In the effort of being honest, I have an admission to make. One that will make the words that follow seem like sour grapes.

I “applied” to work at Cracked.com.

Applied in the sense that I signed up for their developmental workshop message boards, where writers can pitch stories that might one day make the website and get them paid. I haven’t submitted anything yet (and probably won’t after this) because I was trying to come up with the perfect pitch. One that was factually correct, stood up on its own, and made its argument forcefully yet logically.

JF Sargent. No, really.

As it turns out, that wasn’t really necessary. JF Sargent, who just happens to the be the moderator of that above workshop, posted an article on the site last week called, “5 Reasons Superhero Movies Are a Bubble That Will Soon Burst.” In it, he compares the popularity of comic book films to the “New Hollywood” era of film making, the period from 1967 to about 1982 where young filmmakers made a big splash and changed the face of cinema. The five “reasons” are five similarities Sargent thinks he sees between the two eras. His theory is because the “New Hollywood” era of film making flamed out, surely the superhero film era is also on its way there.

On the surface, it seems like it has the makings of a well researched piece of film criticism, one so logically sound that it can not be questioned. I mean, if Sargent proves that  one era hit the same number of landmarks in  the exact same way as another era did, why, certainly if first era dies, the other one will die in the same way, right?

Well, it might, if Sargent hadn’t made any glaring factual errors, fudged facts and history, and used subjective logic and “proof” all along the way. There are so many glitches  that his arguments go from sounding the definitive death knell for the comic book film to being what appears to be a sad bit of “wishful thinking” journalism.

How many? Well, let’s make a list of our own by going through his text. And we don’t have to wait long. It starts with the lead paragraph:

If you’re a lover of comic books, fantasy novels, or sci-fi, you should be in heaven right now. All of Hollywood caters to your tastes. Hell, if you’re under 20 years old, you don’t even remember what it’s like not to have Hollywood throw $2 billion worth of blockbuster movies at you every summer (while the rest of us remember that as recently as 1994 they made a Fantastic Four movie so bad, it couldn’t even be released).

1. The poor quality of the Fantastic Four film played little to no role in the project being shelved.

I explained as much here, but let me give you the pertinent graph:

There are two schools of thought over why the film was not released. One was that Constantin never intended to release the film at all, and essentially lied to all parties involved in the production just so the film could be made. Another says that Avi Arad, who would become head of Marvel Studios two years after the film was due to be released and helped usher in the success Marvel has had in recent years, paid Constantin and Concorde to shelve the movie because he didn’t want such a cheap production to taint the brand. Regardless, the film was never released either here or abroad, and only exists in a popular bootleg version you can find at most comic book conventions.

Granted, the film was shot for $1 million dollars, a sum way under what it would take to make a good FF film. It was cheap and it looked it. But the main factors at play seem to be the ones mentioned above. And Arad’s reason for putting the film on ice, as described on the very Wikipedia page Sargent linked to, seems less about how bad it was, but how little money was spent on it.

This might be splitting hairs, but it goes to establishing Sargent’s bona fides. The fact that he just casually mentions that the ’94 FF film was shelved was because it was awful, without even presenting an existing opposing point of view, shows a tendency to present only the “facts” that support his argument. Not a good start.

And while we’re here:

2. Sargent uses Wikipedia as a source. A lot.

Not long ago I was in college. I wrote a lot of papers. Wikipedia was strongly frowned upon as a source of information. Why? Because it is crowd-sourced. Anybody can edit an article there,and you can have it say whatever you want. Therefore, it’s not always very trustworthy to back up your arguments. Granted, some of Wikipedia”s articles are sourced, but in that case its better to use the original source.

Sargent’s list begins in earnest by stating both eras began with a surprise box office hit out of the blue. For “New Hollywood,” it was 1967′s Bonnie and Clyde. For the comic book era? It was a bunch of films that came out in the early 2000′s that overcame the superhero film-light 1990s. Let me let him tell you:

This changed in 2000 and 2001 when X-Men, Spider-Man, and the first The Lord of the Rings came out. Remember that back then those geek-centric movies were all pretty risky investments for the studios. Not only was this the first time that either of those Marvel superheroes would be seen on screen, but the last superhero movie to come out at that time had been Batman & Robin, which, you know, we’d rather not talk about. As for The Lord of the Rings, the last attempt at an adaptation was a godawful cartoon that was made in the 1980s.

3. Spider-Man came out on May 3, 2002.

Before you call me a nitpicker, here me out. The reason I make an issue out of this is because it is key to Sargent’s comparison that each era begin with a “big bang” if you will–one or more films that were a surprise success. Now, since the “New Hollywood” era is traced back to just one film, it suits Sargent’s argument better if the three “superhero” films came out in quick succession. But they didn’t. It took three years for all the films mentioned to come out.  And really, there were only two that are legit, and they came out two years apart. More on that later. But Spider-Man definitely came out in 2002, even Wikipedia got that right.

4. What about Blade?

If Sargent was looking for a comic book film that fit his analogy to a T, Blade is it. It was the first film where Marvel took a more active role in the production of the film, marking a new attention towards fidelity to the source material that Sargent marks as a trademark of the superhero film era. It was also an unknown property without a huge built in audience, so it was not a lock that it would be a success. But it was, it debuted at #1 at the box office just like Sargent’s other examples and made a sizable profit. If there was a film that ushered in the era of the superhero movie, it was Blade.

Why didn’t Sargent use Blade as the start of the superhero movie era? Perhaps he just didn’t know that Blade was a superhero. Or, maybe, for his point to work, for the narrative he was trying to create to gel, he had to create some distance the “last” comic book film, Batman and Robin, and the comic book film’s resurgence. Blade wouldn’t work here because it was released in 1998 and Batman and Robin was released in 1997. That would have meant the superhero film bounced back just 14 months after it’s nadir. And that weakens Sargent’s point almost completely.

Some of you might argue that Blade is not a superhero. He’s a vampire who fights vampires with his vampire powers. That is totally different than a superhero who fights supervillains with superpowers! Okay, but what about…

5. Frodo Baggins, Superhero!?!!?

Listen, determining who is and who isn’t a superhero is a popular topic of debate in comic shops across the country. Is the Punisher a superhero? Someone will that because he wears a costume, yes. Others will say that he doesn’t have any powers, so no. Then someone will bring up Batman, who wears a costume but has no powers, is he a superhero? Someone will say yes because he fights super-powered villains. But, the Punisher fought super-powered villains…well, you get the idea. If your loved one goes to their local comic shop and doesn’t come back for hours, it’s probably because they got sucked into one of these kinds of conversations.

But if you were to go into that shop and say that your favorite superhero was good ol’ Frodo, all sides of the argument would stop fighting amongst themselves,unite, and start arguing against you.

I mean, granted, Frodo has a ring that makes him invisible, and he hangs out with wizards, but he resides in the fantasy/sword and sorcery genre, not the superhero genre. And while fans of one genre often are fans of the other, the genres are not interchangeable. It would be a huge stretch of logic to consider them so.

But Sargent needs big films and big franchises to provide the tools to work with. So, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and Star Wars become superhero movies, even though they really aren’t. For the casual reader, this probably won’t matter much. But to fans of the superhero film, the inclusion of these films invalidates Sargent’s argument from the get go. Because he’s not railing against the superhero film, he’s really railing against a larger target–the geek culture film. But I guess that wouldn’t generate as many hits.

6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Crow, The Mask, and Men in Black all came out in the 1990s.

Sargent likes to paint the 1990s as such:

In the ’90s, all of the major money-maker movies were Die Hard knockoffs (Con Air, Broken Arrow, Face/Off), sober explorations of tragedies (Dances With Wolves, Schindler’s List, Titanic), Adam Sandler being a dumbass, and Tom Hanks doing things that usually didn’t involve having superpowers.

First off, not including Speed in the list of Die-Hard knockoffs is a crime. It was Die Hard on a frikkin bus for goodness sakes!

Second, Sargent intends to show that the 90s were a dry period for the superhero movie. But they really weren’t. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Crow, The Mask, and Men in Black all could be considered superhero films (if Frodo’s a superhero, then so is Agent J). They all came from comic books. All their lead characters fought crime in different ways. And all of them were box office hits in the comic book film unfriendly 1990s. Each one had at least one sequel, which is more than you can say for Sargent’s examples. And, lest we for get, Batman Returns, Batman Forever and, yes, Batman and Robin all were released in the 90s and all made a profit (yes, even Batman and Robin, when worldwide grosses are added in).

If this goes through, expect a lot of rabid Fantastic Four fans to begin sounding racist. And also a lot of racists to start sounding like Fantastic Four  fans.

The Wrap is reporting that Michael B. Jordan has had numerous meetings with Fox to reunite with his Chronicle director Josh Trank on the director’s reboot of the Fantastic Four franchise. He is in talks for the role of Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, a role originated by Chris Evans in the first set of films. The website says that the only thing standing in Jordan’s way is that the studio wants to be sure he can build chemistry with the other cast members, whoever they turn out to be.

As you can see, Jordan is African-American, and Johnny Storm is portrayed in the comics as being white. This has cause a fair bit of outrage in the comic fan community already and he hasn’t even been cast yet (the project hasn’t even been officially greenlit yet for that matter). And if fans made a stink because Idris Elba, one of the best actors on the planet, played the formerly white Heimdall, one of the most minor characters in Marvel’s interpretation of Norse mythology, in Thor, you can expect this rumbling to continue and intensify if Jordan actually gets cast.

Of course, it’s easy to think that comic fans are upset over a black actor being cast as what is known as a white character because, well, they don’t want a black actor playing what is known as a white character. And I’m not so naive that I believe there are no racists in comic book fandom, but comic book fans are awfully fickle and finicky about how their comics are adapted to the big screen. If you do a quick Google search, you’ll find a lot of outrage over the fact that Superman isn’t wearing red pants in The Man of Steel. You’ll also find a lot of complaints about Superman’s hair style in the film and the fact that Lois is now a redhead. So all the rumblings over Jordan’s casting isn’t exclusively an act of racism, they’re more an act of fans being really, really anal.

As for me, I can’t say that I am familiar with Jordan’s body of work, but the fact that he has The Wire  and Friday Night Lights on his resume tells me he can bring a lot to the role. If I would admit to any concerns about Jordan’s rumored casting is that it appears that they are looking at white actresses for the role of Johnny’s sister, Sue. This would mean that one of the siblings would be adopted. This would put an interesting twist on the family dynamic the characters represent, and could be worthy of being examined on film. However, in these types of films, these kinds of issues are barely addressed, let alone investigated in any meaningful way. If you are not going to use this casting to raise understanding or awareness of this kind of modern family dynamic, it becomes an arbitrary publicity grab and therefore superfluous.

When it comes to casting rumors for comic book films, it’s never too early for speculation. And if the forthcoming project is a reboot of a series that left a bad taste of comic book fans, that speculation will start sooner. Even if the genesis of the speculation is a throw-away comment made by a film website journalist.

That journalist is Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr. In a small blurb about Allison Williams entering talks for the film Rosaline (her first starring role), Fleming casually mentions that the star of HBO’s Girls and daughter of NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams is on the short list for the Fantastic Four reboot. This, of course, starts sites such as Comingsoon.net and ComicBookMovie.com to wonder if she is being considered for Sue Storm,the Invisible Woman.

This is not that great of a leap. There is a dearth of female roles in the FF franchise, and I’d doubt Alicia Masters or Frankie Raye would be short list worthy. However, as Deadline points out, Williams has no lead film roles to her credit. Heck, she has no film roles to her credit, period. As a matter of fact, before Girls came along, her acting resume was a couple of web series and a handful of guest appearances.

But this could all play into the direction Fox is going with the reboot. If she is up for Sue Storm, Williams’ inexperience in big film roles could make her a cheap hire, while her being on a highly talked about TV series each week will bring a boatload of press with it. Could be a win/win from a budgeting standpoint.

Of course, she is only on the shortlist of a film that is still in the talking stages. We have no idea who else is on that short list, who else ranks above her, and if she will stay on the list when casting actually begins. But, as I said before, it’s never too early to speculate.

I will say this if Williams is actually up for the Invisible Woman: Really, Hollywood? You can’t find one blonde actress in all of Tinseltown who could make a run at this role? Really?

Screenwriter Michael France, who contributed to the James Bond franchise during the Pierce Brosnan era as well as wrote three Marvel comic book adaptations, died in his St. Pete Beach home Friday morning, April 12, after an extended illness. He was 51.

France broke into screenwriting while he was still a reader at TriStar with his spec action script Cliffhanger. He followed that up by contributing the story to the 1995 Bond franchise installment GoldenEye, the first of films to feature Perce Brosnan in the role of secret agent 007. He would return to the Bond franchise in 1999 to do some uncredited script work on The World Is Not Enough including creating the initial version of the film’s buzzsaw helicopter attack and the battle in the Kazakhstani nuclear disarmament plant at sequences.

Universal hired France to help bring the Marvel Comics character The Hulk to the screen. Although his initial screenplay was set aside when the studio brought on Jonathan Hensleigh to write and direct the project, after Hensleigh left, France was brought back in to work on a new screenplay under the film’s eventual director Ang Lee. He would also write the screenplays for Lions Gate’s 2004 adaptation of The Punisher and Twentieth Century Fox’s 2005 Fantastic Four.

In 2007 he returned to his native Florida, where he bought and operated the Beach Theatre in St. Pete Beach until it closed last year.

Twentieth Century Fox is pushing forwards on getting their reboot of their Fantastic Four comic book adaptation franchise. Late last week the studio added X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughn onto the project as a producer. And now the studio hashad novelist Seth Grahame-Smith do a polish on the screenplay that they have by Jeremy Slater.

The Hollywood Reporter has broken the news about Grahame-Smith getting the gig and goes on to describe the studio’s take on the new film as -

[A] grounded superhero and sci-fi approach to the heroes and will tap deep into the comics mythology, which featured not just the better-known villains such as Doctor Doom and Galactus but also alien races the Kree and the Skrull, and the anti-matter universe known as the Negative Zone.

Well, that certainly makes it sound as if Fox is looking to make their reboot as big and epic as possible, no doubt thanks to the big box office of last summer’s The Avengers.

But is Grahame-Smith the man for the script polishing job? Previously he has adapted his own novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter for the big screen as well as wrote the script for last year’s Dark Shadows. But neither film struck me as being exceptionally strong in the screenplay department. Has he upped his game for Fantastic Four?

Last night, Mark Millar tweeted that director/producer Matthew Vaughn had signed on as a producer to Twentieth Century Fox’s Fantastic Four franchise reboot being directed by Chronicle‘s Josh Trank.

Just off the phone with Fox and some excellent news – Matthew Vaughn is producing Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four reboot!

— Mark Millar (@mrmarkmillar) February 22, 2013

In addition to Vaughn directing the adaptation of Millar’s comic series Kick Ass, the two are working together on an adaptation of another of Millar’s series, The Secret Service. But things get a bit more incestuous than this. Millar is currently serving as a consultant to Twentieth Century Fox for the Marvel Comics properties that the studio happens to own, specifically the Fantastic Four and X-Men characters. Vaughn has served as director of X-Men: First Class and was set to direct the upcoming follow up X-Men: Days Of Future Past. Though he stepped aside supposedly to work on Secret Service, he is still keeping a producer credit on the film.

Previously, Millar has hinted that as part of his duties as a consultant to Fox was just “figuring out how everything can work together and not contradict each other. But I also don’t want to make it too much of a mess either, with everyone showing up in everyone else’s films.”

Certainly having one producer, who has a definite affinity for comic book material, installed on both franchises would go a long way towards coordinating the two series so they could seemingly co-exist. And is this the first step in a plan that will ultimately see the two superhero teams joining up to defeat some world-threatening menace?

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 superhero films not adapted from any comic book.  

Not every movie starring a superhero is adapted from a comic book but each has been inspired by or in turn inspired comic books.  Many of these non-comic book comic book films have sprung up in recent years but they have been appearing in movie theaters for over thirty years. We will dedicate the next few installments to these movies. We’ll try to talk about all of them here, but odds are one or two will slip our notice. Let us know what you think we’ve missed and maybe we’ll include them in a future installment.

One of my most fondly remembered superhero movies was 1980’s Hero At Large.

John Ritter stars as Steve Nichols, an underemployed actor who is hired to portray the character Captain Avenger at the opening of a film based on the character. A job that entailed just signing autographs for fans becomes something more when Nichols breaks up a robbery while in costume. The media grabs hold of it, and his life becomes much more complicated. Nichols is compelled to keep fighting crime as Captain Avenger while political interests want to use Nichols for their own interests.

I haven’t seen the film in a while, but it was one of my favorites as a youth. It wasn’t Hamlet, but it wasn’t awful either. Anne Archer, passed over several years prior for Lois Lane in Superman, gets to play a similar part here as Nichols’ neighbor/love interest. Kevin Bacon has a small part in the film as well.

The film made $15,934,737 at the box office that year. That might seem paltry by today’s standards, but it out grossed other, better well known films from that year such as Prom Night, Used Cars, Stardust Memories and Mad Max.

A year later, Disney came out with its take on the superhero, Condorman.

Hero At Large might have been cheesy, but it was nothing compared to this film. Condorman couldn’t have been cheesier if it was paired with a beef stick and sold at a Hickory Farms kiosk over the holidays. The film has been all but consigned to the dustbin of history by most (the above trailer was put together by a fan), those that do remember it recall it fondly in a “so-bad-it’s-good” sort of way.   Michael Crawford, five years before he would take the stage as the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production of Phantom of the Opera, stars as Woody Wilkins, a comic book writer of a character called “Condorman” who is pulled into a spy exchange in Europe. Wilkins adopts the Condorman identity, becomes a spy for the CIA, and rescues a Russian double agent played by Barbara Carrera.

In all fairness, the film is more a Disneyfied version of the James Bond-esque spy thriller than an actual comic book, although Crawford does appear in costume as Condorman and uses many Batman-esque gizmos and gadgets. It goes without saying that the film was a critical and commercial flop.

While Condorman probably began with the noblest intentions and wound up at cheesiness accidentally, The Toxic Avenger wallowed in its inherent cheesiness to the fullest extent from the very first day of production, as is the trademark of the studio that released it, Troma Entertainment.

Whether it was intended to be or not, 1984’s The Toxic Avenger was like all of the Marvel Comics from the 1960s brought to the big screen all wrapped up in one. Toxie, as he is lovingly referred to, starts the film as a nerdy janitor bullied by his peers (much like Peter Parker was before he became Spider-Man). One day, he has an accidental exposure to radioactive materials (like, well, take your pick: Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Daredevil, any number of other heroes and villains from Marvel at that time) which causes the nebbish to grow into a superhumanly strong creature (like The Hulk). He uses his new power to fight crime in Tromaville, finding love along the way with a blind woman who loves him for who he is and not what he looks like (mimicking a plot point featuring the Fantastic Four’s Thing and blind sculptress Alicia Masters).

What separated the film from the Marvel Comics of the 1960s was the schlocky, off-center and off-color humor, the violence that was so graphic that it became absurd, and the copious amounts of sex and nudity that is the trademark of the Troma film. But the first film was a success and that spawned a sequel, 1989’s The Toxic Avenger Part II:

When Troma found they shot enough footage for two films, they released another sequel in 1989, The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie:

And yet another sequel, 2000’s Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV:

That last film pulled out all the stops when it came to celebrity cameos, featuring Ron Jeremy, Corey Feldman, Hugh Hefner, and Julie Strain, with Stan Lee serving as narrator.

The Toxic Avenger was also adapted into a short-lived Marvel comic book in 1991 and a stage musical in 2008. A rumored fourth sequel was planned, but might have made way for a PG-13 remake produced by Akiva Goldsman and directed by Hot Tub Time Machine’s Steve Pink.

The next film we are going to discuss was made with noble intentions but became a box office failure. Hollywood Shuffle’s Robert Townsend wanted to make a film that was a counter-point to the popular “gangsta” films such as New Jack City and Juice that dominated cineplexes at the time. So, in 1993, he came up with a film idea that presented a positive black role model that would work to stop black-on-black violence instead of glorify it. That film was The Meteor Man.

The film told the story of Jefferson Reed, a Washington, DC teacher who is struck by a meteor and given superpowers. He uses these powers to clean up his neighborhood—stopping gang violence, demolishing crack houses, and stopping robberies. While the Toxic Avenger was a mix of a bunch of Marvel superheroes, the Meteor Man seemed to borrow from a number of DC Comics heroes, most notably Superman (who shares most of the same powers and the “mom-made costume” bit) and Black Lightning (DC’s first major black superhero, who was also a teacher named Jefferson Pierce).

The film featured a veritable who’s who of the best African-American actors America had to offer, including Bill Cosby, James Earl Jones, and Robert Guillaume and did earnestly try to present a more positive African-American role model.  But the film was rather simplistic and the naive (the two gangs in the film, the Bloods and the Crips, put aside their differences to support Meteor Man in his fight against the white drug lord) script led to box-office disappointment.

Next time, we cover three popular movies that might stretch the definition of the superhero, but that had an effect on comic books for years to come.

Given how much I enjoyed director Josh Trank’s Chronicle, I am eager to see what he does for Twentieth Century Fox’s Fantastic Four franchise. We know that he is rebooting the series, which is a good thing as the previous two films stumbled on a number of points.

Currently, Trask is working on a screenplay with writer Jeremy Slater and while we don’t know any of the details of the plot, comic book writer Mark Millar, whom Fox has hired to provide some creative consultancy and oversight to their superhero properties, states in a new interview with SciFi Now that Trask has some spectacular things shaping up to be something unique.

What I wasn’t expecting actually was just how funny and likeable he could make this as well as getting the more awesome moments on screen – I use awesome in the traditional British sense and not the California sense awesome, you know? The Ridley Scott moments, and the Fantastic Four really are jaw-dropping in the same way you feel when you saw Alien for the first time. There’s some moments in this – not to be specific – that are actually gonna be phenomenal on screen and stuff you haven’t seen in a superhero movie before.

Normally, I would be prone to dismiss this as the usual Millar brand braggadocio, I found Chronicle a rather fresh take on both the found footage genre and superhero origins stories. I have a feeling that Trank can deliver again. We’ll find out when the Fantastic Four reboot hits screens on March 6, 2015.

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.

One of the best things about Mark Millar being name Chief Creative Consultant role for all of Fox’s Marvel properties is that he loves to talk. And when he talks, he is usually giving juicy tidbits of information as a means of promoting himself and the things he does.

Case in point: his recent interview for the podcast of the British film magazine, Empire (which the folks at SuperheroHype were nice enough to partially transcribe). In it, he describes what his job duties entail and what he expects to see from the Fox’s Marvel properties.

One of Millar’s primary duties will be to expand the line:

So they brought me in to oversee that really. To work with the writers and directors to suggest new ways we could take this stuff and new properties that could spin out of it because the X-Men alone feels like a universe of itself. There’s so many characters in there and so many great potential spin-off characters.

Fox has been doing fairly well with spinning off films from its X-Men film franchise already, with the Wolverine films and X-Men: First Class tying into that mythology. Millar’s job will then probably be getting dormant or slow-moving mutant projects such as Deadpool, Gambit and New Mutants up and running. In addition, he will probably be looking for new films from other characters from the movies. Let’s hope that he shows more restraint than the comic arm of Marvel did, as anyone who has ever been an X-Man has had one or more series to their own (And that is only a slight exaggeration).

One presumes Millar will also be trying to wring as many spin-off possibilities out of the Fantastic Four franchise, but that might be a bit harder because most of the properties that spun out of the comic book (Black Panther, Inhumans) are owned by Marvel Studios.

Millar also is tasked with having both of Fox’s Marvel licenses play well together:

They asked me to come in and work out a plan. So unfortunately at this point I can’t get too specific. I do have a three to four year plan of where things could go, but you know, I’ll be working with guys like Matthew and Josh Trank, who’s the new director on Fantastic Four, and just figuring out how everything can work together and not contradict each other. But I also don’t want to make it too much of a mess either, with everyone showing up in everyone else’s films.

While this does not mean that Wolverine will be taking a swipe at Ben Grimm’s face, it appears nothing in either franchise will go against the other. It seems to me that if they can find a way for the properties to intermingle in a non-awkward way (like say Reed and Sue Richards son being born a mutant), they’ll pursue it. But at the very least, it will be clear that the X-Men and the Fantastic Four live in the same world on the same planet.

But what about a sense of continuity with the Marvel Studios’ films?:

What my dream is, as a fan, is that when you go and see any Marvel movie that it feels as if they’re all taking place in the one universe like when you pick up a Marvel comic. You should feel as if they’re all taking place in one big kind of cohesive place.

This could be just a continuing of the above thought, but it could also be Millar stating that the Fox Marvel films will have the same “non-contradiction” viewpoint towards the Marvel Studios films. Again, we probably won’t be seeing Wolverine join the Avengers, or Tony Stark and Bruce Banner help Reed Richards with a particularly prickly scientific problem, the Fox films will be more similar in tone to the Marvel Studio films, and fans will have nothing to lead them to believe they don not all reside in the same version of New York City.