MCU’s Blade will be Rated R
Marvel may have finally stopped trying to ice skate uphill. In an interview with Deadline, Yann Demange, director of Marvel’s upcoming Blade reboot, says that the Daywalker’s first MCU adventure will be rated R. He doesn’t say whether this is a new development, but when he was hired along with screenwriter Michael Starrbury, the new script direction was said to be “dark and gritty in tone,” so it’s possible this was always the plan. Demange also says that for his Blade, “we are going to have fun” and “show a kind of ruthlessness, a roughness he has, that allows him to walk the earth in a particular way.”
This sounds like damage control. That doesn’t mean it’s untrue, but it seems awfully coincidental that this would come out right after a big article that revealed there was a draft of Blade where the title character played fourth fiddle to a bunch of women – which itself followed that South Park special that ingrained “Put a chick in it; make her gay!” in everyone’s brain. I don’t know much about Yann Demange as a filmmaker or Michael Starrbury as a writer because I haven’t seen any of their work, but the word from when they were hired was that their version would be more in line with what a Blade movie should be, minus Wesley Snipes. But that was almost a year ago, and Marvel and Disney must want to make sure everyone knows that this will be a fun, cool, bloody Blade movie that’s actually about Blade. And if they deliver on their promise, that’s perfectly fine. But now that it’s out there, they’d better deliver.
