Marvel May - Blade (1998)

        Hey guys, Chuck here, and I hope you had a great weekend. We're back with more Marvel May, and I want to start off with a little bit of Marvel movie history. In the years between the Marvel Comics revolution of the '60s and the year 1998, Marvel films were struggling to get made, let alone released. Marvel did have success in live-action television with things like Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Doctor Strange, but their films were very disastrous, and very few ever made it to the box office. Howard the Duck, produced by George Lucas, and The Punisher, starring Dolph Lundgren, were both box office bombs, and a Captain America movie with Matt Salinger barely registered. And the worst was a Fantastic Four movie produced by Roger Corman that was so bad, it never got an official release. 

        Needless to say, Marvel was in dire straits. After an acquisition by Toy Biz, Marvel began selling film rights to their properties. And the first to get a feature film, and a successful one at that, was Blade.

         Released in 1998 by New Line Cinema, Blade was directed by Stephen Norrington, and told the story of the half-human, half-vampire vampire hunter known as Blade, who the movie reveals got his nature as the Daywalker because his mother, who was pregnant with him at the time, was bitten by a vampire. Years later, and Blade, under the guidance of Abraham Whistler, fights against the hordes of vampires, including the villainous Deacon Frost. Frost, who is part of a new generation of vampires, is seeking to awaken the vampire blood God La Magra, which requires a mix of pureblood vampires, as well as Blade himself. 

         Now, many of my generation absolutely loved Wesley Snipes as Blade. And it's not difficult to see why. Wesley Snipes was an absolute badass as Blade, and he had some absolutely fantastic one-liners, with my favorite being "Some motherfucker's are always trying to ice skate uphill." In addition to Wesley Snipes as Blade, Kris Kristofferson is also fantastic as Whistler, and he definitely plays well as the old vampire hunter working with the next generation vampire hunter. 

        Stephen Dorff, who plays Deacon Frost in the movie, is delightfully evil, with a smirk on his face, cigarettes in his mouth, and an attitude to boot. Other vampires, played by the likes of Sanaa Lathan, Udo Kier, and Donal Logue, are also a lot of fun. Interesting fact, Sanaa Lathan, who is one of Frost's lovers, is also the mother of Blade. Yikes. N'Bushe Wright is also in the movie as Dr. Karen Jensen, a doctor who gets bit, but gets saved by Blade and Whistler and agrees to help Blade in his fight against the vampires. 

          The action in this movie is second to none, and marks possibly the coolest vampire movie since Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys , and is truly the film that kicked off the Marvel Renaissance. In fact, if it weren't for the work Stephen Norrington did with Blade, chances are very slim that movies like X-Men and Spider-Man would have been nearly as successful. So, I'm giving Blade a rating of 5/5. 

      Alrighty guys, this is Chuck signing off and I'll see you guys tomorrow as we continue Marvel May with Blade II.

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