“Some
mother fucker's always tryna ice skate uphill.”
Oh,
okay. What?
'Blade'
started a lot of stuff and thangs. It was the first good Marvel
movie, and basically started off a long trend of post-classic
'Superman' film comic series (an honour often attributed to the
'X-Men' trilogy). It also came out before 'The Matrix', and inspired
the fashion of slo-mo gun battles, long black leather overcoats, and
slim shades that 'The Matrix' epitomised.
That
being said, this film hasn't aged very well. The style of a lot of it
comes off as silly now, and the CG is downright terrible by today's
standards.
While
the style of clothing and whatever is off, the look of the film is
pretty great, and there are plenty of nice shots. The lighting is
also good, and creates mood well for different locations. I like that
we don't have to sit through an origin story for Blade either, we
just get right into it with that awesome opening scene at the blood
rave. I also like the vampires in this series, and the way that their
hierarchy is structured in this on in particular. I didn't find the
main villain all that interesting though, and the way the film
wrapped up never felt that satisfying to me.
There's
also some weird changes of characterisation in this film. Blade is
mostly the no-nonsense half-vampire tough guy - the strong silent
type, for which Tony Soprano would praise him, but now and then he'll
say a goofy one-liner or do some dumb thing for laughs that doesn't
really blend with his persona. The doctor lady also never really
leapt out at me, and she sure does come up with that cure fast, huh.
Though
I find it pretty silly (as I do pretty much all super hero movies)
and it hasn't aged well, it's a big part of what got a big ol' ball
rolling, and it's still an enjoyably gory action flick to half-watch.
Blade: 43.3