48 Fun Facts About Blade Movies

Wesley Snipes signed on as Blade after failing to get a film made about which other Marvel hero?

Black Panther: Snipes had pushed for a film about the king of Wakanda and recalls meeting the director John Singleton, but no script and director ever lined up. He called the vampire hunter a natural progression.

What nickname do the vampires give Blade?

The Daywalker: Blade has a vampire's strength but none of the usual weaknesses, sunlight included. The one he does share is the thirst for blood, which he holds off by injecting a serum.

Who directed the first Blade film?

Stephen Norrington, an effects artist with one low-budget feature behind him, directed it. The writer has said that David Fincher was going to direct and that the two developed the script together.

Which actor plays Deacon Frost, the upstart vampire villain of the first Blade film?

Stephen Dorff plays Frost as a young upstart sneering at the vampire elders. In the comics he was an older, white-haired man, and the screenwriter joked that he looked like Colonel Sanders.

Who plays Blade's mentor and weaponsmith Abraham Whistler?

Kris Kristofferson, the country singer-songwriter behind "Me and Bobby McGee", played the grizzled Whistler in all three films, returning in the sequels despite his apparent death in the first.

What is the profession of Karen Jenson, the woman Blade rescues from the hospital?

Hematologist: Karen Jenson is a blood specialist at the hospital where a burned Quinn attacks her, and she later uses her lab skills to hunt for a cure for Blade's thirst.

Which 'blood god' does Frost try to awaken with a ritual using twelve pure-blood vampires?

La Magra: a prophecy says the spirits of twelve pure-bloods will wake the blood god, so Frost overthrows the vampire council and tells its elders, "I need twelve volunteers."

What compound does Karen discover explodes when combined with vampire blood?

EDTA, an anticoagulant, reacts explosively with vampire blood in Karen's lab tests. Blade later finishes Frost with an overdose of it, and the villain swells up and bursts.

What is Blade's real name, as revealed in the first film?

Eric Brooks: his mother was bitten by a vampire just before he was delivered in 1967, which left him half vampire. Thirty years on he finds her still alive among Frost's followers.

Who plays Vanessa, Blade's vampire mother, in the first Blade film?

Sanaa Lathan was nine years younger than the star playing her son. Her character is bitten in the 1967 prologue and turns up thirty years later as a vampire.

What term does the first Blade film use for a human servant loyal to vampires, like the cop Krieger?

Familiar: the film brands these human servants with a vampire glyph tattoo, as with the corrupt cop Krieger; in Blade II the tech Scud is revealed as one working for the vampire overlord.

In which comic was the character Blade created in 1973?

The Tomb of Dracula: Blade began there as a supporting character, an ordinary man who was merely immune to vampire bites. His half-vampire nature came later and was written back into the comics.

What weapon did Goyer give the film Blade in place of the comics character's teakwood knives?

A sword: Goyer swapped the comics' teakwood daggers for a katana with a booby-trapped hilt, giving Blade a samurai-like look that the comics later adopted.

In the first Blade, what lets the vampire Frost confront the hero outdoors in broad daylight?

Sunblock: Frost turns up wearing it and admits it is only "a start". What he really wants is what Blade already has, all of a vampire's strengths and none of the weaknesses.

Whose cameo as a cop was filmed for the first Blade but cut before release?

Stan Lee shot a scene as a police officer who finds Quinn's burning body after the nightclub raid, but it was cut. His run of big-screen Marvel cameos began with X-Men two years later instead.

Who plays Nyssa, Damaskinos's daughter, in Blade II?

Leonor Varela, the Chilean actress who had played Cleopatra in the 1999 miniseries, is Nyssa, the pure-blood who ends the film dying in Blade's arms at sunrise.

Just before finishing off Frost in the first Blade, the hero says some people are always trying to do what?

Ice-skate uphill: Frost has just sneered that Blade's serum can't help him now, not knowing the syringes hold a compound that makes vampire blood explode. Blade says the line and kicks in the last one.

Which film did Blade knock off the top of the North American box office in August 1998?

Saving Private Ryan had led for four straight weekends when Blade's $17 million debut displaced it. Blade held on for a second weekend, then lost the top spot to There's Something About Mary, by then eight weeks old.

In Blade: Trinity, what breed is Pac-Man, the pet dog the vampires have turned into one of their own?

Pomeranian: the lapdog bares monstrous jaws at Hannibal King, who asks in disbelief whether they really made a vampire Pomeranian. His captors explain they have been porting the vampire gene into other species.

Who plays Drake, the original vampire, in Blade: Trinity?

Dominic Purcell, later the star of Prison Break, plays Drake, the first vampire. Beaten, Drake salutes Blade's honour and uses his last strength to take the hero's shape, so the FBI carries off the wrong body.

Who directed Blade II?

Guillermo del Toro was tired of vampires as tortured romantic heroes and wanted them frightening again. The sequel's monsters are a savage new strain that preys on other vampires.

In which city does Blade II open, with Blade searching for the captive Whistler?

Prague: Blade finds Whistler there two years after his mentor seemed to die. The vampires had turned him and kept him prisoner, and Blade takes him home and cures him.

What are the mutant vampires in Blade II called?

Reapers: the mutant strain spread by Nomak feed on vampires and humans alike, shrug off silver and garlic, and are vulnerable only to sunlight and ultraviolet light.

Who is Jared Nomak, patient zero of the mutant strain in Blade II?

Damaskinos's own son: the overlord engineered the strain in a bid to breed vampires free of weaknesses, used Nomak as the first carrier, then cast him off as a failure.

Who plays Nomak in Blade II?

Luke Goss was a 1980s teen idol, the drummer of the boy band Bros alongside his twin brother Matt. The sequel's ravenous monster was his first notable film role.

What is the elite vampire unit, originally trained to kill Blade, that he leads in Blade II?

The Bloodpack spent two years training to hunt Blade, as one of them tells him to his face. He answers their first challenge by sticking an explosive charge to the back of the ringleader's head.

Which member of Blade's vampire team, played by Ron Perlman, gets an explosive on his skull?

Reinhardt taunts Blade, takes a swing at him and ends up with the charge stuck to the back of his head. When Scud later gloats that it was only a dud, Blade reveals that it is live and uses it on Scud instead.

Who plays Scud, Blade's young technician who turns out to be working for the vampire overlord?

Norman Reedus, later Daryl Dixon in The Walking Dead, plays Scud. Gloating over his betrayal, Scud says that once the vampires win he would rather be a pet than cattle.

In Blade II, what does Nyssa find when she dissects a dead mutant?

Their hearts are encased in bone, Nyssa finds, so a stake through the chest is useless; she notes that only the side is vulnerable. The creatures also have to feed every day.

In Blade II, what does Whistler release to lure a horde of the mutants onto the treacherous Chupa?

Their own pheromones: the hunters carry scent harvested from the creatures' glands as bait, and Whistler looses his when Chupa turns on him. The swarm it draws tears Chupa apart.

Which Marvel character, teased in a deleted ending of the first Blade, was meant to be the sequel's villain?

Morbius, Marvel's living vampire, watches from a rooftop in an ending that was filmed and then cut, with the film's own director under the coat. The sequel went ahead with a different villain.

In Blade II's closing scene, in which city does Blade finally catch up with the vampire Rush?

London: Rush is the vampire Blade squeezed for information at the start of the film. Blade tracks him to a strip-club booth and greets him with, "You didn't think I forgot about you, did you?"

Which critic called Blade II 'a really rather brilliant vomitorium of viscera'?

Roger Ebert meant it as praise: he gave the gory sequel three and a half stars out of four, half a star more than the original. His sentence ends, "a comic book with dreams of becoming a textbook for mad surgeons".

Which two actors play the vampire hunters Hannibal King and Abigail Whistler in Blade: Trinity?

Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel play the wisecracking King and the archer Abigail, Whistler's daughter. The studio signed the pair with a spin-off of their own in mind.

In Blade: Trinity, what is the name of the vampire-hunting group King and Abigail belong to?

The Nightstalkers is the name King announces. Blade replies that it sounds like rejects from a Saturday-morning cartoon, and King admits they wanted the Care Bears but that was taken.

In Blade: Trinity, what do the vampires trick Blade into doing on camera?

Killing a human: the victim is one of the vampires' own helpers, used as bait, and video of the killing puts the FBI on Blade's trail. The raid that follows costs Whistler his life.

At the start of Blade: Trinity, vampires dig up Drake, the first vampire, in which part of the world?

The Middle East: Drake is dug out of a desert tomb, and the hunters later say he was found in Iraq. That fits their story that the first vampire was born in ancient Sumeria.

What is the name of the viral bioweapon designed to kill vampires at the genetic level in Blade: Trinity?

Daystar, the hunters' engineered virus, needs Drake's pure blood to become lethal to every vampire; Blade delivers it with one of Abigail's arrows at the climax.

Which professional wrestler plays the vampire bodyguard Jarko in Blade: Trinity?

Triple H, the WWE star Paul Levesque, was the studio's idea. The director said he was "really skeptical" at first, then liked his comic timing so much that he wrote him extra scenes.

Which constructed language appears on signs and flags in Blade: Trinity's unnamed city?

Esperanto was chosen as the second language of a city the film never names. Signs and adverts carry it, and the Esperanto flag hangs over the entrance to the police headquarters.

Who plays Danica Talos, the vampire leader, in Blade: Trinity?

Parker Posey, the indie-film darling of Party Girl, was such unlikely casting as a vampire queen that one leading critic's review paused to add, "yes, Parker Posey".

Which Blade: Trinity co-star said its leading man spent much of the shoot in his trailer, sending notes?

Patton Oswalt, who plays the hunters' gadget man Hedges, said the star would communicate only by Post-it notes signed "From Blade". Asked about it in 2020, the star laughed and wondered why anyone believed that version.

Who took over the role of Blade for the 2006 television series?

Sticky Fingaz, the Onyx rapper Kirk Jones, took the part for Spike TV. The two-hour opener drew 2.5 million viewers, then the channel's biggest premiere for an original series, yet the show lasted one season.

Which 2024 film brought the original big-screen Blade back for a surprise appearance?

Deadpool & Wolverine: Marvel had already cast Mahershala Ali as a new Blade for a reboot, yet here the original returns and declares that there has only ever been one Blade, and only ever will be.

Which studio released Blade in August 1998 and both of its sequels?

New Line Cinema released all three. Blade became the first hit film based on a Marvel character, two years before X-Men, and a badly needed win for a publisher that had gone into bankruptcy in 1996.

Which writer created Blade with artist Gene Colan in 1973?

Marv Wolfman sued Marvel and the film's studio as the film opened, arguing that he had been a freelancer when he invented the character and had never signed it away.

In the first Blade, who plays Quinn, Frost's enforcer who survives wounds that would kill lesser vampires?

Donal Logue plays Quinn, the loudmouth henchman who is set alight at the blood rave and later loses a hand to Blade; Udo Kier instead played the vampire elder Gitano Dragonetti.

Who plays Karen Jenson, the woman Blade rescues, in the first Blade film?

N'Bushe Wright plays Karen, who is bitten early on and cures herself in the lab. When Frost threatens to turn her, she dares him to go ahead and bite her, since she can simply cure herself again.