Mahershala Ali’s Blade Comments Expose Marvel’s Biggest Creative Failure

Mahershala Ali’s Blade was supposed to be one of the biggest movies in the MCU. Now, it’s proven to be one of Marvel’s biggest creative failures.

In July 2019, Ali was unveiled at San Diego Comic-Con as the actor tabbed to play Blade, one of the most iconic Marvel characters. Fans were extremely excited at the idea of Blade appearing in the MCU, but unfortunately, it never came to be. The movie, which was stuck in development hell, was also mired in the ongoing changes happening in the MCU, and subsequently never got made. Just this week, Ali essentially confirmed he was done with the project.

“No offense to them. I’ve been doing this professionally for pushing 30 years now, and one thing I’ve learned is that what is for you is for you and what is not is not,” said Ali to GQ on the movie. “For whatever reason, that project is not for me. If they wanted to do it, we would’ve done it. So I have to move on, and I have moved on… Again, you had me under contract, they have billions of dollars, if they wanted to do the movie, we would’ve done the movie. So we’re not doing the movie.”

Ali’s comments not only shine a light on the status of the movie, but cement the never-made Blade movie as one of Marvel’s biggest creative failures, and a surprising one due to how easy it should have been.

Mahershala Ali’s Blade should’ve been an easy slam dunk for Marvel

The character of Blade is one that, on paper, should’ve been an absolute home run for Marvel. The character is never deviated from too greatly in the world of Marvel Comics, and always shown off doing more or less the same thing. As soon as Ali’s role as Blade were announced, fans immediately began dreaming of how cool it would be to see Ali don the outfit and become the badass, vampire-slaying antihero that Blade is.

Instead, it seemed like Marvel could never even get the project off the ground. Rumors at the time suggested Marvel had no idea where to go with the project, and didn’t want to just make it a standard Blade story. Kevin Feige even recently said they didn’t want to just “simply just put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires,” and wanted the movie to be “unique,” but the problem there is that Blade is at his best when he’s killing vampires and looking cool doing it.

Blade was meant to be one of the biggest pillars in the post-Endgame era of the MCU. Ali’s star power and the character’s standing as one of the most beloved in Marvel was an obvious match made in heaven. For whatever reason, though, Marvel could never make it work, and might have gotten too in its own head while developing it. Of course, there are other reasons for the movie’s failure, as the MCU as a whole was spiraling a bit at the time. However, the Blade movie was a slam dunk that seemed too easy to mess up, but instead now shines as one of Marvel’s biggest missteps.

Source: Comingsoon.net