Who do we have to thank for all this? The answer, Blade.  For the unaware Blade was an unassuming movie that came out in 1998.  At this point Batman had run it’s course leaving only the memory of terrible one liners by Arnold Schwarzenegger and a distaste for comic book movies in general.  At the time, one wouldn’t think a movie starring Wesley Snipes, Kris Kistofferson, and Stephen Dorff would be the remedy. but in retrospect it was exactly what the doctor ordered.  It was no record breaking weekend, but Blade did make a decent chunk of change – around $70mm to be exact and went on to become a VHS/DVD hit as well.

I was too young to see Blade in the theaters, but since my father and actually my whole family were completely ignorant to any of the “weird” and “geeky” things I was into, I was able to rent it on one of our weekend trips to Blockbuster without any issues.

I remember sitting and watching Blade one Friday night.  My siblings were somewhere (I was 14, so if they weren’t home it meant they didn’t exist in my small world for however many hours), and my mom was… somewhere too(again 14).  My dad was cooking us dinner and told me I could watch my movie then.  Which at the time sounded like a nice treat for him to give me, but in retrospect I realize he was just trying to avoid watching it himself.

Now, if you haven’t seen Blade before, here’s my sales pitch – watch the first 10 minutes of the movie; if you’re not hooked immediately and if you don’t wonder “where the fuck has this movie been my whole life?” Then turn it off.  This movie is not the movie for you.  Blade comes out swinging and is unabashedly “Blade” from opening credits to the very end. The opening scene shows a guy hanging with a girl that’s way too hot for him, leading him through a meat packing warehouse to a club, that if it was real, was also too cool for him.  Even he can sense that his dopey hat and style doesn’t belong, but not for the reasons he probably thinking.  There’s house music playing and a party being had, that for me at 14, looked cooler than anything I would ever attend in my life (which may or may not still hold true). Then it starts to rain blood in the club, from the fire sprinklers.  The regular dopey citizen guy begins to realize he’s in too deep in something he does not want to be in.  He turns to run but just gets met with a face full of fangs, falls to the floor and back pedals and runs into the only thing left not covered in blood. BLADE.  From here Blade played by Wesley Snipes puts on one of the best ass kickings I’ve ever seen in a movie.  All the while never getting a single drop of blood on his all black outfit (this is a running theme in the movie series).  The fight culminates with him giving a shit-eating grin and throwing some sort of boomerang weapon that decapitates multiple vampires in one flight and him catching it on the other end.

THIS IS BLADE.  Again turn it off at this point if you don’t think you’ve just witnessed the second coming.  The movie goes on actually with a really good story line and an even better lore to follow Blade around, or as the vamps call him the “Day Walker”.  The whole movie is bad ass incarnate. From great one liners by Kristofferson who plays the father figure and mentor to Blade; “Catch you fuckers at a bad time?”, to absurd fighting scenes that makes someone as impressionable as me simply want to be the “Day Walker”.

The movie officially blows my mind in the final scene.  After watching about 70 minutes of Wesley Snipes shoot, chop, slice and dice a large amount of foes, you find him “trapped” with no weapons.  What’s he going to do? Well, after dining down on some doctor chick he saved earlier in the movie (he’s weak at this point and even though he’s sworn off blood, he needs it, and man does he go to town. He sucks that blood like a 10 year old crushing a Capri Sun after playing outside).  He then jumps down in the fray with seemingly no weapons and just his vest.  The bad guy’s right hand man comes at him, while wearing the sunglasses Blade had don the whole movie (again its a running theme), and to his surprise and the viewers surprise Blade pulls some form of rip cord out of his vest and decapitates the chump all the while sticking the dismount by catching his shades; and then the beat drops.  Movie ends with Blade killing a ton more vampires** leaving only him and Deacon Frost, played by Stephen Dorff. Unsurprisingly he defeats him, but not before saying the best catch phrase ever, that even Robert Downey Jr. in all his charm can’t best. And with reports of the franchise getting rebooted it may ring true again for all other comic book movies that,  ”Some mother fuckers always trying to ice skate up hill.”

So this is me thanking the movie Blade, and everyone that was involved.  Blade came at the perfect time for me, and essentially etched my fate in stone of looking forward to every comic book movie to come out after.  Now 15 years later, they dominate the box office.  Sure some fail (cough, cough Green Lantern), but for the most part, a lot of them exceed most expectations.  And although Batman is my favorite comic book hero, and the comic gods shined down on me with Batman Begins coming out on my actual birthday (I swear it was a sign), Blade still shouldn’t go unpunished for the great deed it did for all our benefit.  It brought grittiness to the screen and showed that  super heroes can be heroic and flawed all at the same time.  Wesley Snipes’ Blade made the old Superman an unwanted commodity in his perfection.  People wanted more edge and more darkness, and they got it.  Dark Knight still may be tied as my favorite movie of all time and is probably the best comic book movie ever (debatable), but Blade will always be in my shuffling movie playlist.  And without a doubt, it made the comic book movie industry a massive bank roll, or as Blade would put it,  they’re “…not exactly the march of dimes.” anymore.

**It’s in this fray of fighting that Blade at one point rips out a dude’s jugular and gains a split second of advantage on the next guy by throwing it in his face. +1 for orginality, +1,000 for bad assery.