Eric Brooks, better known as Blade, is the central protagonist of the Blade film series. Based on the character of the same name from Marvel Comics, he is a hybrid of human and vampire. He possesses all of the strength and abilities of vampires, but shares none of their weaknesses other than the thirst for human blood. However, Blade resists the thirst with the aid of a special serum created by his partner Abraham Whistler, and uses his abilities to hunt and kill the vampires that created him.
History[]
Birth and early life[]
Blade's mother, Vanessa Brooks, was bitten by the vampire Deacon Frost while she was pregnant. She was found and taken to a hospital where doctors were able to save her baby, but Vanessa died.
Much of Eric Brooks' early life is unknown, but by his early teens he was living on the streets, having completely given into the thirst and feeding on the homeless. He would one day be found by vampire hunter Abraham Whistler, who almost mistook him for a full-blooded vampire and killed him. Instead, Whistler took the boy in and studied him, realising his hybrid nature, and researched a method to ween him off his thirst for blood. Eventually, he concocted a serum that kept young Eric's thirst in check and allowed him a sense of self-control.
Under Whistler's guidance, Eric learned how to fight using his vampiric strength as well as various weapons specially designed for slaying vampires. Developing a particular talent for swordplay, Eric was given the name "Blade".
Blade[]
By 1998, Blade and Whistler were operating in New York, attempting to hunt down vampire lord Deacon Frost. One night, after destroying one of Frost's vampire nightclubs, he tracked the vampire Quinn to a hospital and caught him feeding on Dr. Karen Jenson. Blade sent Quinn running and saved Jenson, but having been bitten, she was at risk of turning. Blade took the doctor back to Whistler's hideout where Whistler treated her, but was also prepared to kill her if she showed signs of turning.
Karen recovered the next day, and Blade followed her, knowing that the vampires would be targeting her after being exposed to them and used her in an effort to find Frost. Blade followed Karen back to her apartment where she was attacked by one of Frost's familiars, a police officer. Blade intervened and beat him hard, just to follow him again to the hideout of a vampire archivist named Pearl. Blade and Karen interrogated him, and found out Frost's plans regarding La Magra, a legendary vampire "blood god". The two were then attacked by Quinn and Mercury, but managed to escape thanks to Whistler's arrival.
Days later, while Blade was out picking up a new batch of serum from one of his allies, Frost and his minions attacked Whistler's hideout. Whistler was beaten and bitten and Karen was kidnapped, taken to Frost's lair at Edgewood Towers. When Blade returned, he found Whistler covered in blood and a video tape message left behind by Frost, daring the Daywalker to come to him. Blade left a gun for Whistler to shoot himself and avoid turning into a vampire, but would later discover that Whistler's suicide attempt failed and he had turned.
Arming himself with all the weapons he could carry, including several vials of EDTA blood-thinner, Blade invaded Frost's lair. When he reached Frost's inner sanctum, he was shocked to find a woman who referred to him by his birth name: his mother. Frost then entered with an army of minions and Frost admitted to Blade that he was the one who had bitten and turned his mother, making her his mistress.
Blade was placed in a special sarcophagus for his blood to be drained and used for freeing La Magra. Exhausted, Blade was saved by Karen, who managed to free herself. The woman let Blade bite her to regain his strength, just in time to kill his mother. Blade then invaded the temple where the members of the House of Erebus were sacrificed in order to resurrect La Magra. After killing all of Frost's minions, Blade attacked Frost himself, who had become the avatar of La Magra. Their battle was fierce, but with the blood god's power, Frost had become all but indestructible as Blade's weapons failed to affect him. However, Blade was able to retrieve a package containing the vials of EDTA, which Blade had already discovered would cause normal vampires to explode. Throwing every remaining vial at Frost, Blade injected him with enough EDTA to kill dozens of vampires. Even with La Magra's power, Frost was still susceptible to such a massive dose and swelled up like a balloon before bursting in a spectacular explosion of gore.
Frost and the House of Erebus had been destroyed, but Blade's war against the Vampire Nation continued. After discovering Whistler had disappeared from his hideout, Blade went in search of his old mentor, intent on either saving him or destroying him.
Blade II[]
In his search for Whistler, Blade tracked vampire movements in Russia and the Czech Republic and eventually tracked his old friend down to a vampire halfway house. The vampires hadn't let Whistler fully convert and had spent two years keeping him in cryogenic stasis, periodically waking him just to torture him. Blade eventually recovered him and took him back to his hideout, locked the old man in a room and injected him with a cure that Dr. Jenson had developed to cure herself of her own infection. Whether the cure worked or not, Blade was going to open the window blinds come morning. Fortunately for Whistler, the cure worked.
Shortly after Whistler's recovery, Blade's hideout was breached by representatives of the House of Damaskinos, the ruling body of the Vampire Nation. Asad and Nyssa told Blade that they had come under a banner of truce, offering to escort Blade, Whistler and Scud to their base in Prague. Their, the slayers met with the vampire overlord Eli Damaskinos, who informed them about a mutation in the vampire genome known as the Reaper. The carrier of the Reaper virus, Jared Nomak, had been feeding on Prague's vampire population, turning them into Reapers as well. Damaskinos had called upon Blade to work with his own forces to hunt down Nomak, citing that the Reapers would target humans once they had killed off the vampires.
Blade was then introduced to the Bloodpack, a group of vampire warriors that had been trained to hunt him, and given the authority to lead them. The group then began their hunt for Nomak at the House of Pain, a safehouse for vampires. Sure enough, the group encountered Nomak and his pack there, but they would soon discover that the Reapers were immune to most conventional vampire-killing weapons and techniques. They did, however, learn that the Reapers were still just as vulnerable to ultraviolet rays as standard vampires.
After recovering a Reaper that had died from malnourishment, Blade and the Bloodpack performed an autopsy on it and readjusted their tactics going forward. The group then ventured into the sewers of Prague where the Reapers were congregating, equipping themselves with ultraviolet flash bombs as well as harvested Reaper pheromones to use as a lure. During the battle in the sewers, most of the Bloodpack were killed, leaving only Nyssa and Reinhardt. Though they had suffered heavy losses, the team ultimately succeeded in exterminating the Reaper horde, although Nomak had escaped once again.
No sooner had the Reaper horde been destroyed, an army of Damaskinos' familiars descended on Blade and captured him. When he awoke in Damaskinos' lair, Blade was told by the vampire ruler how the Reaper virus had been engineered in order to create a new breed of vampire and that Nomak, Damaskinos' own son, was the first test subject. At this time, Scud revealed that he had been working for Damaskinos the whole time he had been running with Blade, mocking him after removing the explosive that Blade had attached to Reinhardt to keep him in line. Blade, however, knew all about Scud's double-cross and remotely detonated the bomb, killing him.
Blade was taken by Damaskinos' minions and placed on a torture table. Spikes emerged from the table that stabbed through Blade's body in order to drain his blood, bone marrow and spinal fluid to be used in Damaskinos' future experiments. However, the lair was invaded by Nomak while this was occurring, diverting most of the base's forces. Whistler was able to escape confinement and find Blade, taking him to the central chamber which housed a pool of blood. Whistler pushed Blade into the blood pool and the Daywalker quickly recovered from his wounds. He then proceeded to singlehandedly wipe out a large group of Damaskinos' minions and also killed Reinhardt.
After killing Reinhardt, Blade followed the path of carnage that Nomak had left in his wake, finding the Reaper standing over the bodies of his father and sister. Eli was dead, but Nyssa had been infected by Nomak's bite. Blade and Nomak fought, though the Daywalker struggled to land a fatal blow on the Reaper. In the end, he was able to wedge his broken sword through a vent in the bone shell around Nomak's heart, bringing the Reaper to his knees. Seemingly glad to die, Nomak pushed the broken sword further into his heart, ensuring his death. Once Nomak was ash, Blade tended to Nyssa, who wanted to die before the Reaper infection took hold. Blade carried Nyssa outside just as the sun was rising, and she disintegrated in his arms.
Blade: Trinity[]
A few years later, Blade and Whistler had returned to the US where they continued hunting vampires. However, Blade would find himself the victim of a setup orchestrated by the House of Talos; he shot and killed a human familiar and the event was caught on camera and sent to both the police and the media. Not long after, the FBI found Blade's hideout, capturing Blade and killing Whistler.
Blade was briefly held in FBI custody until Danica Talos arrived to take him. Before she could, however, Blade was rescued by Hannibal King and Abigail Whistler of the Nightstalkers. They took Blade back to their hideout and informed him that they were now his support crew since Abigail's father was gone. At first, Blade was dismissive of the group, believing them to be amateurs, but King revealed that he was once a vampire himself and had been running with the Talos siblings before the Nightstalkers captured and cured him.
The Nightstalkers informed Blade that the House of Talos had found and awakened the legendary vampire patriarch Dracula in order to use his blood to engineer a new vampire race. In order to defeat the vampires, they decided to fight fire with fire and develop their own biological weapon that could wipe them all out at once. To make their Daystar virus work, however, they would need the blood of Dracula.
While Blade and Abby were out one night shutting down a vampire blood farm, Drake attacked the Nightstalkers' hideout, killing most of the group while King and the young Zoe Somerfield were abducted. After returning to find their comrades dead, Blade and Abby contacted another Nightstalkers cell who provided them transport and a vial containing the Daystar virus. Abby was entrusted with the sample and attached it to an arrow in her quiver, ready to take the shot against Drake.
The duo then stormed the lair of the Talos siblings, slaughtering several vampires and familiars before freeing King, who then joined the battle. While King and Abby fought of Danica's army, Blade confronted Drake in an epic swordfight. During the fight, Drake transformed into his pure form and began to overpower Blade. Witnessing the fight from a walkway, Abby took aim at Drake and fired the Daystar arrow. Drake was able to catch the arrow mid-flight, but Blade seized the opportunity to stab him in the abdomen and cause him to drop the vial. Blade caught the vial and stabbed it into Drake's abdominal wound, injecting him with the Daystar virus. The virus quickly mutated within Drake's bloodstream and the vampire patriarch spewed a cloud of infected blood from his mouth, releasing the virus as an airborne agent that quickly infected and killed every remaining vampire in the building.
Blade was also affected by the virus and lost consciousness. Following the battle, the FBI arrived at Talos' lair where they recovered Blade's body. However, Blade wasn't killed by the virus and awoke while en route to the morgue and escaped.
Personality[]
Blade is aloof and stoic; he rarely speaks unless he needs to, so there is always weight behind his words. He is a man with few desires and wants, only ever concerned about his mission to hunt down and destroy vampires wherever he finds them. Abraham Whistler is the closest thing to a friend Blade has, and Whistler regards Blade like a son.
The only emotions Blade regularly shows are anger and hatred, typically directed towards vampires and any humans who serve them. He also shows very little care about human bystanders who get caught in the crossfire between him and his enemies, though he does hold value for human life and typically will not attack an enemy holding a hostage.
Abilities[]
- Superior Strength - As a dhampir, Blade exhibits strength far greater than a normal human being.
- Superior Reflexes - Blade has shown incredible reaction time and is able to easily dodge most attacks.
- Superhuman Senses - Blade has heightened senses of sight, sound and smell. He is able to distinguish humans and vampires by scent alone.
- Regenerative Healing - When injured, Blade can heal his wounds very quickly. If he ingests blood while injured, he will regenerate most wounds almost instantly.
Weaknesses[]
While vampires are all vulnerable to sunlight, garlic and silver, Blade is immune to all of these. His only vampiric weakness is the thirst for human blood; he needs blood to survive and going without it causes him to become ferocious and animalistic. However, he regularly takes a serum developed by Whistler that sustains him and allows him to hold the thirst at bay.
Weapons and equipment[]
- Sword - Blade wields a custom-made sword with an acid-etched titanium blade which can make short work of vampires. The hilt of the sword contains a set of retractable blades designed to prevent anyone other than Blade from wielding it, who holds it in a particular way to keep the mechanism from activating.
- Firearms - Blade carries a number of guns that have been customized for hunting vampires, including a shotgun, Magnum and TMPs. All of these guns are loaded with rounds made using silver nitrate, though the shotgun can also fire silver stakes and shells loaded with silver nitrate and garlic extract.
- Knives - Blade carries a set of throwing knives made from silver.
- Chakram - An ornate throwing weapon with curved, acid-etched titanium blades.
- EDTA - A blood-thinning agent that is delivered either by thrown darts or a specialized gauntlet. Vampires are violently allergic to this substance as it can cause their blood to combust. A standard dose is enough to cause a vampire's body to swell up like a balloon and explode.
- Body Armour - Blade wears a Kevlar-weave bulletproof vest to protect himself from gunfire.