justice when Superman and Batman fought Superboy and Robin.

 

That's the thing you have to keep in mind with a lot of these superhero stories, especially DC stories. The heroes and the villains act and think in idealized or extreme ways compared to normal people. Which is why they are doing the things (fighting against or committing crimes/acts of terror) that they do.

 

Good point but in the show they made it seem like it was fair and square and that Kara was legit stronger and a better fighter. They pretty much lost me after that. I've tried to make it through several episodes but simply can't. The low key racism mixed with uber feminist slant makes it impossible to watch unless they do a crossover.