Throwback Thursday: Does the Blade trilogy still hold up?

Does Wesley Snipes’ Blade Trilogy still hold up twenty years later?

There are certain movies that should get credit for making a film genre popular. For example, the Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises are the reason horror films continue to be profitable. With Marvel Studios, people attribute Spider-Man, X-Men, and Iron Man to their success and the success of the superhero genre as a whole. People even look at Deadpool and Logan as the reason R-rated comic book movies can work. However, before any of those Marvel Comics movies came out, Wesley Snipes played the Daywalker Blade and really got things going.

Blade wasn’t a well-known comic book character. The general public only knew that he’s a vampire who hunts other vampires. It was a gutsy move to use a character like this, but it worked. When Blade debuted in 1998, the world got to see who he really was — a tough character with a plethora of one-liners and an arsenal of weapons. Despite not being affected by some of the vampire weaknesses like sunlight and silver, he still had their thirst for blood. Other vampires may not have seen it as a weakness, but Blade did. To the vampires he hunted, his only weakness was his need to protect humanity, and both of these things humanized him to the audience. Otherwise, he’s just another character without any depth.

Today, we’ll look back at each of the Blade movies in the fan-favorite trilogy, as well as break down the good and the bad and decide if these movies still hold up.