MarvelKevin Feige is finally shedding some light on the delays plaguing Blade, the franchise’s much-delayed remake. It’s been six years since the Marvel Studios boss first unveiled plans to introduce the ultra-cool Daywalker to the MCU, with two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali attached to star — and Marvel has spent most of those years struggling to make good on those plans. After the departure of two different directors, a revolving door of writers taking cracks at the script, and some very public irritation from Ali himself, Feige is ready to set the record straight. Unfortunately, his explanation just proves what most fans have feared: Marvel is making Blade way more complicated than it needs to be.In a recent interview with press, Feige admitted that the MCU’s struggles with quality over quantity could partially be blamed for Blade’s delays. Thanks to the franchise’s “over-expansion,” quantity seemed to trump quality “for the first time ever.” “We always had more characters that people were asking about than we could possibly make,” Feige explained. “Suddenly there’s a mandate to make more, and we go, ‘Well, we do have more’ … But maybe that’s what we fell into.”Feige admits that Blade was caught in the search for quality over quantity. | Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty ImagesFeige has since been working hard to right what many see as a sinking ship — and that dogged determination to bring back the quality of previous Marvel projects ironically kneecapped development on Blade. “We didn’t feel like, as we often do, you can have a good script and make it a great script through production,” Feige said, citing Marvel’s former strategy of “finding the film” or improving a story with reshoots and rewrites. But in the efforts to avoid that by crafting the perfect script also has Marvel stuck in gear, striving to overcorrect one of their biggest issues.“It fell into the time when we started pulling back and saying, ‘Only accept insanely great,’” continued Feige. “We didn’t want to simply just put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires. It had to be unique.”Feige’s hesitation to go where fans might expect is the very thing that’s put Blade so off-course. Per the exec, Marvel had been toying with the idea of a period setting for the film. Of the “three or four” versions of Blade Marvel’s worked on in the past six years, two were set in the past, with one in particular in the 1930s. That just doesn’t make much sense for the character: apart from the fact that Blade was already teased in Eternals, his storylines have always been set primarily in the present day. His origins have never been all that complex, either — at the end of the day, he is a man who dons leather and slays vampires. Before the latex-fueled craze that gave us The Matrix and even Fox’s X-Men movies, that was exactly what made Blade unique. Even with so many imitators, Blade remains singular; Marvel’s attempts to add further complexity betray a huge miscalculation on Feige’s part.Blade may finally be on the right track, after six years of searching for a “unique” way forward. | New Line CinemaWhatever mistakes Marvel has made with Blade, the studio hasn’t given up on the film just yet. It is still in the works, and Ali is still attached to star. Per Feige, production has finally landed on a “modern” story for the character, though we’ll have to wait for more details. Marvel is still searching for a director to replace Yann Demange, who himself replaced Bassam Tariq. And that’s only half the battle: while Blade is finally on track as far as its setting, it still needs to stay true to the Blade we know and love. Otherwise, what’s the point of bringing him into the MCU?