Mahershala Ali’s New Movie Scores 100% on Rotten Tomatoes Making Marvel’s BLADE Mess Look Even Worse

Mahershala Ali never got his chance to unleash the Daywalker in the MCU, but his latest movie may give fans a pretty good idea of what Marvel Studios missed out on.

After previously teaming up on Marvel’s troubledBlade reboot, Mahershala Ali and Bassam Tariq have reunited for Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, an action thriller that has come roaring out of the Toronto International Film Festival with a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

That’s pretty exciting, especially considering Tariq was attached to direct Blade longer than any of the other filmmakers who tried to get the movie off the ground.

While Marvel Studios failed to get Blade into production, Ali and Tariq moved on and made something of their own. The result sounds like exactly the kind of intense, character-driven action movie fans were hoping to see from their version of the Daywalker.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother stars Ali as Latif, a devoutly religious hitman caught between his violent profession, his faith, and his responsibilities as a father. After the death of his wife, Latif races across Houston trying to protect his children as enemies close in and his own beliefs begin to fracture.

That story gives Tariq plenty to work with, mixing brutal action with grief, religion, family, and moral conflict.

The cast also includes John Cho (Star Trek), Abubakr Ali (Grendel), Laith Nakli (Ms. Marvel), Tramell Tillman (Severance), Tiffany Boone (The Chi), and Giancarlo Esposito (The Mandalorian).

Following an early screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, the first wave of reviews has been incredibly strong, and critics are giving Ali and Tariq plenty of praise.

Deadline compared Tariq’s latest work to his feature debut, Mogul Mowgli, saying: "Though 180-degrees from his debut, Mogul Mowgli, Tariq’s film shows a similarly inventive depth to its writing, and it’s tempting to wonder what that film’s star, the intense but spiritual Riz Ahmed, could have done with the same material."

The Wrap praised the creative partnership between Ali and Tariq: "What Ali, Tariq and the collaborators have assembled feels not just like kismet but divinely ordained, as if this was the movie they were always meant to make."

Vulture offered perhaps the most entertaining description of the movie: "Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is a film about faith, grief, fatherhood, and stabbing people to death, and it whips ass in a way that makes its origin story feel downright serendipitous."

Next Best Picture also singled out Ali’s performance and the material Tariq gives him to explore: "His work here, as always, is fantastic, but the layering in Tariq’s writing allows an actor of Ali’s caliber to really dig deep into the incorporeal battle he’s toeing the line with."

IGN praised how the movie connects its larger themes to the world surrounding Latif, saying it: "Beats with a lived emotional authenticity, while unfolding against a borderline satirical modern United States whose religious and cultural concerns inform the movie’s sprawling drama."

As we mentioned, Tariq was once set to direct Ali as Blade before leaving the project, which went through years of creative problems, rewrites, delays, and filmmaker changes without ever making it to theaters.

But, the pair moved on and teamed up to deliver a killer action movie that critics are loving. Tariq’s new movie doesn’t tell us exactly what his MCU film would have looked like. But seeing him and Ali click this well certainly makes Marvel Studios’ inability to get their version of Blade made look like a major missed opportunity.

For fans still waiting to see Ali wield a sword as Marvel’s vampire hunter, this is the closest thing we’re getting because Ali has moved on from the project and closed the door on it.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother begins arriving in theaters on September 25.