A Look Back at Blade (1998)
A Look Back at Blade (1998)
With Marvel’s recent announcements at this year’s Comic Con, one franchise that seemed to surprise the most was a reboot of Blade with Mahershala Ali. The Blade comic book and movie franchise are known for their brutal violence and adult content, which begs the question if Marvel and Disney are going to finally delve into the R-rated comic book movie genre that has been popularized recently by Fox’s Logan and Deadpool.
The original film was one of Marvel’s biggest successes as a small production company at the time, and the success of the next few Blade films paved the way for the Marvel Cinematic Universe thus changing the course of cinema for the next few decades. So, we thought it would be fun to take a look back at the original Blade starring Wesley Snipes.
Initially, Marvel studios had developed the film as early as 1992 with LL Cool J in talks as playing Blade. However, Marvel opted to license out the character to New Line Cinema. Executives at New Line had only three actors in mind for the role; Denzel Washington, Lawrence Fishburne, and Wesley Snipes. Writer David S. Goyer believed that Snipes was the only person who could do Blade justice.
The film was produced with a budget of $45 million and grossed $70 million domestically for a total of $131.2 million worldwide. Two sequels were produced after the success of the first movie.
Blade is considered a signature role for Wesley Snipes. His portrayal of the vampire hunter is nothing short of perfection. He brings broodiness and a sense of cool that truly makes the character iconic. Blade is a man of mystery.
Throughout the course of the film, you learn that his mother was bitten by a vampire while she was pregnant with him, making him half-human half-vampire. He has all of their strengths, but no one their weaknesses, except for a thirst for human blood.
With the help of his mentor Whistler, played by Country Music legend Kris Kristofferson, Blade is able to curb his thirst for blood with the help of a serum.
Blade’s main task is to hunt down Deacon Frost, played by Stephen Dorff, and stop him from unleashing the vampire blood god, La Magra. Twist’s and turns abound in the film, as it is later revealed that Blade’s mother is not dead as he thought, but in actuality is now a vampire.
The vampire that turned her is none other than Deacon Frost. This sets up an interesting power dynamic between the villain and the hero. If Deacon Frost had never attacked Blade’s mother, she would not have gone into labor birthing him as the half-human half-vampire that he became. In essence, Deacon Frost is Blade’s father.
One aspect of the franchise that hopefully Marvel gets right, is the vampires themselves. In the original film, the vampires were scary. The film spares no time showing us this as it opens with a vampire blood bath night club scene that Blade crashes.
The vampires dance around as blood pours from the fire sprinklers above them and toy with the only human on the dance floor like a cat with a mouse.
The vampires in the movie have increased strength and are shown being able to rip out an individual’s throats with a swift bite to the neck. Blade was made in an interesting time period where CGI hadn’t quite surpassed practical effects, so a large portion of the film was filmed practically. Much of the violence in the film is created with fantastic prosthetics that are both gruesome and scary.
Because CGI wasn’t quite up to par as it is today, many of the fight scenes are also practical, featuring incredible sword and fight choreography.
The fight choreography in Blade still holds up quite well. Blade swings his sword with ease slicing through a large portion of his foes with his iconic sword. He has a range of weapons in his arsenal as well and during combat, mixes between gunplay, swordplay, and stakes.
The fight scenes are all backed by a fantastic soundtrack that truly adds to the visceral impact of the choreography.
The news that Marvel is rebooting the series is fantastic. It will be exciting to see what Marvel and Disney will do with this franchise. The character is much more grounded in reality and his reality is hard, brutal, and violent.
He is not a god-like Thor, nor is he a billionaire with a vast army of flying suits, but simply a half breed between a human and vampire.
One can only hope that the powers at Marvel take a look back at their first successful film franchise and incorporate some of the aspects from that series into the new one.
The Witcher is Coming to Netflix
Netflix recently released a trailer for its new series based on The Witcher book series.
For those of you that are unaware, The Witcher is a fantasy series comprised of short stories and novels written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. The story centers around the adventures of Geralt of Rivia, a monster hunter that wields steel and silver swords and takes bounties for coin.
The books have spawned several games, graphic novels, and even a Polish Television series and film.
Very little is known about the upcoming Netflix Witcher series. Henry Cavill is playing Geralt of Rivia and he has stated that he’s played The Witcher 3 multiple times. Showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich recently stated at Comic Con that fans of the games should not expect the show to ever mine the games for source material.
While this may disappoint some fans of the game series, The Witcher has quite a lot of material to draw from the books. So, the plot of the series will not be in short supply of monster hunting, magic, and political intrigue.
However, one aspect of the video games that should not be overlooked is the combat design for Geralt. Motion capture artist MaciejKwiatowski has provided his sword handling skills for all three of the Witcher games, and the choreography is unique to Witcher series.
Witcher’s do not carry shields with them, so their combat style is much more agile and swift. One could liken their moves to a type of a deadly dance.
One could liken it to Oberyn Martell’s fight style from Game of Thrones but with a sword rather than a spear. While enemies in the game follow a traditional combat style like HEMA, Geralt dances around them with deadly pirouette’s that make his fight style shine.
He also has an arsenal of magic at his disposal that makes him able to chain attacks in combat for a cinematic fight. Check out this video of the motion capture design of Geralt in action below.
Considering that Henry Cavill is such a big fan of the game, there is hope that he pushes for a combat style similar to the combat that is featured in The Witcher 3. We already know that Cavill is fully committed to doing his own stunt work.
His recent work on Mission Impossible: Fallout is a testament to just how far he’s willing to go to take stunts over the edge. In all likelihood, he will be doing all of his own stunts for The Witcher series.
It will be interesting to see if the Netflix series does take a cue from the combat from the game series as the sword choreography could make for some amazing spectacles of action that will hopefully keep this series relevant for a long time.
Let’s Build Our Community
We here at the Sword Experience strive to create an environment that is friendly and inviting for those who love sword culture, pop culture, physical fitness, and of course fun. We’ve got a lot planned in the coming months for the blog.
We hope you’ve enjoyed our previous series The Perfect Sword, written by Chris Fields, and soon we will be starting a series featuring our Sword Partners to learn a little more about their training in sword choreography and their experiences with Adrian Paul and the Sword Experience.
We’d love to hear more from you guys. What topics would you like to see covered in the coming months? Is there a franchise out there that you think doesn’t get enough love?
Is there a new fighting style that is piquing your interest and you’d like to learn more about it?
Feel free to comment below and tell us what interests you!
