The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s reboot hasn’t exactly been plain sailing given the widespread setbacks, delays, and change of director, but we’ve still got the utmost confidence that it’ll be a damn sight better than the derided Blade: Trinity.
Taking an iconic franchise that had a massive influence over the resurgence in superhero cinema at the turn of the millennium and then torpedoing it with a subpar threequel that was dogged by incredulous tales of off-camera antics, calling it an underwhelming end to what has the potential to be a top-tier comic book trilogy would be an understatement of undead proportions.
While the blame can’t be placed entirely on star and producer Wesley Snipes’ shoulders – especially with longtime writer David S. Goyer hardly proving himself to be a dab hand as a director – the headlines were nonetheless seized by tales of Snipes having a stand-in shoot the majority of his scenes while he sat in his trailer and smoked pot, even if he sought to debunk the claims.
One thing that can’t be argued is that Blade: Trinity is among the bottom tier of Marvel Comics adaptations, or so you would have thought. Incredibly, a Reddit thread in defense of the maligned vampiric martial arts actioner has drummed up a head-scratching amount of support, proving that the internet’s opinion is always ready to shift on a dime.
It’s not a patch on Stephen Norrington’s seminal original or Guillermo del Toro’s ambitious sequel, but we can’t color ourselves entirely shocked to discover that a title regularly lambasted as one of Marvel’s worst has made an attempt to shake off the stigma and shoot its shot at reappraisal.