Exploring Blade

the character blade first appeared in marvel comics the tomb of dracula number 10 in 1973. he was a supporting character whose appearance was based on various black actors of the time like richard rountree and jim brown as his popularity grew he got his own solo story in vampire tales number eight in 1974. in the years it followed he appeared in ghost rider morbius night stalkers and finally in 1994 he had his own series blade the vampire hunter since the early 90s new line cinema had been doing very well adapting lesser-known comic series to film they were approached by director ernest dickerson who wanted to make a film based on the character blade david goyer who'd been a long time fan of the character wrote the first draft of the script newline met with marvel who had already spoken at dickerson and they wanted ll cool j to play the lead dickerson left the project to work on something else and newline brought in steve norrington as a replacement norton had a background in special effects and just finished working on the ambitious sci-fi action film death machine wesley slams was working on a film adaptation of black panther at columbia and was frustrated the production stalled he received a copy of the script for blade and left black panther which ended up never coming together anyway he liked blades so much he not only agreed to star but also became a producer now it snipes on board goya returned to refine the script he worked with norrington to update the blade story to current times and keep the darker tone of the comics while the script kept some things from the comics they worked on a new vampire mythology for example they got rid of things like crosses and holy water being used as weapons they said what if the vampire was jewish why would a cross work on him they wanted to give it just a little more foundation in reality for something so outlandish since norrington had a background of visual effects he worked closely with the production design team to make sure they got the right look for the film he didn't want the gothic romantic-style vampires of anne rice he was looking for a meaner sort of modern vampire snipes had been training in martial arts since he was 12 years old he was a 5th degree black belt in karate and was fluid in many different styles he loved hong kong action movies and since blade would have numerous fight scenes he wanted them to be more like that than typical hollywood action snipes brought in his longtime friend jeff ward to do the fight choreography they met on streets of gold in 1986 and worked together many times since ward's done an insane amount of stunt work one of my personal favorites being his work on the last dragon with the production further along they began casting stephen dorff was hired to play the villainous deacon frost he read the script and liked it but the character was written to be much older and somewhat cliche he worked with norrington and goyer to make frost a younger incredibly arrogant villain in a meeting discussing the character of frost snipe stated he was the kind of guy who would ice skate uphill goyer and norrington loved it and insisted on putting it into the movie some [ __ ] are always trying to ice skater bill norrington was a fan of the prisoner so he wanted patrick magoon for the part of whistler when that didn't work out they decided to go with chris christopherson they designed his character as the grungy grandfather the modern day van helsing that could still easily kick ass if he had to they hired ambush wright to play the leading lady karen donnell logue as frost sidekick quinn and udo kier as dragon eddie this was the third time cure played a vampire he was even dracula in blood for dracula in 1974. logo originally had a much smaller part but was so funny on set they expanded his character and let him ad-lib a good portion of his dialogue spanish model arleigh jover played mercury she had very little acting experience but norrington loved her look and thought she'd be perfect as one of the lead vampires late in pre-production the producers suggested bringing in tracy lourdes to play the small role of racquel she had the right amount of arrogance and sex appeal to make this very minor character memorable gorier was having trouble with the third act of the film he felt the first two were solid but wasn't completely sold on the ending he wrote a dozen different endings and finally narrowed it down to the one he thought would work best after a long pre-production they started filming the movie was shot mostly in and around downtown l.a the hospital scenes were shot in an abandoned hospital in long beach in the scene where quinn fights with karen he fell and immediately started screaming because of the way he fell he massively dislocated his jaw they rushed him to a real hospital where they thought he was there for severe burns since he still had the prosthetic melted skin from the chute after relocating his jaw log explained he broke his jaw in a motorcycle accident years ago and if it gets hit the wrong way it unhinges and locks in place gorier and norrington fought the studio over a very unusual scene towards the beginning where karen's talking to an ex-boyfriend at the hospital the scene intentionally drags on they called it the melrose place segment they purposely want to inject this dull romantic drama to lull the audience into a false sense of security then when quinn leaps up to kill the guy it's a surprise the executives tried to get them to cut the scene but they argued to leave it in and when they showed it to test audiences it got one of the biggest reactions the design team worked at norrington on the character of pearl the vampire keeper of the scrolls originally designed as an androgynous japanese man norrington pushed to have it this morbidly obese vampire the original design had pearl sitting in his own filth surrounded by dozens of dead children that other vampires had brought him to feed on the studio thought that was an incredibly poor taste so they removed any notion of dead kids they had to build the scent around the monster it was something like pounds of latex skin that had to be moved with a forklift it was controlled by five actors four puppeteers worked the arms and legs and one was the head they had hoses that pumped fresh cold air into the body while the monster was essentially a giant animatronic puppet they still added some cg to enhance the skin there was another part the studio had issue with when karen first arrives at blade's lair she finds a jar with a vampire baby whistler had been using for weapons testing that part was cut because the studio said it was too horrible it was snipes idea to have the entrance to pearl's lair be through a walk-in freezer he also suggested the young martial arts kid ebony adams he wanted a completely unexpected moment in the film where this girl seems helpless and then proceeds to kick blade's ass adams was a young martial arts prodigy who was trained under billy blanks and took time off from her competition schedule to be in the movie for the subway scene the train car was all cg they bought three subway cars and used the interiors of them for certain shots but the exteriors were cg to add some humor and a lot of insanity to the film they added the sequence where blade goes to a vampire club filled with japanese businessmen watching the pop punk band shonen knife that's director stephen norrington and a cameo as one of the vampires director david fincher did one of the rewrites of the script he told goyer in the film blade needed to kill his mother his father and buddha so in the film he kills his mother he kills frost who technically was his father since he turned his mother into a vampire and buddha was whistler his mentor in an earlier draft he kills whistler but in the final version his fate was uncertain in one version of the ending it's whistler who's the vampire getting ready to kill the girl in moscow they shot a few different endings for the film the first one was partially conceived frost becomes lamogra and unleashes the blood tide which washes over the city and turns everyone it touches into a vampire they ended it with the vampires winning and causing the vampire apocalypse they set it up so in a proposed sequel blade and karen would travel around sort of like mad max raiding and destroying vampire food storage areas since they weren't sure if there would be a sequel they went with the original proposed ending of frost turning into the blood god and blade fighting him they screened the film for test audiences who loved the movie all the way up to the final fight they hated that frost was the villain and then in the end blade was fighting against a giant cg blood tornado they went back and re-shot some scenes adding frosts coming in and out of the blood toning blade this tested even worse they realized the problem was the audience wanted to see blade fighting frost not a visual effect they asked the studio for more money and worked on an extended fight sequence between blade and frost goya remembered from the screenings the scene where the vampires exploded from the edta anticoagulants got a huge reaction every time he worked that into the ending so now when blade fights frost it ends with him exploding months later they screened this version and the audience loved it so it shows the test audiences aren't always a bad thing the movie was in production for over two years and finally released on october 21st 1998 it was a huge success spending two weeks at the number one spot and pulling in 131 million versus its 40 million dollar budget an x-men movie was already in the works at fox but with the success of blade it reinvigorated the production and made the studio take it more seriously x-men was released on july 14 2000 and made almost 300 million dollars this overwhelming success kickstarted the next wave of superhero films which is going stronger than ever today the importance of blade can't be understated it was a serious comic book movie that was released in a time when comic book movies weren't being taken seriously blade started a franchise that was even more successful with blade 2 and the series came to a crashing halt with blade trinity there was even a short-lived tv series with kirk sticky fingers jones in the lead role in 2015 at the san diego comic con snipes was in talks with marvel about making at least one more movie blade is outstanding it's got the right mix of action humor and a great deal of world building norrington said the movie was an ode to sam pakenpaw and at its core it was a western it crammed a lot of story into two hours without it feeling overloaded snipes nailed the character and while i'm sure eventually marvel disney will reboot the series it's going to be tough to find somebody who can match his performance the only downside to the movie now is some of the cg is dated it doesn't detract from the movie overall it's just some of the scenes stand out in a bad way still at least they made the smart choice to change the ending if they didn't it's possible that people would have laughed at dwarfs blood tornado the series would have never made it past part one and we potentially would not have the massive comic book universes we have in cinema today you out of your damn mind

Channel: GoodBadFlicks

Views: 392,936

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Id: hBCuFgR_dLk

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 08 2016