With all due respect to the Wick saga, this was perhaps to be expected. All the franchise\u2019s hours and hours of well-tailored, well-choreographed violence would eventually have to fold in on themselves, becoming a mosaic of elegant brutality where the boundaries would become fuzzy. If it\u2019s Chapter 2<\/em>, this must be Italy, right? When did Halle Berry and her attack dogs show up? Was Laurence Fishburne there from the very beginning?<\/p>\n\n\n\n But there was something else to the nagging feeling of recognition that predated the Continental, the gold coins, and even Baba Yaga his bad self. The Wick <\/em>universe felt familiar for another reason. And then, as Keanu Reeves punched, kicked, stabbed and shot \u2013 especially shot \u2013 his way through yet another cadre of henchpeople, it hit me, like a point-blank headshot from JW.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wesley Snipes. More specifically, Wesley Snipes as Blade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are differences, of course, between these two characters. Before returning to the baroque underworld where he was the resident boogeyman, Keanu\u2019s Wick at least made an effort<\/em> to go straight, briefly living a peaceful domestic life with a beloved wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Snipes\u2019 Blade, on the other hand, has completely eschewed any trappings of such an existence – his true home is the murky netherworld beneath the \u201csugar-coated topping\u201d of the human world, his true love is Whistler (Kris Kristoffersen), the grizzled old bastard who rescued him from life as a feral teenage bloodsucker, and his raison d\u2019etre <\/em>is gleefully fucking up vampires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some backstory, perhaps: introduced in 1973 as a supporting character in Marvel Comics\u2019 Tomb of Dracula<\/em>, initially as a human immune to the bite of the vampire and later reimagined as a half-human\/half-vampire himself, Blade appeared in a variety of Marvel\u2019s supernatural-tinged titles, occasionally doing battle with or alongside similarly spooky characters like Doctor Strange, Ghost Rider and Morbius, the Living Vampire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, when Blade made it to the big screen in 1998 (after a prolonged development process that saw everyone from Richard Roundtree to LL Cool J considered for the role), the extended Marvel Cinematic Universe was yet to be developed, and Snipes\u2019 \u2018Daywalker\u2019 existed in his own dark, sleek environment, one seemingly dissimilar to any vampiric environment that preceded it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, despite their long history, arcane mythology, and veneer of sophistication and propriety (exemplified by soft-spoken European power-broker Dragonetti, played by \u2013 who else \u2013 Udo Kier), the movie\u2019s vampires are really a dog-eat-dog bunch, ready to betray and incinerate one another to gain a small sliver of power or a larger slice of the pie. And while such shadowy organizations are studded throughout fiction, and have been for some time, recently revisiting the John Wick<\/em> franchise in its entirety made the similarities between it and the Blade<\/em> movies clearly stand out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Naturally, there is the lone avenger violently dismantling the power structure. But there are also the uneasy or unexpected alliances formed to take down a common enemy or achieve a shared goal (often with a touch of backstabbing thrown in for good measure). The vicious young usurper, happy to bend or break the rules to ascend the ladder or maintain a classicist status quo (Stephen Dorff as insolent Deacon Frost in Blade<\/em>; Bill Skarsgard\u2019s coldblooded Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont in Wick 4<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n But maybe the standout similarity is what really gets the blood pumping for fans of these franchises: carnage in cool nightclubs. Honestly, who doesn\u2019t enjoy a place usually reserved for drinking, dancing, and romancing becoming an arena in which our hero lays waste to villain after villain?<\/p>\n\n\n\n With that in mind, one imagines that the Marvel Studios brain trust might take the opportunity of its mooted Blade reboot to bloody up the MCU a little, although the delays and staff replacement accompanying Mahershala Ali\u2019s revival of the character, even before the added complications of the writers\u2019 and actors\u2019 strike, gave the whole project the feeling of a motherfucker trying to ice-skate uphill<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/blade2.jpg\")
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Watching Blade<\/em> upon its release 25 years ago, what struck me was the organization and hierarchy of its vampire race, a marked contrast to the lone creatures, predatory packs and loose-knit aristocracies that had characterized the subgenre until then. There was something so threatening about a ruthless, remorseless mechanism running parallel with the real world, something that regularly emerges to snatch up an innocent and drain them dry (as illustrated in Blade<\/em>\u2019s unforgettable opening sequence, a techno-scored nightmare in which a hapless fuckboy\u2019s date with Traci Lords turns horribly crimson).<\/p>\n\n\n\n