Wesley Snipes Is Returning As Blade?
Back before the MCU was even a twinkle in anyone’s eye, audiences were subjected to some really bad comics adaptations ranging from Howard the Duck to the original and deeply embarrassing Captain America movie. However, the Blade films starring Wesley Snipes as the titular vampire hunter became an unexpected hit, and the original trilogy of this hero’s films served as an early glimpse of how great–and gory–comic book movies could be.
Now, Geekosity reports things have come full circle: Wesley Snipes will reprise his role one last time for Deadpool 3, a film that may rival Blade in terms of blood and body count.
Wesley Snipes is rumored to appear as Blade, for the first time in 19 years, in Deadpool 3.
We likely wouldn’t be seeing the return of Wesley Snipes if not for Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Fully embracing the potential of the multiverse allowed Disney to bring pre-MCU characters into their cinematic toybox, including Patrick Stewart’s iconic Professor X. And while details are sketchy about the exact plot of Deadpool 3, it seems clear that multiversal shenanigans will be responsible for Deadpool teaming up with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, who is another pre-MCU superhero staple.
While we are excited about getting to see Wesley Snipes’ Blade back on the big screen again, we can’t help but wonder if he will have a juicy role or if it will be a minor cameo. As neat as it was to see Professor X as well as previously-unseen characters like Reed Richards in Multiverse of Madness, the characters didn’t spend much time on screen, and some fans decried this as a cheap stunt at the expense of good storytelling.
More recently, rival film The Flash did something similar by hyping up a series of franchise cameos that amounted to simply showing old scenes wrapped in the world’s ugliest VFX filter.
Wesley Snipes and Ryan Reynolds worked together before in Blade: Trinity.
Unfortunately, the idea that Wesley Snipes’ Blade will just make a quick cameo in Deadpool 3 seems very likely, especially in light of the fact that it has been confirmed that Jennifer Garner will return as Elektra. Between her and the inevitable appearance of multiple X-Men cameos, it’s difficult to imagine that there will be enough time to give everyone a major story.
Then again, that doesn’t mean it won’t be entertaining: the biggest laughs in Deadpool 2 came from the “blink and you miss it” glimpse of the First Class-era X-Men, which highlighted the absurdity that Deadpool is always stuck working with Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead.
Wesley Snipes joins Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner as pre-MCU stars returning for Deadpool 3.
However, the cameo ends up shaking out, we are pleasantly surprised that Disney would bring Wesley Snipes back as Blade at all, especially since the studio is currently working on a reboot where Mahershala Ali plays the title character.
If Deadpool 3 and the MCU Blade are released closely enough, it will inevitably lead to online fan debates about which actor was better as the character and whether Ali can live up to the awesome cinematic legacy of Snipes. Then again, Ali’s Blade seemed stuck in development hell even before the WGA and SAG strikes, so the films aren’t in much danger of releasing close together.
