The unholy abomination that nuked a once-mighty Marvel franchise thankfully remains as unpopular as ever

The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s reboot has admittedly been suffering through some turmoil of its own, but even in the worst case scenario, there’s surely not a chance that Mahershala Ali’s debut as the Daywalker will turn out worse than Blade: Trinity.

Wesley Snipes’ leather-clad vampire slayer played a huge (and unfairly underrated) role in kicking off the comic book boom, even if it was Bryan Singer’s X-Men and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man that ended up taking most of the plaudits. Guillermo del Toro’s sequel was a worthy successor, but David S. Goyer’s threequel was most definitely not.

Of course, the entirety of the blame can’t be laid exclusively at the writer and director’s door, seeing as reports raged about Snipes’ behavior during production, which could generously be described as uncooperative. In the end, what had the potential to go down as one of Marvel’s best-ever trilogies instead petered out like the dampest of squibs.

It’s been almost 20 years since Blade: Trinity underperformed at the box office, got trashed by critics and crowds alike, and launched a legal battle involving Snipes Goyer, New Line Cinema, and the United Talent Agency, but we can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the reprehensible fantasy actioner hasn’t been subjected to the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia.

A Reddit thread asking “what’s so bad about Blade: Trinity?” has been effectively summed up in the comments and replies as “everything.” Snipes’ phoned-in performance, Jessica Biel’s regularly cringeworthy contributions, the awful script, substandard visual effects, and flimsy villain are only a handful of the entirely deserved and wholly valid criticisms that remain as salient now as they ever did.