More Trouble for Blade

Movies

You’re going to find this hard to believe, but it looks like Marvel’s Blade reboot is in trouble. The first hints of this came five days ago, when scooper Daniel Richtman claimed that Michael Green, the sixth writer to take a crack at the film’s script (and the writer of Logan, Alien: Covenant, Green Lantern, and the recent Kenneth Branagh Agatha Christie adaptations), has left the project, and his script is getting “major rewrites” that will include “a new male villain,” with filming being pushed back from summer of this year to fall. Yesterday, John Campea talked about Blade on his podcast and said that he’s heard “too many of the key players” are not happy with the script and that the production was going “right back to square one.” Furthermore, Campea doesn’t believe Mahershala Ali will stay with the film, as he’s been waiting for five years and is about to say he’s had enough. On the other hand, he says Marvel has “the basic story locked” despite all the unhappiness with the script. You can see the segment below:

Wow, it’s always the last one you suspect. Seriously, though, it’s hard to imagine Blade is giving Marvel so much trouble. This should be a fairly easy one to get right; take one of the better comic book storylines as the basis for the story, include a ton of vampire killing with some cool one-liners (not that they’ll ever top the “ice skate uphill” one, but give it a try), and maybe break precedent and go for a really great villain to pit against Blade. But the rumors have said that Marvel and Disney once again couldn’t get out of their own way, forcing a bunch of female characters into the movie and diminishing Blade’s role, which nobody wants. If they’re including a male villain, that suggests to me that they may be moving away from this. Marvel will not allow a male hero to defeat a female villain; that’s why Thor: Ragnarok had that asinine finale where Thor triggers Ragnarok, the Norse God apocalypse, to stop Hela instead of using his new Thunder God powers to do it, which would have been the natural result of the plot. If there’s no female hero to beat her, you can’t have a female villain, so they need a guy for Blade to fight.

As for Mahershala Ali, they deserve to lose him. As Campea says, he’s given them five years of his life and career, and they’ve jerked him around with awful scripts and a revolving door of writers and directors. (I haven’t read them, of course, but I’m more than willing to believe the screenplays all sucked.) He’s a terrific actor, and I’m sure he’s got plenty of other movies he could do instead of waiting for the next version of a likely bomb from a studio that’s become a joke since he signed on to play Blade. Selfishly, as much as I like Ali, I’d prefer if they got Wesley Snipes back; he’s iconic as Blade, and I’m sure he’d be happy to do it. Then again, if the movie ends up being bad – which it probably will – maybe it’s better not to have that as the final word on Snipes’ Blade, even if that means Blade: Trinity is it.