Blade

I wish I could classify the mood of movies I've been watching recently because it has been quite the mixed bag. If it was just Blade and The Matrix I would say it was a late 90's mood. If it was Blade and Overlord, it would be a paranormal action mood, but in the span of two days I watched Blade and Across the Universe so I'm kind of all over the place these days.

Blade is a movie I've been meaning to see for quite a bit of time because hardcore comic book nerds point to this movie as being one of the driving forces of getting the superhero golden age we're living in kicked off. Chronologically speaking, they're right. While some people point to X-men and the Raimi Spider-man films as the start of the superhero renaissance after the disastrous Batman and Robin, Blade was a grounded, R-Rated (that's probably the biggest feather in its cap), semi-competently made film two years before X-men in 2000. Regardless of whether you consider Blade as being apart of this group or not, these were the harbinger movies that brought Superhero films from the campiness of the 90's into the mainstream and set the path for Nolan's Batman and the MCU. So yes, chronologically Blade should be considered in that group...

However... this movie is a bit of a mess...

Based off the Marvel Comic of the same name, Blade follows the story of a half vampire, half human named Blade (played by Wesley Snipes) who is a vampire hunter, fighting an unholy crusade with his friend Whistler (played by Kris Kristofferson) to I guess just fight vampires.

On one hand, I could say Blade's quest is pretty vague. He doesn't have a distinct goal, he just kills vampires. But at the same time it does go into the impressive fact that this movie wasn't an origin story, in 1998. Blade is just a vampire hunter superhero and the story picks up while he's been doing it for a while.

The story begins when Blade finds a hematologist named Karen Jenson (played by N'Bushe Wright) who is bitten by a vampire. Karen becomes the audience's viewpoint into the world of Blade. Now it's a pretty vague look like I said before but it's somewhat interesting when you get into it.

The villain of the film is a vampire by the name of Deacon Frost (played by Stephen Dorff) who is loosely connected to a council of pureblood vampires.

There are some politics and even mythology that I imagine might be in depth and thought provoking from the comic. It's not really looked into that much in this film but the concept of vampires being hidden in plain sight through treaties with humanity is interesting.

Deacon's plot is to summon a vampire god and lay waste to humanity with him at the center of power so obviously Blade needs to stop him and overall... the movie is pretty slow at times.

Especially in the beginning after the first pretty cool action sequence, a lot of the film is kind of slow moving exposition. It's also a lot of dark or dimly lit rooms that honestly put me to sleep a couple of times because nothing was happening.

The action for sure gets better as the movie progresses and for a late 90's film, they actually do a lot of really great stunts and action sequences.

It was actually kind of interesting watching The Matrix and watching this film that had come out a year prior and it goes back to those attitudes and themes you found at the end of the 90's decade. Everyone was in leather, and there were interesting ideas of where the world was going.

The action is pretty awesome and it's impressive on how it holds up. That does lead me into my next point and this is both a good point for the movie and a bad point, it's Wesley Snipes.

On one hand, Wesley Snipes is essentially an underrated 90's action star, kind of in the same vein that Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone were in the 80's and 90's.

He's good at being the action star and he does the quippy one liners pretty well.

But on the other hand, he's not a very good actor. To be fair, I haven't seen a lot of his filmography so I can't really judge him fairly, but based on this film alone, he's ridiculous, he's fun, and I love that we live in a world where we can point to that ridiculousness and say that was a weird time, but I'm not going to say he makes this movie totally worth it.

His interactions with the other characters are overall fine but not really ground breaking.

I liked his friendship with Whistler and the relationship between him and Karen actually isn't horrible, its just kind of there.

I don't think anybody does a really bad job in this film, but nobody really does a great job. Overall, this movie is what superhero movies probably should have looked like in the 90's because it feels like an over the top action film that just happens to be based on a Marvel Comic.

The main character is the hyper masculine action hero, the female verging on useful but ultimately still a product of 80's traditional female roles, and the villain is just inexplicably and irredeemably bad.

The plot is pretty much a mess with a lot of things happening off screen or plot holes going nowhere, but the main attraction of the film is clearly the action, which is pretty awesome.

When Blade is fighting, the movie gets pretty awesome and its an element that really makes the movie worth at least checking out for the ridiculousness of it. Again, it's interesting watching this in tandem with the Matrix films because I think both films utilized similar fighting choreography and its done really well.

I think the main appeal of this movie is how it was able to strike this dark tone that utilized awesome visuals and action in order to gain some legitimacy, while at the same time the movie doesn't take itself too seriously (for the most part) that it's still entertaining.

I wouldn't say the movie is overly self aware, but it's just ridiculous enough paired with the serious tone to make it just a high intensity ridiculous action film and I see how people enjoy it for what it is.

Story-wise, the movie is pretty convoluted and nowhere near the quality you see in movies like X-men or those early Raimi Spider-man movies, but some credit should be given to Blade as a slight stepping stone to those real harbingers.

If anything, I'm going to watch the Blade sequels just because I think the idea of Wesley Snipes fighting vampires in an R-Rated action film based on a Marvel comic in the early 2000's makes for some ridiculousness that I'm excited for. It's bad, but a fun bad.

I can't full recommend Blade because I did come out of it saying, "that was not a very good film". However, if you're looking for an over the top 90's action film and want a look into the weird transition point that the late 90's were in a similar but less impactful way that The Matrix provided, Blade might be a somewhat enjoyable time. Otherwise, it's probably something you can skip over.

But those are my thoughts on Blade. What did you think? Any words of wisdom as I go into the sequels? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can also get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog

Thanks for reading!