In 1998, an unexpected movie smashed expectations and sparked a new era of superhero entertainment: Blade. Aided by Wesley's Snipes' star power and atmospheric action, Blade introduced the Daywalker to a whole new generation of fans and foreshadowed the movement towards a more serious, grounded approach to the genre, especially in the wake of recent failures like the campy Batman and Robin.
The film was also notable for its adherence to Blade's horror comic roots and made sure to include plenty of blood and violence. However, despite the fact that the film was rated R, New Line Cinema decided to intervene in pre-production to remove one particular jump scare, something that may have horrified audiences and potentially tarnished their perception of Blade's character irrevocably.
The jump scare would have occurred during the scene in which hematologist Dr. Karen Jenson (N'Bushe Wright) wakes up after Blade has heroically rescued her from vampire Quinn (Donal Logue). As she awakens, Karen explores Blade's living quarters and almost gets injured as she inspects his famous sword. From there, she witnesses Blade's mentor Whistler inject the Daywalker with his serum.
In the DVD commentary, screenwriter David S. Goyer explained that in the script, soon after Karen had inspected the sword, she would have discovered an infant human-vampire baby floating in a jar, resulting in a jump scare. The baby would later be explained to be a guinea pig that Blade and Whistler use to test out their anti-vampire weapons.
While this scare certainly would've been scary and demonstrative evidence of Blade's insatiable quest to defeat vampires, it probably would have shocked and alienated the audience. Killing attacking vampires is one thing, but if the hero was using a baby as a lab rat, it may have turned off some people. Blade was already extremely dark both visually and tonally, and this particular scene might've been too gratuitous. As Goyer puts it in the commentary, "I think it would have scared the living shit out of the audience, but New Line felt it was just too horrible."
Now that Kevin Feige has announced Deadpool 3 will indeed boast an R-rating, it remains to be seen how dark the Marvel Cinematic Universe's new version of Blade will be. Let's just hope the creative team at Marvel Studios thinks twice before putting any vampire babies in its new iteration of the iconic vampire hunter.