Sightlines · reception

How Blade was received

1998 · Stephen Norrington · Blade on Sightlines

The arc

In 1998 it was received as a solid, slightly disreputable action hit — a vampire movie that critics shrugged at. Now it's routinely credited as the film that proved Marvel could work on screen, two years before X-Men and a decade before the MCU.

What’s debated

The perennial fan gripe: superhero-movie histories start the modern era with X-Men (2000), and Blade fans insist that's erasure — Blade walked so the MCU could run.

Its footprint

The blood-rave opening is one of the most referenced needle-drop sequences of the '90s, and 'some motherf***ers are always trying to ice skate uphill' remains an evergreen quote — the whole techno-vampire aesthetic became shorthand for late-90s cool.

Where it stands

A canon climber: once filed under B-movie action, now a genuine Letterboxd favorite and a 'you have to understand where superhero movies actually started' talking point.

Did you know? Before Blade, Wesley Snipes had spent years in the 1990s trying to get a Black Panther film made — when it stalled, Blade became his Marvel hero instead, making him the first Black lead of a hit Marvel movie.