10 Most Important Comic Book Movies Ever Made

9. Blade

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New Line Cinema

Just twelve months after the high-camp antics of Batman & Robin had almost single-handedly rendered the comic book movie obsolete, the release of Stephen Norrington's Blade went a long way to rehabilitating a genre that had veered dangerously close to becoming a laughing stock.

The leather, sunglasses, techno and martial arts aesthetic of the movie captured the zeitgeist of late 90's culture a full year before The Matrix would hit theaters and inadvertently influence a generation of inferior knock-offs, showed that comic book movies could still bring in a lucrative revenue stream and gave Marvel Enterprises their first post-bankruptcy box office hit.

While many people point to Bryan Singer's X-Men as the genuine launchpad for the continued dominance of the superhero movie (more on that later), this violent, R-rated actioner with a bad-ass protagonist that dropped bodies as well as he did one-liners proved the genre could be cool again.

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