Daredevil was created in 1964 by Stan Lee and Bill Everett, based on a character design by Jack Kirby. DD has one of the more ingenious superhero disguises, as his secret identity is a blind lawyer named Matt Murdock. Thanks to the early-Marvel catch-all of radiation = super-powers, young Matt was blinded by a radioactive canister, but his other senses were expanded a hundredfold.
The character was always something of a B-lister, never having the same level of prominence as Spider-Man and the Avengers and the Fantastic Four throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and in the 1980s, the title was on the verge of cancellation, when writer Roger McKenzie departed the title and his artist, Frank Miller, was given the chance to write the book. Under Miller’s guidance, the book was increased to monthly and became immensely popular, as Miller built on the darker tone McKenzie had started, and focused on DD as a city vigilante, fighting gangsters and such, in particular a minor Spider-Man villain, the Kingpin of Crime, as well as ninjas—lots of ninjas.
DD’s popularity meant that the spate of early 21st-century movies featuring Marvel characters almost had to include ol’ Hornhead.
Miller’s work vaulted Daredevil to the A-list. In addition to bringing in the Kingpin, he also utilized several elements that previous writers had created, from the incredibly skilled assassin Bullseye (created by Marv Wolfman) to Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich (created by McKenzie). Urich actually figured out that DD and Murdock are one and the same.
Perhaps the biggest thing Miller did, though, was a retcon regarding Murdock’s pre-Daredevil past. He introduced Elektra Natchios, a diplomat’s daughter whom Murdock met while he was at Columbia University. They had a tumultuous relationship, he confided his secret to her, but then her father was killed, and she went home.
He went on to become a superhero, she went on to become a ninja assassin, and their tumultuous relationship got even more so when they crossed paths again years later. And the issue in which she died at Bullseye’s hands, issue #181, remains regarded as a classic comic book. She was later resurrected, and has continued to be a presence in DD’s life, and elsewhere in the Marvel milieu.
Like so many Marvel properties, Daredevil was optioned by a studio. The backdoor pilot for a DD TV show in The Trial of the Incredible Hulk didn’t come to anything, so they sold the film option to 20th Century Fox, which wound up being the first of many. It bounced around to Columbia (after failed negotiations with Disney), and finally New Regency, who used Fox to distribute it. Cha cha cha. Chris Columbus was attached for some time, and he even wrote a script, then Mark Steven Johnson was brought in to write a new script, and when the rights settled with New Regency, Johnson was also hired to direct.
Early-21st-century “it” couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner were cast as Daredevil and Elektra, respectively. (Garner would star in a solo spinoff two years later, which we’ll cover next week, and it was meeting on this set that led to their being that couple.) Michael Clarke Duncan was cast as the Kingpin, with Colin Farrell as Bullseye. While Kingpin is white in the comics—and the other two times he’s been done on screen he’s been played by John Rhys-Davies and Vincent D’Onofrio—he was cast with a black actor here. Having said that, Duncan actually looks most like the Kingpin of the comics of the three of them (though all three have the requisite massive physicality required for the role).
The rest of the cast included longtime character actor Joe Pantoliano as Urich, David Keith and Erick Avari as the fathers of, respectively, Murdock and Elektra, and Jon Favreau as Murdock’s law partner Foggy Nelson. (Five years after this, Favreau would be one of the first movers and shakers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, directing Iron Man and appearing in it as Happy Hogan.) Paul Ben-Victor, Jude Ciccolella, Leland Orser, and Robert Iler rounded out the cast. It was particularly entertaining in 2003 to see Iler, who played Anthony Soprano Jr. on The Sopranos, as a bully.
Daredevil became one of the most successful February releases in history, but given the movies that are generally released in February, this is rather like being the finest ice skater in the Bahamas. Critical response was mixed, and when Elektra failed at both the box office and critically, the planned DD sequel (which would possibly have adapted the “Born Again” storyline by Miller and David Mazzucchelli) never came to be. Aside from a cameo in Elektra, Hornhead wouldn’t be seen on screen again until 2015 when Marvel’s Daredevil would inaugurate Netflix’s collection of MCU shows.
“I need a fucking costume!”
Daredevil
Written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson
Produced by Gary Foster and Amon Milchan and Avi Arad
Original release date: February 14, 2003
Daredevil is clutching a cross atop a church. He falls down into the church itself, where Father Everett finds him. A voiceover talks about how your life flashes before your eyes when you’re dying, and that prompts a flashback…
Young Matthew Murdock is tormented by bullies growing up in Hell’s Kitchen. His father is Jack Murdock, a former boxer who now works as an enforcer for a mobster named Fallon. However, Jack’s been lying to Matt and when Matt discovers the truth, he runs away angrily, only to get involved in an accident that causes radioactive waste to hit his eyes.
While the gunk blinded him, his other senses are heightened greatly. He can use his increasing hearing as a kind of sonar, his increased touch enables him to hone his athletic skills, and he soon becomes quite the bad-ass. He beats up the bullies who were after him, and also saves the life of an old man who looks just like Stan Lee from being run over while crossing the street.
Jack makes Matt promise to make something of himself, to become a doctor or a lawyer. Jack also gets back into boxing, but he’s still in Fallon’s pocket. Fallon orders him to take a dive, but with Matt in the audience watching (well, listening), Jack wins the fight, only to get pounded to death by one of Fallon’s enforcers, a big guy from the Bronx named Wilson Fisk, who leaves a rose on the corpse.
Matt grows up and goes to law school, starting a practice with his best friend Franklin “Foggy” Nelson. Matt insists on only taking clients who are innocent, and he can tell who’s innocent or guilty by listening to their heartbeats. Most of the cases are pro bono, too, or at the very least are clients who can’t afford lawyers. (One client pays with fluke.) Foggy wants to branch out to actual rich and possibly guilty clients, but Matt insists.
In addition, Matt has honed his athleticism and use of his enhanced four remaining senses to dress up in a red devil outfit (inspired by the devil-style outfit Jack wore) and dispense justice when the law isn’t enough. We see him in a case against a rapist named Jose Quesada. Matt and Foggy lose the case, and so Daredevil chases down Quesada from a bar and into the subway, where DD watches him get run over and killed by the C train. Later, he stops a mugging and chases the bad guy into a building. A kid observes DD beating the crap out of the mugger and cowers in fear, but DD insists that he’s not the bad guy. The kid looks unconvinced.
Battered and bruised, Matt returns home and showers and tends his wounds. He hears a woman getting shot and killed as he’s getting into his isolation chamber for sleep, but does nothing about it.
While Foggy and Matt are in a coffee shop, a woman walks in. Matt immediately starts hitting on her for reasons that aren’t particularly clear. He gives her his name but she doesn’t give hers as she walks out. Matt follows her and they wind up having a friendly sparring session in a playground. She introduces herself as Elektra Natchios (while holding a side kick near his throat), the daughter of Nikolas Natchios, the billionaire.
New York Post reporter Ben Urich has been doing stories on Daredevil—most people believe him to be an urban legend—and also has been gathering evidence on the so-called “Kingpin” who runs all organized crime in New York City. Not everyone believes he exists either, but even those who do believe don’t know who he is.
As it happens, it’s Fisk, who has risen to prominence as the head of Fisk Corporation, and Nikolas is one of his investors. However, he wants no part of this anymore, and asks Fisk to buy him out.
Elektra tracks down Matt and he takes her to a rooftop he used to love as a kid, as it provided a great view of the city. Their romantic interlude is cut short when his hyper senses pick up a crime in progress and he leaves her to help the victim as Daredevil.
The woman Matt heard getting shot before sleeping was a prostitute, and they found a man named Dante Johnson passed out nearby. Johnson hires Nelson and Murdock to defend him. Matt is confused, though, as Johnson is telling the truth—but Detective McKenzie, the cop who seems to have set Johnson up, also appears to be telling the truth.
Fisk sends for an Irish assassin who goes by the sobriquet “Bullseye.” Bullseye can kill anyone with anything—he kills a bartender he doesn’t like in Ireland with paperclips, and suffocates his seatmate on the plane to New York with peanuts.
Matt confronts McKenzie, and discovers that he has a pacemaker, so that the heartbeat trick won’t work. McKenzie also says that the Kingpin, whoever he is, calls all the shots and there’s nothing some pissant lawyer can do about it.
Bullseye goes after Nikolas. Daredevil tries to stop him, but Bullseye grabs DD’s billy club, and uses it to kill Nikolas. Both Elektra and the cops believe that DD killed Nikolas. Fisk is pleased, as DD has been a thorn in his side for a while now and having him be wanted for murder works out nicely. (Of course, he’s already wanted for the murder of Quesada, but never mind.)
A forensic scientist shows Urich the murder weapon in the Natchios case, and Urich recognizes it as Matt’s cane.
Elektra goes after Daredevil, stabbing him in the shoulder with a sai. She unmasks him and is appalled to realize that it’s Matt. She believes Matt (a bit late) when he says he didn’t kill Nikolas, and then Bullseye shows up and Matt says he killed Nikolas. (How everybody found each other on this rooftop is left as an exercise for the viewer.)
Bullseye kills Elektra. Daredevil goes after Bullseye. They wind up at the church where the movie started, and we’re back full circle. They fight each other, Bullseye realizing that loud sounds annoy him when they crash into the organ and ringing the church bell to disorient him. During the fight, Bullseye reveals (a) that Fisk is the Kingpin and (b) that Fisk used to be Fallon’s enforcer and he was the one who killed Jack.
Daredevil tosses Bullseye out a stained-glass window and he lands on Urich’s car. Bullseye is taken to a hospital and put in traction, while Urich reveals that Fisk is the Kingpin, based on information he got from Nelson and Murdock—he has no proof, but he gives the cops Fisk’s right-hand man.
Battered and bruised, DD goes to Fisk’s tower. They fight each other, and DD breaks the Kingpin’s legs. But he doesn’t kill him, leaving him for the cops, declaring again that he’s not the bad guy, because he only committed assault instead of murder. Yay?
Johnson gets off and is eternally grateful. Urich warns Matt that he knows his secret, and he actually writes the article about who DD really is, but then he decides to delete it.
“You sure you’re blind?”
The biggest problem with Daredevil is that he’s always kind of been a second-rate Spider-Man. Numerous attempts were made to make DD stand out, but he always lagged behind the web-head as the top red-suited acrobatic hero in town. Even when Frank Miller revitalized the character in the 1980s, the character was often in Spidey’s shadow.
This extended to the movies, as Daredevil came out the February following the first Spider-Man film, and it was inferior in every way.
What’s frustrating is that it’s obvious that Mark Steven Johnson is familiar with the comics. He elegantly fuses together the various elements—DD’s origin, Elektra, Kingpin, Bullseye, Nelson and Murdock’s law career—into a single storyline. And I do like the fact that several of the side characters are named after creators who worked on the Daredevil comic—Lee, Everett, Mack, Bendis, Miller, Quesada, Colan, Romita, McKenzie—plus the cameos by DD writers Frank Miller and Kevin Smith, in addition to the ubiquitous Stan Lee. Johnson also re-creates several comics panels, most notably Bullseye’s murder of Elektra.
For all that he shows awareness of the character’s comics history in the abstract, though, he doesn’t get the context at all. To start with, the Matt/Elektra pairing is a complete failure. It worked in the comics (and in the Netflix series) because it was seeded in a flashback to Matt’s college days. The flashbacks give the relationship a chance to breathe, and gives it depth.
In this movie, there’s nothing. They barely know each other, Matt’s reasons for approaching her are never explained, and his going after her is one very small step below stalker. The playground fight is fun, but it’s the opening salvo of a long relationship, and we don’t get that. Instead we get two characters who suddenly are each other’s one twue wuv without anything to justify it. And everything happens so fast that Bullseye stabbing her has very little impact—made worse by the aping of the structure of Daredevil #181, but with none of that classic issue’s emotional resonance.
The worst, though, is that this isn’t a superhero movie, because at no point is Daredevil remotely a hero. Johnson systematically removes everything noble about Daredevil, starting with his origin. In the comics, Matt was blinded saving the life of an old man. In the movie, it’s just a dumb accident. At no point anywhere in the film does Matt or DD act heroic.
To make matters worse, Johnson has no understanding of how the justice system works. It’s bad enough that Daredevil murdered Quesada in cold blood, a moment at which I lost any interest in the character. But to make matters worse, DD only went after Quesada after the latter was declared innocent in a rape case against Matt and Foggy’s client.
Here’s the thing: victims of crimes don’t have lawyers in criminal cases. The district attorney’s office prosecutes the alleged perpetrators. The only way for Nelson and Murdock to be representing a rape victim in a courtroom is in a civil case, where the burden of proof is far less than it is in a criminal case.
And Matt and Foggy still lost. Which doesn’t mean that the justice system failed, it means that Matt and Foggy failed as lawyers. And because Matt and Foggy are shitty lawyers, Matt decided to suit up as DD and commit murder.
At one point, DD tells a little kid that he isn’t the bad guy, and he repeats it, hoping he can convince himself. He never convinced me. Supposedly he’s better by the end because he “only” broke Fisk’s legs (likely crippling him for life) and threw Bullseye out a window (almost definitely crippling him for life), but that just makes him a different class of criminal. It’s left annoyingly unclear why, exactly, Urich doesn’t expose Daredevil, as he’s a violent vigilante who shows no evidence of even being beneficial to the community.
For the second time on this site, I’ve done a rewatch of a movie I hated, which had a later director’s cut. In both cases—the other one is Star Trek: The Motion Picture—I never saw the director’s cut until I did the rewatch here on Tor.com. In both cases, I was told repeatedly that the director’s cut would cure all the ills of the theatrical cut.
In both cases, those people were full of it, as the director’s cut is just as bad as the theatrical release. The subplot with Johnson (played with amusing goofiness by Coolio) and Detective McKenzie (played with Jude Ciccolella’s usual sliminess) is an unfocused mess that displays more of Matt and Foggy’s lawyerly incompetence. (Talking to the wall? Really?) And it’s never made clear what evidence, exactly, was provided to help bring Fisk down. The additions in the director’s cut add nothing of consequence, and still keeps in everything that’s actively bad in the film
That includes the two leads. While the supporting cast is very strong, Ben Affleck is phony and awful for the most part. He’s only good when he allows himself to relax, which is in his romantic scenes with Jennifer Garner’s Elektra and in his delightful banter with Jon Favreau’s Foggy. But as the square-jawed vigilante, he’s dreadful. Garner’s not much better, though she has the physicality for the role. However, she never sells the tragedy. Elektra is a complex character who lost everyone she loved and turned to violence, but in Garner’s hands, she’s a talentless dilettante who pouts a lot and doesn’t even know to tie her hair back when she goes out to kill people.
It’s too bad, because they’re surrounded by great performances. Michael Clarke Duncan is a letter-perfect Kingpin (he’s the best of the three live-action Fisks, and that’s with no disrespect to John Rhys-Davies or Vincent D’Onofrio, who were both also superb), Joe Pantoliano is, as always, a delight as Urich, Favreau’s Foggy is hilarious, David Keith was born to play an over-the-hill pugilist, and Colin Farrell is having such a blast as Bullseye I found myself rooting for him more than DD. (Having said that, he’s a little too over the top overall, and the movie could have done with less of him.)
However, the strength of the support isn’t enough to counteract the drag effect of the leads or of the script’s inability to understand the lead character. Johnson’s directing is fine—the film’s lovely, even if the CGI is noticeably weaker than it was in contemporary Marvel films (even Hulk had better CGI)—and his use of sound is particularly impressive. I would’ve liked it if the film didn’t go out of its way to contrive rainstorms to make DD’s life easier, but whatever.
Ultimately, though, this movie winds up being just like the comic: it’s a weak version of Spider-Man.
However, it did spawn a spinoff with Garner. Next week, we’ll look at Elektra.
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s birthday was this past week. Please wish him a happy birthday in the comments.
Happy birthday, Keith!
My wife has a soft spot for this movie, because she’s a fan of Garner (she really liked Alias) and Affleck. Personally, I’ve always thought this one was “OK, not great,” based on the excellent performances by the supporting cast and the obvious fondness for the comic stories. I figured this was about as good of a Daredevil as we were likely to get, until I saw the Netflix version. The Netflix version takes advantage of being a TV miniseries to lean into the darkness of the Miller era in ways I didn’t think a movie would dare (and then I saw Logan, so I’m clearly a terrible judge of these things). I agree with you that Duncan is the most accurate Kingpin in terms of physical presence, but D’Onofrio is both vulnerable and straight-up terrifying in ways I didn’t expect, so I have to give him the slightest of edges.
Back when I was a more square-minded comic fan (and a less “woke” person), this was the movie that convinced me that you could cast actors that were a different ethnicity from than the comic character.
And I enjoyed this movie, it’s not amazing, but it worked back then. I had not realized the rape victim lawyer thing. And it’s definitely loads better than Elektra.
Coolio? Huh, I did not remember that.
Happy birthday!!! I’m glad you’re here!
I remember renting this with my boyfriend in college, and I guess it says something that aside from remembering that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner are in it, and the fact that he was blind but able to use his other senses to ‘see’ that I remember absolutely nothing else about this movie. Even reading through your synopsis only vaguely triggered some memories.
That said, my absolutely favorite thing about this movie and its existence has nothing to do with the movie at all, but the fact that My Immortal and Bring Me To Life were hits from the soundtrack and how I got exposed to Evanescence, which is still one of my favorite bands ;)
Yeah, I remember enjoying this in the theater. Kingpin and Bullseye were great. Haven’t seen it since, and don’t really feel the need to.
“the spate of early 20th-century movies featuring Marvel characters” — Gee, Marvel’s older than I thought!
“While Kingpin is white in the comics—and the other two times he’s been done on screen he’s been played by John Rhys-Davies and Vincent D’Onofrio—he was cast with a black actor here.”
Although the first black actor to play Kingpin was Roscoe Lee Browne, who voiced him magnificently in the 1990s Spider-Man: The Animated Series. And Michael Clarke Duncan would later reprise the role in the 2003 MTV Spider-Man animated series.
To me, the theatrical version was cut so short that it felt more like a long trailer than a full movie. It seemed more like a Cliffs Notes summary of itself than a full story, something that can also be said about X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Batman v Superman (although that’s more like a vaguely story-shaped collection of random moments). It was visually and stylistically superb, aside from the lousy CGI in the climax, but way too superficial.
Tons of plot holes, too. Like the hole Elektra put in Matt’s shoulder. Okay, the crime scene is covered in the superhero’s blood, and the cops still can’t figure out who he is? Yet somehow the cops are good enough to figure out Kingpin’s identity at the pivotal moment without a single shred of evidence!
Oh, and why is Matt dumb enough to carry DD’s signature weapon around as his everyday cane? And why did he write out his insignia in letters that were invisible unless set on fire? Gee, how many crime scenes d’you suppose he was never associated with because nobody had the psychic insight to toss a lit cigarette down at just the right place?
The script also dwelt far too much on Matt’s blindness, with far too many “clever” lines about seeing and sensing and stuff like that. Okay, we got it the first time, he’s blind — now what else is he?
I liked the idea of the film as a journey of redemption, taking someone who started out as a vengeful killer and showing him learning to be a hero instead (which is basically Arrow‘s whole arc), but it was as superficially executed as the rest.
I could not stand Colin Farrell as Bullseye. I’ve never been that fond of him in anything, but here, it just felt like he was trying to be some mutant hybrid of Wolverine, Bruce Willis, Groucho Marx, and a whiny teenager, but less articulate than any of them. Over-the-top, yes, but in a monosyllabic, petulant man-child way that was just grating.
I do recall finding the director’s cut far more coherent and watchable than the theatrical cut. It wasn’t great, but at least it felt like an entire story rather than a fragmentary precis of one.
I forgot to mention that DD’s bit of dialogue where he says, “That light at the end of the tunnel? That’s not heaven — it’s the C train” may be the dumbest line ever uttered in a superhero movie. It’s certainly in the top ten………….
Oh, and thanks for catching that typo Christopher — it’s fixed.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@6/krad: “I forgot to mention that DD’s bit of dialogue where he says, “That light at the end of the tunnel? That’s not heaven — it’s the C train” may be the dumbest line ever uttered in a superhero movie. It’s certainly in the top ten………….”
“The same thing that happens to everything else.”
“I forgot to mention that DD’s bit of dialogue where he says, “That light at the end of the tunnel? That’s not heaven — it’s the C train” may be the dumbest line ever uttered in a superhero movie.” Nah, Storm’s line to Toad still reigns supreme for me: “You know what happens to toads struck by lightning? The same thing as everything else.”
Agree that the movie is lousy, disagree that the romantic scenes are a highlight. The playground meet-cute made me want to retch.
It’s funny that so many people dismiss Affleck as a lightweight romantic lead, when if you’ve seen this movie and Hollywoodland, you know he is absolutely incapable of doing cute and debonair. He’s actually better at playing serious and only semi-likable, which is why I knew he would be fine in Batman v. Superman. I just didn’t know he’d be as good as he was.
@7. Ha! Funny when two separate mind come up with the same reaction.
HOW COULD I FORGET THE TOAD LINE?????
Of course, that’s also in the top ten. Or, rather, bottom ten.
And the C train is still pretty horrible……………..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Happy birthday!
Affleck hated playing Daredevil, and unfortunately it shows in his performance. That’s almost impossible to overcome.
For me the worst line in a superhero movie (although it’s really so bad it’s good) is “Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate uphill” I haven’t even seen the entire Blade movie but it was on in the background and I remember when that line came on we just looked at each other and started laughing and to this day we use it as a joke. I just remember the whole scene trying to appear so dramatic and everything and this line just came out of nowhere.
@13: It’s an awful line, but it holds a special place in my heart for being so utterly silly. Kind of like Sam Neill’s Event Horizon classic: “Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see.” Then again, I’ve always had a soft spot for hamming it up.
@13 Best line; that is the best line in any superhero movie. Change my mind!
Happy birthday Keith!
Ugh, where to begin with this movie. Johnson’s inability to figure out how to make Matt an actual good guy, I guess? We’re given this slathered-on look-at-how-noble-he-is scene where he not only insists he’ll only defend the innocent, but being the shining moral paragon he is, he won’t even charge for it! What a wonderful man.
And apparently that’s supposed to be enough to carry us through the part where he spends his nights working out his sadistic urges by beating and murdering people. Ah, sorry, criminals. Since, you know, it’s clear enough in this narrative that criminals aren’t people and you can just do whatever you want to them and call it justice. Like… Johnson’s Daredevil is just a bloodthirsty hypocrite. It’s impossible to actually root for this guy. He’s an awful person who just happens to be pointed at other awful people. Did Johnson confuse Daredevil for the Punisher, or…?
Aside from that, the pacing’s a mess, the romance feels like nothing, and the big climactic fight at the end doesn’t really give any sense of payoff for the audience, in part because despite being directly or indirectly responsible for every tragedy in Murdock’s life, Fisk doesn’t really feel like he was properly built up into the nemesis Johnson clearly wanted him to be – more like a tacked-on boss fight after Boss #1 in Bullseye. Which is tragic, because Michael Clarke Duncan was a joy in this movie and I would have loved seeing more of his Kingpin onscreen. Perhaps with Murdock recast as someone who actually wanted to be there.
I’m a little surprised to hear such praise for Duncan’s performance as the Kingpin. He was okay, I guess, but I found him mediocre compared to the likes of Rhys-Davies, D’Onofrio, and of course Roscoe Lee Browne, who will always be the definitive Kingpin in my book even if he only supplied the voice. (Where Browne was concerned, the voice was more than enough.)
It was a good attempt, but just didn’t hang together well. The supporting cast was great, but the leads, not so much. Jennifer Garner was horribly miscast; she just didn’t fit the character that was written. And Affleck was too grim, and the whole thing about him being overly sensitive to sounds was just overplayed.
Close, but no cigar.
Happy Birthday Keith! I’ve seen this movie once all the way through and for about 10 minutes on cable. It’s a mediocre mess that I just couldn’t get into . I usually like super hero movies about someone I know nothing about and DD is one of those. I do remember the character from the Hulk movie though but that’s it. MEH about sums it up for me.
“Battered and bruised, Matt returns home and showers and tends his wounds. He hears a woman getting shot and killed as he’s getting into his isolation chamber for sleep, but does nothing about it.” While the rest of the movie was mediocre at best, I have a soft spot for this scene for showing how being a superhero would be pretty terrible.
Not a good movie, even though Duncan and Farrell were great and Garner looked good in black leather.
Why Ben Affleck ever thought he’d be an action star is beyond me … he’s better doing comedy.
Nothing more needs be said about the script.
I don’t hate Affleck, but the way he looks uncomfortable playing superheroes has at this point become part of his legend. Which makes me wonder–when is the last time he looked like he was having fun in a movie? It feels like basically decades.
They can and do. You’re right that the DA prosecutes (nowadays — private prosecution was the norm a couple hundred years ago). But the victim still might need representation in various ways: to weigh in on a plea bargain; to protect rights that might affect other cases; to preserve privacy in certain ways; etc. My firm actually did it in a very well known case.
I’ve often said they got the wrong Boston boy, they should have tried for Matt Damon.
Sophist: Yes, under those circumstances, but those weren’t remotely the circumstances presented here.
Glenn: According to a 2011 interview Matt Damon did in the London Times, he was offered the part and turned it down. So they did try, they just failed. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The one thing I remember liking in this movie (aside from the already mentioned banter scenes with Matt and Foggy, and Colin Farrell’s unforgettable portrayal of Bullseye, is the idea that Matt Murdock would sleep in a sensory deprivation tank (that it would be the only way that he could ever truly relax and shut himself out from all the “noise”). I know that it isn’t from the comic books, but I thought it was a logical addition.
You know a movie is a disappointment when you can barely remember ANYTHING from it. And most of the stuff you remember isn’t very good*.
*And memory for me is not an issue. I can memorize an entire movie – every single line of spoken dialogue – when I’m really into it. I can literally quote every minute of a Star Wars film, from Phantom Menace to the Last Jedi by memory alone.
I definitely recall the Matt/Elektra relationship and just how hollow it was, devoid of any story meaning. If anything, I was very when they announced the character on the Netflix series. I have my own issues with the character on that one, but overall, it was a better experience than this film.
Fortunately, this movie did have one bright spot: the Kingpin, brilliantly played by Michael Clarke Duncan. His fight against Daredevil was a highlight of this early superhero boom phase. I had actually hoped they would cross the character over to the Raimi Spider-Man films at some point. Of course, when this was being made, few were thinking of shared cinematic universes.
And the less said about Bullseye the better.
Eduardo: there was no chance of a crossover. Different film companies, different rights deals. That’s why Urich worked for the New York Post instead of the Daily Bugle.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@27/Eduardo: As I mentioned above, Duncan did reprise Kingpin in one episode of the 2003 Spider-Man: The New Animated Series on MTV, so he did sort of cross over after all. (Evidently the TV/animation rights were more inclusive than the feature film rights.) That series was theoretically a sequel to the first Raimi movie, although it was ignored and contradicted by the actual film sequels (at least where Curt Connors’s fate was concerned). It wasn’t very good, and the cel-shaded 3D animation was primitive and clumsy. But if you want to see Duncan’s Kingpin interacting with Spider-Man in something resembling the Raimi continuity, that’s where it happened.
I remember liking this movie when it came out. I didn’t find Affleck to be bad at all as either Matt or Daredevil. Jennifer Garner was miscast in that she definitely had the physicality for the role, but sadly none of the mystery or danger inherent in the comic book version.
I liked Colin Farrell’s Bullseye at the time, but the look hasn’t aged well.
Also, the fight scenes – particularly the one in the bar – are nearly incoherent.
As to turning Daredevil into a killer, I think it’s part of superhero movies’ unfortunate tendency to try to out-Miller Frank Miller. Where Miller made the heroes darker, though, he wasn’t about turning the heroes into indescriminate killers. Both “Born Again” and “Dark Knight Returns” give their heroes the opportunity to descend into murder but he pulls them back from that ledge. Meanwhile, both this and “Batman v Superman” have Affleck playing DD and Batman as killers.
Also
@30/Twels: “As to turning Daredevil into a killer, I think it’s part of superhero movies’ unfortunate tendency to try to out-Miller Frank Miller.”
I think it’s more just that it’s a tradition in American action movies for the protagonists to kill the bad guys. Especially in anything dark or noir-ish. So when superhero comics get adapted to film, they tend to be written according to filmic formulas, which are far more bloodthirsty than comics formulas. That’s why so many superhero movies are recast into standard action-movie formulas like revenge plots (e.g. Burton’s Batman turning the Joker into the murderer of Bruce’s parents, rather than just a bad guy he was opposed to on general principles), and why such a large percentage of movie superheroes use deadlier methods than their comics counterparts. It’s not just Daredevil and Batman, it’s Iron Man, Captain America, even Superman from time to time, and others. Spider-Man is one of the few superheroes who’s usually not been made a killer onscreen (with the exception, I believe, of Electro’s defeat in ASM2), but his filmic enemies have a habit of dying anyway, because it’s part of the ruthless formula of American action movies that the villains have to die at the end.
29/Christopher: I remember that show. Personally though I adored the cel-shaded animation. At least for the time, I felt it was groundbreaking. And for the most part, I felt they managed to feel true to the first Raimi movie, at least on a spiritual sense. I also felt Lisa Loeb had a better handle on MJ than even Dunst.
Keith R.A. DeCandido:”as Miller built on the darker tone McKenzie had started, and focused on DD as a city vigilante, fighting gangsters and such, in particular a minor Spider-Man villain, the Kingpin of Crime, as well as ninjas—lots of ninjas.”
Dunno about pre-Miller Kingpin being a “minor Spider-Man villain.” Granted, I’ve heard people say that (including Frank Miller), but it doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. The Kingpin was a major foe to Spider-Man. Indeed, if you asked a serious fan to name Spidey’s top three a villains during Stan Lee’s tenure as writer, they would have named Dr Octopus, Green Goblin, and Kingpin.
@30/Twels:
“Both ‘Born Again’ and ‘Dark Knight Returns’ give their heroes the opportunity to descend into murder but he pulls them back from that ledge.”
I don’t know; it sure looks to me like Bats blows away that babynapper with his own gun.
Excuse me, I mean with his partner’s gun.
@32/Eduardo: “Personally though I adored the cel-shaded animation. At least for the time, I felt it was groundbreaking.”
I found it very off-putting at the time, too deep in the uncanny valley between 2D and 3D animation. I just watched a clip of it online, though, and it looks a lot better than I remembered. I guess I’ve gotten more used to cel-shaded 3D and the way its characters move, and while there was a certain stiffness to the animation, it actually holds up fairly well. (I still prefer 2D animation, though.)
The MTV series also had the advantage of casting Neil Patrick Harris as Peter/Spidey. I wasn’t that familiar with him at the time, but in retrospect, it was an inspired choice and I wish he’d had better material to work with. The writing disappointed me far more than the animation. It was nominally a more “mature” animated series than its predecessors because it was a prime-time show, but its definition of “mature” was limited to tossing in gratuitous violence, death, and sexual innuendo, while the actual storytelling and characterization were much less sophisticated than the writing on the 1994 FOX Kids series. That’s not what I think of as mature writing.
@34/Stephen: The babynapper that Batman supposedly “blows away” in TDKR is actually female, despite what Zack Snyder and a lot of people online seem to think. And the artwork is very ambiguous; I always took it to mean that Batman just shot the wall next to the abductor’s head. It makes no sense in the context of the story to conclude that Batman killed her; after all, later on, even when he decides he needs to kill the Joker to stop his extreme murder spree, he still can’t bring himself to do it.
I’m pretty sure (I don’t have the book with me right now) we see the mark of the shot on the wall NEXT to the kidnapper’s head, and the kidnapper’s head isn’t bleeding or, you know, exploded to bits after such a hit from such a type of gun. If I remember correctly, the kidnapper was then looking at the hole while still holding the kid, while she’d have dropped him after going limp had she been dead after being shot. It was just a warning shot.
Oh, right, and happy birthday, of course!
@37/OverMaster: Another possibility is that Batman shot her in the shoulder, just wounding her, and she’s slumped down the wall to reveal the bloodstain. Although the gun seems way too big to merely wound, and you’re right about the kidnapper still being able to hold the child. Miller’s art is so vague that it’s hard to tell what the hell’s going on, and people just read into it what they want to see.
36/Christopher: Well, if we’re going to analyze these shows on the maturity of their storytelling, plus characterization, I still find the 1992-1997 X-Men animated series to the be the best one still made, topping all of the Spider-Man versions. Despite the saturday morning limitations, they were able to convey the never-ending social plight of the mutants in an honest fashion, with very well written characters.
@40/Eduardo: Yeah, it was the FOX Kids Marvel shows that first made me understand what made Marvel worthwhile, because of how faithfully they interpreted the elaborate storytelling and character complexity of the comics. I’d had a high school/college friend who’d tried to sell me on them before, but I didn’t really buy into it until I saw those shows.
Although the drawback of X-Men was that it mostly had pretty terrible animation, by Akom, one of the most mediocre overseas animation studios. Akom’s work was really stiff and clumsy and error-prone compared to contemporary work from other studios. Most fans seem to dislike the later episodes that were done by Philippine Animation Studios (e.g. the Lady Deathstrike 2-parter and most of the final season), since the artwork is more cartoonish and off-model, but I preferred it because of its greater fluidity and expressiveness.
Spider-Man: The Animated Series (the ’94 FOX Kids show, that is) was animated by Tokyo Movie Shinsha, my favorite Japanese animation studio, and the first season had some really superb animation, although unfortunately the show was subject to severe budget cuts and was experimenting with early digital 2D animation (i.e. still hand-drawn, but with the artwork scanned into computers and painted/animated digitally, as is standard now), so its animation quality decreased over time.
I do find the notion that Batman wounds the baby-napper with a burst from an M-60 (held one-handed to boot!) a little unlikely, but if memory serves, the splatter on the wall is colored purple – so maybe he didn’t hit her at all.
I knew this was coming up so I watched it a couple days ago and I couldn’t get over the inconsistencies- I know that there’s some handwaving needed for this genre in general, but I do like some internal consistency – if loud sounds are so problematic that the church bells disable him and he seems to sleep in a sensory deprivation tank, (btw, he would be all pruny and lucky not to drown), then why, early in the movie, does he get out of the tank, seem distressed by all the noise of the city, and then turn his music up to 11? Maybe it’s intended to drown out the other sounds, but wouldn’t it kind of ‘blind’ his sonar? Either way, that moment in particular has bugged me ever since I saw it in the theater.
On rewatching, I’m also bugged by the fact that he can’t seem to smell the mustard that Foggy gives him in place of honey – or even tell that it’s not in the bear-shaped honey container that the restaurant (which they go to regularly) uses.
He is also incredibly cavalier about his secret identity, performing Daredevil style feats in his civilian identity – like the fight with Electra – I don’t know how someone spending even a little time with Murdoch wouldn’t think, ‘this guy doesn’t seem blind, what’s up with that?’. It’s a bigger leap to ‘…and he must be Daredevil’ but some nod to caution would be nice. Just as he uses the same fancy cane/billy club/grappling hook thing in both identities.
His hair is also ridiculous.
Agreed that most of the supporting cast are fine and better than the movie deserved. I always like to see Erick Avari in anything (Electra’s dad).
kitryan: Yeah, Avari is always excellent.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I think one thing that this film does illustrate is a shortcoming that is often seen in genre filmmaking – regardless of the genre. The problem is when the filmmakers come at it with the approach that the genre itself (not the story or the characters) is the star attraction. In this case, it seems like the writers and filmmakers decided that fights and flights were what needed to overpower everything else. Hence why Matt and Elektra fight on the playground rather than interacting in ways that are more easily invested in.
That said, this movie is nowhere near the bottom of the superhero barrel, IMHO. Amazing Spider-Man 2, Ang Lee’s Hulk, Man of Steel and Batman v Superman all rate WAY lower, if you ask me.
In the DKR panel we’ve been discussing, the mark on the wall is partially BEHIND the babynapper, which would seem to indicate it had to have been left by something that went through him/her, not something that hit the wall next to his/her head. And he/she does indeed seem to be dropping the child — with his/her left hand at least, which is now unoccupied. (We can’t see what the right hand is doing.)
It appears that, at the very least, Bats shot the babynapper in the shoulder, causing him/her to drop the kid, whom Bats then grabbed.
Either way, it’s a pretty ridiculous sequence. I don’t see how ammo from a weapon like that could hit the wall OR the babynapper without also killing the latter and probably hitting the child as well. And frightening and/or wounding the criminal into dropping the kid and then being able to grab it before it hits the ground — well, those would have to be some lightning-quick reflexes, even by our hero’s standard.
Plus, using Batman’s later reticence to kill the Joker as proof he couldn’t have offed this adversary doesn’t seem a reliable yardstick, given that Bruce also lectures the Sons of the Batman that their side does not use guns — and whatever happens in the scene we’ve been analyzing, it clearly involves Batman “using” a firearm. And a pretty nasty one to boot. DKR has many virtues, but philosophical/ideological consistency is not at the top of the list. (Nor is fully coherent visual storytelling, obviously.)
@46/Stephen: “It appears that, at the very least, Bats shot the babynapper in the shoulder, causing him/her to drop the kid, whom Bats then grabbed.”
Yeah, the grayish color of the stain on the wall extends over the abductor’s shoulder and chest area, implying that it’s all covered in blood. But as this article points out, a few pages later, we see Captain Yindel on TV announcing a list of charges against Batman, and homicide is not among them. Also, later on, when he’s considering shooting the Mutant leader dead, Batman thinks of it as crossing a line he set for himself 30 years ago — which says pretty clearly that he hasn’t crossed that line yet. So he definitely was not supposed to have killed that kidnapper. As you say, it seems that the intent was that he’d shot to wound. The idea of TDKR was that Batman was becoming more violent and extreme in his methods than ever before, but stopping just short of deadly force.
“Plus, using Batman’s later reticence to kill the Joker as proof he couldn’t have offed this adversary doesn’t seem a reliable yardstick, given that Bruce also lectures the Sons of the Batman that their side does not use guns — and whatever happens in the scene we’ve been analyzing, it clearly involves Batman “using” a firearm.”
But not his firearm. It was the gun the male Mutant had been firing when Batman smashed through the wall and took it from him, and since he happened to be holding it anyway, he used it. Obviously what he meant in the later scene was that the Sons should not carry or use guns as a matter of course. Presumably, Batman has precise enough aim that he can shoot to wound even with that ginormous military machine gun, since he’s Batman. But a band of young street punks wouldn’t have the same discipline, so he doesn’t want them packing heat.
I love that the two Marvel characters that Jon Favreau has played have been named “Foggy” and “Happy”.
One of my main memories of this is catching the end of it while on holiday in Portugal and being mostly grateful just to hear people speaking English.
Otherwise…it’s okay. I’ve also heard of a director’s cut that actually makes sense, rather than Daredevil just going “Oh yeah, and the police know you’re Kingpin” when it’s time for the movie to end. Unlike Keith, I’ve never bothered to look it up to see if that’s true. I’ve also heard it makes Karen Page (Daredevil’s original love interest from the comics) a bit less of a glorified extra and that it was cut to make way for the studio-mandated sex scene, because they didn’t hire Jennifer Garner to have her keep her clothes on.
I kind of get the arc of Daredevil starting off as a killer of the guilty and then sparing the one person he has a personal reason to kill because he’s realised that’s not who he wants to be. I guess another case of an aborted series taking the whole of the first film to get to the point?
Happy birthday, Keith.
@49/cap-mjb: Here’s a detailed summary of the changes to the Director’s Cut. It’s about 30 minutes longer and R-rated; a lot of the cuts to the theatrical edition were to trim violence and make it PG-13. But it does contain an entire subplot that was excised from the theatrical cut, involving a murder investigation and trial that leads Matt and Ben Urich to find the proof that Fisk is the Kingpin, although none of the descriptions I’m finding online seem to specify what that proof is.
By the way, will you be covering Dragon Ball Evolution, Speed Racer, Ghost in the Shell, Fist of The North Star and Netflix’s Death Note as well? They’re all based on comics after all, even if they happen to be Japanese comics. But they’re still American live action adaptations (I imagine you won’t be covering live action foreign stuff, like the Asterix and Rurouni Kenshin movies).
@51/OverMaster: This series is about movie adaptations of superhero comics specifically, although it has included a couple of films that I wouldn’t have defined that way (Barb Wire and Tank Girl).
@47/Chris:
“But as this article points out, a few pages later, we see Captain Yindel on TV announcing a list of charges against Batman, and homicide is not among them.”
That was an interesting and very insightful article. Thanks for sharing it.
“But not his firearm.”
Right, the same way it doesn’t count as cheating on your diet if you eat off your friend’s plate. Oh, that Frank Miller!
“Presumably, Batman has precise enough aim that he can shoot to wound even with that ginormous military machine gun, since he’s Batman. But a band of young street punks wouldn’t have the same discipline, so he doesn’t want them packing heat.”
He tells them the reason they will not use guns is that a gun is the weapon of the enemy – – that they do not “need” it. Elsewhere in the book, he calls guns the weapon of liars and cowards who have made killing too easy. Those strike me as moral and philosophical objections, not ones based on skill or accuracy. The aggregate stance of the character in this work seems to be that guns are an unnecessary evil that automatically compromise the user’s morality — unless he’s using somebody else’s gun to save a child and he’s sure he can shoot to only wound. It’s a big minus in terms of the book’s overall persuasiveness, and it just shows how Miller’s avowed debt to the Dirty Harry movies isn”t really reconcilable with Batman as a character.
Quoth Christopher: “although none of the descriptions I’m finding online seem to specify what that proof is.”
Because the movie itself doesn’t bother to provide it, one of a billion reasons why the director’s cut is not the panacea people seem to think it is. All the director’s cut does is make the film longer.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@53/Stephen: I still think you’re splitting hairs. Every rule has the occasional exception. But bending a rule once doesn’t mean you’ve totally thrown out the rule altogether. I agree with you about Miller’s excesses, but it’s not that hard to believe that, in an extreme situation where it was the only way to save a baby, Batman would be willing to fire a gun nonlethally if he happened to be holding one at that moment. It doesn’t mean he’d changed his overall policy on guns, it just means that that situation was exceptional. If anything, Batman would probably be upset that he’d been forced to resort to such a measure, thinking that his younger self would’ve been fast enough and athletic enough not to need the gun. (Much like in Batman Beyond, where Bruce retired from the cowl after a hostage situation where he almost resorted to using a gun because he was no longer able to rely on his body alone.)
@55: One thing I always found to be interesting about Dark Knight Returns is how Batman agonizes over killing one person while Superman seems to kill the Soviets around Corto Maltese with very little reservation. If I recall correctly, he smashes at least one airplane and cracks a carrier in half.
I like DKR a lot, but I’ve never felt like Miller had as good a grip on Superman as a character as he did on Batman (at that time at least, everything he’s done with the character post-Year One has been awful).
Miller’s Daredevil – which obviously serves as direct inspiration for much of this film – is really the only reason the character was able to remain relevant. He really managed to differentiate the character from Spider-Man by injecting all the ninja stuff and noir elements. That said, I recently reread Born Again and man, does that arc really have its ups and downs in terms of trashing a long term character (Karen Page) and generally wallowing excessively in misery
@56 – Twels: Miller hates Superman, and goes out of his way to ridicule and demean the character.
@43 – Going off memory here, but doesn’t Matt switch coffee cups with Foggy, thereby implying that he knew he was given mustard instead of honey?
kitryan and Austin: Yeah, in the coffee shop, Matt waited until Foggy wasn’t looking and then switched mugs so that Foggy got the mustard-soaked one.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@57: I think Miller also overstated his role in changing the relationship between Batman and Superman. Mike Barr had already created the wedge between them by having Bats leave the JLA in the first issue of Batman and the Outsiders, if memory serves …
Getting back to Daredevil, I think that one of the reasons that Miller was able to get away with making such a big tonal shift there was that everything that had come before it had been such weak tea. People forget that Daredevil had been reduced to coming out every other month and was on the verge of cancellation.
Come to think of it, that’s also where the book was before Kevin Smith came along and did his bit to take Daredevil back to where Miller had him.
Me, I’m a sucker for the recent Mark Waid stuff. Charles Soule has been pretty good, but Waid did a good job of making Daredevil feel more Marvel and less Sin City.
I never much cared for Daredevil, but the work artists like Chris Samnee, Paolo Rivera, Marcos Martín, and Javier Rodríguez have done (with writers like Waid or Soule) is awesome.
@56:”That said, I recently reread Born Again and man, does that arc really have its ups and downs in terms of trashing a long term character (Karen Page) and generally wallowing excessively in misery “
My favorite part of the BORN AGAIN sequence is the stuff with Captain America. It’s kind of odd, really. Miller doesn’t get (and seems to loathe) Superman, but he really understands Captain America. The confrontation between Cap and Nuke, for example, is brilliantly handled: the Rambo-esque Nuke is grinning maniacally while gunning people down….then we “hear” the sound of bullets being deflected….we see Nuke’s startled face…then a close-up of Cap’s iconic shield.
@62: It’s definitely an interesting contrast that Miller’s Superman is someone who says “Yes to anyone with a badge” while his Cap is “loyal only to the dream.” Obviously, there are storytelling needs at work. For DKR to work, Superman has to have gone over to the side of the government, despite his own reservations about how the shutdown of the superheroes happened. Still, he’s at least partly redeemed by that wink at the end.
One wonders, though, given Miller’s recent rightward turn what he would think now of his fairly merciless take on Ronald Reagan as a dottering idiot
That said, my favorite moment in Born Again is when he described Cap as “having a voice that could command a god – and does” right before Thor shows up.
@63:”That said, my favorite moment in Born Again is when he described Cap as “having a voice that could command a god – and does” right before Thor shows up. “
It’s a fantastic moment:
@63 – Twels: A famous right wing politician and twice president of my country once said “We were all communists when we were 18”. Of course, he never was.
@65: I seem to recall reading in some kind of comic book history time that some of what informed Miller’s dark turn was his experience if living and working in NYC during the 1970s and 80s. Specifically, he talked about getting roughed up and robbed at night and carrying around what he called “mugger money” so as not to get injured walking around the city. You can definitely see that clearly in DKR – particularly in the sequence where the woman gets blown up in the subway.
Miller’s Daredevil is less reactionary, but it’s still got that feeling of the city as a predatory entity.
Keith, Austin – I totally missed the switch moment on my recent rewatch – I think I was too busy being irritated by the weird way Matt immediately obsessed over Electra :)
In an odd way it makes me feel actual relief knowing that he switched the cups, thanks for letting me know!
Twels: I grew up in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s and it was a much nastier place to live. There was a level of constant fear of being mugged that hung over the city that really isn’t there now. Of course, that was the time period of Miller’s first run on DD, which started in 1981.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Did anybody else think at the end, you should have said: “This did garner a spin-off with Electra”? Or too lame?
Having seen the Director’s Cut, I don’t agree about it doing nothing to improve the film. It provides an explanation of how the Kingpin is identified and convicted. (Wesley is tied to the prostitutes murder and he gives Fisk away as a plea bargain)
It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but it’s a definite improvement over the chopped up theatrical version.
I just realised, if in the comics Elektra is a billionaire’s daughter who met Matt-from-Hell’s-Kitchen in college, does that mean… she came from Greece, and had a thirst for knowledge?
Wharever happened in this movie, Foggy is now Happy.
It just struck me, when contemplating Mr Colin Farrell’s performance in this film, that he might well have been born to play Tommy Monaghan from HITMAN – it’s easy to see him nailing the mix of black comedy and hard-boiled violence the role (just about any Garth Ennis role) requires.
As for the film itself I quite enjoy it, but find it slightly hilarious to imagine Jennifer Garner as Electra – I can accept her as a costumed adventurer (especially as a friendly neighbourhood superhero), but not as a smoulderingly intense assassin with worrying cult connections; it’s one of the major reasons I never understood the anguished outrage that followed Mr Ben Affleck being cast as Batman.
Yeah, Farrell would have been a good Hitman.