Blade star Stephen Dorff has some harsh words for the upcoming MCU adaptation of the same superhero film he was in back in 1998. The former Deacon Frost actor doesn’t have any confidence in the upcoming film and claims that the recent superhero films that have been released, both from Marvel and DC, are “worthless garbage.”
Dorff played Deacon Frost in the 1998 production of the Marvel film. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Dorff mocked Marvel Studios after it was announced last year that Blade will be searching for a new director. He also claimed that his iteration of Blade was the “best” and that the MCU production is a laughing stock.
“Marvel is used to me trashing them anyway. How’s that PG Blade movie going for you, that can’t get a director? [laughs] Because anybody who goes there is going to be laughed at by everyone, because we already did it and made it the best. There’s no Steve Norrington out there.”
The former Blade actor claimed recent superhero films are “embarrassing.” He’s aware of how much money these films make but doesn’t believe that they’re good. An example he gave was 2022’s Black Adam, starring Dwayne Johnson. He believes that nobody remembered that film, while also admitting that he never saw it because “it looked bad.”
“All this other garbage is just embarrassing, you know what I mean? I mean, God bless them, they’re making a bunch of money, but their movies suck [laughs]. And nobody’s going to remember them. Nobody’s remembering Black Adam at the end of the day. I didn’t even see that movie, it looked so bad.”
Dorff’s criticisms come from a place of love for the genre. He believed that superhero films back then prior to the MCU’s popularity were much better compared to now. He saw each iteration as a step up from the previous adaptation. An example was Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy and how it “reinvented” the Tim Burton Batman films.
“I love all kinds of movies. If comic-book movies were more like when I started when we made Blade, or the few that have been decent over the years, like when Nolan did The Dark Knight and reinvented Batman from Tim Burton, who’s obviously a genius…when they were interesting.”
It was revealed back in 2022 that film director, Bassam Tariq, will be leaving production for the PG13+ Blade adaptation right before shooting began. This caused massive delays for the MCU’s production schedule, where a handful of films’ release dates were pushed by months.
Blade was scheduled to be released on November 2023, but has now been pushed back to September 2024.
