Here's How You Can Watch Every Blade Movie
Back in 1998, when the superhero genre was in peril and Marvel had never released a hit film, it took a lesser-known vampire slayer to save the day.
The impact of Blade, the action-horror vehicle starring Wesley Snipes, cannot be understated. To this day, Blade remains the ultimate example of how an underutilized comic book character can, with the right touch, become a cinematic legend. At the time Blade was released — a full year before The Matrix made black leather the next cool thing — it was unlike anything filmgoers had ever seen, and paved the way for Marvel to finally put the X-Men on the big screen, two years later. Combining dazzling martial arts sequences with an equally unique atmosphere, while matching a fan-favorite performer to one of the most badass superheroes ever put on film, Blade's influence still runs far and deep through the multiplex today.
Once the first Blade movie sunk its teeth into audiences, a follow-up was an inevitability, and that arrived in 2002 with Blade II, a sequel that — thanks to the artsy B-movie sensibilities of Guillermo Del Toro — arguably surpassed its predecessor. Unfortunately, the trilogy was bookended by Blade: Trinity, a film as disappointing onscreen as it was reportedly tumultuous behind the scenes.
Thankfully, in the next few years, Blade is set to make a big comeback, finally entering the Marvel Cinematic Universe where he belongs, with Academy Award-winning actor Mahershala Ali starring as the Daywalker. This rebooted Blade is still in the early stages, but if you're hungry for blood today, the old trilogy can be streamed online. Here's how.
The new home of the 'Daywalker' is on HBO Max
Blade might be a Marvel superhero, and Marvel films might tend to reside (these days) on Disney+, but you won't find Wesley Snipe's iteration of the character anywhere near the family-friendly streamer. That's because the Blade films came out a long time before the Mouse House and Marvel's fates became intertwined, and thus, the rights to the original trilogy belong to New Line Cinema — which, itself, lives under the big umbrella of Warner Bros. Entertainment. That means that the Wesley Snipes incarnation of Blade can now be streamed on HBO Max, alongside all the DC superheroes, and WB's entire upcoming 2021 slate. An HBO Max subscription will run you $14.99 a month, but thankfully, the streaming service includes all three films — that's Blade, Blade II, and Blade: Trinity — so you won't have to bounce onto any other streamers to get the full story.
Now, because the Blade trilogy is on HBO Max, that also means you won't find it on Netflix anymore. If you're not down for HBO, though, you do have the option of purchasing or renting digital copies of the films on Amazon Prime Video. The same is true of Vudu, which also carries all three movies. Meanwhile, back in the 2020 Halloween season, the trilogy was available on Hulu, but at the time of this writing (January 2021), the only movie that the streamer still carries is Blade: Trinity.
Of course, as die-hard Blade fans know, there is one other thing that comes after the trilogy — and that's Blade: The Series, which saw a new actor taking over Snipes' role. Streaming the TV show, unfortunately, is an entirely different process from streaming the movies.
What about Blade: The Series?
When Blade: The Series premiered on Spike in 2006, it had its work cut out for it. While the pilot was developed and scripted by David Goyer, who had previously masterminded the film trilogy, the TV show landed just a few short years after Blade: Trinity's lukewarm reception, and also had to overcome fan resistance to the recasting of Wesley Snipes with Kirk Jones, AKA Sticky Fingaz. The third twist of the knife, as it were, was that the story's plot revolved less around the title character, and was more driven by a new character named Krista (Jill Wagner) an Iraq war veteran who comes back to find out that her deceased brother was mixed up in some vampiric business. As a result, this made it difficult for Sticky Fingaz to truly make the Blade role his own.
With all these factors working against it, nobody was too surprised when Blade: The Series didn't get renewed for a second season. The show's first season, though, earned a reception that was more "mixed" than it was negative. And since the Blade franchise as a whole was dragged so far down from its previous heights by Blade: Trinity, the TV show does allow you to keep the vampire-slaying binge going just a little bit longer, once you've finished watching the movies. To that end, Blade: The Series can be streamed on iTunes for $22.99.
Once that's done, what's a vampire to do? Other than watching the 2012 Blade anime series (available on HBO Max), you'll just have to wait until more news arises about the hotly-anticipated Marvel Cinematic Universe reboot, starring Mahershala Ali. That should hit theaters in 2022 or 2023.