MCU Phase 4: 10 Ways Marvel Could Reboot Blade

5. Set Things In The Past (Seventies)

Marvel Comics

Captain America: The First Avenger, Agent Carter, Ant-Man and now Captain Marvel are all MCU features that have utilised elements from the past to tell a story, but with The First Avenger the only thus far to make the past a primary focus, Marvel are running light on period pieces.

Blade, a character first conceived in the seventies, could change that. Fox's X-Men films have already done wonders by taking a historical angle, and with more world-building to be done, making Blade a presence in the MCU's past makes plenty of sense. Not only would the setting help differentiate any reboot from the older Snipes films, but it would also help provide it with a new sense of identity, rooting the story in a zeitgeist where monster movies - in the classic sense - were absenting the spotlight.

There are plenty of characters that lend themselves well to these earlier decades (Daredevil was optioned as a seventies crime thriller by Joe Carnahan) before the Netflix show), but Blade perhaps works the best. The MCU has laid out its foundations for its espionage elements, but the supernatural ones - now fronted by Doctor Strange - are a relatively new phenomenon. Place Blade in the seventies, and you only enhance what's already there.

Plus, there's also the bonus of potentially seeing the classic Blade outfit - green sunglasses and all.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.