The Screen Addict | Blade and the Hollywood Dream
25 years ago, fresh out of high school, my big dream was to see Hollywood, the magical place I grew to love through the many films I saw. However, being 18 years old and broke, there weren’t many options for me to get to Tinseltown.
That was until my father told me about an organization called Camp Counselors USA. This outfit had made it their business to recruit cheap laborers – mostly from European countries – who could then be put to work in one of the many summer camps throughout The States. The foreigners would of course have to do the crappy jobs the American counselors wouldn’t be caught dead doing, but I didn’t care. It was my way in.
I eventually ended up at Camp Ojibwa in Eagle River, Wisconsin. The job was exactly what you’d expect it to be – scrubbing pots and pans in an industrial kitchen and keeping the camping grounds clean. But there was an added bonus. My fellow kitchen staff and I – a merry bunch from mostly Eastern-European countries – formed a strong bond, and after a long week of doing dishes and cleaning up after privileged kids, we would all go up to a nearby lake and enjoy a case of beer.
The situation always reminded me of that beautiful scene from The Shawshank Redemption (1994), in which Andy and his “co-workers” get to enjoy a rare moment of feeling free after a cunning deal with the most vicious prison guard earns them a bucket of ice-cold brewskis.
Yes, I know – I wasn’t actually in prison, but this is how I felt. Sue me.
After three months of hard labor, three of my fellow workers and I bought a barely road-legal, 20-year-old Ford Taurus, and drove to Chicago where I got on the Greyhound to Los Angeles. Unbeknownst to me, the Greyhound bus station of my destination was smack in the middle of gang-infested South Central L.A. at the time, so I can only imagine what the locals must have thought when a baby-faced white boy got of the bus in the middle of their hood.
I jumped into the nearest cab and made it in one piece to a place called The Banana Bungalow, a hostel I booked before I left Wisconsin because of its attractive location directly beneath the Hollywood sign. A couple of blocks down from The Bungalow is Santa Monica Boulevard, where I got on a bus that took me straight through Hollywood and Beverly Hills, all the way to Venice Beach.
As I was standing there on the beach, bare feet in the Pacific Ocean, I was overcome with an overwhelming sense of homesickness. I had lived up to this moment for many months, but now that it was finally there, I really just wanted to go home.
On my way back to The Bungalow, I made one more stop. I couldn’t leave the film capitol of the world without having had a cinematic experience in the most famous cinema on the planet – Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.
I saw many films during my maiden visit to The States, but the one I saw in Grauman’s will always stick with me. It is significant in another capacity as well, because the film I am referring to, is arguably the genesis of our current Golden Age of The Superheroes. I am talking of course about Blade (1998).
I am obviously fully aware of the profound impact that Richard Donner’s Superman (1978) and Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) have had on the genre – not to mention Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000) – but I am of the firm opinion that Blade is the one that really set it all off.
The odds were against it though. Blade was a modestly budgeted flick, based on a rather obscure Marvel comic featuring a black superhero, directed by an underground filmmaker and released by an independent studio… By all accounts, it could have gone straight-to-video and no one would have batted an eyelid.
But the long shot paid off in spades. Blade made almost $150 million on a $45 million budget, spawned two sequels, and was a monster hit in ancillary businesses. More importantly – it made creatives and executives alike wake up to the fact that there was actually a huge market for Superheroes and a massive IP treasure-trove up for grabs.
It took a couple of films to test the waters, but in 2009 Disney CEO Bob Iger rolled the dice and acquired Marvel, one of the two jewels in the Superhero Crown. Ironically, New Line Cinema – the company that released Blade – had already been acquired by Warner Brothers in 1996 through their acquisition of Turner. If WB had realized the potential of Blade and the Marvel Cinematic Universe at the time, they might have owned DC and Marvel today. Ah well… 20/20 hindsight.
Blade was recently upgraded with a 4K release, so I grabbed the opportunity to revisit the film. I almost forgot how gorgeous it looks. Dutch Master Theo van de Sande’s crisp, steely photography combined with the immaculate costume and production design… To me, Blade is a piece of post-modern art.
The Ultra High-Definition transfer unfortunately confronts us with some of Blade’s flaws as well. To be fair – the CGI used in the climactic sequence was never great, but the 4K upgrade makes it all the more obvious. The light of the dawn can be cruel...
Blade’s imperfections are of minor importance, though. What struck me upon revisiting the film, is that everyone involved – director Stephen Norrington, star Wesley Snipes, villain Stephen Dorff et al. – is perfectly aligned to make the best genre film possible. Aside from the dodgy CGI, Blade really is a flawless film.
Disney – unlike Warner – probably won’t underestimate the added value of our favorite vampire hunter to the MCU, exemplified in the fact that two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali will star in the reboot of Blade, scheduled for release in 2025. I’ve loved Ali ever since I first saw him in House of Cards, and I can’t think of any other actor who would be more qualified to don Snipes’ black leather attire. But then again, it won’t be easy to top this opening sequence…
Many years after that first trip to Hollywood, I became a frequent visitor of Los Angeles through my role as a film buyer. By some kind of poetic cosmic coincidence, I ended up staying regularly at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows, which is right there at the beach where I felt so lonely years before. I truly love coming to the U.S. and L.A., but when I am looking out over that massive Pacific Ocean, I am always reminded of how overwhelmed and out of place The City of Angels can make you feel.
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Twitter (X): Robin Logjes | The Screen Addict