That is true. But really, the film is more vampire-action than it is superhero, especially in terms of how it was marketed to the audience. The fact that he isn't a traditional superhero in costume or general style in the movie kind of argues against him breaking open anything for the superheroes. Nobody was going, "Well, Blade worked, so now we can do other superhero movies."
This.
Clearly there were superhero films before Spider-Man and X-Men. There were...3? 4? Superman films. 4 Batman films. Batman and Robin was in 1997. Blade was a vampire/action movie. If you went up to Jane or Joe On The Street and asked if Blade was a superhero, I'll wager most would go "Blade who?", a few would go "No", and one might do as you did and recite chapter and verse. There was a superhero genre, but it was occasional and hit-or-miss. X-Men and Spider-Man triggered the real boom, but even then it took some time to catch on, with hits (X-Men 2, Spider-Man 2, Batman Begins) intermixed with flops. It didn't, IMO, "establish" until Iron Man - an actual new, not rebooted, superhero.
If I'm going to indulge in 11:45 AM navel-gazing, I'd say superhero movies have a few pivotal conventions, which include dual identities (not always secret, but a civilian vs hero one), a costume of some sort (identified with the hero identity), and a transformative event that defines the morality of the hero (often death of a parent or parents). A pivotal story arc involves reconciling the two identities. Action heroes don't have the identity issues or costume. They may or may not have transformative event. Blade doesn't have an alternate identity, his transformative event was prenatal and thus not really a crux point for him, and his costume is...weak. The stories, from what I recall, tend to be Blade vs bad guys, rather than Blade defending innocents. My mind keeps throwing John Wick up as a comparison. No alternate identity, "superhuman" ability, no real transformative event (more of a triggering event, triggering the resumption of his previous identity), weak costume.
