The Ryan Reynolds and Wesley Snipes Feud Keeps Making Blade: Trinity Better and Better

This post contains a major spoiler for Deadpool & Wolverine that you probably already know, but still.

“I don’t like you,” an aged Blade snaps at Deadpool, who has joined the Daywalker and other forgotten heroes in Deadpool & Wolverine in a place time for got. “You never have,” Deadpool responds.

Deadpool’s reply is, of course, one of his signature fourth-wall breaks. Because while Deadpool and Blade had never met before they both wound up in the Void, Ryan Reynolds and Wesley Snipes worked together on Blade: Trinity. Snipes recently referenced the tumultuous production of that ill-fated film, too, when explaining his surprise cameo to Entertainment Weekly. “I hate this guy,” Snipes recalls thinking when he got a text from Reynolds, who was talking to him about returning for Deadpool & Wolverine. But Snipes quickly flashes his smile and assures everyone that he’s joking, insisting, “We’ve been playing this for, like, two decades.”

Snipes is a great actor, but it’s hard to believe him here. After all, his feud with Reynolds and allegedly anyone else involved with Blade: Trinity is the stuff of legend.

For those too young to remember, 2004’s Blade: Trinity followed the first great Marvel movie Blade (1998) and the excellent Blade II (2002). Screenwriter David S. Goyer, who played a pivotal role in each of those movies’ productions, then convinced New Line Cinema to let him direct the threequel. I would be just his second movie, and a real come down after Stephen Norrington and Guillermo del Toro. The directing decision reportedly angered Snipes, who felt that the studio was taking away his franchise.

According to Patton Oswalt in a now famous interview with the A.V. Club, Snipes responded to Goyer’s ascendency in the most outrageous of ways, including only communicating with the director via stickie notes (signed “- Blade”) or refusing to open his eyes in important scenes.

Oswalt claims that Snipes’ abstinence also made room for Reynolds, who played vampire hunter Hannibal King alongside Jessica Biel‘s Abigail Whistler. “A lot of the lines that Ryan Reynolds has were just a result of Wesley not being there,” Oswalt claimed. “We would all just think of things for him to say and then cut to Wesley’s face not doing anything because that’s all we could get from him. It was kind of funny. We were like, ‘What are the worst jokes and puns that we can say to this guy?’ And then it would just be his face going, ‘Mmm.’ ‘Smiles are contagious.’ It’s so, so dumb.”

The increased attention that Reynolds got only annoyed Snipes more, especially as the two men’s stars faded. While Snipes has denied Oswalt’s version of events, calling them among other things “microaggressions,” there is no denying Snipes was unhappy with the Blade: Trinity production and how the finished film wound up giving more screen time to Reynolds and Biel than the title character. In 2005, Snipes even filed a lawsuit against New Line Cinema over the movie, citing among other issues that he was never provided proper approval over the hiring of the director and his co-stars despite his contractural role as producer. Furthermore, he felt the film’s “juvenile level of humor” was forced upon him for the “real purpose” of building up Reynolds and Biel’s characters for spin-offs at the expense of himself. He stated that Goyer hired an all-white cast and crew that fostered his “isolation and exclusion” on set.

More recently, Snipes has spoken vaguely but somewhat candidly about the experience with EW, saying “Some of the things [Reynolds] did back in those days, that’s not really my humor. I’m not tuned in that way.”

Anyone who rewatches might be shocked to hear so much to-do made about such a terrible movie. Blade: Trinity gets about everything wrong, wasting a great supporting cast (which includes Natasha Lyonne, Parker Posey, and Oswalt) on a dull tale about Blade facing off against a miscast Dominic Purcell as Dracula. The third movie put an end to the first great Marvel franchise, to the point that not even Kevin Feige and Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali have been able to successfully reboot it (yet).

Despite the terrible experience, Snipes has fully come around to Reynolds and his sense of humor. “Seeing him do it in this context made a lot of sense,” Snipes said of Reynolds in Deadpool & Wolverine. “And seeing him do it and do it well, Ryan does something that most people can’t do. He’s unique in that way and he’s found a fantastic niche for himself doing what he does. Deadpool is Ryan Reynolds all day long. So it was enjoyable. It was enjoyable to work with him. It was enjoyable to revisit.”

Do Snipes’ comments reflect a true change of heart? Or is he playing a different type of character, one to suit a more fan-friendly narrative? Only Deadpool and Blade know for sure. Either way, it is nice to see them to have buried the hatchet. Once you know the backstory, it even made Blade: Trinity far more entertaining in the process. We imagine Deadpool would be proud of that meta-improvement.

The Daywalker appears in sunny scenes of Deadpool & Wolverine, now playing in theaters.

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