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Is Blade really a superhero?
AKA are Vampire/Witch/etc hunters superheroes?
With Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters out this past weekend, I’ve been thinking about the role of the supernatural hunter in the superhero genre. The obvious example in favor of the argument is Blade. He’s part of the Marvel Universe right alongside Spider-Man and Iron Man, and yet if you look specifically at the movies, they’re pretty much straight up vampire hunter movies, without a trace of superhero in them. And for the purposes of this post, I’ll be lumping together vampires, werewolves, demons, and witches under the term supernatural hunter, since many of them follow the same kind of formula. So where does that leave other supernatural hunters in movies like Ultraviolet, Underworld, Vampire Hunter D, or even Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters? That’s what I’d like to figure out.
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Blade: House of Chthon
Blade: House of Chthon 2006
It’s not looking like I’m going to get around to watching the new Ghost Rider anytime soon, so instead I decided to check out something else that I hadn’t seen before. When I bought the Blade series on DVD it wasn’t just a trilogy, it was four movies. The extra movie at the end was the TV movie slash pilot episode of the short lived television series on Spike TV. Blade: House of Chthon. My wife and I were both curious about it so we decided to pop it in and check it out. Long story short, I can see why the show didn’t make it past its first season.
Blade: Trinity
Blade: Trinity 2004
I’ve been feeling awful all day with an annoying runny nose and sinus headache while running all over town running errands. But I finally get to cap it off with a movie I remembered really enjoying as the last movie in the great Blade Trilogy. As a minor side note, I keep thinking this movie’s subtitle is actually Trilogy instead of Trinity. It wasn’t an awful movie by any means, but there was a lot of stuff in it that I completely didn’t agree with or didn’t make sense that I must have completely overlooked the first time I watched it.
Blade II
Blade II 2002
Another couple days and it’s not looking good for me seeing Ghost Rider in theaters. I’m not interested at all in seeing it in 3D, and it’s not too easy with my schedule to catch one of the few 2D showings. So I’ll keep an eye out for it and watch it when I can. Instead I’m pushing forward with the Blade Trilogy and I’m now on the second movie. This one is known for being directed by Guillermo Del Toro right before he went on to direct Hellboy. It also has a lot of typical changes that good sequels tend to have.
Blade
Blade 1998
I partly wanted to see the new Ghost Rider movie, but after reading several reviews for it, I didn’t much want to go out and see it in theaters. So things didn’t work out and at the last minute I put in Blade. I think I made the better decision. Of course if I want to stick to my schedule and have this finished by midnight it means that I only have half an hour to write this. So for those of you reading this, you can see what me writing quickly and without being able to do a second take on it later. Of course I always have the option of going back in and editing, but that’s not worth mentioning right now. Also, if you read this early you got to see this without most of the pictures, lucky you.
Black Superhero Month
I knew it would be easy to guess my theme for this month, but when I needed to decide what movies I should watch for this month, I realized that it was Black History Month and I thought I would see how many black superhero movies there were. I managed to find 9 of them: Catwoman, Spawn, Hancock, Blankman, The Meteor Man, Steel, Blade, Blade II, and Blade Trinity. Some of them are pretty good, a lot of them are really bad. And I’m actually over halfway through watching them. I only have Steel and the Blade Trilogy left to watch. One other thing that snuck up on me was the fact that Ghost Rider and Chronicle came out this month. I managed to watch and review Chronicle already and plan to watch the new Ghost Rider and the old one for good measure. So I’m in for a busy month. In fact I was so busy writing the review for The Meteor Man that I almost forgot to write this blog post for today which is why I’m posting it just before midnight.
It’s really a sad state of affairs that when someone mentions a black superhero movie, they either think of Blade, or they think of a really bad movie like Steel or Catwoman. And honestly a lot of movie fans aren’t that fond of the Blade movies, especially when you get around to the third one with Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds. And a couple things that come up when talking about black superheroes is why has no one made a Black Panther movie yet? And of course there’s also talk I’ve heard going around of Michael Jai White wanting to make a superhero movie that I can’t think of at the moment and when I tried to search for it it seems to have been overtaken by talks from July about rebooting the Spawn franchise as a hard “R” rated movie. Which I think would be great. Spawn had a lot of potential but it was hurt by the PG-13, script issues, CGI issues, and acting issues. Michael Jai White has grown a lot as an actor and CGI has improved and gotten less expensive, I think it would be great to see a Spawn reboot. Forget that, I’d rather see a Spawn sequel, forget the reboots, there’s enough Superhero origin stories, just make it a sequel, skip retelling the origin, and get straight to the action. And if anyone wants to remind me of that other Superhero White was trying to get made into a movie, leave a comment.
I also wanted to mention that while I didn’t watch the Superbowl, I did manage to catch the new trailers for both the Avengers and The Amazing Spiderman. I’m really excited to see both of them. I didn’t realize that Denis Leary was going to be in the new Spiderman movie and I’m really interested to see what he brings to the movie. I also like the actor, Garfield or whatever his name is. I’m kind of torn over the mechanical webslingers for some reason though. I actually liked the decision that the first series of movies made to make the webbing be a part of his transformation rather than something he made on his own. I understand that a lot of fans thought that the chemical webbing showed a part of Peter Parker’s scientific side, my thoughts are “what’s the first thing you think of when asked what abilities does a spider have?” I’m pretty sure it’s not amazing strength or precognitive ability. It’s the ability to create webs. But whatever, it’s really a minor thing but what I’m most annoyed about that I’m sure will happen at least once during the movie is there will be a critical moment where Spiderman’s web fluid will run out at the worst possible time. On another more random note, I realized that when the movie comes out I will be watching the Tobey Maguire Spiderman movies, but I will be watching them in reverse order. Starting with the worst of them all, Spiderman 3, moving to what some consider the best of them all Spiderman 2, and finishing off with Tobey’s origin story before watching… this guy’s origin story. Anyway check out my review of Hancock coming up on Thursday, until next time this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.