Superhero Action Horror Film Review: Blade

Blade was the film that started the modern Marvel film era and was also the film to usher in the modern superhero era in general. X-Men, released in 2000, is regarded today as the catalyst for the superhero film boom of the 2000s, but Blade, released in 1998, was the film that truly laid the groundwork for what was to come.

Blade is a daywalker, a human born to a mother who was bitten by a vampire while she was pregnant. His mother died giving birth to him, but he survived, gaining the strength of a vampire. However, he does not have a weakness to silver or garlic. He does have the bloodlust, however, which he keeps at bay by drinking a serum developed by Abraham Whistler. The latter found him when he was a teenager, after he was overcome with the need to drink blood after he hit puberty, and taught him to keep his bloodlust at bay.

Now, Blade hunts vampires while searching for the vampire that killed his mother while drinking the serum to keep himself human. On his quest, saves a hematologist named Dr. Karen Jenson who was bitten by a vampire and uncovers a plot by a rogue vampire to take over the world.

The film is very much a 1990s action film, with corny moments of comic relief, the mix of hip-hop, techno, and alternative rock in the soundtrack, and the late-1990s era computer-generated imagery mixed with practical effects. However, there are some things here that give a glimpse of the superhero films that will follow in the next decade. There are some pieces of cinematography that will feel familiar to fans of the later X-Men or Spider-Man films, such as the closeups following liquid flowing through the film's mythical artifact. The choreography of the fight scenes are also top notch, setting the bar for films to come, and remaining among the best parts of the film.

The other part of the film that makes it hold up despite its occasional 90s cheese is the performance of its actors. N'Bushe Wright was great as Dr. Karen Jenson. She was a genuinely strong supporting female character that used her expertise to help Blade and she had the strength to follow him on his mission. Karen also wasn't a love interest, although the chemistry was definitely there. She is the best female supporting character I have ever seen in superhero media. Today's attempts to make a strong female character could take some notes from this film. 

Most importantly, Wesley Snipes was excellent as Blade. As with Robert Downey Jr. with Tony Stark ten years later, this was inspired casting. Wesley Snipes embodies the character so fully that he is Blade. If the Blade reboot ever gets off the ground, there will definitely be big boots to fill.

Blade is a classic film that jumpstarted the modern superhero boom and it deserves its reputation. It has some of the pitfalls of the 1990s cheese that came before it, but it is few and far between. The acting of Wesley Snipes, the fight choreography, and the cinematography make up for any shortcomings. You can already see all of the things that fans came to love in the superhero films of the 2000s in this film. It is well worth watching, especially if you are a fan of turn-of-the-millennium Marvel films.

Final Verdict:

4 out of 5

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Action Superhero Film Review: Spider-Man 2

The second film in Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy was more Peter Parker's story than Spider-Man. It also had a fantastic, realistic portrayal of Doctor Octopus that influenced the comics as much as it was influenced by them.

Peter Parker is having trouble balancing his real-world identity with that of his superhero identity as Spider-Man. He has trouble making appointments, such as classes at his university and his new job as a pizza delivery man. He loses the latter and is close to being expelled from the former.

On top of this, his best friend Harry Osborne is convinced that Spider-Man killed his father. Also, Peter and Mary Jane are still infatuated with each other, but Peter doesn't want to tell her that out of fear that she would be attacked by Spider-Man's enemies if they discovered his secret identity, as had happened to his Aunt May via the Green Goblin.

Peter tries to remain friends with MJ, but his time as Spider-Man is making that difficult as well. She is following her dream by acting in plays, however, Peter can't manage to make it on time due to his web-slinging alter ego. This isn't helped by the fact that an usher, played by Raimi's friend Bruce Campbell in his second cameo in the trilogy, won't let him in due to his tardiness.

All of this stress causes Peter to have, as he put it in No Way Home, a web block. This causes him to lose the ability to properly control his powers. This leads to a humorous scene where he has to use the elevator in costume since he can't swing through the city.

One of Peter's scientific idols, Otto Octavius, invented a device that gives him four extra metallic arms so that he can work in environments that human hands can't touch. He can control the device by thinking as he has a neural link to the device that is wired through his spine to his brain. The arms have sophisticated artificial intelligence, so he equipped a neural inhibitor to keep the AI from influencing him. 

Unfortunately, his inhibitor chip is burned out during a failed press exhibition. Octavius tried to control a ball of energy composed of an abundance of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen named hydrogen-3, or as Osborne put it, the power of the sun in the palm of his hand. Spider-Man manages to turn off the device holding the tritium, however, before he managed to pull the plug, Rosalie Octavius, the wife of Doctor Octavius is killed.

Doctor Octavius, himself, is injured during the aborted demonstration. He is taken to a hospital where the doctors try to cut his metal arms off of him. However, the AI resists and attacks the hospital staff. This scene is made in the style of a horror movie, with which director Sam Raimi is well acquainted having directed the original Evil Dead films.

After this, the arms gain control of Otto's mind. The AI takes Otto's pain of losing Rosalie as well as his life's work and magnifies the hatred he feels. He then becomes a villain which the Daily Bugle names Doctor Octopus.

The AI convinces Doc Ock to continue his experiment, even though the rational side of his mind thinks that the experiment as well as his mechanical arms should be away from humanity at the bottom of the ocean. Doctor Octopus uses his mechanical arms to break into a vault at a bank to gain money for his experiment. However, he is stopped by Spider-Man. Unfortunately, because Peter's Aunt May was screaming, Doc Ock chose her to hold captive in order to get the police to hold off on attacking him.

Peter eventually becomes frustrated with his double life, ditches his spider suit, and stops being Spider-Man. This has positive effects by allowing him to get to his university classes on time. He also makes it to Mary Jane's play. However, Mary Jane is betrothed so she isn't receptive to his attempts to get her to date him.

As for the visual effects, Doc Ock's AI-controlled mechanical arms look fantastic clawing up the side of buildings. It's amazing this was done with practical effects. In the versions that are 4K, or 3840 x 2160 pixels, even the computer-generated imagery in this film looks fantastic. My favorite scenes are the fire-damaged building where Peter, as himself, rescues a young girl, the scene where Doc Ock threw a car through the window of a cafe, as well as the final battle with Doctor Octopus.

The actors put in a fantastic performance. Tobey Maguire delivers a great performance as the struggling Peter Parker. Kirsten Dunst is also fantastic as Peter's love interest Mary Jane Watson, who is tired of him standing her up all the time. 

James Franco is also much better than he is credited for as Harry Osborn. He believes Spider-Man killed his father, so he is angry at Peter for taking pictures of, and defending the man he considers his enemy. His anger at Peter builds up throughout the film, as more of Harry's life falls apart, and I think Franco handled it well. He began with a friendly demeanor, then as he lost his family's money by funding Osborne's experiment he got angrier, then he bubbled over when he thought he was losing his girlfriend Mary Jane Watson to Peter. Like his performance as a grieving son in the first film, I found Franco's acting much better than I had originally thought before a rewatch.

Another that I originally disliked was how Aunt May, portrayed by Rosemary Harris, became cold to Peter after he told his aunt the truth about him letting the man who killed his Uncle Ben. However, like James Franco's performance at the end of the first film, I see this much differently now that I have suffered loss myself. Now I actually like that aspect, and I feel that Rosemary Harris once again put in a fantastic performance as a grieving widow who was dealing with a nephew that she felt was heading down a dark path. 

J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson and Alfred Molina as Otto Octavius are both standouts in this film. J.K. Simmons provides some much-needed comic relief in this otherwise serious story. His Jameson is so pitch-perfect that it feels just like the character so much that it is like J. Jonah Jameson himself jumped out of the comic books. In contrast, Molina delivers a fantastic performance, both as the friendly Otto Octavius and as the villainous Doctor Octopus. His performance was so good that his portrayal of Doc Ock is one for whom you feel sorry because he is a tragic villain with two personalities due to an invention he created to help humanity. Like the Green Goblin in the first film, I feel that Doctor Octopus was squandered in the trilogy as he was one of the characters who only appeared in one film. Also like the Green Goblin, however, this was thankfully rectified when Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus appeared in Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2019.

This film is often considered not just the best Spider-Man film, but one of the best superhero films. I think I'd personally place this second to Spider-Man: No Way Home as the best Spider-Man film, but it definitely deserves its praise as one of the best superhero films ever. The actors are great, and the effects mix practical and computer-generated imagery really well. In particular, the scene where Spider-Man saves a subway train and the New Yorkers help the injured, maskless Spider-Man, is an iconic moment in film history. It advanced the philosophy of the first film, "when you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us". The film influenced Spider-Man films, and superhero films in general, and still does to this day. This is definitely a must-watch. Like the first film, I recommend the remastered and upscaled 4K Blu-ray and digital releases for both people who have never seen it before as well as those who see it as a rewatch.

Final Verdict:

5 out of 5

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Action Superhero Film Review: Spider-Man

It's been over twenty years since the first Spider-Man film that starred Tobey Maguire. However, this Spider-Man, who Marvel retroactively named the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man to differentiate him from Tom Holland's Spider-Man, is getting a lot of publicity because he reappeared in Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021. Because of this, I thought it would be interesting to watch Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy to see where the twenty-first-century Spider-Man films began.

The storyline follows the comics for the most part, as a bullied teenager named Peter Parker gets bitten by a spider, gains spider abilities, and uses a red ski mask to hide his identity. He aims to make money wrestling as the Human Spider. However, the fight announcer, played by the incomparable Bruce Campbell, does not like that name and calls him Spider-Man instead. Peter is happy and more than a bit cocky when he wins the money until his Uncle Ben is killed by a man he let get away. After that, he follows Ben's advice that "with great power comes great responsibility" and designs a proper superhero suit to use his Spider-Man persona to help the people of New York City.

As was noted in No Way Home, this Spider-Man differs from the comics in a major way. Unlike any other version of Spider-Man that came before, the genetically-modified spider that bit Peter gives him the ability to shoot webs from his wrists. Other versions of the hero make the web fluid which shoots out of a wrist-mounted device called a web shooter. This leads to the iconic scene where Peter tries many wrist actions and verbal commands to learn how to shoot the webs, including a shout-out to the other Captain Marvel.

Spider-Man has two enemies in the form of a direct threat and an indirect threat. The first is the father of Peter's best friend, Norman Osborn, who owns a company that develops technology for the United States military. The second is the editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson, the man who buys photographs taken by Parker and uses them to print stories claiming Spider-Man is a menace.

When the board of OsCorp sells the company to a rival and fires Norman in the process, Osborn uses a jet-powered glider developed by his company and becomes the villainous Green Goblin. The Green Goblin has a suit and mask that still looks threatening today. However, it's a shame they gave him a mask as the man who plays Norman Osborn, Willem Dafoe, has a very expressive face that is squandered by covering it up. This is the main reason they chose to have Norman break the mask in No Way Home.

Both of the men, Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn and J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson, are so good in their roles that Marvel didn't feature either character in Spider-Man films until the Tom Holland version of Spider-Man appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

On top of this, Peter Parker is in love with his next-door neighbor, Mary Jane Watson, who is played wonderfully by Kirsten Dunst. He is afraid to ask her out, so his best friend Harry Osborn asks her instead and becomes her boyfriend. Peter never loses his interest in her, however, leading to the wonderfully memorable and iconic moment where Peter, as Spider-Man, saves her life and then gives her an upside-down kiss in the rain.

There is another iconic moment with Mary Jane, where the Goblin drops a trolley with children and Mary Jane from a bridge. The Goblin did a similar thing with Gwen Stacy in the comics, however, things work out much better for MJ. The shot with Mary Jane falling reflected in the eyes of the Spider-Man suit still looks fantastic and gave me goosebumps even on a rewatch.

The New York citizens rallying behind Spider-Man and shooting rocks at the Goblin is something that is a common thread in the Raimi films and will be expanded on in great fashion in the next film in the trilogy. The words of one New Yorker sums up Raimi's Spider-Man philosophy well, "when you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us".

Raimi's films are the last, as of the time this review was posted, live-action films that portray Aunt May as an elderly woman, as she is in the comics. Rosemary Harris plays the part well, especially in the scene when the Green Goblin attacks her in the bedroom of her apartment when she prays to God to "deliver us from evil" as the Goblin laughs maniacally.

The shots that are done with practical effects still look amazing. Some that are done with computer-generated imagery, especially the part where the pumpkin bomb rips off half of Spider-Man's mask, still look great as well, except for the shots where Spider-Man is swinging from his webs quickly through the city. These have a bit of a dizzy-inducing quality, however, that has been alleviated in the versions that are in 4K, or 3840 x 2160 pixels. These transfers remastered and upscaled the film. Sony did a great job there, as the film has never looked so good.

When I first watched the film, I thought that James Franco, as Harry, showed bad, wooden acting at the end of the film. However, after suffering from many losses myself, I now see that this was intentional. Harry was grieving so he felt numb. He spoke completely without emotion because he felt that his world was ripped apart. This is the major aspect that I originally felt hindered the film, but looking at it with a fresh perspective, I see it as the cold, emotionless words of a man seeking revenge. Which, I'm sure, is exactly what Raimi was aiming to do.

Sam Raimi's Spider-Man still stands up remarkably well more than two decades later, except for a regrettable scene where Peter uses a homophobic slur when he taunts the wrestler Bonesaw McGraw, played by the late great Randy "Macho Man" Savage. While it does set up Harry's turn from friend to foe, Raimi's Spider-Man follows films like 1989's Batman, where a fantastic villain only appears in one film in a series. Thankfully this was finally changed when Dafoe's Green Goblin returned in No Way Home in 2021. I highly recommend watching this film for the first time or watching it again, especially in the fantastic 4K Blu-Ray and digital versions.

Final Verdict:

4 out of 5

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Agent Carter Review

Before she became the co-founder of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter received a Marvel Studios One-Shot. This was a format for ideas that didn't warrant their own film. They have been used for humor, to fix continuity issues, and as springboards for television series. It's the latter use that Agent Carter falls under, as it acts as both a sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger and as a prequel to the Agent Carter television series.

After the end of World War II, women returned to their status as homemakers. Those who didn't were ridiculed for continuing to work in an all-male environment. Peggy Carter was expected to leave the Strategic Scientific Reserve, however, homemaking was not in her nature. She was a better agent than the men in her office, but they kept getting field work while she was forced to act as a secretary.

When a late-night call comes in, she is the only person in the office. Peggy saw it as an opportunity to prove herself, so, going against regulations she goes out in the field to take care of the mission alone rather than relaying the message to the men in the office.

Haley Atwell was one of the best parts of Captain America: The First Avenger, so it was great to see the story of her hard-hitting heroine continue onward after the apparent death of Captain America. The storyline and fight choreography are top-notch and make the best out of the smaller budget given to the One-Shots. It is no wonder why an Agent Carter television series was greenlit, as this was and still is, one of the best One-Shots ever released.

Final Verdict:

5 out of 5

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