In a multi-part series, Comic Book Film Editor William Gatevackes will be tracing the history of comic book movies from the earliest days of the film serials to today’s big blockbusters and beyond. Along with the history lesson, Bill will be covering some of the most prominent comic book films over the years and why they were so special. This time, we’ll talk about how Blade was the true start of Marvel’s dominance of the comic book film.

One way to look at it, he could be the answer to “What if Shaft hunted vampires?” Or it could have very well been a counterpoint to Blacula, which hit theaters the year before. You can make any theory you want, but it seems like Blade’s first appearance in 1973’s Tomb of Dracula #10 played off the popular Blaxploitation trend of the day. It is ironic that a character inspired by a film genre would be the adaptation that would jump-start Marvel’s mastery of the film box office.

The comic book Blade was created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan to be an adversary of Dracula. He was the son of a woman who was attacked by a vampire while giving birth to Blade. This bite passed on certain abilities to Blade, such as not being susceptible to vampires yet being attuned to their genetic makeup, therefore able to track them. Other than that, he was a highly-trained martial artist and fighter with no superpowers.

Before the film came out, Blade typically made only a supporting character in other character’s books, only having one, ten-issue series to his name. Not really the first character you’d expect to be made into a movie, considering Marvel’s most popular titles (X-Men, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four) either were stuck in development Hell or adapted with less than stellar results.

But Blade being the first of this new era of Marvel Comics films was probably the best thing to happen to the genre. Being that the character was so low on the totem pole, there were less preconceived notions about the concept, and, therefore, more freedom. It was brought to the screen by three people with respect for the comic book medium—writer David S. Goyer (a man who has written for comic books), Wesley Snipes (who has been attached to every African-American comic book character being brought to the big screen, from Luke Cage to Black Panther) and Stephen Norrington (who would go on to direct League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and would be attached at various times to the Ghost Rider film and The Crow reboot). These men would set the template of how to make a successful comic book film.

That template boiled down to being respectful to the source material while making the best film you can. Changes to the comic book source material shouldn’t be done arbitrarily, but to make the best cinematic presentation possible.

Case in point, the film changes Blade’s origin. His mother is still bitten by a vampire, but before she gives birth. But the bite now turns Blade into what is called a “Daywalker,” someone with all the powers and weaknesses of a vampire yet able to walk in the day time. This change adds more weight and pathos to the character, while making him more of a threat to the vampires.

Another part of the template is that Goyer and Norrington left the campiness at home. Blade is a serious work. Wesley Snipes consistently plays Blade as a grim, driven hunter, never with a wink of his eye towards the audience that he thinks he’s above the material.  There are oodles of cyberpunk style layered on, but never to the point of becoming a joke. The project was approached not as adapting kiddie fare; it was approached as a horror concept and treated duly respectfully. And it was released with an R rating, to say that it definitely wasn’t kid’s stuff.

This first Blade almost tripled its budget, which set up the inevitable sequel, Blade II.

Goyer stayed on to write, but the directorial reins were handed over to a pre-Hellboy Guillermo del Toro. This film sent Blade to Europe in search of a hybrid band of vampire called Reavers, so advanced they hunt normal vampires. Blade is forced to team with a group of vampire mercenaries, one played by future Hellboy Ron Perlman, to eradicate the threat to humans and vampires alike.

Blade II made the most money of the series, and a franchise was born. But the future of the franchise was placed in jeopardy with the next sequel—Blade: Trinity.

David S. Goyer took over the directing duties in addition to his writing job this time around, and decided the Blade franchise needed to branch out. Therefore, he added two new vampire hunters to help Blade out: one from the comics in the form of Ryan “Mr. Comic Book Film” Reynolds’  Hannibal King and one original creation in Jessica Biel’s Abigail Whistler.  The idea was to allow Blade: Trinity to showcase these characters so audiences would fall in love with them and they could spin them off into their own film franchise or in place of the Blade franchise if Snipes retired the role.

There were a number of problems with this. First off, they forgot to ask Snipes what he thought of this. Well, since he was a producer on the film, they probably did ask him. They probably just ignored what problems he had with the idea. Snipes felt Blade didn’t need another partner, he had Whistler (played by Kris Kristofferson in the first two films and written as Abigail’s father in this one) and that was fine. Snipes eventually sued New Line Cinema and Goyer, stating he hadn’t been paid what he was owed and that his screen time was deliberately reduced at the expense of giving the spin off characters more screen time, which hampered the quality of the film.

He might have had a point there, because the film is the weakest of the three. While I didn’t find it as horrible as some critics, it definitely seemed out of place in style and tone with the two previous Blade films. It attempted to ape the style of the other films, but came off as too glossy and less gritty than the others. The new characters did defuse the focus quite a bit, and while in this film they finally pit Blade against Dracula, the villain is mostly relegated to a background role, making for a wasted opportunity.

Despite the hard feelings, Snipes has repeatedly stated he would like there to be a Blade 4. But the actor’s imprisonment for tax evasion, him being over 50 when released in 2013, and Marvel gaining the rights back from New Line means that any new Blade film will probably be a reboot and most likely not feature Snipes.

Next time, we look at how the new era of comic book films opened the doors for more independent comic books to hit the big screen.

It was over a year ago that we reported that Eddie Murphy had been signed on to provide the voice of the titular crime-fighting dog for Warner Brothers’s live action/CGI adaptation of the 1970s cartoon Hong Kong Phooey. Since then, I had forgotten all about the project, probably because it sounded like a bad idea. Well, some test footage has shown up online that reinforces that notion.

Director Alex Zamm has posted some of his test footage online and I can’t say that I am all that impressed. Technically the footage looks fine, but the humor in it just seems so lazy.

The footage is coupled with some test footage that Zamm developed for a live action/CGI Marvin The Martian feature. Storytelling-wise it is a bit better, but I’m still not convinced that this would have been a good film either.

It should be noted that the Marvin The Martian feature has long since been cancelled. Does its coupling with the Hong Kong Phooey test footage indicate that that project is cancelled as well?

Via Bleeding Cool.

In the lead up to the recent release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, many Tolkien fans were discussing how might director Peter Jackson live up to his promise of incorporating various elements from the Appendices to the Lord Of The Rings in order to flesh out some of the backstories of certain Hobbit characters and events.

And I think some of those people were a bit surprised with how some of those plot points were rearranged by Jackson and his writing crew of Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh and Guillermo Del Toro into different combinations than were originally intended by Tolkien. I know I was.

One of the chief rearranged plot points that stands out to me is this – How exactly did Gandalf get the key and the map to the dwarfs’ kingdom of Erebor which he gives to Thorin Oakenshield in the film?

In Tolkien’s writings, he presents a backstory in which Gandalf discovered that Thorin’s father Thrain, whom we do see in the film in the flashbacks to the attack on Erebor by Smaug, is a prisoner of the Necromancer in the dungeons of Dol Guldor. However, when Jackson and company beefed up the role of the wizard Radagast, they shifted the job of discovering that Dol Goldor is occupied by the Necromancer to Gandalf to Radagast. So if Gandalf has never gone to the ruined fortress, how does he get the map and key?

Well, while it seems like a plot hole now, it appears that it will be addressed in the next installment of the trilogy. Catching up with Boyens at the New York premier of the film, a writer from Vulture specifically addressed the issue.

Good storytelling-spotting! We did try it at the front of this movie, and then we moved it… We will be meeting Thráin, and it may be in unfortunate circumstances. It may involve torture. The discovery of who or what is in Dol Guldur is a fantastic part of the storytelling, so yes, of course we went there.

Currently, Jackson has wrapped up his initial cut of the second chapter of the adaptation, The Desolation Of Smaug due out next year at this time, and is getting ready for the pickup filming for the final installment, There And Back Again, which will be released in the summer of 2014.

Although he had previously been coy about his return to the X-Men franchise, Patrick Stewart has become more forthcoming and confirmed that he will be in the upcoming Days Of Future Past.

In an interview with the LA Times’s Hero Complex blog, Stewart does admit that he will be back alongside franchise co-star and fellow British thespian Ian McKellen.

I’m very happy to report that Bryan Singer is coming back to direct the movie. I’m very happy that my lovely friend Ian McKellen is going to be with me. I don’t know anyone else who is to be involved in the project. Maybe it’s just the two of us! That would be a movie! Magneto and Xavier’s conversations…. I’m not being cute. That’s all I know. Maybe once the holidays are over, more information will begin to come through. I have a vague idea of the time commitments, but I don’t know where we’re going to shoot. But I’m greatly looking forward to it.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I would gladly watch a two-hour movie of Magneto and Xavier conversing, especially if played by McKellen and Stewart. The characters have richly developed backgrounds and if properly written it could explore some of the thematic depths that the films have already touched upon in a new and interesting way. Think of it as the superhero version of My Dinner With Andre.

Days of Future Past shoots later next year and is currently scheduled for a 2014 release. In the meantime, the next X-Men franchise installment, The Wolverine, is heading to theaters next summer.

One of the many secrets that are being kept by J J Abrams over Star Trek Into Darkness is exactly what kind of villain will actor Benedict Cumberbatch be playing in the film. But while recently promoting the upcoming film to the Japanese press – Star Trek has traditionally not been as popular outside of English-speaking countries as it is in the US and other English-speaking nations – Abrams and Cumberbatch talked a bit more about the character and his role in the film.

First Cumberbatch explained a bit of the pitch Abrams used to get him interested in the film -

When J.J. described the role to me… he described someone who was, in movie terms, a mixture of Hannibal Lecter, Jack in The Shining, and the Joker in Batman…He’s someone who has enormous physical strength. He’s someone who is incredibly dangerous, both as a physical entity and through the use of various technologies and weapons and who performs acts of what I would describe as terrorism. He’s also a psychological master. He manipulates the minds of those around him to do his bidding in a very, very subtle way.

Abrams added -

His name is John Harrison and he is sort of an… average guy who works in an organization called Starfleet and he turns against the group because he has got this backstory and this kind of amazing secret agenda. After two very violent attacks, one in London and one in the US, our characters have to go after this guy and apprehend him. And it is a far more complicated and difficult thing then they ever anticipated. Into Darkness is very much about how intense it gets and really what they are up against.

Well, it gives us a bit more of their approach to the villainous John Harrison without really giving away any more of the plot than we’ve already seen in the previously released trailers.

STar Trek Into Darkness opens next summer.

Via TrekMovie.

Although Christoph Waltz was originally set to play a major role in the soon-to-shoot sequel to last year’s The Muppets but a hitch in his scheduling for his appearance in another film lead to director James Bobin to cast Ty Purell instead.

But it appears as if Waltz still might have a chance to appear opposite Kermit and the gang in the new film after all. It just won’t be as big a part as originally planned. Speaking to Collider, Waltz explained -

I was talking about it again today but it might nor be a proper part, it might be one of these little what they call cameos… I was looking forward to meeting Miss Piggy. But they told me that dancing with Miss Piggy, for example, is almost impossible because she’s totally operated by puppeteers and dancing is, you have to dance with someone where there’s actually a real person inside so let’s see who I dance with.

Dancing with Miss Piggy? Hopefully, the cameo appearance won’t preclude him from appearing in a future Muppets film. It didn’t for Ricky Gervais.

The as-yet-untitled Muppets sequel starts shooting early next year for a late 2013 release.

Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine has been undoubtedly the breakout character of Fox’s X-Men franchise. Not only did he get his own spinoff film, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, in 2009, but he made a cameo in last year’s X-Men: First Class. And now it looks like one of the other X-Men characters will return the favor and make a small appearance in the upcoming The Wolverine.

In an interview with Parade magazine, Jackman teases that we might be seeing another one of his former franchise cast mates in the upcoming film.

Okay, the movie takes place after X-Men: The Last Stand. My character is at his lowest. He is supposed to be able to heal himself, but he may encounter someone who has worked out a way to really hurt him. And there is a cameo from one of the past X-Men in it.

This is not the first time that there has been buzz about a possible cameo from another X-Men franchise actor. This past October a rumor circulated that Famke Janssen had gone to The Wolverine‘s set in Sydney, Australia for some shooting. Of course, her character of Jean Gray died in the third X-Men film, The Last Stand, and this film takes place after that. But as any comic book fan can tell you, Jean Gray’s comic book codename of Phoenix is for a very good reason, though I would suspect that her cameo here will probably be more in the form of a flashback or dream sequence, especially if the way that Jackman is talking about how Logan could be hurt is emotionally.

The Wolverine opens July 26.

We can add J J Abrams’s name to the list of those who have taken themselves out of the running for the director’s chair for Star Wars: Episode VII.

Speaking in an interview with Empire magazine’s iPad edition (via Bleeding Cool), Abrams confirmed that he was approached about directing the recently announced sequels, but declined due to his commitment to Paramount’s Star Trek franchise which he successfully rebooted for them.

Not surprised that he passed and not surprised that he was offered the job. Between his work on the Star Trek and the Mission: Impossible franchises, Abrams is one of Paramount’s star players. I can see the attractiveness of Disney wanting him to work his magic on the Star Wars franchise and I don’t suppose that the prospect of wooing Abrams away from Star Trek weakening that franchise wouldn’t be such a bad thing from Disney’s perspective either.

Of course, the mind does real at what a J J Abrams-directed Star Wars film would look like. I imagine there would be lots of lens flare from the lightsabers.

Charles Durning, the twice Oscar-nominated character actor who appeared in over 200 roles in television and film, died yesterday at his home in Manhatttan. He was 89.

The breadth of Durning’s career is fairly wide. In the span of six decades he played characters that ranged from a Nazi to the Pope and included a variety of detectives, judges, doctors and military men. Some of his most notable roles were in The Sting (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, The Muppet Movie (1979), Tootsie (1982) and his two collaborations with the Coen Brothers – The Hudsucker Proxy (1984) and Oh Brother Where Art Though? (2000).

Durning’s first Academy Award nomination came in 1982 for his portrayal of the comically corrupt governor in the musical The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas. A portly man, Durning surprised critics with his skill and dexterity as a dancer in the film’s musical set pieces. (Durning had previously been an instructor at a dance academy.) His second Oscar nom came for playing a bumbling Nazi officer in Mel Brooks’ remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not To Be.

1. Django Unchained (Weinstein Company, @3,010 Theaters, 165 Minutes, Rated R): I, for one, admire Quentin Tarantino. He is one of the few directors who career developed right when I became interested in film, and I have been a fan from the very beginning. He is never afraid to wear his influences on his sleeve (and, his critics say, lift entire sequences from them to put in his films), and he weaves completely new works stitched together from genres and styles he likes.

This film is Tarantino’s take on the western, with a blaxploitation twisted added on to it. Jamie Foxx plays Django, a slave turned bounty hunter, who tries to rescue his wife from her owner, the vicious Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

2. Les Miserables (Universal, @2,807 Theaters, 157 Minutes, Rated PG-13): Now, I have never read the book or seen the Broadway musical adapted from it, but from what I see of this film, it seems like the title is truth in advertising.

You have people starving. You have people thrown in jail. You have women selling their bodies to survive. You have corruption. You have revolution. You have turmoil. What you don’t have, at least in the ads I saw, is much happiness.

That’s just what you want to see over Christmas. Here’s something relentlessly bleak and gloomy! Happy holidays!

3. Parental Guidance (Fox, Wide Release, 104 Minutes, Rated PG): I have t0 say this. It might not be cool or hip, but I am a Billy Crystal fan, dating all the way back to his days as a stand-up comedian.

That being said, it is weird to see him in this role, his first starring role in a decade. I mean, Harry from When Harry Met Sally  and Mitch from City Slickers in a wacky family comedy? Man, that really makes me feel old. It probably doesn’t make Crystal feel young either, as he is playing a grandfather in this.

The plot, well, it’s about grandparents watching their grandkids, and having their approach to parenting not jiving with their kids approach to parenting. I just hope Crystal can bring something more to the rather formulaic plot.