Blade (1998) (Limited Edition Steelbook) (4K UHD Review)
- Review Date: Feb 12, 2025
- Format: 4K Ultra HD
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Director
Stephen NorringtonRelease Date(s)
1998 (February 4, 2025)Studio(s)
New Line Cinema (Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
Blade landed in 1998 during a bit of an interregnum in the hierarchy of cinematic comic book adaptations. The original Tim Burton Batman had broken box office records in 1989, but the sequels all drew mixed reactions (and mixed box office receipts as well) until Batman and Robin nearly put a nail into the coffin for the entire franchise in 1997. Other comic book films released during that period generally underperformed as well, even overlooked gems like The Rocketeer, The Shadow, and The Phantom. The next wave of comic book successes wouldn’t really take off until X-Men in 2000 and Spider-Man in 2002. So, there were no real expectations for Blade in 1998, especially since it was an adaptation of a less familiar comic book character, and an R-rated one at that. Against all odds, it ended up being a pleasant surprise that became an unexpected box office success, long before the current run of R-rated comic book movies was a gleam in anyone’s eye.
Blade proved influential in more ways than one, since David S. Goyer’s script altered Blade’s comic persona in a fashion that ended up feeding back into the books. Blade’s origin was always the same, with his mother being bitten by Deacon Frost while he was still in the womb, but Blade wasn’t the Daywalker in his original incarnation. The enzymes in Frost’s kiss did alter his genetic structure, but rather than transforming him into a vampire, it gave him immunity from the disease instead. He had heightened senses, but otherwise no superhuman powers. The year after Blade was released, the comics had him being bitten by Morbius during a team up with Spider-Man, and that transformed him into a Daywalker just like in the film. The immunities provided by the enzymes in his bloodstream weren’t strong enough to counter the strain of vampirism carried by Morbius, so he finally became a full vampire, albeit one who could survive the full light of the sun.
It’s not entirely clear if the Daywalker concept was actually Goyer’s idea, or else if Marvel had informed him of the coming changes to the comic book character and he chose to use the concept before it reached the books. Either way, the film version took Blade to a level not yet seen in print. It’s difficult to imagine Blade working as well any other way; the heightened style of the action only works because Blade has the same elevated powers as the vampires that he’s fighting. This heightened action is a huge reason for the success for Blade. Director Stephen Norrington shot the film in a beautifully kinetic style that has often been imitated but never quite equaled. There are plenty of directors who use shaky camerawork in an attempt to create energy and a sense of immediacy, but Norrington and his cinematographer Theo van de Sande took a different tack with the technique. Rather than shaking the camera randomly and incessantly, they reserved it for key moments in order to add a sensation of power and impact.
Whenever Blade leaps at his opponents and lands on the ground, the camera shakes as if it was struck by a shockwave from the impact. When he punches or kicks one of them, everything shakes as if the momentum from the blow has been transferred to the camera. Moments of instability like that are carefully controlled; the camera shakes as if it was hit by a shockwave and then stops immediately after it passes. Even when the camera shakes in a more extended fashion, such as during Pearl’s memorable demise, it still gives the feeling that the shaking is due to energy being released by the action, rather than being the results of a cameraperson who had a bit too much caffeine that morning. One of the few other films from that era that used a shaky camera in a similarly controlled fashion is Gamera: Revenge of Iris. That film was released the next year, so it’s possible that visual effects director Shinji Higuchi had seen Blade and absorbed its lessons. Unfortunately, most other directors who favor unstable camerawork have never learned that lesson, and they probably never will.
As memorable as the action scenes in Blade may be, none of that would matter if the characters weren’t compelling enough to hold them together. Wesley Snipes was the ideal choice for Blade, and his relationship with his mentor Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) is the lynchpin of the entire film. Blade’s story is steeped in a history that’s hinted at but rarely shown, and it feels as if Blade and Whistler had traveled many hard miles together as a team. (Whistler’s suicidal nonchalance while he refuels Blade’s car is one of the single greatest visual character beats ever put on film.) N’Bushe Wright as the hematologist Dr. Karen Jenson made for an interesting addition to their gang; it’s a shame that she never returned for any of the sequels. Minor characters like Dragonetti and Raquel are also memorable thanks to being played by legends like Udo Kier and Traci Lords—there’s no need to spend time giving any backstories when you cast actors with well-known histories of their own. Stephen Dorff does a fine job as Deacon Frost, and he’s supported well by Donal Logue and Arly Jover as his naughty vampire gang members.
Blade still suffers a bit from the fact that the filmmakers struggled to find an ending, with the La Magra concept having been carefully set up all throughout its running time only to be mostly discarded in the way that the finale actually plays out. Originally, Norrington had shot a very different version of the ending, but it ended up being cut due to the fact that they couldn’t figure out how to get the CGI to work convincingly enough. (The early digital effects that still remain in the final cut aren’t necessarily the most convincing either, but thankfully they’re all pretty brief.) So, while Blade’s narrative repeatedly promises an apocalyptic blood wind that it never actually delivers, at least the revised final duel between Blade and Frost is reasonably well executed. Perhaps most importantly, without the reshoots, the world might never have been gifted with Wesley Snipes’ infamous non sequitur right before he delivers the final killing blow. Who needs blood winds when you have baffling verbal metaphors instead?
Cinematographer Theo van de Sande shot Blade on 35mm film using Arriflex 35III, Moviecam Compact, and Moviecam SL cameras with a variety of different anamorphic lenses including Arriscope, Clairmont, Todd-AO, Cooke, Angénieux, and others. The results were completed on film and framed at 2.39:1 for theatrical release. This version is based on 4K scans of the original camera negative, graded in High Dynamic Range for HDR10 only. This 4K master for Blade has generated plenty of controversy due to accusations of rampant noise reduction, but as with many such online kerfuffles, the reality is a bit more nuanced than what you may have been led to believe. Van De Sande used Kodak T-grain emulsions like 100T 5248, 320T 5277, 500T 5279, and 200T 5293, all of which were fine-grained to begin with. So anyone expecting a grain fest like some other 4K titles was going to have to look for a culprit for why that didn’t happen. Yet the original film grain is still present, although it is indeed quite fine. The majority of the film offers impressive levels of detail as well, from the intricate textures of the costuming to the imperfections in the skin of the actors, especially with Snipes and Wright. The extreme closeups of faces display almost as much detail as anything shot in 70mm.
There may well have been some light grain reduction applied to these shots, but if so, it was done in non-destructive fashion. Now, there are indeed plenty of shots sprinkled throughout the film that are noticeably softer and less detailed, but most of them contain optical effects, so they were scanned from later-generation dupe elements rather than the camera negative. It’s not just the film’s extensive visual effects work, either; all of the vampire language subtitles are burned-in and aren’t generated later by the player. That means that any shot featuring on-screen titles is going to be soft compared to the rest of the film. And these shots are where it does appear that noise reduction was applied with a heavier hand, but the grain in dupe footage like this already wouldn’t have matched the surrounding material—it’s coarser and heavier. Noise reduction was used in these cases to try to smooth out the grain to better match. It’s a tradeoff, but the reality is that old-school optical work is always going to stand out no matter what you do. In this case, they arguably stand out less than they would have otherwise, at least for anyone who isn’t on the hunt for the dreaded “DNR.” But your own mileage may vary.
With all of that out of the way, Blade was built for HDR, and the grade in this version doesn’t disappoint The color palette is intentionally somewhat muted, but when the splashes of color appear, like the vast quantity of blood spraying across the screen, they can be really intense. The expanded contrast range helps that as well—when the “Bloodbath” begins during the opening, the sharp contrast and deep color of the blood ends up making it look almost three-dimensional (Van De Sande also employed a different shutter on set in order to enhance the stroboscopic effect). The black levels are deep and true, but there’s plenty of depth to the details within that blackness—Blade’s uniform is always clearly delineated. It’s a fantastic 4K presentation of Blade—feel free to dismiss it based on what you’ve read online, but you’re missing out if you do. (The usual caveat applies here that if you’re already sensitive to flashing lights, HDR makes them that much more intense, so exercise caution when viewing the club scenes.)
Primary audio is offered in English Dolby Atmos. Blade was released theatrically in 5.1 with matrix-encoded 2.0 stereo as a backup, and the original mix isn’t included here. That may be an issue for some people, but once you’ve auditioned the newer Atmos mix, it will be hard to go back. The effects have been spread throughout the entire sound field including the overheads, and while a few new effects have been added to facilitate that, it all blends seamlessly enough to create a much more immersive soundstage. The bass is thunderous, especially during the club scenes, but even sound effects like the exploding door thudding to the ground have real impact to them. While the bass in the old 5.1 mix may be arguably a bit heavier than it is here, this sounds much cleaner and tighter in comparison. I’ll take it. Still, there’s no getting around the fact that Blade has always been driven by Mark Isham’s score and the various pieces of source music sprinkled throughout, and that’s all reproduced well in this Atmos mix.
Additional audio options include French, German, Italian, and Polish 5.1 Dolby Digital, plus Spanish and Czech 2.0 Dolby Digital. Subtitle options include English SDH, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Spanish, Czech, and Polish.
The Warner Bros. Walmart-exclusive Steelbook 4K Ultra HD release of Blade is a two-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film. (Note that it’s a repressing of the original Blu-ray, not a remastered copy.) Like all of the other Steelbook and non-Steelbook versions that Warner Bros. has released to date, the discs are identical in each and every case, so the only difference lies in the packaging. The following extras are included:
DISC ONE: UHD
- Audio Commentary with Wesley Snipes, Stephen Dorff, David Goyer, Theo Van De Sande, Kirk M. Petrucelli, and Peter Frankfurt
- Isolated Score Commentary with Mark Isham
DISC TWO: BD
- Audio Commentary with Wesley Snipes, Stephen Dorff, David Goyer, Theo Van De Sande, Kirk M. Petrucelli, and Peter Frankfurt
- La Magra (SD – 14:08)
- Designing Blade (SD – 22:31)
- Origins of Blade: A Look at Dark Comics (SD – 12:10)
- The Blood Tide (SD – 20:02)
- Theatrical Trailer (SD – 2:09)
The group commentary featuring Snipes, Dorff, Goyer, Van De Sande, production designer Kirk M. Petrucelli, and producer Peter Frankfurt was originally produced for New Line’s 1998 LaserDisc release of Blade, although it’s not really a group commentary at all. Instead, it’s a curated track of the type that had been pioneered by Criterion back during that era, and New Line Cinema followed suit with their commentaries for films like this one and Se7en. It’s a shame that this style has fallen out of vogue these days, because a good curated track can be so much more instructive than rambling monologues or even dialogues. In this case, all of the participants were recorded separately and edited together, with each of them introduced by an unnamed New Line representative. It’s a solid track that always stays on point, and it’s filled with great stories about the making of Blade.
The isolated score commentary with Mark Isham was added for New Line’s Platinum Edition DVD in 2000—although for some reason, it wasn’t carried forward for the 2012 Blu-ray from Warner Bros., so it’s nice that it was rescued for their 4K version. (That’s why Isham’s commentary is on the UHD only in this set, since the Blu-ray was just a repressing of the old one.) Isham explains the choices that he made and why, accompanied by the isolated score samples as a demonstration.
The rest of the extras consist of material that was originally produced for the LaserDisc and DVD releases of Blade. La Magra features interviews with Frankfurt, Petrucelli, and Goyer, plus New Line president Michael De Luca. It traces the original conception of the blood wave, offering production artwork and deleted scenes along the way that pretty clearly demonstrate why everything had to be changed for the final cut. Designing Blade opens by bringing back Petrucelli to discuss his production design for Blade, then it switches gears to offer contributions from makeup designer Greg Cannom, stunt coordinator Jeff Ward, and visual effects producer Richard “Dr.” Bailey. (Bailey was a neglected pioneer of the early CGI era, so it’s always fascinating to see how he created impressive results with the limited technology that he had at his disposal.) Origins of Blade: A Look at Dark Comics features Goyer, Stan “The Man” Lee, and others discussing the influence of EC Comics and how the backlash against it shaped the development of the rest of the comic industry. Finally, The Blood Tide examines the importance of blood in terms of how it relates to the concept of vampirism in folklore, mythology, religion, and even science. It offers interviews with a genuinely interesting panel including Father Gregory Coiro, Dr. Gary Schiller, Dr. J. Gordon Melton, Nina Auerbach, Brian Clemens, Mick Ferren, and Goyer (naturally).
There aren’t any new extras because there isn’t anything new in this set at all. It’s also not the first (or even the second) exclusive Steelbook packaging that Warner Bros. has offered for the film. Blade seems to be one of those films that they’re happy to re-package and re-release occasionally to try to milk out some new sales. So if you have any of the previous Steelbook releases, there’s no reason to pick up this one, unless you’re an Ash Ketchum type who just has to collect them all. On the other hand, if you haven’t picked up Blade in 4K yet, this is an excellent place to start. It makes Blade look sharp from within and without.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).