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BLADE Directed by Stephen Norrington of Death Machine fame(?) and written by David Goyer, Blade came out in 1998 with rather mixed reviews. It did well enough in the box office to warrant two sequels, several games, and a TV show. It should be noted that this was the first Marvel box office success. It set the groundwork for comic book movies for the next 17+ years following it. When I first saw it as a 10 year old I thought it was loving amazing. My view has not changed in that time. Roger Ebert said "Blade ... is a movie that relishes high visual style. It uses the extreme camera angles, the bizarre costumes and sets, the exaggerated shadows, the confident cutting between long shots and extreme closeups. It slams ahead in pure visceral imagery." To talk specifically about the visual aesthetic of the movie I am forced to quote our own Uncle Boogyman and his amazing realization. Uncle Boogyman posted:Blade feels like a movie from a world where the '80s never happened and the '70s ran headlong right into the '90s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6UXQ_9IRo8 Ever since that point I have been really wanting to talk about the movie, in depth, with other people. Also, the cast is just great, I mean we have Wesley Snipes, Stephen Dorff, Kris Kristofferson, N'Bushe Wright, Donal Logue, Udo Kier, and Tracy Lords. Half of that is just plain inspired casting. Anyways, might as well start it off since I am sure we will talk about everything as the time comes. Part 1: Pre-credit 0:00:00-0:02:05 Part 2: Blood Rave 0:02:05-0:11:00 Part 3: Introductions 0:11:00-0:22:50 Part 4: Fleshing out Blade and Frost 0:22:50-0:33:00 Fat Lou fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Jul 5, 2015 23:55
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 05:48 |
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Part 1: Pre-credit 0:00:00-0:02:05 This is going to me a small update because of the shortness of the scene.  The movie starts off with this ultra clean blown out white and blue tinted hospital hall. The only things that break this color scheme, for the entire scene, are blood, the text, and the emergency signs on the doors. I always found that this opening image to resemble church doors with the cross in the glass section up top being back lit by the light. You start to get some muffled distant panicked yelling. Immediately, the doors are flung open as triage doctors push through with someone on a stretcher.   The doctors are yelling about how she was bitten by some kind of animal and how her water is broken.  At a certain point, one of the doctors attempts to look through her wallet. At this point there is a menacing sounding breath and the victim, now identified as Vanessa Brooke, knocks the wallet out of his hands.   She seems to be lost as the heartbeat monitor goes haywire and her baby is being taken away. This part always stuck with me because between flashes of light, quick cutting, lack of head on the doctor, and lack of focus on the newborn you never get a good look at the baby. Everything makes it seem that the baby is monstrous in some way. That is also reinforced by how the doctor seemed to be defensively holding the baby so to keep the baby away from the mother and vise versa.  At this point is when the mother flatlines, but she still seems to be alive, and reaching for her baby, through pure will and adrenaline. I will try not to harp on Uncle Boogyman's comment too much, but goddamn, this scene is like a combination of a 90s emergency room procedural and 70s hospital horror movie wrapped into one. If anything, it is like if It's Alive happened on the set of ER. After it ends it goes to some timelapse videos of a city as it goes from day to night. Next update will have a bit more content being that is it the bloodrave scene! If you want to watch ahead that will be up until the 11 minute mark
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Jul 5, 2015 23:55
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Neo Rasa posted:I did not say that it is, but that elements of the genre are in there. It's a movie about a guy whose career is being the ultimate badass by selling stolen watches to fund his personal kung fu war against a council of ineffective, blandly dressed white guys in a board room obsessed with racial purity. I agree with this. More than that, the one white helper Blade has is handicapped and functions as yet another minority that is push aside by society. Also, the primary black character on the vampire's side is Vanessa and she is just the sex slave of Frost.
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Jul 7, 2015 05:53
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Literally The Worst posted:Also how dare you make this thread without telling me motherfucker I mentioned it in gen chat you nerd. I should have part two up tomorrow since I am off of work. I am dissapointed by all these bad opinions from people who do not think Blade is the greatest comic book movie.
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Jul 8, 2015 03:10
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Helsing posted:Whens the last time you watched the original Blade? Because the CGI hasn't aged very well. I feel that it mostly holds up pretty well. Most of the cgi only lasts for a brief amount of time and is moving quickly so it does not stand out that horribly.
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Jul 8, 2015 04:03
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Part 2: Blood Rave 0:02:05-0:11:00 Load up the blood rave soundtrack before reading the blood rave post.    Meet Racquel(Tracy Lords) and Dingus. I am calling him Dingus because I have no loving clue what it is and I am not about to look it up. Anyways, right out of the gate he proves that he is the gooniest of goons by referring to his dick as a "heat seeking missile". Unfortunately for him, vampires are not warm, so he is going to miss his target by a country mile. Racquel does her best Tyrese impression by starring directly at him and driving for like a minute solid and takes him to a...  meat warehouse! Dingus just is so excited to see all this meat and still does not really suspect anything because he is a dingus. This scene is great though, because how blunt it is in it's execution. He is meat, duh. All the meat cutters are emotionless as they just stare are him.  The first point where he has any real confusion is when he says "What the gently caress?" when he sees a number of bandaged up dead people suspended in plastic bags. The amazing thing is that he is so daft that dead bodies are not enogh for him to overcome his id. Raquel talks to the Russian bouncer and they are in to the club.     The entire scene is just bathed in a blue tint. The only thing that goes against this is Dingus's, quite appropriate, red rain jacket. It is not a hard and fast rule in the movie, but bright red normally means something bad is going to happen in the near future, particularly when the color is attached to someone. Raquel quickly leaves him on his own to be pushed around and stared at by the entire club. His enjoyment quickly turns to annoyance as Raquel pushes him away in order to dance with Mercury(Arly Jover). He then runs into Frost and at the height of his annoyance he declares "gently caress I need a drink".  He notices a drop of blood fall on his hand.  That soon follows with...  a lot more. Alright, lets just take a little look at the historical significance of "blood rain". It has been written about in literature since the Iliad. In that, Zeus used it in order to warn of slaughter in an upcoming battle. Almost all of the times it is used in literature it is to warn of massive bloodshed in the future. It was also thought to be demonstrations of godly power. Both of these literary uses of blood rain fit exactly what happens in the movie from Frost trying to seem like a god to Blade's entrance into the movie.    Once everyone is suitably soaked in blood Dingus quickly realizes that he is in a room full of monsters. They push, hiss, and roar at him, but mostly they don't really attack him initially until of one individuals decks him hard enough to drop him to the ground. Once he is on the ground then he is kicked and clawed as he tries to crawl his way to some sort of escape.   Suddenly, he crawls into Blade. Blade is wearing all black and does not have a single drop of blood on him. At this exact time the music dies down and you can get a bunch woos and general excitement from the crowd, but that quickly dies away as the crowd recognizes that Blade is there.  Murmurs of "that's him" and "that's the day walker" are heard as most of the aggressive posturing from the vampires quickly evaporates into most of them backing off and generally being scared. Some random vampire decides to attack him and Blade pulls out a shotgun and shoots him in the chest, causing him to dissolve into bones and then dust.   Some vampires attempt to attack him, but most run away. The ones that do attack him end up dust thanks to is shotgun, stakes, and machine pistol. I love the way that this cgi looks. No, it might not be perfect, but the way it looks in motion between burning into ashes and convulsing it is so brutal.    After Blade takes out the DJ, Quinn(Donal Logue) shows up. This is one of my favorite casting choices ever. Blade pulls out his sword and takes care of business some more.   After all of Quinn's minions are dispatched he comes at Blade and Blade pins him to a wall with a stake fired out of his shotgun. This fistpump is seriously on par with the iceskating line in my mind. It is just so goddamn hilarious.  Blade mentions that he is getting tired of chopping up Quinn and that this time he will try fire. I love this little relationship that they have because Quinn is completely useless against Blade and yet Blade just uses him to get under the skin of Frost by returning Quinn burned, missing hands, etc. It is like a sick game of tag for Blade.  As blade is leaving he runs into Dingus. Without even skipping a beat he checks to see if he has been bitten on the neck. That aspect always kinda bugged me because it is not like a vampire needs to bite you anywhere in particular, and with Blade throwing out the idea of crosses etc the movie still keeps that tradition alive. The main reason, I feel, they do though is because it is the most obviously sexually intimate place that could reinforce the vampires' sexual nature.   The cops show up are most mostly unphased by this whole scene in front of them and casually the fire fighters put out Quinn. Blade meanwhile disappears into the darkness of the night. Even though that this is pretty much the most memorable scene in the entire movie it does not really go downhill afterwards. I feel that it stays steady throughout between the scenes with Pearl, the Book of Erebus, the burning of Dragonetti, and the entire final scene. It is an amazing setup for the movie as a whole. You are introduced to the brutality that Blade is able to have while at the same time not dispatching any vampire that does not directly threaten him first. Also, he goes out of his way to check to see if people are turned or not. Because of this, he is not a complete monster. He still has some level of humanity, even if it is buried deep underneath his hardened exterior. It sets up the vampire's culture pretty well, at least the culture that Frost is incubating, in that it is all about hypersexualized youth who are all about the things your parents warned you about. The main difference is switch out drugs and booze with murdering innocent people for blood. Its all in good fun though. As stated in this thread this movie is really bloody and violent. It is odd that this is the movie that kicked off the comic book movie crazy, although, it was not until Spiderman that comic book movies really started to do work in the box office. Also, I feel that Blade was a huge influence on The Matrix. Between the dress of Blade along with how a lot of the action was filmed it seemed that The Matrix aped it in a lot of ways. It should be noted that in the "universe" of The Matrix there are vampires in Reloaded if I remember correctly. To talk a little about the exposition of the movie I don't even feel there is THAT much of it. I mean, from about 10 minutes in until 30 minutes in when you are at Blades place and when you see the meeting with Frost is pretty much all that you get. Even then there is an action scene in the middle of it. That exposition really does not seem overwrought at all since it introduces Blade, Whistler, Karen, Frost, Vanessa, and all of the old order of vampires. All in all it is pretty quick to jump right back into the action at hand.
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Jul 9, 2015 02:57
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I really do need to revisit Blade 2 in the future. I think the last time I saw it was like close to 10 years ago. I seem to remember liking the art style of it, but the movie as a whole never really stuck with me for some reason.
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Jul 9, 2015 22:15
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jabby posted:You missed the part where a random female vampire attacks him and he takes a moment to hit her in the crotch with his shotgun before shooting her. Just because. 
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Jul 12, 2015 15:48
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jabby posted:Now critically analyse it. Racquel is clearly the primary sexual force in the opening of the movie and hypersexuality is one of the primary characterizations that make up Frost's subsection of the vampire nation. What Blade is doing is neutering her with his first hit and killing her with the gunshot. Critically speaking he is attacking the sexuality of the vampires, with his phallic gun, in order to weaken and kill them proving that his raw sexuality is superior and not to be trifled with. It is not unlike many blacksploitation movies, in line with Shaft, where the main character is thought of being completely unmatched in terms of his sexual and physical strength. Is that good enough for just waking up? Sorry for the slow updates my week has been interesting. Hopefully part three will be up tonight. Fat Lou fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jul 12, 2015 |
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Jul 12, 2015 16:19
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Sorry about the massive wait, I have been buried under legal garbage with dealing with my exemployer and have not been up for doing much. Part 3: Introductions 0:11:00-00:22:50  This time, as opposed to a living body on a stretcher on the brink of death we have a corpse.  Although, once the cover it taken off it shows that it is Quinn. Certainly nothing bad will happen.    Anyways, here we meet Dr. Karen Jenson, a hematologist who works nightshift. We also learn that Curtis, the one morgue worker, is her persistent ex. Karen notices some odd structure to the blood and Curtis convinces her to take a look at the body.  During the autopsy Curtis badgers Karen about why they broke up. Apparently, it is because he is a huge rear end in a top hat.  At this point Quinn snaps back to life and goes right for Curtis.   After taking down Curtis, Quinn quickly turns his sights on Karen.    Blade magically shows up to punch Quinn in the face and then cut off his hand.  The security officers show up in record time and start unloading into Blade. Blade is completely unaffected by the bullets because of his armor.   In this time Quinn runs away by jumping out of the hospital an landing in an ambulance.   As Blade is about to leave he looks down at Karen and is reminded of his mother. There is a second flashback of when he last saw his mother. He decided to try to save her and Blade picks her up.  About half a dozen cops show up and without pausing start attacking and chasing him down.   To escape Blade throws Karen across a street and onto another building, and he quickly follows himself.   Blade and Karen hide behind the roof entrance of the building they are on. Karen informs Blade that she has a dislocated shoulder and Blade does what Blade does and fixes it.  For some reason a SWAT team dude with a backwards baseball cap is already on the scene and right has he starts shooting Blade and Karen manager to escape through the roof entrance.     Blade takes Karen back to his home base and Whistler(Kris Kristofferson) is there. Whistler is a great addition to the film. He is Blade sidekick and weapons maker. He is callous and blunt in his opinions of Karen and mentioned that Blade should have just killed her. After giving her a garlic shot to stabilize her transformation he just walks away and says he gives her 50/50 if she makes it through the night.      Welcome to the House of Erebus. They are the old guard of vampires. Dragonetti(Udi Kier!!!) looks through the photos of the blood rave massacre and has Frost meet with them.   Frost is called a disgrace to the vampire nation because he broke the treaty between humans and vampires. They give him poo poo for not being a pure blood vampire. In Frost's parting words he declares "You may wake up one day and find yourself extinct." The morgue scene is pretty interesting because it works by repeating, in a way, the precredit scene in the hospital. They work on opposites though, in the first scene it takes place in an operating room where Blade is born into this world, and in this scene it is in the morgue of a hospital where Quinn comes back to life from death. These scenes focus on the brink of where life starts and ends. The entire movie kinda toys with the idea of what is death and where does it begin. I would argue that once you are turned you are dead and no longer human. Outside of the purebloods it seems that vampires are purely fueled by id and ego and seem to completely lack any level of humility that almost all of the humans seem to have in the movie. This loss of humanity might not be a literal death, but it is certainly a metaphorical one. The humanity that he has for Karen immediately shows that he is not a monster at all. He may be more aggressive, even going as far as torture Quinn, but at the end of the day he only attacks violent vampires. Even when the police shoot at him he practically shrugs it off and just tries to avoid them. I really like Whistler as an addition to the movie. Going with the idea that the film cribs off of the Blaxploitation aesthetic it luckily seems to sidestep the trope of having a handicapped white male as the villain and instead makes Whistler the helper to Blade and the person who rescued him.
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Jul 22, 2015 01:53
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Bad actor?
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Jul 23, 2015 04:09
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Quote-Unquote posted:I love this bit because Snipes delivers it in a completely different tone to everything else he says in the entire movie, all high-pitched and frantic rather than slow and gruff. And his expression is absolutely priceless. I kinda take it as he is just confused why humans are even trying to attack him when the best they are going to do is cause a minor injury and maybe kill some bystanders . There is practically no threat from humans since normal bullets are not going to drop vampires, so Blade's response is in line with a god being attacked by a human. He is pretty much just laughing at them. Later in the scene when he is running away from them it is not because he is afraid of getting hit, but he is afraid of Karen being hit.
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Jul 27, 2015 21:14
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I started taking screenshots of the next update, and the music for when Karen is at Blade's place is just amazing. It is very John Carpenter in all the right ways.
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Jul 28, 2015 05:32
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All yall best brush up on your Snipes viewing. King of New York, New Jack City, Jungle Fever, White Men Can't Jump, Passenger 57, Rising Sun, Demolition Man, To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, The Fan, Money Train, and U.S. Marshals are all American classics that Snipes was in before starring in Blade. Also, happy 53rd birthday Wesley Snipes.
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Jul 31, 2015 05:38
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Part 4: Fleshing out Blade and Frost 0:22:50-0:33:00 Blade shows up at Kam's shop that seems to cater in Eastern style medicine.    Blade pays Kam in watches in order to get the serum to prevent his bloodlust. He says that Whistler thinks he is building up a resistance.  You barely get a chance to see it, but Kam has The Eye of Horus on the back of his head. I never even noticed it until I watched Blade when I started this thread. It is symbolic of good health and protection. It is the primary symbol of the sun god, Ra. It was also used in ancient Egypt by including it on the bracelets that were given to passed pharaohs in order to protect them in the afterlife. I find this oddly prophetic given the contextual reading of Blade being on the edge between the living(humans) and the dead(vampires).  Kam is one of the only people Blade has a comradery with outside of Whistler. I don't know his story from the comic books, but I always assumed he was a childhood friend or even maybe older brother of Blade.  Karen wakes up in Blade's place.  There is a chess set. White vs black obvious connection to race and blacksploitation, but also a links to Wu-Tang and Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai  There is also a place for meditation. She also finds the ID card of Blade's mother.  And a gun rack...   And Chekhov's Now Wu-Tang Clan was pretty much at their height of popularity and influence in 1997 with the release of Wu-Tang forever and multiple solo albums in the past year or so. I really feel that even though that the Blade comics have been around since the 70s, the main reason why they went this route in the movie was because they were piggybacking off of the Wu-Tang craze. Ghost Dog on the other hand came out a year later and was a reflection on gangster movies, but it was through the lens of blaxploitation movies while cribbing heavily on eastern thought and imagery just as Blade did the year prior. Ghost Dog's soundtrack was done by RZA, so that just adds another link between everything. Basically what I am saying is that Ghost Dog and Blade are both extremely similar only that Blade does it with vampires and Ghost Dog does it with gangsters. I feel there is more to say here, but I have not watched Ghost Dog in a long minute.  Meanwhile, Whistler is working with the serum in order to give to Blade.  Karen sneaks out of her room.    Blade gets injected with the serum while tied down. When this happens Whistler locks hands with him and looks away. This is great, because it shows how much Whistler hates doing this because of how much pain it causes Blade. It seems to hurt him as much as it does Blade. Hell, the look that Blade gives just before he is injected really says it all.    Karen is spotted and they corner her. I assume they are not 100% if she is vampire or not being that when Blade jumps down he has his ummm throwing blade thingy.   Whistler refuels the car and smokes at the same time because he just does not give a gently caress.   Whistler and Blade explain to Karen how vampires exist and how to kill them. One of the ways is UV light.   This is another great line from Kris Kristofferson. When Whistler shows Blade his latest UV lantern Blade responds "Still Heavy". Whistler just looks confused at him and says "But your so big". It just kills me every time.  Blade tells Karen to leave town unless she wants to die. Whistler gives her a thing of vampire mace to protect her and recommends that she buy a gun in order to off herself once she starts turning because it is better than the "alternative" and it zooms to Blade.  This driving right here is when I noticed that a lot of the ambiance music seems to be styled after John Carpenter. Right here has a minimal beat that kinda resembles a heartbeat.     Dragonetti enters the House of Erebus library to yell at Frost for being there and he discovers him trying to decode a dead language in order to awaken La Magra, the Blood God.   Frost continues to listen to his kickin rad techno until Dragonetti yells at him. Frost then gets up and tells Dragonetti to keep his voice down because they are in a library.  Dragonetti responds by slapping Frost and asks what Frost is up to. Frost just puts his hand on Dragonetti's face and asks him what he is going to do.  Dragonetti calms down and just states "You bore me" before leaving, obviously shaken. I was always a little confused by this scene. Are there any repercussions for vampires? Are there vampire jails? I assume not, because it seems the old guard just worked under a code of respect. Fat Lou fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 19:56
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DarkSol posted:What about with what happens to Dr. Webb? He turns into this zombie/vampire thing? and is left to waste away. I assumed that that was "Frost justice" since he was turned by Quinn. I might be wrong though. I just find it odd that there seems to be no repercussions for even when he is directly breaking the rules of the House of Erebus. Also, I assume that he was just not given any blood for ages and that is why he becomes so skeletal.
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Aug 10, 2015 01:13
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Golbez posted:They say something about how the process sometimes properly doesn't 'take', and creates beasts like him? Oh poo poo, yeah, I don't know why I completely forgot about that part.
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Aug 10, 2015 01:23
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Thanks for all of this. I played World of Darkness for all of like an afternoon, so I have no clue about anything related to it. Fat Lou fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 17:01
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So, um Blade.
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Aug 19, 2015 04:57
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Sorry guys, I have been insanely busy over the past couple weeks. I will try to get an update out in a few days.
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Sep 5, 2015 00:36
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XIII posted:I just read through the entire thread and I A. really want to rewatch Blade and B. hope the scene by scene isn't dead. It is not, I just was doing 12 hour work days for the past two weeks. I should be back to a human schedule really soon.
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Sep 15, 2015 00:12
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Thank you for picking this up. I assume that at some point I will have a normal person life in the future, but in the short term I actually have two days off in a row this Wednesday and Thursday, so I MIGHT continue it if I have the energy.
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Oct 6, 2015 05:55
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 05:48 |
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^lolSnapchat A Titty posted:Is this completely dead? Good news! Well, just as my life was getting easier a little over a month ago I had layoffs at my job and I ended up needing to work hilarious hours. The next couple weeks are going to be the same, but after Christmas I should be able to pull my life together again and do fun things again. Hell, I have only watched two movies in theaters in the past three months.
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Dec 13, 2015 03:53
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