Fans of the classic 1998 movie Blade, in which Wesley Snipes' half-vampire hunts down terrible creatures of the night, are shocked at the film's age rating.
Before superhero movies really took off, there was Blade, with Snipes playing Marvel's vampire hunter across a trilogy of movies during which a legion of evil bloodsuckers got their very violent comeuppance.
It wasn't until the releases of X-Men and Spider-Man that the superhero genre really took off and recovered from box office bomb Batman & Robin, but in the meantime Blade was keeping comic book fans entertained.
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The film was only really for older fans as it was slapped with high age ratings, and fans these days have been shocked to look back at the movie and see how it compares to today's standards.
ComicBook writer Adam Barnhardt shared a few clips from the Blade films and pointed out how much more accustomed to on-screen violence audiences have become since 1998.
The clips show Blade stabbing a vampire in the heart, causing them to crumble to dust, and behead another with blood spraying all over the screen.
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Upon its original release, it was rated 'R' in the US and '18' in the UK.
For audiences in 1998, this meant no children were allowed to watch the movie, but as Barnhardt notes, if you take out most of the bloodshed it's really not all that much worse than standard fare for today's Marvel movies.
He argued that the violence that once carried an R rating is 'entirely PG-13 by today's standards' and it's hard to argue the point.
Characters are killed all the time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that pack out cinemas and have legions of kids watching them.
Is stabbing a vampire in the heart really that much worse than Thanos snapping away half of the universe, or Thor getting his eye cut out by his evil sister?
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Compared to the standard fare that audiences of all ages pile in to watch in MCU movies these days, it's pretty tame for a film that carries an R rating.
As for whether Blade's particular brand of vampire slaying has grown tamer by today's standards, we'll get the answer when he joins the MCU with Mahershala Ali in the title role.
Originally rumoured to have a 2021 release, the Blade reboot that brings him into the MCU is expected to land in cinemas next year, as according to Digital Fix, filming will begin on 4 July.
Meanwhile, they also report that Marvel has a free slot in its release schedule for 13 November, 2023, and suggest that's when we could see Ali's Blade on our screens.
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Topics: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
