What the World Needs: Blade 4

I had my favorite viewing of the original Blade recently, although watching Blade 3 the day before probably made the movie feel that much better.

The original Blade uses a lot of sped-up camera shots to give the impression of superhuman speed. It's a trick you see pretty often these days because we have a lot of goddamn vampires clogging the screen, but it's usually too fast or too jilted, or something's off.
But Blade, a movie from 1998, does it ten times better than anyone else. Stephen Norrington, the director, has spent most of his film-making career doing special effects and models and shit, and it shows. At one point in the movie there's a bunch of winged skeletons climbing out of the mouths of vampires and flying all over the place. It's so neat.


Blade also has some awesome fucking one-liners and they're delivered perfectly. When Wesley Snipes says, "You're nothing to me but another dead vampire." you can hear the scorn in his voice. Motherfucker hates vampires. It's practically the only emotion you ever see out of him.

Wesley Snipes was totally hyped to get Stephen Dorff's autograph

So, the world needs Blade 4. The only problem with this wonderful plan of mine is Wesley Snipes being fifty-one years old. We need a new guy, but who could possibly deliver one-liners as well as Wesley Snipes? Who could possibly roundhouse kick stuntmen as brutally as Wesley Snipes?


And if there's going to be a hypothetical Blade 4 existing in my head then it's going to have to be awesome. First off, fuck Blade 3 and fuck Dracula. Seriously, why were half the security forces Blade fought in the end of that movie wearing full body armor but didn't even have batons? What kind of a budget cut is that?

In Blade, the vampires are complete assholes. They show up, do evil shit, and they laugh the entire time they're doing it because it's so fucking funny to them, and that makes for great badguys. Forget the sympathetic villain. Forget the 'you-fought-honorably' dorks. Give me assholes. The world is full of them so their characters are totally believable, and when Blade shows up and starts beating the shit out of them you couldn't be happier.

Next, give Blade an antagonist that isn't Dracula. Another daywalker would be good. Another badass who totally has Blade's personality, except he enjoys killing people instead of vampires. Of course, they'd have to team up at the end in order to kill a shit-ton of asshole vampires.

Forget the goofball science that finds itself into the end of every Blade movie. None of that, "I made a virus that kills all vampires," crap. And lose the hideout full of Bond gadgets. Get gritty. Put Blade on the ropes and have the police actually try to track him down for once instead of letting him beat up cops in the middle of the street in broad daylight. Add some tension, even more asshole vampires, and presto, Blade 4.


And more sped-up camera shots. I like those.