Editorials
Breaking Down the Deleted ‘Blade’ Ending Featuring Morbius and Why We Never Got That Sequel
After a fifty-year comic book legacy, Morbius the Living Vampire will finally make his big screen debut in this year’s self-titled solo film. It’s a Marvel movie that perhaps no one saw coming a few years back, although development of a Morbius feature dates all the way back to 2000, when Artisan Entertainment partnered with Marvel to option fifteen of its comic book properties for feature adaptations, of which that title was included. But the theatrical legacy of this character dates back further than that, almost as far back as Marvel’s movie history in and of itself, as the character was originally set to debut at the end of 1998’s Blade.
Blade was, of course, only Marvel’s second big screen venture after 1986’s Howard the Duck—and far more successful, at that. While the credit usually goes to X-Men and Spider-Man for the massive comic book movie boom that has now sustained for two decades, Blade did so much to open the door to allow both of those films to happen in the first place. It was a film about an obscure character, a massive gamble, and it paid off. Because the movie was so risky, it’s actually a little surprising that director Stephen Norrington and writer David Goyer thought to set up a sequel in the first place, even if that tease was eventually cut.
To refresh anyone’s memory if they need it, Blade as we know it ends with the vampire hunter and the human Karen emerging onto a rooftop after their battle with Deacon Frost. Karen, who has cured herself of the infection, offers to help cure Blade as well, but having had his bloodlust reignited, he only suggests she make him a stronger serum instead, as he still needs his abilities in order to do his job. The movie then cuts to Moscow, where we see Blade set to take out some Russian vampires.
Initially, in the deleted ending, that rooftop scene went on a little longer. Blade still tells Karen to keep her cure because, as he says, “I still have a job to do.” This time, Karen then tells him “You’re on the clock,” revealing a figure watching the conversation from atop a nearby building. That figure is none other than Morbius. All in all, this blatant sequel tease of an ending might be a little too on-the-nose, but it’s also deliciously cheesy.
This ending was filmed and has been available to watch online in pretty low quality for years. Unfortunately, a higher-res version has never surfaced, though I would love to see any kind of behind-the-scenes footage or photos for what went into shooting that, if they even exist.
Imagine that, though: Morbius making his debut at the end of Blade, directly to tease a sequel in which he would be a central figure, before we even had Spider-Man on the big screen. More than that, this is the kind of direct, blatant sequel set-up that the MCU is known for and it was shot a full decade before the release of Iron Man. Heck, Marvel wouldn’t even attempt another credits sting until X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006. So what happened? Why was this amazing set-up scrapped in the first place?
The question is mostly answered by writer David Goyer on the DVD commentary. The ending was meant to set up a sequel in which Morbius would be the main antagonist. That was Goyer and director Stephen Norrington’s idea and would have formed the backbone of his sequel; but when Norrington left, that idea went with him. Guillermo del Toro came on board to direct Blade II instead and, naturally, wanted to do his own thing. That resulted in what most fans consider to the best movie of the Blade franchise.
It’s interesting to think of Morbius as the villain in the Blade sequel and what that may have looked like. Yes, the character made his debut as a Spider-Man villain, and he has a long history of rivalry with Blade, but he has never been anything but sympathetic. It would be surprising to see him portrayed as an outright antagonist, though it’s also possible that this hypothetical long-dead Blade II could have seen the two anti-heroes taking on some larger threat. With Morbius being not quite a vampire—or at least someone who came to vampirism through extremely non-conventional means—and often struggling to keep his bloodlust under control, he has a great deal in common with Blade. I’ve often assumed that their longstanding hatred for one another stems from just how much of themselves they see in the other, as there are so many similarities between the two of them. After all, vampires tend to get testy about looking into a mirror.
Everything about what that version of Blade II may have entailed is pure speculation, unfortunately, as it never seemed to even make it to a script stage, despite Morbius’ introduction being filmed. Sequel ideas were also tossed around introducing comic characters Frank Drake and Hannibal King, the latter of which would eventually appear in Blade Trinity played by Ryan Reynolds. Stephen Norrington turned down the offer to direct the sequel and del Toro came in with his own vampire mythology, to obviously great results. Norrington, however, had a much bigger role in Morbius’ introduction at the end of the original Blade than most fans would probably ever think to guess. I had always assumed the role of Morbius in that scrapped cameo was played by an unnamed stuntman, but the truth is way more interesting as the person wearing Morbius’ billowy coat in that cut finale is none other than director Stephen Norrington himself.
That’s both amazing and entirely unsurprising as it meant not having to hire someone for an incredibly brief role, plus the fact that you can’t actually make out any details about Morbius save for his signature long, black hair.
After his departure from Blade, Norrington wound up becoming attached to countless other projects, including a few other Marvel movies. In 2001, he was attached to direct Ghost Rider, before the project shifted hands from Dimension to Columbia. That same year, he signed a deal to direct The Hands of Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu, which was in development for years, though never actively, and Norrington was replaced as director on that by Yuen Woo-ping in 2005. In 2007, he was set to direct the remake of Clash of the Titans which he left on the grounds that he had never grown up with the original, handing the reigns to Incredible Hulk director Louis Leterrier instead. In 2008, Norrington announced that he would direct a remake of The Crow and remained attached for several years before departing in 2013. Several other filmmakers have come and gone from that project since. Norrington was also said by Robert Englund to have been attached to Freddy vs. Jason in 2001. Just before Norrington was attached—and just after Rob Bottin disappeared from both the development of that film and the industry as a whole—Englund noted another filmmaker had boarded the project when speaking to Horror Online at the time: “I believe they were going to go with Guillermo del Toro, who I love. I loved Cronos and Mimic. But he’s busy with Blade II now.”
By that timeline, Norrington would have turned down Blade II, leaving del Toro to come in and replace him, with del Toro leaving Freddy vs. Jason in the process, leaving Norrington to replace him on that. Which, if true, is an amazing perfect circle of development hell. Unfortunately, other than the quotes from Englund, neither director’s involvement has ever seemed to be substantiated, so it’s possible that neither one of them was ever as seriously involved with the project as rumors have led fans to believe.
Norrington’s last film as director was 2003’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. As a big fan of that first Blade, though, I would love to see him finally direct something else that actually gets made. While Blade would certainly have been a no-brainer to bring Morbius to the big screen, it’s crazy to actually see the character debut in his own solo film two decades later. It’s a natural instinct to think it’s insane that comic book culture has ballooned to such a massive size that characters like Morbius can get their own movie, but the truth is, thanks to being tied to Spider-Man and featuring prominently in the ‘90s animated series, Morbius was probably a more well known character than Blade at the time that movie came out. Although Blade made a few appearances on that cartoon as well, they were smaller guest appearances, like many other Marvel heroes.
Between then and now there was another outlet that was rumored to see Morbius make his live-action debut: the short-lived Blade: The Series. That show, which ran for only thirteen episodes on Spike, was cancelled after an extreme cliffhanger. David Goyer and everyone involved seemed to think a second season was almost guaranteed and there were concrete plans for what the second season would have entailed. While rumors of Morbius’ inclusion circulated for a long time, they were never confirmed and there’s almost no way they could be true, as by that time the Spider-Man franchise was in full swing and the character was firmly tied up at Sony. However: Blade: The Series was set to mark the live-action debut of yet another Marvel character long before they finally hit the screen, as the supernatural vigilante Moon Knight was set to appear in the second season, had it been made. Moon Knight now has a series headed to Disney+.
For a character (and film) that almost never gets mentioned alongside other foundational Marvel heroes, Blade did a ton to make this hero-heavy climate possible, in some unconventional, crucial, and unfortunately largely forgotten ways.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on January 16, 2020.
Of the three films that make up the Diabolical Trinity of classic religious horror films—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)—The Omen is the most purely entertaining.
While Rosemary’s Baby digs into the societal shifts of the 60s and The Exorcist explores spiritual tensions between faith and doubt in an ever-shifting world, The Omen seems most interested in just telling a thrilling story. It achieves this by blending two major trends of the 1970s, the devil movie and the paranoid thriller, into one crackling adventure yarn. In the process, The Omen has sparked fear and curiosity about what could happen in the “end times” if such events are to occur.
After seeing The Exorcist, producer Harvey Bernhard contacted writer David Seltzer and said something along the lines of, “Hey, write me one of those.” Seltzer, having never read the Bible, thought it would be an interesting challenge, so, according to various interviews, he read the Bible and several commentaries in search of a story. Then he stumbled upon a passage in the book of Revelation, the image of a great Beast rising out of the sea, that sparked his imagination. In the commentaries, he found that the sea represented politics in some interpretations of the text, and he began building his story on that foundation.
Seltzer has told this story often, and I am inclined to believe him. However, from there, much of the theological-sounding lore of The Omen was created purely by Seltzer. Many of the ideas surrounding The Antichrist in the film appear to be drawn much more from the pop-eschatology sensation of the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, than any Biblical source.
Lindsay’s book was the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s and re-popularized views of the “last days” that had been dying along with fundamentalism for decades, namely Dispensationalism, Millennialism, and the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In dispensationalism, history is broken into several epochs of time (or dispensations) that culminate in the return of Christ and his thousand-year (millennial) reign.
Before this return, a seven-year Tribulation will occur in which the Antichrist comes to power and persecutes all who oppose him, culminating in a battle between the forces of good and evil at the valley of Megiddo, usually called Armageddon. Of course, in this worldview, the true believers in Jesus will be lifted out, or raptured, before all this takes place. Since the publication and popularity of The Late Great Planet Earth, this has been the prominent belief in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian circles, though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant denominations largely reject it.
Lindsay also did something unique that had not been the case even in dispensationalist circles before him—he posited that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 started the countdown to Armageddon. Fans of the film will immediately realize where Seltzer ran with this idea in the first line of the poem created for the movie: “When the Jews return to Zion…”
Damien Thorn and the Creation of Horror’s “Innocent Villain”
Seltzer’s next inspiration focused on the idea of the Antichrist as a child, what he would call the film’s “innocent villain.” In watching The Omen, it is readily apparent that Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens) does not really do anything evil beyond a bit of normal kid mischief. Even the moment in which Damien knocks Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) over a second-floor railing can be read as an accident orchestrated by Damien’s diabolically connected nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The film takes this idea of the innocent villain a step further by casting Gregory Peck, best known for playing arguably the greatest father in film history, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as Damien’s earthly father, an element that greatly satisfied Seltzer.
The New Testament itself says very little about the Antichrist and certainly nothing about his childhood. In fact, the word antichrist is used twice (1 John 2:18 and 2 John 7 for the curious) and refers to groups of people, not a particular person. There is also a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 in which the writer (usually attributed to Paul) discusses “The Man of Lawlessness” who will “exalt himself over everything that is called God” and “proclaim himself to be God.”
Then there is the Beast of Revelation chapter 13 with “seven heads and ten horns” that Seltzer latched onto, which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Powerful people throughout history, from Charlemagne, various Popes during the Protestant Reformation era, Napoleon and Hitler, to modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have all had the label placed on them by various circles. Even religious leaders like Billy Graham have not escaped being called the Antichrist.
Lindsay and modern dispensationalists are certain the Antichrist will be a 21st-century individual as they are equally certain that the Rapture, Tribulation, and return of Christ are imminent, likely within their lifetime. Many scholars and theologians, however, interpret these passages as symbolic representations of the Roman Empire and the first-century Caesars who persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians and Jews who refused to submit to Imperial rule and worship them as gods. For example, that the Beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads is symbolic of the famous seven mountains of Rome, with the 10 horns referring to rulers and magistrates of the Empire.
But this is all really of no matter to Seltzer and the story of The Omen. Instead of being concerned with any historical or theological accuracy, he instead built his own lore, which sends Robert Thorn and photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) on a globetrotting investigation into the nature of the Antichrist and how to stop him. Some of this lore includes the child being born of a jackal, the reaction of animals, the protective cult that arises around Damien, the daggers of Megiddo, and maybe most interesting of all, the peculiar flaws in Jennings’s photographs that presage the ways certain individuals will die.
All these aspects are where the paranoid thrillers come in, as films like Blow Up (1966), Z (1969), The Conversation (1974), The Parallax View (1974), 3 Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976) were all the rage at the time. Especially in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the idea of journalists (like Jennings) as ordinary heroes who could bring down the powerful, nefarious forces in the world was exactly what audiences craved. And what greater hidden evil force was there than the Devil? This is also why the device of the daggers of Megiddo is so important to a movie like this. If Damien is indeed the Antichrist, there must be a way to stop him, though in the Biblical text, the only power capable of destroying the Devil is God Himself.
The Mark of the Beast, 666, and the Film’s Most Famous Religious Symbolism
The piece of lore created for the movie with the most solid Biblical grounding is the Mark of the Beast. Revelation describes a mark on the forehead or hand of those who worship the Beast and his image. Again, this is symbolic language differentiating those who belong to the power of the Roman Empire and those who belong to Christ, who have the Mark of the Lamb. In Seltzer’s hands, the mark is very literal, a birthmark that is borne by not only the Antichrist but all his followers, meaning they are marked from before birth as belonging to Satan, and there is no escaping it. This is all rather distressing to the priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who betrays his mark by warning Thorn about Damien and pays the price by memorably being impaled by a spire that falls from a church steeple after being struck by lightning.
Why is the mark three sixes? Again, this is drawn from a passage in Revelation that states that the Beast can be identified by calculating his number. In Biblical scholarship, this is believed to be the sum of the name of a man transferred into Hebrew numerology, a practice in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number. Using this method, the number of the name Caesar Nero, which many believe to be the most logical choice, is six hundred sixty-six. In the film and elsewhere, this number is changed to three individual sixes. According to the film, this represents the Diabolical Trinity (a designation also unique to the film) made up of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. That Damien carries this unique birthmark under his hair convinces Robert that the child is the Antichrist, and it’s up to him to destroy him.
Part of what makes The Omen great is its ambiguity. Damien could be the Antichrist, or he could be at the center of a series of coincidences. Director Richard Donner stated in interviews that he believed Robert Thorn had gone insane by the end of the film, which, to Donner, is the only explanation for why Thorn would attempt to kill an innocent child. However, that enigmatic smile in the final shot suggests that Damien does embody a spirit of great evil. The sequels, however, all but erase this ambiguity.
In audiences, The Omen sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the Antichrist and the dispensationalist interpretation of the end times that continues to echo throughout the last five decades. Around the time of the film’s release, even Elvis Presley was photographed brandishing a paperback copy of Seltzer’s novelization. Dispensationalist authors like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee have made millions publishing books and giving lectures about the Antichrist and the end of the world.
The Legacy of The Omen, 50 Years Later
Though A Thief in the Night (1972) preceded The Omen in initial release, it gained quite a resurgence (along with the ability to create three sequels) in the wake of the popularity of The Omen and went on to scar the psyches of Evangelical children for decades. Hal Lindsay was also able to release a film version of The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978, complete with narration and a brief onscreen appearance from Orson Welles.
In the 1990s, the Left Behind series became a cultural phenomenon, spawning twelve books in the core series, a YA spinoff series, video games, and a movie series (2000-2005) starring Kirk Cameron. A bigger studio adaptation of the first book was released in 2014, starring Nicolas Cage. 20th Century Fox and The Omen got in on the renewed “end-of-the-world” vigor by releasing a remake of the original film on June 6, 2006. The franchise was revived once again in 2024 with The First Omen, which explores ideas of the Antichrist and the motivations of those in power in our current religious, social, and political context.
But despite all the sequels, spinoffs, rip-offs, remakes, and “end times” money grabs of the last 50 years, the original version of The Omen remains untouchable. Its greatest strength is that it seeks, first and foremost, to entertain. And it does so admirably.
After half a century, its influence can be felt in horror, the culture at large, and even in various faith circles. It is a testament to the power of story and film that, consciously or unconsciously, fans of The Omen and those who have never seen it alike are, to this very day, marked by the Beast.
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