La Ron S. Readus
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How Deadpool 3 Saved Blade (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2021-02-03 21:00:02 +0000 UTC(Sighs) I’ll do it. But I’m gonna HATE myself in the morning...
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Readers, It’s almost surreal that the last IRL San Diego Comic Con we received was in 2019.
We were so hopeful back then, especially in regards to the projects announced for Marvel Studios’s Phase 4 and beyond.
/And one of those “beyond” titles was announced during the end of that same panel, when Mahershala Ali walked up on stage, and put on a hat with the studios’ new logo for the reacquired Blade on it/
We got hype, we got geeked. Wesley Snipes not only congratulated Ali on the role, but we also found out that Ali declaring his interest in playing it was what made Kevin Feige transition the plans from making the property a show on Disney+ to a feature-length theatrically released film.
The POWER.
Y’see, the film rights to Blade -- along with the majority of his fellow Marvel Knights characters like Daredevil, Ghost Rider and Punisher that were ALSO sold to multiple studios back in the day so that Marvel could stay afloat -- were reacquired by Marvel Studios back in 2012 after previous film and television rights holder New Line didn’t do anything with the property for 6 years following the 1-season long Blade series that I completely forgot about.
And while the majority of the reacquired Marvel Knights found new life in other semi-MCU adjacent projects -- like Daredevil and Punisher getting Netflix shows and the Robbie Reyes iteration of Ghost Rider appearing in Agents of SHIELD -- Blade just kinda sat on the backburner for the longest time.
/Which, considering the Wesley Snipes classic was not only what reinvigorated the superhero movie and paved the way for more Marvel movie classics like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, but also kept Marvel out of the clutches of bankruptcy, is kinda disrespectful in my opinion./
So when I say the hype regarding the announcement of Marvel Studios finally giving the Daywalker his due was real, it is NOT an understatement.
Then we collectively remembered that Marvel Studios -- and just Marvel in general -- isn’t an independent company anymore; they’ve been owned by Disney for over a decade, and the highest rating any movie in the MCU has received -- even the Spider-Man ones -- is PG-13
And collectively, we all said, “Shit.”
The reason why a lot of us were disheartened is because despite their absolutely ridiculous move of acquiring 20th Century Fox and the majority of their media catalog, Disney is a company filled with board members and executives that puts their family friendly branding front and center first and foremost.
And while they might have acquired the film and tv rights to X-Men, Fantastic Four and Deadpool to give back to Marvel Studios thanks to the acquisition, the Fox deal left Disney with a lot of content that they either had to heavily edit or just completely disregard in order to fit their streaming service Disney+ because of said brand recognition.
Y’know, despite them constantly forgetting that they have full control of Hulu and can put a lot of their high-end PG-13 and R rated stuff they gained on there...?
Like, the fact that the Alien and the Die Hard films are on HBO Max and not Hulu is absolutely baffling to me.
This branding -- to a certain extent -- can even be felt in the work of Marvel Studios when their distribution deal with Paramount ended after Iron Man 3, and Disney became their only supporter.
While the PG-13 ratings stayed the same, a keen eye can tell that the distribution of how things were once portrayed on screen had been shifted.
/PG-13 approved cursing was watered down to a PG standard; not even taking advantage of a film’s one-time use of the F-word./
/Instead of leaving fatalities of characters off screen for the imagination of the viewers like other studios did to work around showing gratuitous violence, both conscious and dead characters that were shown on camera with their bodies impaled or filled with bullets barely bled./
/Any dismemberments or heavy focus on impalements only happened to non-human resembling characters./
/Shit, I’m STILL surprised they approved the way Loki went out in the beginning of Infinity War, real talk/
I’m saying all of this to say, that because of these hidden parameters placed by upholding Disney’s “brand” when it comes to making film and television based on Marvel Comics, PROPERLY bringing Blade to the big screen via Marvel Studios would prove to be pretty difficult, considering that it is -- at its core -- about vampires.
/Creatures that regularly display copious amounts of blood. Creatures that resemble humans and are regularly impaled, dismembered and decapitated in order to kill them. Creatures that -- in order to be portrayed properly on film in the spirit of the source material they come from -- have to either be in a feature with either a restriction-free PG-13 rating or a solid R./
And Readers, believe me when I say that this pun is NOT intended, but there’s no other way for me to emphasize my point other than what I’m about to say. But PG-13 rated vampire movies fucking SUCK.
No, this isn’t me shitting on Twilight. Different strokes for different folks; it’s fine.
But with the exception of films like Van Helsing and Dracula Untold -- who, even then are higher on the PG-13 food chain than any MCU movie after Disney’s acquisition of Marvel -- traditional vampires in modern day media with PG-13 ratings or equivalent are usually used for comedy; not the horror or even the action genre that the original 1998 Blade film helped put them in.
And with the outlet of using Netflix to make more mature “Marvel Knight” pieces that take place in the MCU now cut off from them because Marvel’s parent company wants to focus on series that can be streamed on Disney+, the Blade movie would either have to conform to the system Marvel Studios been operating under since Thor: The Dark World and water down what’s already established about Blade on screen, or -- in an attempt to do things properly -- find a way to convince the Disney board members that they need to go:
(Where the money resides)
Well. It turns out that thanks to a creative decision of Fox that was made BEFORE said acquisition, Kevin Feige might’ve found a way to do just that. And it’s all thanks to my least favorite superhero in Marvel Comics, Deadpool.
There’s no doubt about it that both Deadpool 1 and 2 did TREMENDOUSLY well in theaters; both movies bringing in over 780 million dollars at the box office.
/And according to Kevin Feige himself, part of the reasoning for that success was that writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, along with Ryan Reynolds own determination and dedication to the character respected and understood the source material enough to enhance the stories that they brought on screen and did right by it./
Kevin Feige told Deadline this back in 2016 when the first movie was released and the reception for it was astronomical.
/Unfortunately, at the time, he ALSO told Deadline that any and all conversations he had with Disney about allowing Marvel Studios to charter the R rated territory with their theatrically released films were pretty much nonexistent./
This was also back before talks of Disney acquiring Fox started to become more serious, and back when Kevin Feige was ONLY the president of Marvel Studios.
Soon after, Deadpool 2 came out and made 3 million more than the 2016 original.
The year after that, Disney’s deal to buy Fox finalized in March, and Deadpool became one of the faces of Disney’s new branding resolves immediately following the buyout, causing mixed signals to the fanbase regarding what this meant about the future of the franchise.
/And a month before Disney+ launched in November 2019, Disney gave Ike Perlmutter the finger and made Feige the CCO of all of Marvel Entertainment/
With the switching of power over on Disney’s end from Bob Iger to Bob Chapek as its CEO -- along with the recent decisions regarding how to both properly integrate their Fox-related R-rated content onto their appropriate platforms and make new content in regards to it -- Feige now has the power and the freedom to do right by these newly acquired properties by showing Chapek and co. that -- thanks to Deadpool -- true success on the Marvel Studios end of Disney, comes from respecting the source material of the character enough to bring it on screen in a way that properly reflects it. Which was something he very much respected about the success of the first Deadpool.
/So when it was announced that Deadpool 3 was not only moving forward with Ryan Reynolds and Bob’s Burgers writers Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Loeglin at Marvel Studios, but that it would ALSO be rated R like its Fox predecessors, fans of the franchise were definitely pleasantly surprised to hear the news./
But for others like myself, it made me realize that I had a lot more respect for Feige than I initially thought I had.
Because to me, if he has this much respect and faith in Deadpool to believe that it needed to keep its R rating because it factored into staying true to its source material, then I am absolutely sure he feels the same way about Blade.
Especially now that he’s being portrayed by Mahershala Ali, which -- I must remind you -- his want to play the character heavily played a factor into transforming the property from a series to a feature film.
Don’t get me wrong; I still hate Deadpool. Like, I will FOREVER die on the hill that the better version of Deadpool was, is, and always WILL be Freakazoid.
/But if the decision of Kevin Feige moving Deadpool 3 forward at Marvel Studios with an R rating ends up being the reason why characters like Blade, Punisher, and even Ghost Rider are allowed to stay true to themselves when they inevitably are under the spotlight of Marvel Studios, then I will respectfully shake his gross-ass baby hand./
But, I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section below if YOU think Marvel Studios’ Blade -- like Deadpool -- would do a better job staying true to its source material by sticking with an R rating.
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, another Marvel property owned by Marvel Studios that could benefit from the same ideology.
Whichever you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts.
