With a sprinkle of Blade II (2002).
While outlining my disappointment in Brand New Day as a Spider-Man movie, I couldn’t help but note how that film clarifies why “There’s only been one Blade. There’s only ever gonna be one Blade,” as Wesley Snipes declares infamously in Deadpool & Wolverine. I write that Brand New Day is a good movie within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but a poor Spider-Man movie. Years from now, we will remember Brand New Day as Marvel’s official introduction of the X-Men into the MCU, rather than a benefactor to Spider-Man‘s development as a character. A resolution for the genesis of Peter Parker’s Man-Spider transformation will have to wait, as will Beyond the Spider-Verse so we can get a movie faithful to its main character.
I assert that Marvel/Disney canceled its version of Blade because Kevin Feige seems to believe every Marvel IP must tie into the MCU. The wiki page detailing the timeline of the canceled Blade is longer than the wiki for the original Blade! Moon Knight, The Eternals, Deadpool, Marvel Zombies are a few IPs listed in that wiki as potential shoehorns. It’s a hot mess, but it also confirms my suspicion concerning Feige’s reticence with making Blade rated-R instead of PG-13. Yikes. We all remember how Aliens vs. Predator (2004) turned out.
Catching up on the canceled Blade saga, I (re)discovered that Snipes was an executive producer of the original Blade trilogy. Yo, Disney execs didn’t even want the Black Panther movies to happen; of course they didn’t have the desire to make another Black movie? They won’t even make another Shang-Chi despite high profits and rave reviews. Considering rumors that Marvel-Disney plans to cull its roster in Doomsday, I anticipate that many minority characters will not survive. The only reason we’re getting a third Black Panther is because Coogler possess command. And ask anyone if they remember Captain America: Brave New World.
As my family knocks out The Black Pantheon, Blade (1998) was my eldest son’s request before everyone went away for school for the fall. Perfect. I’m challenging myself to write about three Black vampire movies for October 2026 anyway.
Remarkably, despite a few aged CGI instances, Blade still holds up! In fact, I would contest that it is a good movie. When I watched it while in high school, I thought the concept of a “Daywalker” was cool, and took it at face value, never considering how he’s born with all of the strength of vampires, with his only weakness being the Hunger. I now recognize Blade as a powerful racial allegory.
Stealing from Octavia Butler’s Fledgling (2005), its protagonist, Shori, is (also) a Black vampire. Her melanin, however, is infused—a result of genetic engineering that Butler’s vampire race, the Ina, developed to overcome their weakness to sunlight. If this sounds familiar, it’s the central plot point in Blade II (2002): elder vampire Eli Damaskinos utilizes genetic engineering to fabricate an army of vampires like Blade, but he only succeeds generating a breed resistant to garlic and silver, yet still weak to light. Additionally, this “Reaper” breed preys upon humans and vampires alike because the genetic manipulation accelerates their Hunger.
One could do a lot with analyzing the Blade movies in the context of eugenics and the experimentation upon Black bodies in pursuit of a superhuman. I don’t feel like writing about all of that here, though. To keep focus on Blade, the most poignant scene expressing this racial allegory is when Quinn (Donal Logue), burned alive to “extra crispy,” revives on the dissection table and bites both Dr. Karen Jenson (N’Bushe Wright) and her colleague. Blade arrives at the hospital to “finish off” Quinn—torturing him for plot reasons in a prior scene instead of outright killing him —and the police also arrive and shoot him instead of the charred cadaver running around causing all the chaos. Snipes ad-libs the famous “Are you out of your f***ing mind!?” line here, which Norrington considered removing. My younger self interpreted this line just as I wrote here: the police shot the good guy instead of the bad one. Only now, after a long list of innocent Black people killed by police do I read this line as Snipes admonishing racial profiling. Subversive blackness like this pervades Blade.
I’m torn about N’Bushe Wright’s Dr. Karen Jenson as the deuteragonist. On one hand, Blade spares us from the action movie trope of the hero getting the girl; on the other hand, I find it sad that Blade seems destined to be a loner. Because vampires are bizarrely erotic, I struggle what to think about Dr. Jenson inviting Blade to drink her blood to power up. It’s an example of a peculiar intimacy. Even so, I struggle to think about movies including a Black female deuteragonist who isn’t an outright love interest like Wright’s Dr. Jenson. Was Naomie Harris as Moneypenny in the recent James Bond films?
In Blade, vampires can’t sustain their own hemoglobin due to a defect like hemoglobin anemia, causing their literal bloodthirst. Dr. Jenson, a hemotologist, treats her vampirism with gene therapy like one would sickle cell disease. That’s hella Black-coded.
Dr. Jenson’s encounter with a familiar—a human enthralled to a vampire—in her apartment highlights director Stephen Norrington’s talent. Previously, Abraham Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) had given her garlic mace which she subsequently uses against the familiar, and nothing happens. Because of course nothing happens! Vampires can’t thrive in the light! Norrington overrides the viewer’s intuition by building tension in the elevator before the apartment encounter. The two characters following her sport matching tattoos on the back of their necks, which are marks of familiars, but the movie does not inform the audience what these tatt0os mean until after the assault in the apartment. Norrington assembles this sequence with adroitness.
The biggity-bliggity-Blackest scene precedes the apartment. Blade enters into a curio shop and its owner, a brotha, nods in approving acknowledgment. He says Blade is early, to which the hero replies, “Yea…Whistler says I’m building a resistance to the serum” as the shop owner plops down the bag of watches Blade has divested from his parasitic prey and repurposed for income. “I thought that might happen,” the shop owner admits before handing Blade the goods. Blade then initiates a dap, and the two embrace in a hug, the shop owner tells Blade to take care of himself.
This scene is indicative of Whistler informing Dr. Jenson that there’s a war going on, and Blade, himself, and a few others are trying to keep it from spilling into the streets. This isn’t just a network that Whistler describes, but a community. The dap the curio shop owner gives Blade isn’t a business handshake for confirming a transaction without a receipt. It’s a affective gesture. The hug is an embrace. Acceptance. Validation. Love. We could use more scenes of Black men hugging out their struggles.
Even Deacon Frost’s (Stephen Dorff) ascension can be interpreted via race. His elders enjoy reminding him of how he’s a half-breed because he was turned instead of born a vampire. He’s othered among his own people, and briefly achieves transcendence in the racial hegemony, but at the cost of destroying the previous one. Again, there’s a lot to unpack there.
By the way, if Frost kills all the elders in Blade, how does Eli Damaskinos manage to exist in Blade II? And while I’ve returned to Blade II, I have a few more notes. Dieter Reinhardt (Ron Perlman) asks Blade if he can blush, referencing his ethnicity, because they’re actually the same race. Blink and miss that one. Also, Nyssa Damaskinos (Leonor Varela) makes an appeal to Blade, saying he shouldn’t hate them—vampires—so much because she in particular had no choice in being born that way; he, if anyone, should understand the Hunger. MESSAGE!
Donnie Yen speaks 0 lines in Blade 2. He just mean-mugs. Why did director Guillermo del Toro and screenwriter David Goyer give a Chinese martial artist katanas, lol?
Okay back to Blade (1998). His mom, Vanessa Brooks (Sanaa Lathan), hitting on him was weird back in ’98, and it’s still uncomfortable now. Lathan also looked great back then, and looks great now, too, lol.
I’m disinterested in regaling about all of Blade’s production history, but it’s noteworthy that Wesley Snipes originally wanted to make the first Black Panther movie, but lacked a convincing script and the technology to make it happen. The Big Money folks kept thinking about the Black Panther Party rather than the comic book character. Instead, the then-bankrupt Marvel sold New Line Cinema the licensing rights to Blade for $25,000, an insulting, zero-faith in the IP sum of money.
With Marvel-Disney re-acquiring the rights to Blade from New Line Cinema, and outright purchasing 20th Century Fox I would declare that Blade (1998) is the first MCU film. Between Blade’s cameo in Deadpool & Wolverine, and this scene, Marvel only has themselves to blame for this.
Blade is the Black Panther movie before we got a Black Panther movie.
What, no Blade III: Trinity references? I’m like Valve. What is this so-called Blade “3”?
