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This will delve into a few spoilers, so if you haven’t seen Blade: Trinity then that’s probably a wise move.

Many would cite Bryan Singer’s X-Men as the true success story, but back in 1998 Stephen Norrington’s Blade was released by New Line Cinema and was one of the few comic book adaptations that really took it seriously and got it right. David S. Goyer scripted the first two films and along with writing Blade: Trinity, he also directed and produced it. “It was my producers Lynn Harris and Peter Frankfurt that suggested I direct this,” said Goyer. “There aren’t many good sequels and there are even less good third films. So it’s really important that you keep shaking things up, that you do something different.”

Goyer’s original idea for the third film was to place Blade 50 years in the future with the world now run by vampires. “An immortal, [Blade] doesn’t really age,” said Goyer. “The vampires don’t either. And I was going to set it in a world where the vampires had won completely and it was much more like a Mad Max world and the humans were resistance fighters.” This would have been as dark and as different as the franchise could possibly get; however, he decided not to go with this, saying “it might as well have been Planet of the Apes or something. So I decided to pull back the reins a little.” In my opinion (and I’m sure I’m not alone here), Goyer should have gone with his original idea.

Instead, Blade: Trinity begins with a small group of vampires flying into the Syrian Desert. Led by Danica Talos (Parker Posey), they walk into a tomb where they awaken Dracula (Dominic Purcell), lovingly referred to as Drake throughout the film. Danica informs Dracula that they need his help to eliminate the Daywalker, Blade (Wesley Snipes). Blade himself is still killing vampires with the help of Whistler (Kris Kristofferson). With the news that Dracula is in the city, Blade ends up getting a little help from a group of vampire slayers known as the Nightstalkers, led by Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel).

During the shoot, many noted how Snipes would remain in character. This is something that he also did during the previous two films. Even during the release of the first film Snipes did press interviews as Blade because the voice, look and movements are “all stuff very different from Wesley.” During an interview with SuperHeroHype, his co-star Jessica Biel described how Snipes was “very intimidating,” saying, “I don't know if I said more than ten words to the guy,” while Ryan Reynolds said how Snipes was essentially Blade on set.

In January 2004, just after shooting had wrapped, Snipes wrote a letter to the then head of New Line Cinema, Bob Shaye, to complain about how he was treated on the film, notably that his character was sidelined to make way for “two new ‘younger’ characters,” referring to Reynolds and Biel. “There has always been a little bit of drama on the Blade sets,” Goyer responded. “They are all edgy characters, they have a certain amount of darkness in them… That is why we cast Wesley in the lead… It became clear to me that Wesley is a very Method actor. When he is doing a Blade movie he is Blade and he acts like Blade.” Snipes probably took his ‘Method’ to extreme levels, but even so Goyer’s response suggested that he didn’t want to escalate the situation.

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