List of Influential Comic Book Films

[metaphysician]

Not really. There was a toy line aimed at collectors and there might have been a comic adaptation but beyond that if you look at the original trailer and poster, Marvel isn't mentioned at all. The only hint is Stan Lee's name being in the credits. Otherwise, it was just marketed as your average '90s Wesley Snipes action movie.

Blade was important financially since it was Marvel's first box office success which gave them the opportunity to move on to X-Men and Spider-Man, etc. But I wouldn't necessarily qualify it as being influential to the genre as a whole. I like the movie but people really look at it with rose-tinted glasses just because it was Marvel's first successful film.

If anything, I'd say it was mainly influential on other vampire-action movies, like the later Underworld series.

 

[Lantern Venom]

Was Blade at the time of it's release even marketed as a comic book movie?

It wasn't marketed that way at all. I've read interviews with Goyer where he said that New Line started off by trying to get Norrington and him on board with making it a campy story since that was the widespread perception of CBMs at the time. He also said that they tried to get them to cast a white actor as Blade, which is a perfect demonstration of the long odds against the film. As strange as this may sound, trying to market it as a CBM back then would have been the kiss of death. The lack of "this is the company of Spider-man and the Hulk" seemed very intentional.

I remember watching/reading reviews on it, and the ones that came out a little after the fact acknowledged that Blade was a comic book character from Tomb of Dracula. Stan Lee actually made a cameo in the original cut of Blade, which was reportedly a dud with test audiences and required considerable re-writing. In fact, Marvel was coming to understand that the comic book reading population was changing, so they saw it as a opportunity to utilize that while appealing to
broader audiences:

"Marvel Entertainment Group was reborn as Marvel Enterprises in 1997, under the direction of Toy Biz co-owner Ike Perlmutter and his partner Avi Arad. In the '90s, there was no better way to sell toys than to attach it to a movie. But before Marvel could take over the film world, it would first need to redefine the books they sold. Enter Marvel Knights, an imprint of mature comics starring Daredevil, Black Panther, Punisher and The Inhumans — characters whose own books had struggled or had been canceled years before.

1998 it was a necessity in order to breathe new life into its brand. Marvel’s new approach to these comics — take bottom-rung characters, give them a 21st century sense of cool and highlight the simplicity of their backstories — runs parallel to their first successful film release, Blade."

'Blade' Started a Revolution and Then Was Abandoned by Marvel