First and foremost, Blade is not an origin story. A dialogue-less prologue in the beginning and a couple of scenes of exposition give you all you need to know about Blade. There’s no flashback of him learning to use his vampire powers, and there’s no story about how he came to possess his specially designed sword or his souped 1968 black Dodge Charger. Blade was also unabashedly R-rated, a rare success not just for Marvel who’s tried and failed to launch two big screen Punishers, but for comic book movies in general.
A bit more obviously, there is a another big difference between Blade and all the other Marvel films to follow thus far, it’s the only one with an African-American hero. To the credit of Anthony Mackie, he’s become a solid supporting player the last couple of years as Falcon, appearing in three of the last four Marvel movies. Don Cheadle, too, as Iron Man partner War Machine has also done good work. But when it comes to a Black protagonist, it will be a 13 year wait between Blade Trinity and Black Panther when the latter finally opens in 2017. Female heroes are even more problematic. Despite great fan desire for a solo Black Widow adventure, it won’t be until 2018 when a woman will headline Captain Marvel.
It’s a tribute to the machine created by Marvel Studios that in the 20 years that will have elapsed between the releases of Blade and Captain Marvel that they’ve only ever hit a couple of hiccups in terms of production; the director drama of Ant-Man, and whatever was happening on the set of Fantastic Four are exceptions rather than the rule. But Blade was delayed a year because test audiences didn’t care for it. Thankfully, some additional editing and a tweaked ending that featured a straight-up sword fight between Blade and Frost, as opposed to a fight between Blade and a transformed Frost who was supposed to become some kind of blood tornado, worked much better.
