Blade: Impact of a Legend

At the end of the summer of 1998 when I was just 5 years old, my dad took me to the movies to see the biggest movie of the summer that everyone was looking forward to, Blade starring Wesley Snipes as the title character, country music legend, Kris Kristofferson as the title character's mentor Abraham Whistler, and Stephen Dorff as the film's antagonist, Deacon Frost.

I remember Blade going on VHS months after it's initial release and me and my dad not being able to rent it because every video store from Blockbuster to Hollywood Video had all their copies of the film rented out with none left over for weeks. At the time, Blade just seemed like the archetype for what it meant to be a great action film in the 90's, but what movie-goers didn't realize at the time was we were seeing the beginning of the culture of the comic book film genre which has now taken both the entertainment world and pop-culture by storm.

When Blade was first released, most movie-goers and film buffs were unaware that the film was based on the Marvel Comics comic book character of the same name, created by comic book writers Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan. Most fans were also unaware that the film was produced by Marvel Enterprises and Marvel Comic's founding father, Stan Lee. These were not details that even the biggest film lovers would have needed to know being that these names were not popular on the landscape of where film culture was at the time. It would not be until the events that transpired over the course of the next decade that all film fans would understand the true significance of Blade.

Prior to Blade's release in 1998, Hollywood was no stranger to comic-book based characters such as DC comics Batman and Superman, and while the films containing those characters were definitely superhero movies, they did not yet have the comic book style of the blockbuster franchises such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe, which have dominated theaters and the box office over the course of the past decade. Written by David S. Goyer and directed by Stephen Norrington, Blade was crafted at a time when Marvel Comics Enterprises was going through a dry spell of low sales. After the film's release and success, film studios became open to the notion that if a lesser known comic book character such as Blade could be turned into a hit film, then maybe characters like the X-Men and Spiderman who were familiar to the outside world of comic book culture could also make for potential film successes in the future. The testing of this theory proved to be a success for Marvel.

By the year 2000 Marvel produced the release of X-Men and by spring of 2002 Spiderman was released. These two films along with other Marvel Enterprises releases including The Hulk (2003), Daredevil (2004), and The Fantastic Four (2005) were all produced by Kevin Feige, who would go on to create the world-wide phenomenon franchise known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

David Goyer who wrote all three films in the Blade series would also go on to be one of the co creators of DC comics The Dark Knight series that would inspire the creation of the DC Extended Universe.

It's safe to say that Marvel has taken over the world of film in the 24 years since Blade's release. Though the significance of Blade was not recognized in the earliest years following it's initial release, with the success of the MCU as well as the MCU's Avengers: Endgame now being the highest grossing film of all time, comic book fans of all ages and all walks of life have had an ever growing respect for the Blade series in retrospect due to the legacy it has created. It is a legacy that has impacted so many fans and platforms, and with the upcoming release of Marvel Studios' Morbius (2022), a movie centered around a Marvel Comics character who is a vital part of Blade's comic history, the legacy of Blade lives larger than ever.