Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe became Hollywood’s dominant superhero machine, there was Blade. The 1998 film gave Marvel a hard-edged screen identity years before Iron Man, and Wesley Snipes carried that world with lethal cool, martial-arts precision

With enough swagger to make the Daywalker dangerous before he even drew a weapon. Two sequels followed, cementing Snipes as inseparable from the character.

Decades later, Blade II director Guillermo del Toro still believes that star power was the secret ingredient behind Marvel’s vampire hunter.

While speaking to IGN for its IGN30 Icons series, Guillermo del Toro reflected on what made Snipes’ version of Blade so difficult to separate from the character itself. The conversation came up while discussing Marvel Studios’ abandoned Mahershala Ali reboot and why recreating Blade is such a challenge.

While del Toro went on to joke that Snipes is “100%” of Blade’s “Blade-ness,” he initially credited half of the character’s screen identity directly to the actor. 

“Blade is the weapon,” Snipes once told him. Del Toro recalled showing the actor an elaborate gun designed for Blade II, complete with a blade attached to it. Snipes rejected the idea because he believed excessive gadgets weakened the character. He wanted audiences focused on the man himself, rather than an arsenal resembling superhero toys. That response immediately convinced del Toro that Snipes understood exactly what made Blade intimidating.

“That’s a movie star,” del Toro remembered thinking whenever Snipes stepped in front of the camera. He also credited Stephen Norrington’s original Blade with giving comic-book cinema an edge that helped shift the genre away from established superhero templates. 

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Snipes helped define one of del Toro’s wildest studio movies, while the filmmaker’s next project is taking him back toward a far more handcrafted form of cinema.

Guillermo del Toro is currently developing The Buried Giant, his stop-motion adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2015 novel. The project continues his commitment to animation after Pinocchio, although this new fantasy is being designed specifically for adults. During his 2026 BFI appearances, del Toro described the production as extraordinarily demanding and stressed his determination to create its creatures through the same physical medium. 

That philosophy became even clearer when del Toro responded to a celebration of stop-motion animation online.

“Made by humans for humans,” he wrote while praising the artists keeping the craft alive and acknowledging that considerable experimentation remains ahead.

Del Toro has already warned that the process will take years. His reason is rooted in visual unity. A world filled with fantastical creatures needs to feel as though everything belongs to the same physical reality, something stop-motion allows him to build frame by frame. 

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What do you think about Guillermo del Toro crediting Wesley Snipes for Blade’s iconic personality? Let us know in the comments.