|
 After Joel Schumacher’s dreadful couplet of Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, it was reasonable to expect that any superhero-themed film was going to be box office poison. Both films were critically lambasted and exemplified the law of diminishing returns with regard to the studio‘s coffers. However, less then a year following the Caped Crusader’s inglorious retreat from the screen, a new superhero film was released. Most moviegoers flocking to see it didn’t know they were going to see a film based on a comic book character, albeit a minor one. In fact, so potent was the Batman-backlash that one suspects that the studio went out of its way to avoid mentioning this hero’s comic book origins.
Blade was originally a supporting character in the comic Tomb of Dracula, published by Marvel between 1972 and 1979. In the comic, Blade’s mother, an English prostitute, is bitten by a vampire while he was being delivered. While the Blade of the comic was a gifted athlete and skilled vampire killer, he lacked any real superhuman powers. However, thanks to his personality and attitude, especially when compared to his cohorts (mostly descendents of characters from Bram Stoker’s original novel, Blade quickly became popular with readers of this relatively short-lived (compared to ones that have been around twenty, thirty years or more) comic.
The cinematic Blade, however, is a vastly different creature. While the comic version dressed like Huey P. Newton , the cinematic version was pre-millennial black leather with silver stakes and automatic weapons for accessories. This version also featured Blade to be more than merely human. Instead, as a result of the vampire attack on his mother during his gestation, Blade somehow managed to become a vampire- human hybrid, with all of a strengths of vampires, but none of their weaknesses.
Which brings us to Blade, the first of three films starring Wesley Snipes as the titular vampire slayer. Opening with a very brief explanation of his origin, the film quickly moves to underage porn-starlet turned scream-queen Traci Lords luring a hapless chump to be the main course at a vampire rave. Just as he’s about to get turned into cat food, Blade arrives to save the day and takes out a few dozen vamps in the process. The action in the opening sequence gives considerable thrills, with lots of CGI  vampire disintegration, gunfire and hand-to-hand combat utilizing Snipes martial art of choice, capoeira. The scene is capped by Blade nailing vampire lackey Quinn (Donal Logue) to the wall and turning him into a bloodsucking charcoal briquette.
This sets the stage for Blade and his ongoing pursuit of rogue vampire Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff). Frost, unbeknownst to Blade, is the vampire who attacked his mother, and is plotting to not only overthrow the vampire hierarchy (led by cinematic uber-vampire Udo Kier), but also to become an immortal blood god. Blade, with the help of his pugnacious sidekick Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) and hematologist Karen Jenson (N’Bushe Wright), struggles to avert a vampire apocalypse.
As a film, Blade is pure candy. It’s your classic good-versus-evil story draped with vampire fetish and a techno-rap soundtrack. What’s difficult to remember, looking back on this film, is that while a lot of the action looks dated, or at the very least clichéd, the movie that really made this kind of action de rigueur, The Matrix, came out nearly a year later. So while today, we’re used to seeing leather trenchcoated badasses fucking shit up onscreen, it was a relatively new concept when Blade was released. So, while you don’t have bullet cam shots, there are still plenty of spectacular action pieces with a star who did most of his own fighting stunts.
 And as enjoyable as the action onscreen is, none of the actors involved will be fishing Blade for Oscar clips. Snipes lends a heap of urban swagger to an otherwise lock-jawed performance. It’s difficult to imagine how hard it was for Snipes to stifle his laughter when uttering such lines as “The world you live in is just a sugar-coated topping, there is another world beneath it, the real world, and if you want to survive it, you better learn to pull the trigger”. Either he’s one of America’s finest actors or he takes himself waaaaaay too seriously. N’Bushe Wright delivers her comic book caliber dialogue with wide-eyed naiveté . Kris Kristofferson’s cantankerous Whistler comes across as grizzled as a sun-bleached cattle skull, and, as Blade’s nemesis, Stephen Dorff basically chews up the scenery like he’s eating taffy. He’s fun to watch, but one can get the impression that he thinks he’s slumming it by deigning to star in an action film (and he hints as much in the audio-commentary).
The supporting cast varies wildly from Udo Kier kicking ass and taking names by basically acting like himself to Arly Jover, who plays Mercury, one of Frost’s vampire girl-toys, with the emotional range of an empty sling shot.
But, at the end of the day, a movie like Blade, isn’t about getting the attention of the academy, or elevating discourse. It’s about watching how many different flavors of shit Wesley Snipes can kick out of his onscreen opponents. And the action delivers a perfect rush. One of the things that I really appreciate about the fighting and martial arts in Blade is that it’s very utilitarian. While there is an occasional exception, there is very little flourish in Snipes ass-kicking. It’s brutal, yet graceful and very realistic. It’s all pretty rock ’em sock ’em until Blade’s final confrontation with Frost, when it goes completely over the top with swordplay and syringe-fu.
 DVD Presentation
New Line Cinema’s Platinum Series DVD was released in 1998, and is a fine transfer considering the format was still in its infancy. As befits a modern-day vampire flick, the colors are deeply saturated, especially the reds and blues, and the blacks are solid. On the audio commentary, cinematographer Theo Van De Sande discusses the great lengths that he and director Stephen Norrington went to achieve the visual aspects of Blade, and the DVD does a respectable job of transferring the theatrical experience to the home screen. The anamorphic 2.35:1 aspect ratio captures all of the action.
Language tracks are limited to English DD 5.1 and 2.0, and the 5.1 does an excellent job spreading out all of the various sound elements, from the sound of blood being sucked from a hapless victim to the rattle of the muffler on Blade’s muscle car. Subtitles are also limited to English.
Extras
Since this was released before studios created the concept of double-dipping, New Line went all out with the supplements. There are three featurettes, the first of which is La Magra, which shows how the story evolved and features deleted scenes, including an alternate ending with Frost turning into a CGI vampire blob, which thankfully stayed  on the cutting room floor. The second featurette, Designing Blade, explores the design of the film, the costumes, the weapons and the special effects. Origins of Blade provides an interesting background into how comic writers had to skirt around the Comics Code Authority in order to publish titles that featured darker themes and characters. While the talking heads in this featurette give nice shout-outs to scribes such as Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and Frank Miller, it would have been nice to feature the creative team responsible for actually creating Blade, Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan. The last featurette The Blood Tide examines the vampire mythology in a fairly superficial manner.
There are two audio commentary tracks: one that features the director, stars Snipes and Dorff, and various crew members from cinematographers to production designers. The participants provide considerable insight into the making of the picture, but the comments of each participant are recorded separately. It’s just a shame that several of them couldn’t sit down in the same room and riff off of each other, or bother to include Udo Kier, who is just one of the coolest dudes around. The second commentary is part of the isolated score audio track and features comments by the composer Mark Isham. It's interesting to hear his influences and for him to describe what he was attempting to achieve, but hearing him naming the bits of score "This is musical cue 2B) gets tedious after a while.
Additional extras include cast and crew bios, an animated menu that also includes biographies of the various vampire houses featured in Blade, as well as a brief explanation of the creation of comic book action, and a theatrical trailer.
Bottom Line
Blade is one of the better comic book adaptations to come along, and it should be credited with projects as varied as X-Men and Spider-Man getting the green light. The DVD is an excellent product that, nearly ten years after its original release, holds up not only as solid entertainment, but also a great value for the DVD buyer.
|
