PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Before Black Panther and Donald Trump, before sparkly vampires and tax evasion, there were “some mother truckers trying to ice skate uphill” in Blade. It’s been 20 years since Wesley Snipes uttered the words, “It’s open season on all suck- heads,” in the 1998 vampire flick by New Line Cinema. Remember, this was before the giant that is now Disney and Marvel’s MCU universe. David S. Goyer wrote the screenplay for the Daywalker and since then, Blade has been one of the go-to vamp films that are held in high regard.
Blade has been included in such company as Near Dark, Interview With The Vampire, 30 Days Of Night and The Lost Boys. But does it deserve such praise? I recently went back and viewed Blade on Blu-ray in high definition to celebrate its 20th birthday and to surmise just exactly what is so great about the film that most are sure that it is such a great movie.
So, here’s my thoughts…
Twenty years is a long time for a film to hold its prestige, and as with most films from the 90s, aging is an problem. CGI was terrible back then. If you took that CGI to the studio today, they’d laugh you out of the room. The acting is cheesy, the editing is basic and the fighting sequences look staged. In fact, there’s a roundhouse kick sequence that you can look up on YouTube that is now a meme. They weren’t even near each other. It’s basically a dance.
As the film continued, I kept noticing more and more issues. My heart sank. Had I gotten it wrong all this time? Have we all just changed as consumers and viewers of film in general? Maybe I’m now a pompous film reviewer, and I’ve forgotten why films like this are great?
And it’s not as though the film itself had an easy time being made, either. Wesley Snipes himself refused to be called by his name and would only go by Blade or Daywalker. He went method, and that was only the tip of the Blade-berg. In fact, the Daywalker almost had an entirely different face, as LL Cool J was up to play the lead role. Ultimately, it was Wesley’s martial arts training that gave him the winning combination and secured him the role of Blade.
Fortunately, as I continued to watch the film, I realized I was enjoying it, even with the flaws and issues that kept popping up, and here’s why. Partly, it’s nostalgic. Listening to the cheesy ’90s score and watching Blade deliver some incredibly bad dialogue, some of which is ad-libbed from Wesley himself, I realized that this movie is cool. Cool, like the ’90s movies can only be. Cool, like how the ’80s had its music and looks which are almost impossible to recreate. Blade personifies the ’90s… techno music, leather, over the top fight scenes and heroes that never say die.
Blade is a cool dude, from his iconic sword (which I have a replica of) to his sunglasses, car and even Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), his sidekick father figure. Even the main bad guy, Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff), oozed coolness. Indecently, we almost had a prequel movie that would have starred Deacon Frost as a gangster. That would have been very cool indeed, but at the time, Marvel and New Line where fighting over who owned the rights. Now that Marvel owns the damned universe, we may well still get it. Say it with me now… FROSTTTTTTTT!!!!
That last outburst is where the deal is confirmed for me. The greatness of Blade lies in the repeatable cheesy lines, and the scenes you remember with joy. If you are a fan, you are no doubt recalling those right now, “I got his pig sticker!”
All in all, Blade has aged and the CGI is terrible, but it is still dripping with that cool factor, and when you understand the nature of a thing… you know what it’s capable of.
