25 Years Later, Blade Is Still Marvel’s Secret Weapon

Blade’s Mainstream Popularity Explosion

The original Blade movie came along at a particularly dark time for Marvel. The comic book industry had recently suffered a major crash, as speculators and collectors fled the hobby and numerous comic shops went out of business. Marvel itself filed for bankruptcy in late 1996. The company had certainly faced lean times before, whether it was the anti-comic backlash of the 1950s or the industry-wide contraction of the 1970s, but there was a period in the ‘90s where it looked like Marvel’s days were well and truly numbered.

While Marvel’s comic book division eventually pulled itself out of a hole on the strength of books like Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada’s Daredevil and Brian Bendis and Mark Bagley’s Ultimate Spider-Man, it’s Marvel’s Hollywood deals that are largely credited with saving the company from oblivion. Licensing out key franchises like Spider-Man and the X-Men helped save Marvel and transform it into the Hollywood juggernaut it is today.

That said, it’s not as though 2000’s X-Men and 2002’s Spider-Man deserve all the credit for pulling Marvel back from the edge. Blade was there first.

Blade had a lot working against it when it hit theaters in 1998. It was only the second Marvel movie to see a wide theatrical release (the first being the critically reviled Howard the Duck). It arrived at a time when comic book movies were anything but guaranteed hits at the box office. Other superhero movies starring Black leads, like 1997’s Spawn and Steel, had already failed. Could a relatively obscure hero like Blade hope to do better?

As it turns out, the answer was a resounding yes. Blade grossed $131.2 million worldwide on a budget of $45 million. The film earned praise for both Wesley Snipes’ performance and Stephen Norrington’s stylish direction, and to date remains one of the most well-regarded pre-MCU movies. It spawned a franchise with two film sequels, a short-lived TV series and multiple video game adaptations. For Marvel, still operating on very shaky ground following its bankruptcy, Blade was a crucial light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s also difficult to understate just how dramatically the Blade movies have informed public perception of the character. Snipes’ dour, trenchcoat-clad, cold-as-ice portrayal of Blade has become the de facto standard in all media. Marvel went so far as to rework the comic book version of Blade to bring him more in line with the movie, transforming him from an ordinary human with immunity to vampire bites to a full-fledged, superhuman dhampir. Marvel’s comics often adopt elements of the live-action movies and series, but never has that transformation been quite so profound (or as permanent) as with Blade.

Blade may not have singlehandedly saved Marvel, but it was exactly the type of mainstream hit the company needed at exactly the right time. This former C-List hero proved to be Marvel’s secret weapon.

How Blade Can Save Marvel (Again)

It just so happens that Marvel may require its secret weapon again. Granted, the current state of Marvel is hardly as dire as it was in 1996. Marvel is now under the umbrella of Disney, one of the most powerful corporations on the planet, and its movies have routinely grossed hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars. The company’s comic book line is still going strong, while Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 became the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game in 2023.

That all being said, Marvel and its parent company had a fairly rough go of it this year. The Marvels suffered the worst opening weekend of any MCU movie and now has the dubious distinction of being the lowest-grossing MCU movie to date. Secret Invasion received a massive critical drubbing. In general, Marvel has been struggling to achieve the same sort of critical and commercial success in the Multiverse Saga that it did during the Infinity Saga.

Meanwhile, on the video games front, there’s a sense that Marvel is still only beginning to tap into its true potential. Alongside the aforementioned Spider-Man series, Marvel has enjoyed a handful of modest hits like the Guardians of the Galaxy and Midnight Suns games. Even Marvel’s Avengers fell short of expectations, with the game becoming the poster child for the pitfalls of live-service games.

With the Marvel ship currently steering through relatively rough waters, Blade is once again coming to the rescue on multiple fronts. On the MCU side of things, Mahershala Ali is taking over the role in 2025’s Blade reboot. That movie is notable for several reasons, not the least of which being that it’s a rare R-rated MCU project. Like Deadpool 3 and the TV-MA-rated Echo, Blade has a chance to prove that this cinematic universe can succeed by specifically targeting older audiences.

Marvel’s Blade Concept Art

Blade is also one of the first MCU movies to really lean into the horror genre, something we’ve only seen in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Werewolf by Night. With so many complaints about superhero fatigue lately, it behooves Marvel to dabble in other genres and explore different tones. The horror-centric approach also allows Marvel to tackle a superhero film with a smaller, more intimate scale. Not every Marvel movie needs to be a $200 million epic. Again, the original Blade only cost $45 million to make, and it still looks pretty darn good (‘90s CGI blood gods notwithstanding).

Admittedly, Blade has proven to be one of the more troubled MCU projects, reportedly undergoing numerous script rewrites and nearly losing Ali in the process. But the upside to this is that Marvel seems determined to get the script right, something they haven’t always accomplished with their “shoot first, fix problems in post” mentality. The original Blade set a high bar that Marvel needs to clear with this reboot.

On the games side of things, Bethesda’s Blade game comes at a time when Marvel is only just starting to realize its potential in this arena again. Back in the ‘90s, store shelves were flooded with Marvel-branded platformers, brawlers and fighting games. It’s comparatively slim pickings now, especially when you ignore the mobile gaming side of things. Just as the first Blade movie showed the potential of Marvel’s heroes at the box office, the Blade game has a real chance to prove that there’s gold to be mined in releasing games built around characters other than Spider-Man or the Avengers.

In many ways, Blade is a natural choice of video game protagonist. He wields an impressive arsenal and spends his nights mowing down bloodthirsty vampires. That’s an easy recipe for another solid character action game or Devil May Cry clone. But Arkane’s development history also hints at some intriguing possibilities for the Blade game.

Both the Dishonored series and 2021’s Deathloop are distinguished by player choice. They present a series of goals and leave it up to the player to decide exactly how to carry them out. Do you want to charge in headlong and annihilate your foes? Would you rather opt for a more silent and stealthy approach? These games go to great lengths to accommodate different play styles and encourage experimentation.

Arkane’s development history also hints at some intriguing possibilities for the Blade game. 

We know very little about the gameplay of Blade, other than that it’s a third-person game rather than Arkane’s usual first-person approach. But it’s easy to see how this emphasis on customization and personal play styles could influence the gameplay. Blade allows gamers to take control of the character in a version of Paris that’s under siege from the undead. It offers a vast sandbox in which players can conceivably slaughter vampires however they choose. Compared to the more straightforward combat of the Spider-Man and Avengers games, Blade has a chance to shake up the Marvel formula and do something very different. And with Marvel slowly expanding its video game output, different is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Are you excited for Blade’s upcoming cinematic and gaming adventures? Do you think these projects are the answer to Marvel’s current woes? Let us know what you think in the comments.

For more on Marvel, see the winner of IGN’s Best Comic Book Series of 2023 award and brush up on every Marvel movie and show in development.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.