Blade (film)

"Blade: There are worse things out tonight than vampires. Karen: Like what? Blade: Like me."

Blade is a vampire hunter comic book character from Marvel Comics created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan who debuted in The Tomb of Dracula #10 (July, 1973). In the movies, his Super-Hero Origin is that vampires killed his mother during childbirth, which had a bizarre side-effect in making him part-vampire. He remained mostly human but gained all the strengths of a vampire and none of their weaknesses. He can walk in sunlight, is not allergic to garlic or silver, heals quickly and has all their enhanced senses. There is a slight catch, however: Blade still gets the "hunger" for blood and is never quite satisfied with an artificial substitution. While vastly outnumbered, Blade makes do working with his mentor, a grizzled veteran vampire hunter named Abraham Whistler, who manages to devise all sorts of vampire hunting gear.

The vampires are insanely rich, powerful and secretly in control of the world from behind the scenes with their own research labs and army. But Blade is still a legend among them, calling him "The Daywalker."

All three movies star Wesley Snipes as Blade and Kris Kristofferson as Whistler. In addition to the movies, there was a spinoff TV show titled, creatively, Blade: The Series. The first film helped usher in the current era of consistently well-done comic book films, coming earlier than X-Men or Spider-Man. As part of a four series deal between Marvel and Madhouse (the others being X-Men, Wolverine, and Iron Man), he starred in his own anime, which premiered on July 1st, 2011.

A new film featuring the character has been announced for the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Examples Across All Films
"Blade: Still heavy (referring to UV Flashlight). Whistler: But you're so big."
 * Abandoned Warehouse: All of Blade's hide-outs.
 * All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Happens in every movie.
 * In the first, vampires invade Blade's Abandoned Warehouse.
 * In the second, vampires invade again but in order to form an uneasy truce to defeat a common enemy.
 * The third movie has two instances in two different bases by different antagonists: a SWAT team infiltrates Blade's lair at the beginning and Drake later sneaks into Night Stalker HQ.
 * Anti-Hero (Type III): Blade and Whistler. Fridge Logic makes them seem more like sociopaths in some respects.
 * Audible Sharpness
 * Awesome McCoolname: "Blade" is apparently a real Old English name meaning, well, "blade".
 * Badass: Blade
 * Badass Biker: Blade again.
 * Badass Grandpa: Whistler sports a white beard and a gatling gun.
 * Badass Longcoat: It has a hole for his blade to poke out of and everything.
 * Badass Normal: Whistler and the Nightstalkers, who take out vampires without the benefit of superpowers.
 * Bottomless Magazines: Few characters in the Blade universe ever need to reload their firearms.
 * Bullet Time: On one of the directors commentaries they jokingly mention the fact they did it before The Matrix.
 * City of Weirdos: No one bats an eyelash at Blade's appearance while he walks around in broad daylight with a leather duster and sword, nor when he does things like beat up cops on the street. Especially in the third film when he's being hunted by the FBI. This was averted several times in the series, however.
 * In Blade Two people beating up a uniformed police offer in broad daylight doesn't attract any attention. Nor is Frost holding the young girl hostage, nor Blade saving said girl from being hit by a bus.
 * Comic Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Notably averted in this film. The eponymous hero goes solely by that name, even when we learn his real name: Eric.
 * Cool Car: 68' Dodge Charger in all 3 movies. According to Guillermo del Toro, the car was practically nonfunctional and had to be pushed into the set.
 * Cool Garage: All the movies have a form of this.
 * Cool Shades:
 * In a DVD commentary, the filmmakers state that Blade is effectively invincible while wearing his shades.
 * Also Priest and Reinhardt from the second movie.
 * Cool Sword: A silver, impossibly sharp blade and a clockwork anti-theft mechanism built into the handle. Amazingly, it has a straight blade and is not a katana.
 * Crazy Prepared:
 * Blade and Whistler.
 * Deacon Frost, although its justified in that he admits he's been studying Blade for years so of course he knows everything about him.
 * Dark Is Not Evil: Don't worry, Karen. The leather-clad biker shooting up the hospital as he runs from the cops is here to help.
 * Deadpan Snarker
 * Whistler gets a few good ones in the first two installments.


 * Hannibal King in Blade: Trinity. He's played by Ryan Reynolds, after all.
 * Everything Fades: Vampires explode into embers upon death. It's awesome.
 * Fangs Are Evil
 * Fantastic Drug: Vampires are seen sniffing red powder, presumably blood cocaine. The TV series introduces vampire ashes.
 * Fantastic Racism: "Purebloods", or born vampires, regard infected vampires ("turned") as second-class citizens of the vampire world.
 * Final Battle: Three times, in fact.
 * Forgotten Phlebotinum: The Big Bad of the first film had a UV-blocking sunscreen which allowed him to walk in the sun for a significant amount of time (hours at least). It's never seen again, even though, by all rights, it's a much more reasonable alternative to all the genetic engineering and other nonsense the vampires try. Although, the UV-blocking seemed to be a temporary/short term solution (Blade noted Frost's sunscreen was beginning to run at one point).
 * Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: Blade himself.
 * Good Is Not Nice: Blade is a hard-ass dick, but he's also a hero.
 * Guns Akimbo: Throughout the films, this practice is shown by Blade, Hannibal King, Abigail Whistler, various members of the Blood Pack, Whistler, and even Scud.
 * Half-Human Hybrid: Blade is a Dhampyr, which is called a "daywalker" in the film's world. He has all the strengths of a vampire with none of their weaknesses except their thirst. Hardly seems fair.
 * Handicapped Badass: Whistler has a pronounced limp and wears a leg brace due to a bad leg injury that never quite healed up right. Despite this, he's more than capable of kicking ass.
 * Hemo-Erotic: The various vampire-club scenes in the movies often involve the vampires being aroused while feeding. In fact, the first movie begins with a vampire-rave in which vamps are sprayed with blood, then start getting hot and heavy.
 * Knuckle-Cracking: In the movies, it seems not even the Daywalker is immune to the ravages of arthritis.
 * Les Collaborateurs: The vampires' various human "familiars", who knowingly aid the vampires against their own kind.
 * Lost in Imitation: Blade being half-vampire (vampire powers minus the weaknesses except for the bloodlust he needs a serum to control) and his companion Whistler came from his guest appearance in the Spider-Man: The Animated Series. The comic book Blade was just a Badass Normal immune to vampire bites until a bite from Morbius put him in line with the movie counterpart.
 * Masquerade: Vampires hide from humanity. In the first film, Deacon Frost wants to break the Masquerade and rule humans in the open. In the second film, the vampires have beefed up their Masquerade a bit just to hide from Blade. They still feel the need to visibly brand their minions with glyph tattoos, though, apparently to keep things sporting.
 * Mentor Archetype: Whistler in the films, Jamal Afari in the comic.
 * Misapplied Phlebotinum: Blade rarely tries to hunt down vampires during the day - while they sleep.
 * Monster Lord
 * Dragonetti in Blade.
 * Damaskinos in Blade II.
 * Drake In Blade: Trinity.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: But don't worry, he's on our side.
 * No Badass to His Valet: Whistler treats Blade like a normal person.
 * The Obi-Wan: Whistler.
 * Off with His Head: One of the ways to kill a vampire.
 * One-Liner: Blade is full of them.
 * Our Vampires Are Different:
 * Vampirism is a genetic condition caused by a retrovirus which is transmitted via vampire saliva contacting human blood, e.g. through a bite. Vampires are not "undead", and surviving bite victims are the ones who may turn into vampires, those who die do not.
 * Vampirism causes volatile sensitivity to UV direct radiation (like in sunlight), severe allergies to silver and garlic, and the inability to produce hemoglobin. As a result of the latter, they need to drink human blood to survive.
 * At the same time, it grants enhanced strength, agility, retractable sharpened fingernails and canine teeth, a healing factor that scarlessly repairs any injury that doesn't disable the brain or the heart in a matter of days(including the complete regrowth of limbs and other body parts), and slows down the aging process to a negligible rate after the subject reaches maturity.
 * Vampires have no weakness to crucifixes, crosses or holy water and do not need to be invited into a dwelling to enter it.
 * A vampire can be killed by destroying or separating its brain from its body, destroying its heart, completely incinerating it, or overwhelming it with a dose garlic or silver. When a vampire dies, a volatile chain reaction occurs which incinerates its entire body except for remnants of its skeleton.
 * During the first film, a hematologist looking for a cure for the virus also develops a serum that causes vampire blood to explode on contact with it. Injecting a vampire with it is obviously violently fatal.
 * Unlike in the comics, Blade is the result of a vampire attacking and infecting his mother as she went into labor with him. The result was him developing the characteristic super-strength, agility, enhanced healing and the thirst for blood but not the weaknesses to sunlight, garlic or silver.
 * Person of Mass Destruction: Blade.
 * Present Day
 * Scary Black Man: A rare heroic example. Blade was notable for being an early black comic book hero, though he still spouted Jive Turkey.
 * Storming the Castle: At some point during each movie.
 * Sunglasses at Night
 * Supervillain Lair
 * Transhuman Treachery: When turned into a vampire.
 * Under Crank: Used to make vampires look fast and unnatural at the same time.
 * Vampire Bites Suck
 * Vampire Vannabe: Most of the humans who work for the vampires, their "Familiars", are doing so for the promise of being turned.
 * Wall of Weapons: On more than one occasion Blade's hideout is displayed with a prominent wall mounted arsenal.
 * Weaponized Weakness: Blade's weapons are all made of silver and garlic. His gun scopes have UV lights. He's a walking anti-vampire arsenal.
 * Weapon of Choice: Blade's… blade.

Blade
"Frost: (holding Blade's sword) Hold out your arm, Quinn. Now. Quinn: Deac, I... (obeys) Frost: (winds up) Just Kidding. (bro-punch to the chest) Quinn: (Beat) AHAHAHAHA He was just fuckin' with me, man! He was just fucking with me."
 * Artistic License Geography: The younger vampires take the elder to see the sunrise on the ocean. The thing is the movie takes place in Los Angeles, which is on the West Coast, so they really can't technically watch the sun rise across the ocean.
 * Backstory
 * Bad Boss: Deacon Frost makes a sport of killing off his familiars when they displease him. Subverted, however, when he prepares to test Blade's sword on his minion's arm (Quinn), only to reveal that he's just kidding.
 * The movie definitely gives the impression that it's just Quinn though. The guy is a complete screw-up, being a one-man Quirky Miniboss Squad who's more interested in sluts than Frost's master plan. Frost kills and sacrifices minions left, right, and center. Quinn's arm WILL GROW BACK, as he's already lost two arms over the course of the film.

"Whistler: You're the key. He needs your blood. The blood of the Daywalker. You're The Chosen One."
 * Big Bad: Deacon Frost.
 * Blood Bath: In the first movie, blood is showered on vampires at a vampire rave with the punny name "Blood Bath".
 * Blown Across the Room: Played straight (and ludicrously so) during the shootout in the night club in the beginning of the first movie.
 * The Cavalry: In the first film Blade is pinned to a wall and surrounded by badguys, when Whistler bursts through the wall holding 2 machine guns and delivers the line "Catch you fuckers at a bad time?".
 * The Chosen One: Invoked by name:

"Blade: You give Frost a message from me. You tell him it's open season on all suckheads."
 * Conspicuous CG: It becomes apparent that they ran out of their CG budget. actually looks like a cartoon animation, and the one Dragon Lady whose head explodes looks like a balloon just popped.
 * Damn It Feels Good To Be A Vampire: Expressed in the first film, implied in the others; being a vampire turns you into an Exclusively Evil bloodthirsty psychopath, but you will look good forever, join a secret society that secretly rules the world, and live and be encouraged to live an eternal un-life of absolutely debauched sex, violence, partying and hedonism. Basically one of the reasons the film works; it both captures the sheer utter bastardy of the Nosferatu race and yet perfectly illustrates why people would want to be such evil bastards in the first place.
 * Deadly Hug: How Blade
 * Dead Star Walking: Traci Lords, killed off in the very first scene.
 * Did Not Do the Research: Dagon was a Philistine god, not a Babylonian god. The chief gods in Sumerian/Assyrian/Babylonian mythology (insofar as such things can be reckoned, given all the city-specific cults) were Anu, Marduk, Ea and Enlil.
 * Fantastic Slur


 * Fast-Forward Gag: The Car Chase, unintentionally, presumably because Los Angeles didn't want to have an actual car chase for some reason.
 * Foe Yay: Deacon Frost. With everyone.
 * Follow the Leader: In a sense, the first movie led to the boom of Marvel movies. Though later overshadowed by 2000's more successful X-Men, Blade was the first Marvel movie to be a bonafide financial and critical success (Men in Black came out first but technically, it was more a property bought by Marvel than made by Marvel. And granted, some productions such as Spider-Man had long been gestating, but the movie's success proved that Marvel characters could headline their own movies.) Additionally, Blade himself was not as well-known prior to the movie's release, but still made for a successful property. In addition to their A-list stars, Marvel and DC have subsequently looked at other lesser-known characters for possible movies.
 * And despite Batman and Robin being basically a Genre Killer the year before, Blade proved comic book movies still had it.
 * A God Am I: Deacon Frost after becoming La Magra.
 * Groin Attack: In the first film's opening scene, pornstar Traci Lords received a rifle butt to the groin, and then a stake to the face when she doubles over. One can't help but wonder if the crotch shot was a reference to the actress's career.
 * I Am Your Father: Blade discovers that his mother is still "alive."
 * Infant Immortality: The girl Frost throws through a hot dog stand is none worse for wear when Blade saves her from the bus a moment later.
 * Informed Ability: Frost's transformation into La Magra was supposed to make him a One-Winged Angel in the form of a giant blood cloud. Test audiences were all "Where'd Stephen Dorff go?" so they redid the ending to leave Frost his "human" form. Frost also took the powers of all 12 pureblood vampires such as pyrokinesis and mind control but neither he nor the purebloods (or even Drake-ula the granddaddy of all the pureblood vampires) displayed any of these powers.
 * If you think about it, Frost didn't even achieve full godhood. The prophecy calls for absorbing "the Spirits of the Twelve," meaning the twelve purebloods... minus the one Frost's girlfriend Mercury ashed with Blade's sword. So Frost only became 11/12 of La Magra, which means even with the EDTA, the only reason that Blade won is because Mercury threw a bitch fit. This could also count for Idiot Ball AND Fridge Brilliance.
 * Kryptonite-Proof Suit: SPF 1,000 sunscreen.
 * Lock and Load Montage: Used to show Blade loading up during the opening credits of the first film.
 * Ludicrous Gibs: Vampires explode upon being injected with anticoagulant.
 * Monstrosity Equals Weakness: This trope was the reason the Final Battle of the first film was changed. Test audiences didn't care for Frost transforming into a giant Blob Monster made of blood, so the theatrical version ended with a Sword Fight instead.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the first film, Karen becomes a vampire (and her boyfriend is killed) because Blade chose to set Quinn on fire rather than staking him, even though he knew it wouldn't kill him.
 * Now It's My Turn: Deacon Frost in the first film.
 * Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner: "Some mothafuckas are always trying to ice-skate uphill", which was something that Snipes said on set one day, and Stephen Norrington liked it so much he added it to the script.
 * Present Day: After the first scene set in the 1960's, it flashes to "Now". The "Now" when the movie was released was 1998. See Technology Marches On.
 * Punch Clock Villain: As Blade is about to kill a henchman in the first movie, said Mook replies "No... please! I just work for them!"
 * Rasputinian Death: Blade abuses Quinn in every way possible (impaling, burns, beatings) before decapitating him.
 * Vampire Dance: The vampire rave that opens the first movie, complete with Blood Bath.
 * Vampire Refugee: The M.E. from the first movie. Blade refuses to be cured of his vampirism so he can remain super-powerful and continue to wipe out the race.
 * Waking Up At the Morgue: The vampire Quinn wakes up in the middle of his own autopsy after being set on fire.
 * You Killed My Father:
 * Younger and Hipper: Deacon Frost is re-imagined as a more Generation X type of character. His comic book counterpart was an older, German accented, white haired gentleman that hailed from circa 1868.