This is, oddly, the one that started it all. Although it's not a great film, it was the film in the 90s that showed us that comic-book superheroes could be extremely fun on the big screen. Sure, we'd had some Batman movies in that same decade, but by the time they were playing "Musical Bruce Waynes" the franchise had died. In fact, this happened long before George Clooney got involved, and he's quite open about the fact that he did it for the money.
Blade not only ushered in going on a decade of superhero movies, but it also paved the way for the Hong Kong action cinema craze we're currently experiencing. I know that this seems like a big claim, but think about it. The Wachowskis must have seen this movie, and regardless of whether they already had the premise and style of The Matrix mapped out in their minds, they must have realised that the success of Blade would bolster their chances of getting their movie produced at all. Look at some of the cinematic elements: long black leather coats, martial arts combined with heavy gun-play, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, heroes and villains dodging computer-animated bullets, the use of techno music to enhance the fight scenes... the list goes on. The talent that went into created The Matrix was greater than what went into Blade, I think, but the individual elements were all there.
The irony of the whole thing is that nobody saw it coming. Wesley Snipes has never quite managed to work his way into the top-grade of action stars (his movies are hit and miss at best), and Blade himself was an obscure character. Created by Marv Wolfman, one of the gods of comics in the 80s, he was all but unknown, and therefore it was cheap to buy the rights to make a movie of him. Shaquil O'Niel tried to do the same thing with an utterly unremarkable character named Steele, but Shaq and his managers have always had no taste, so the movie sucked from beginning to end.
Blade was certainly not the only movie to combine superheroes with Hong Kong-style action; Jet Li's Black Mask was released in Canada in 1996, two years before Blade and three years before The Matrix. The film was nothing more than dressing Jet Li up like Kato from The Green Hornet (which in itself is a nod to Bruce Lee more than anything else), and didn't feature a particularly compelling plot or action sequences that fully used Li's talents. (However, it did feature Francois Yip, a local Vancouver action starlet who also appeared with Jackie Chan in a movie called Rumble in the Bronx, was briefly a recurring character on Jerimiah, and did a small promotional video featuring my ex-roommate, Rod Williams, which was itself a parody of a lot of the kinds of effects we saw in The Matrix!).
The point is, Blade was the one that took, like the coat of paint on your bedroom wall that finally covers up the dark purple you slapped on when you were 15 and perpetually depressed. As such, it (the movie, not your bedroom wall) effected everything that came after in that it prepared the audience to buy into certain cinematic elements. We no longer really need an explanation for people performing complex kung fu fights at the drop of a hat, or even performing gymnastic feats that are nigh-impossible for the human body. Hell, even Charlie's Angels used wire work. Without Blade we might never have had the chance to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or the upcoming films Hero and Zatoichi. Someone needed to get the Western (read: American) audience used to the extremes of Wuxia cinema. Blade was that someone.
Posted by orion at July 17, 2004 2:07 PM