But among the big problems was perhaps that initial expectation. Blade is not Black Panther and never can be.
Like all superhero stories, Black Panther is a power fantasy. But where Spider-Man or Batman imagine what would happen if a nerdy teen or a traumatized kid gained fantastic abilities, Black Panther shows the power of a nation.
Whereas the real Africa has been subjected to colonialism and incessant Western plots to undermine the people and nations there, Wakanda has no taint of colonialism. Its people were not kidnapped and enslaved, its resources were not stolen, and it has not been a space for Western powers to compete with one another. Drawing from the sci-fi sub-genre Afro-Futurism, Black Panther shows a fantastic reality in which African peoples were left to themselves to control their own evolution and destiny.
None of this is to take away from the pure craft of the film itself. Ryan Coogler has inherent blockbuster instincts and he and co-writer Joe Robert Cole made a rich story with multiple characters and a theme about growing into global awareness and responsibility. Coogler fills his cast with some of the best Black actors working today too, including Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, and Lupita Nyong’o, as well as an almost all-Black crew.
Blade can certainly match Black Panther on the level of craft. According to Hollywood Reporter, the film has had some impressive talent attached, beyond the great Ali. Delroy Lindo and Aaron Pierre had been signed in undisclosed roles, and scripts have been written and rewritten by later X-Men ’97 showrunner Beau DeMayo and True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto.
But at its core, Blade is just a story about a vampire hunter. Not only are these stories very common in pop culture, from the many Dracula adaptations to the Underworld franchise to spoofs such as Blacula-hunter Jefferson Twilight in The Venture Brothers, but they tend to be relatively thin. Some versions of the new Blade script reportedly involve a secret society of bloodsuckers, a concept used not only in the first Blade from 1997 but also in the current Marvel Comics crossover Blood Hunt. In these plots, Blade uncovers a hidden global threat that only he, as a half-vampire with the ability to walk in the day, can stop. That’s exciting, sure. But is it as inspirational as the revelation of Wakanda? Can it speak to a people so often disparaged in media and pop culture? Will it appeal to a family audience who want their kids to see themselves as heroes, as opposed to self-loathing half-monsters who spend their lives fighting bloodsuckers in the night?