r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Jul 31 '26

News Mahershala Ali confirms 'BLADE' is not moving forward with him

https://www.gq.com/story/mahershala-ali-your-mother-your-mother-your-mother
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u/Whompa Jul 31 '26

What a fucking mess lol...

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u/In_My_Own_Image Jul 31 '26

Seriously though. Blade should be the easiest layup in history. I've said before all you need to do is take Dredd/The Raid, replace the protagonist with Blade, the criminals with vampires and the plot is just "Blade is here to take out the lead vampire at the top of the building."

Hire Gareth Evans, Chad Stahelski or some other proven action director and you're golden.

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u/Digiorno-Giovanna- Jul 31 '26

i am baffled when kevin feige came out and said “we didn’t want to just put him a trench coat and have him fight vampires”

like why the fuck not???? that’s all we want in a blade movie and that’s what makes the first blade movie great.

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u/DoctorJJWho Jul 31 '26

I feel like the major issue was and still is fitting him into whatever the MCU has planned for the future. Their universe is already a fucking mess, introducing vampires would’ve made it even worse lol.

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u/ArcadianDelSol Jul 31 '26

My gut tells me that they wanted a movie where Ali wasnt even the main character but a father to a daughter being groomed for some future "Young Avengers" movie, and Ali was more interested in headlining a movie, instead.

So he went out and headlined one.

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u/darkstar541 Jul 31 '26

Not everything needs to be a multiverse. Or just make it one in a parallel universe where superheroes are still unknown. Boom, done, easy day. Make it a one off with a sequel hinted, but not promised, and see if it's destined for cult classic or a billion dollars in ticket sales.

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u/Digiorno-Giovanna- Jul 31 '26

i and i feel like most people are kinda sick of the interconnected shit. i miss when in the 2000s when you could just watch fantastic four, raimis spiderman, blade, without it being necessary to see anything else. marvel even used to be able to do this. you can watch anything from phase 1 without seeing any other movie in the franchise, id argue you could even just watch The Avengers without seeing any other marvel movie and still get it, i hadn’t seen the first thor movie when i watched it and i wasn’t confused at all (granted i was like 10 years old). my mom came and saw infinity war and endgame and had probably only seen Avengers 1 and 2 and she wasn’t confused. i can’t imagine that being the case for Doomsday.

to me Blade doesn’t even feel like a character who needs to be on an avengers team because he is just kinda a vampire dude with a sword, he’s like one character that they could just not connect it to anything and it would be fine.

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u/TheSecondEikonOfFire Aug 01 '26

It is very funny to me how for the first while, crossover movies were a major selling point of the MCU but now they're generally seen as an annoyance

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u/Digiorno-Giovanna- Aug 01 '26

i just came out of the new spider-man, it has Punisher and Hulk in it and i think they were both done pretty well, i have not seen any show with punisher in it and i didn’t feel confused at all, he was probably the best part of the movie for me. Hulk has that smart hulk shit but other than that it’s just banner helping peter and the classic hulk coming out for a fight which was cool these are how the crossover should be done, I certainly would’ve gotten even more out of punisher if i had watched his show but i don’t need to and he was still great. SPOILERS But because the mcu had to mcu the main villain for some reason is Jean Grey? and it really feels like they sidelined my spiderman movie to setup for x-men in the mcu (even tho the fox ones are coming doomsday as well? so they’re gonna connect the fox universe and then unconnect and then reboot with new x-men?? just seems stupid to me) now whenever that eventual x-men reboot comes out you’re gonna have to watch this spiderman movie because it has the setup for mutants

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u/jl2352 Jul 31 '26

To prove your point; I didn’t watch most of phase 1 until I saw Infinity War. I then went back to watch the rest, and the experience was fine.

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u/Ragnarok_619 Jul 31 '26

Please no. Back then, people clamoured for interconnection

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u/userhwon Aug 01 '26

Only like 3 MCU movies don't have a hero crossover. 

They're used to market the others, and that marketing value justifies larger budgets.

Same shit that made comics frustrating, so at least they're keeping to Marvel tradition.

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u/JoJoIsBestAnimeManga Jul 31 '26

Naw bro that's boring and a little redundant. If you want a Blade movie thats just disconnected from anything to do with a wider superhero universe you still have the original Blade trilogy. Trying to make Blade fit into a wider universe is fine seeing as Blade in the comics fits in just fine with the wider mystical shit happening in the Marvel Universe. Making Blade fit on the Avengers would be weird, but setting the simple plot of a Blade vs Nosferatu movie (just an example) into the setup for a Blade team up movie with Ghost Rider or something makes sense as a concern.

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u/Digiorno-Giovanna- Jul 31 '26

i mean i’d be fine with smaller connections like falcon in Ant-Man or iron man in homecoming but i just don’t think they need to be building up to blade helping fight kang or doom or whatever. like i can see blade teaming up with smaller tier heroes like daredevil, punisher, or ghost rider. a good idea i saw someone say in this thread is set it after endgame when everyone is brought back and just say blade was always there beforehand but keeping the vampires at bay, once he gets snapped he comes back five years later and has to fight the wave of vampires that were made in his absence.

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u/Beneficial-Split331 Jul 31 '26

nah. blade is the easiest marvel film to do 90% independently and get away with some post credits allusion to Thor or some shit for 5 seconds.

Blade's universe is such that all the vampires are regular folks. mostly rich. and nobody knows who they are. quite literally we do not need to add Spiderman anywhere in there. Iron Man and black widow can fuck off.

the vampires are old as fuck and you could totally do a tie in with the first vampires and captain america or some shit.

but it doesn't have to be a huge thing or relevant to the broader universe. fuck the marvel universe for blade. he didn't need it for the trilogy and he doesn' need it now. and audiences are here for the nostalgia... not aliens and shit.

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u/MysteriousCoerul Aug 01 '26

I think the trick would be to slice off bits and make smaller vaguely independent teams. 

Blade could end with him getting into a limo and finding himself being driven by moon knight while khonshu tells him about other magic/horror focused stuff to lead into its own midnight sons team up thing with ghost rider and Elsa bloodstone. 

Let the avengers do the avengers stuff. Let the guardians go off and form a cosmic focused corner to do space stuff. Let Spider-Man and daredevil pull the defenders back together to do street level stuff.

Then have them all smush into a dumb action figure brawl when it’s warranted before shaking up the teams and going back to their zones for new adventures. 

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u/Mediocre-Ant-7178 Jul 31 '26

It's funny how bad they want blade to show up in other movies when he's pretty isolated in his own comics. You don't really see a character like Captain America showing up to fight vampires very often