YMMV / Blade (1998)

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• Awesome Music: "Confusion (1995 Pump Panel Remix)" by New Order is the most noteworthy example (interestingly, it's one of the few songs in the movie that made it to the soundtrack album, which mostly kept to hip-hop songs not in the movie).
• Complete Monster: Deacon Frost is a younger vampire who sets himself apart from the older vampire hierarchy and their preference to remain in the shadows to rule humanity from behind the scenes, desiring to openly reduce all humans to cattle by incarnating the evil blood god La Magra. Frost maintains a network of nightclubs where hapless humans are frequently killed for the vampires' feasts; kills a vampire elder in an exceptionally painful way by removing his teeth and letting him burn up in the sunrise; murders one of his human minions For the Evulz; throws a little girl into traffic to distract Blade; attacks Blade's mentor Whistler and leaves him for dead; and sacrifices the entire vampire council as part of the ritual to summon La Magra. However, Frost's worst crime is his past attack on Blade's then-pregnant mother and his transformation of her into a bloodsucking monster, later rubbing this fact in Blade's face to hurt him.
• Eclipsed by the Remix: The Pump Panel Remix of New Order's "Confusion" is far better-known than either the original 1983 non-album single or the 1987 re-recording for Substance.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
  • Claiming that the X-Men or Spider-Man movies were the first comic book movies to set off the current superhero media boom instead of this film.
  • Claiming that Black Panther was the first superhero movie starring a black actor. ^note if you want to get technical, The Meteor Man, Steel, Spawn predate both, but fewer people have seen them, along with the latter two coming out the year before Blade and being reviled. Besides, there's also Hancock and the hated Catwoman (2004), which came out between Blade and Black Panther.
• Ham and Cheese: Stephen Dorff spends every single one waking minute of his character's screentime Chewing the Scenery. And it is glorious.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Wesley Snipes had previously been considered for the title role of another Superhero movie with a black lead, but was rejected since the producers felt that his likeness wouldn't sell as many toys as the actor they went with. That movie was Steel, which chose Shaquille O'Neal over Snipes, and (along with Batman & Robin) is largely seen as killing DC's dominance in superhero movies^note although they did try again with 2004's Catwoman (2004), it wouldn't be until Batman Begins that DC would be able to make another credible superhero movie, whereas this movie, along with X-Men and Spider-Man, was what's largely seen as the start of Marvel's domination of superhero movies.
• Narm Charm: Blade's Pre-Mortem One-Liner. It doesn't make much sense — unless you really think about it — but damn if it doesn't sound badass.
  Blade: Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate uphill.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Famous porn and non-porn actress Traci Lords as Racquel, one of the vampires in the club.
  • Teenage Karate champion Eboni Adams as the young vampire girl who lures and fights Blade in the archive. Had social media existed back when the movie was released, she would have surely been able to have a career out of her sole highlight in the movie.
  • There are some other martial artists of renown in the film, like Jeff Imada (as the long-haired, Asian vampire who armlocks and corners Blade in the archive), Bruce Lee's daughter Shannon Lee (doing a cameo as a resident in the hospital), Lee's goddaughter Diana Lee Inosanto (another of the vampires fighting Blade in the club), and Gerald Okamura (the bald, Old Master-looking vampire in the council, although sadly without a fight scene).
• Retroactive Recognition: A pre-The Shield Kenny Johnson as Heatseeking Dennis, who has a close call with the vampires at the beginning.
• Special Effects Failure: Some of the CGI effects have not aged well. Perhaps the most glaring example is the climax of the original script, which had Frost turn into a blood cyclone, but the CGI looked too out of place for the producers' taste (You can find this in the deleted scenes of the movie). So they just kept the fight to physical abilities with the only CGI used to show off Frost's new regeneration powers after Blade initially lands a killing blow on him, Sadly, the regeneration effect has still aged very poorly.
• Strawman Has a Point: Frost says humans are like cattle, so Blade shouldn't care about saving them. Thing is, with all the examples of Apathetic Citizens we see in the film, it's hard not to concede that he has a point in-universe.
• Tear Jerker: Whistler's death. Beaten to a pulp, bitten and turning, he exchanges last words with Blade who is clearly shattered despite his stoicism as he gently dabs at Whistler's wounds, before Whistler requests Blade's gun for suicide and orders him to walk away so Blade won't see the closest thing he's ever had to a father die. Then we hear the shot and see Whistler's hand fall. Subverted by the second movie, which retconned it.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: When the film was released, the vampires being "ashed" was amazing for its day. And even a decade on is still pretty cool. The effect noticeably improved with subsequent sequels.

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