When the first Blade movie hit theater screens in August of 1998 it became a surprise smash hit and accomplished several noteworthy goals: it gave Wesley Snipes an iconic movie hero in the mold of Rambo and John McClane to call his own, spawned one of New Line Cinema’s most lucrative franchises since the heyday of Freddy Krueger and the Ninja Turtles, and it proved that Marvel Comics characters could successfully headline their own motion picture adventures, thus paving the way for Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Avengers to rule the box office in the years that followed. It took four years for a sequel to come together but with Guillermo Del Toro at the helm, Blade II surpassed the original in every way and became one of the best comic book movie sequels of all. The rapturous reception from moviegoers and critics that greeted Blade II helped revive Del Toro’s American directing career.

Expectations were high for a third Blade movie; at one point German filmmaker Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) was rumored to take the reins for a post-apocalyptic sequel that would have had Snipes’ monosyllabic vampire hunter continue his neverending battle in a world dominated by the bloodthirsty undead. Instead David S. Goyer, the screenwriter who was instrumental in bringing Blade to the big screen, signed on to write and direct the movie that would be released in December 2004 as Blade: Trinity. The end result has since been deemed by many to be one of the worse comic book movies ever made, if not the absolute worse. Make no mistake friends, if you’ve never seen the movie you’re not missing anything at all. It’s atrocious. In the annals of superhero it ranks with the likes of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and Elektra. Blade: Trinity makes other maligned third chapters of comic book movie franchises like X-Men: The Last Stand and Spider-Man 3 look like masterpieces in comparison.