Blade

Blade is the father of the current trend of comic book movies. I know it can be hard to believe, after all it was the X-Men that made our dreams come true, it was Spider-Man that broke the records, it was the Matrix that made it cool. But it wasn't any of those that started the trend all over again. Blade was made first and made a pretty penny doing it (of course, next to the box-office behometh that is Spider-Man all its profits do look just like pennies). True, the Matrix probably would've been made anyway, Blade or no Blade. It was a Joel Silver production and didn't need much encouragement from a tiny New Line film (also, only a few people think of the Matrix as a superhero film despite the fact that it most obviously is, if the suits as Warner Brothers had thought of it as one, I wonder if they would've been quicker to greenlight it or more hesitant?).

Of course, it had to was up to Blade to get the ball rolling. When Blade was made, Spider-Man was a legal nightmare and wasn't on the track to being cleared up anytime soon. The X-Men was a large cast ensemble which are nightmares in their own way from casting through production. Daredevil was a lesser known properity and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which hadn't even come out at the time) was an even lesser known properity and Ghost World was an even lesser known properity than the League. The Hulk was too expensive and the technology wasn't advanced enough. None of these projects seemed fesible to make and if they did, then they didn't seem profitable (which is just as bad in Hollywood terms).

Blade proved that a comic book movie could make money if given a chance (the story goes that David Goyer, the film's writer, had to lobby hard to convince the studio to give them more money and not treat the film as a throw-away comic book adaptaion like the Punisher or numerous other atrocious comic book films). Blade also got Marvel to prek up its ears and try to get every project that it had off the ground.

That's how important Blade was.

The next, and more important question, is how good is it? Well, it's okay. It's good enough for me to own it but that doesn't say much since I have trouble avoiding comic book movies, good or bad.

The dialogue isn't great and the characterization isn't much either. So what does it have going for it? The three A's: action, attitude and atmosphere, The film has great fight scenes. They're well cheorographed, well fought and well shot. His mixture of sword fighting and gunplay is great and well done. It was also unapologetically rated R. Take a moment to appreciate what this means, it was a comic book movie that refused to let any younger than 18 into the theatre. To most Hollywood executives the word "comic book" and "kid friendly" are synomous, so for New Line to work so hard to make a mature comic book movie was quite a feat. Which brings us to the third "A," atmosphere. The film is sexy and dark, the perfect mood for a vampire movie.

So, as long as you know what you're getting into (great mindless action), this movie is great fun.