Stephen Norrington’s “Blade” was ground zero for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s unprecedented blockbuster run. Though it hit theaters in 1998, 11 years before the release of “Iron Man,” if you grew up reading comic books, you could sense a kindred charge from your fellow moviegoers the second Snipes got on with his vampire-killing business. This wasn’t Tim Burton’s “Batman,” which used Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” as window dressing; Norrington’s “Blade” possessed the swagger and lethality of the character created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan.
Norrington immediately became a fan-favorite filmmaker (his reputation bolstered by “Blade” becoming one of the first must-own DVDs as the medium caught fire), which led a significant contingent of geeks to lobby for him to direct everything from “X-Men” to “Spider-Man.” When he finally alit on “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” an adaptation of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s loopy comic book mash-up that brought together such genre characters as Allan Quatermain, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Mina Harker, the Invisible Man and Captain Nemo, I thought his gift for world building might take this burgeoning big-screen genre in an unexpected direction.
Norrington certainly did the unexpected with “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” The “Blade” director ended two careers on this movie. It also grossed a distressingly light $179 million against a $78 million budget. But yesterday’s disasters are sometimes ripe for rediscovery decades later. Is this one of those cases? Tubi subscribers are inexplicably keen to find out!
