3 reasons why Blade is so important and why it’s also important that Wesley Snipes reprises his role.

Blade quietly changed the game. Before Blade, superhero movies were rare, risky, and often campy. Studios weren’t fighting for comic book rights. They saw them as niche or unproven. After Blade pulled in $131M on a $45M budget, everything shifted. Suddenly, Fox invested in X-Men (2000), Sony bought Spider-Man (2002), and Marvel began licensing characters like Daredevil, Hulk, and Ghost Rider. The superhero genre went from gamble to goldmine and Blade was the PROOF OF CONCEPT that made it happen.

Wesley Snipes IS Blade and Blade IS Wesley Snipes. In the first movie, Whistler says Blade ages like a human — meaning he only has one lifetime to rid the world of as many vampires as he can. That makes Snipes, now in his 60s, even more perfect for a grizzled, world-weary vampire hunter. That weight, that urgency, makes an older Blade even more compelling. Let him finish what he started.

And let’s not forget: the first superhero landing on film? Wesley Snipes. Blade (1998). Long before it became a Marvel cliché, he made it iconic. Respect the originator.

Blade deserves way more flowers than it gets.

Commentaires

erectilediscussion2025-10-03 08:14

They may be a bot, but they're right.

AlternativeSpell95602025-10-04 19:20

Not a bot.. as far as I know. You are clearly the only one in the comments with some sense and dare I say vision?

Danal12025-10-03 14:22

Comic movie fans gotta learn how to let go. In a couple decades we’re gonna have an avengers movie that’s just 90 year old Rdj, Hugh Jackman, Wesley Snipes, and Toby Macquire, wheezing out of breath, and complaining about their bad backs all movie

ccReptilelord2025-10-03 16:07

The Avengers: Age of Food Not Soft Enough

emcee_you2025-10-04 19:05

The Avengers: Shawarma's Revenge

niffa2025-10-03 16:47

As long as its actual fan service and not hokey like Jurassic Park Dominion, they can still have my money lol

caniuserealname2025-10-03 20:45

They're all be AI stand ins by then don't worry

onionleekdude2025-10-03 22:15

I dunno, the SAG/AFTRA guild is pretty damned influential.

FX1142025-10-04 00:47

SAG already agreed to let actors be recreated in AI, as long as they consent.

onionleekdude2025-10-04 00:56

Thats what I mean, though

Its not just consent, its compensation.

So they have to pay to use AI actors.

Thats very different from AI replacing actors. If you have to pay to use a recreation, why not just use the real one.

Turbulent_Lobster_572025-10-04 21:16

Actors won’t get replaced overnight. But if Hugh Jackman (as merely an example) can star in half a dozen movies a year, other lesser known actors won’t. Leading to fewer new stars, fewer actors overall and an imperceptibly weaker SAG every year until they no longer have the clout to stop studios from ousting actors altogether.

AlternativeSpell95602025-10-04 19:14

Not this decade

MistakeLopsided83662025-10-06 12:36

But Paul Rudd will still look the same as ever 🙂

keinish_the_gnome2025-10-03 14:35

Blade it's a very entertaining movie and Snipes is very good on it. So was Christopher Reeve as Superman. And Sean Connery as Bond. You can love and respect something and still move on.

Slow_Fish26012025-10-03 14:43

No. He did a great job, and now it's time to move on.

AlternativeSpell95602025-10-04 19:17

Not yet. I see another two movies

Wtygrrr2025-10-03 14:58

I’d say the main reason it’s important is his debt.

AsterArtworks2025-10-03 16:51

Bro Wesley snipes is old, too old to do several more movies as blade. Totally fine if a new actor takes their place and should.

weebaz19732025-10-04 16:03

Exactly... He looked good for his age in Deadpool but not 'good' for Blade... He just looked older and weaker. Move on I say

AlternativeSpell95602025-10-04 19:14

Not totally

AsterArtworks2025-10-05 19:02

Totally.

AlternativeSpell95602025-10-05 19:04

Not even a lil bit

colderstates2025-10-03 17:20

Missing the bullet points but it’s got the telltale m-dash.

rincewind1202025-10-03 19:19

I disagree.

When Blade came out in 1998, it was during the vampire trend of the 90s. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Interview with the Vampire, and John Carpenter's Vampires were all around this time. Blade was seen as a vampire movie, not a comic book or superhero movie. There was little mention of Blade's comic origin during the marketing of the movie, The ties to Marvel were downplayed with only Blade and Deacon Frost were the only characters from the comics, and they had been changed significantly for the movie. The creators of Blade were not mentioned in the credits of the movie and it lacked even a Stan Lee cameo. There were no comic book tie ins to the movie and no Blade monthly series at the time of the release to capitalize on the movie. Most viewers at the time were unaware that Blade was from a comic.

Marvel was selling the movie rights to their characters years before Blade came out. Most of the development was due to the success of Tim Burton's Batman in 1989, where studios were trying to figure out the next big hit. The X-Men rights had been at Fox since at least 1994 and was boosted by the animated series. The various rights for Spider-Man were sold so much that it took years to untangle the legal mess before a movie could be made.

FX1142025-10-04 00:51

Yeah, for years it was a piece of trivia that Blade was actually based on a Marvel comic.

Although I wouldn't hold not having a Stan Lee cameo against it. That didn't really become A Thing until the 2000s.

AlternativeSpell95602025-10-04 19:48

Nothing you’ve stated negates anything that I’ve stated. 7 marvel character rights sold before Blade 1998. 3 released. All flopped. No studio pulled the trigger until Blade’s success. 9 superhero films released from 1988-1998. 30 films from 1998-2008. Research is free. The argument that Blade’s ties to Marvel were downplayed is probably the silliest argument I’ve heard so far. As if the studios who bought character rights after had no idea that Blade was a Marvel production.

Realistic_Analyst_262025-10-03 19:23

I cringe so hard at people like this.

Let Wesley Snipes’ Blade go.

Let Tobey Maguire’s Spiderman go.

Let Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine go.

Hell, let the MCU cast and their characters go once their stories are done.

These are actors playing fictional characters. They are not and absolutely should not be tied to the roles so closely. It’s been over 25 years. Stop putting the character at a detriment because you are so emotionally attached to an actor that you are willing to diminish the quality of the film for their sake. Having a good movie or two doesn’t mean we need to treat that whole adaptation like a religious deity. Move the fuck on.

We need to embrace this and accept new adaptations. This is the one thing the Marvel community has always been better at than DC, its ability to see different interpretations and representations while not maintaining a toxic relationship to one of them and reducing all the others regardless of quality (Snyder vs Gunn).

SuedeSalamander2025-10-03 19:59

This is the same mentality people have with Black Panther and Chadwick.

Chad wasn't T'Challa and vice versa. He was more than just a character and the character has existed before him and will continue to exist. But because people still haven't let the connection go, we have fewer appearances of the character.

Wesley is getting up there and while seeing him again was nice, we need to move on.

Imagine if Superman ended after Jerry and Joe were no longer working on the book. He would've never become as iconic as he is today.

Or imagine if Cap was relegated to his one life action appearance in a film, we'd never have the MCU version.

Edit: added clarification

AlternativeSpell95602025-10-04 19:18

Not the same mentality. This take is daft

Photography_Wizard692025-10-07 09:14

Then what’s the difference?

FX1142025-10-03 20:39

Your timeline is off. Fox had been developing the 2000 X-Men movie since the early/mid-90s. Daredevil was licensed in 1997. Universal started developing their Hulk in 1992, and Marvel was lining up buyers for the Ghost Rider rights the same year. Fantastic Four was famously sold in the 80s, but development of the 2005 movie started in 1995.

The thing that had made superhero movies into a gamble was Batman and Robin, which came out in 1997, so it was a pretty short turnaround.

Also, $131 million gross on a $45 million budget is definitely a respectable return, but it's hardly a gold mine.

And, as others have pointed out, Blade was a comic book movie on a technicality. It was really just a vampire action movie that happened to be based on a comic, but there's nothing particularly comic or superheroey about it. It's a step away from calling Road to Perdition a comic book movie.

AlternativeSpell95602025-10-04 18:55

Timeline is not off (read again) and yes Marvel sold rights to 7 characters before Blade because of financial struggles. 3 were released before Blade 1998. All flopped. Sony acquired Spider-Man in 1999 and Ghost rider in 2002. Fox bought rights and began developing Xmen in 1994. The film was trapped in development hell. Principal photography and casting didn’t even begin until 1999 and as you stated, because of commercial failure of superhero films (howard the duck, captain America, the punisher, steel, Batman and robin) Fox was hesitant to invest heavily until the success of Blade 1998. I never said $131m on $45 was a goldmine. (Read again) I said it was the proof of concept that turned the Superhero genre into a goldmine. Also, saying Blade was a comic book movie on a technicality is ridiculous. It doesn’t negate any of the facts I’ve stated and is definitely not the flex you and “the others” think it is

FragrantGearHead2025-10-03 23:17

Maybe Avengers: Secret Wars will end up with a lot of recasting of roles, since the 2015 book story has multiple variants of most of the characters, but only a single variant survives to the end.

So both Wesley and Mahershala could play the character in Secret Wars, which would act as a passing of the baton.

VisibleGuide69912025-10-03 23:19

My question when I saw the movie is if Deadpool's Blade is the same Blade from the previous movies or belongs to another universe. And if it is the Blade from the previous films, why did it end in a vacuum?

According_Night95582025-10-05 12:48

Blade wasn't even like movie Blade before the movies. I love the movies but casting Snipes again only means you won't see Blade at all in the MCU past his first movie.

It also doesn't make sense to tie characters meant to go on for decades to an actor. I'm tired of this cult of personality thing because the character comes after the actor and most times is just empty fanservice rather than good casting.

Live action already has a disadvantage for superhero stories against animation and comics, since they take a long time and actors age. You shouldn't make the problem worse by hanging on to an old actor.

Apart from that, if you have a 60 year old blade, you can tell very interesting stories about aging superheroes, but you miss out in a lot of other stories since the roles are so physical.

That's considering Snipes would like to return to a longer project, which I doubt.

If you want to kill Blade's possible relevancy, Wesley Snipes is a great cast.

AlternativeSpell95602025-10-06 00:04

Exactly. Snipes’ Blade became the inspiration for the character in comics, movies etc. after the first movie. Iconic.

Thebay6162025-10-06 12:47

Like every comic artist draws the characters in his own style i sometimes think we are too hung up with certain actors playing certain roles again and again. Wouldnt it be more "comic" if we had changing actors for the roles?