Aint Gonna Ice Skate Up Hill

This is Asteroid G’s regular column documenting the rise of superhero films in Hollywood. For the complete story, make sure to read the previous parts:

• Part 1: Batman '66
• Part 2: Superman '78
• Part 3: Wonder Woman '75 and the Incredible Hulk '78
• Part 4: Batman '89
• Part 5: Batman & Robin

Up until 1998 all the biggest superhero films were based on DC characters. Sure, you had other superheroes that got feature films, from the likes of The Shadow, The Spirit, and Captain AmericaCreated by Simon and Kirby in 1941, Captain America was a super soldier created to fight Germany and the evil HYDRA. Then he was lost in the ice, only to be found and reborn decades later as the great symbol of the USA., but they were relegated to serials and B-list films. None of them had the cultural impact of Superman or Batman. Dc ruled the roost when it came to the Box Office, and it was their game to win (or lose, as in the case of Batman & Robin). But then along came a new kind of superhero from rival publisher Marvel, and the game completely changed.

Enter the Daywalker

Released in 1998 and produced by New Line Cinema (back when they were their own studio and not subsumed under the Warner Bros. machine), Blade wasn’t like the previous superhero films we were used to. He was dark and violent and his film was, at times, quite gory. He was a superhero dressed up in a world of R-rated horror, and after the travesty that was Batman & Robin just a year before, he was a breath of fresh air, a completely different kind of hero than anything Warner Bros. had produced. A needed change.

Even though the film was in production before Batman & Robin came out, it works as a kind of response to the errors of that film. You wouldn’t catch Blade making dad jokes, whipping out a credit card with his symbol on it. Hell, he didn’t even have a symbol. He was a cool, vampire hunting vigilante dressed in black leather, fighting, and killing, his foes with ruthless efficiency. He was everything the Schumacher Batman wasn’t, all the things fans were desperate for after years of more and more kid-friendly superhero media.

It helps that our hero is played by Wesley Snipes, who was at the height of his action hero fame and fully engaged with the character (something that would happen less and less often as the sequels came along). Even though Blade had been appearing in comics since 1973’s Tomb of Dracula, it was the Snipes version – the badass, leather clad, reserves and angry vampire hunter – that would become the defining version for an entire generation and beyond. This version even became the default look and attitude of the character in the comics, with that version of Blade quickly resembling and acting like Snipes’s version within a few short years. People loved the character and they wanted to read more adventures of the version they loved.

But most important was the fact that Blade proved superhero films could work for adults. As much as he’s fighting vampires through bloody, violent set-pieces, Blade is still very much a superhero film. A lone warrior with superpowers fighting against an evil villain and his goons (in this case, the villain being Stephen Dorff's vampire lord, Deacon Frost) for the fate of the world. That’s very much a superhero story, through and through, just infused with a Goth leather vibe and thumping club beats. Blade was cool, and audiences wanted more of this kind of superhero film.

All Their Strengths, None of their Weaknesses

Of course, this film was also a Marvel movie, the first to really top the charts at the Box Office. Before DC had the lock, but Blade showed that other superheroes could make the grade. Naturally to do this the film had to fight against everything that defined DC superhero films. Warner Bros. wanted bright, happy, toyetic films that they could sell the kids but there was nothing toyetic about Blade (at least, not that you could sell to kids, anyway). As the Batman films became more and more shiny and neon, along came a vampire that not only pushed superheroes back into the grimy darkness of Batman ‘89.

In a way, this film looked at the complaints levels against Batman Returns, how violent and gory and not kid-friendly that film was, and said, “hold my blood bag.” The opening scene involves a dude getting dragged to a vampire club where, once New Order’s “Confusion” comes on, blood starts spraying and all the vampires really start dancing. But that’s not even the end of it because then along comes Blade, with his guns and his sword and his silver boomerang, and he starts cutting vampires down left, right, and center. This isn’t Tim Burton’s Batman. This goes beyond all that to find a new level for superheroes to play in, and it works.

Don’t think Marvel didn’t notice. They had a superhero out on the big screen that was rolling in cash ($131.2 Mil against a $45 Mil budget) and they weren’t making the majority of that money due to the fact they’d had to license out they’d had to license out their heroes to films studios just to keep their lights on and doors open. Blade, awesome as he could be, was the first step for Marvel in realizing what their true ambitions would be.

But How Did It Redefine Superheroes?

For starters, Blade proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Marvel’s heroes could compete on the big screen. It’s no small coincidence that after Blade came out, X-Men was put into production over at Fox, with its black leather-clad heroes (because black leather was not the de facto superhero costume) arriving in 2000 to launch their own series. And then two years later Spider-man came along and once again proved how big a Marvel superhero could be on the big screen. Marvel heroes made money, and Blade was there first.

Blade also showed that you didn’t have to make superhero films that catered exclusive to kids. Merchandise is a big part of the Hollywood ecosystem (something we’ll have to touch upon once we get to the Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe.), but making a splash at the Box Office is just as important, and on that front Blade ruled high. Sure, his film didn’t make the $400 Mil of Batman ‘89, but then this was an R-rated film about a dude slicing down vampires. It was expected to have a smaller audience, but it still kicked ass and took fangs. Then the fans showed up to buy other stuff, like statues and posters and the like (all of which Marvel got to directly reap the benefits of). Blade widened the audience and showed studios what could be done with superheroes.

It’s Influence on the Future

In a way, each of the major comic studios took their own lessons from Blade. For Marvel they saw, for the first time, that their heroes could be successful on the big screen, but (through this, and then the X-Men and Spider-man and on, and on) they also realized that to truly make the mad money at the Box Office (and not just a tiny licensed percentage) they’d need their own films made by their own studio with the characters they had left in the repertoire. They needed to make their own cinematic universe.

In other words, if we want to find a single film, a locus for where superheroes were and where they went, the single film that truly came to define the modern superhero genre, then you need look no further than Blade. It’s not insane to say that without Blade we wouldn’t have the MCU at all. Marvel saw the writing on the wall and they embraced it.

Next Time On…

We do still have major moments in superhero cinema, though. Even if we’ve answered the major question of this series, we have to investigate the other milestones that came later to see if, just maybe, another answer could be on the table. And that means we have to get down with the merry mutants of the X-Men…