Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock in Netflix's 'Daredevil'
At the moment, the superhero genre is arguably at its peak. Movies based on comic book characters have raked in billions at the box office, with both Disney and Warner Bros. planning to spend billions more on serialized story arcs spread across multiple films spanning well into the next decade, including the upcoming
Avengers: Age of Ultron and next year's
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Analysts have been wondering for a while if there will come a saturation point where the bottom will fall out. However, we haven't reached that point yet.
A longstanding argument about superheroes is whether the genre is inherently a right-wing power fantasy Dick Cheney would probably embrace. In most stories, violence becomes a tool for either social change or maintaining the status quo. The bureaucracy of government is inept and corrupt because people are bad and corrupt behind a thin veneer of civilization. And a hero (or group of heroes) must rise above it all through brute force, sidestepping legalities like privacy and due process, to protect humanity from itself. However, this interpretation is overly simplistic and doesn't apply universally. Through a character like Captain America, the Marvel films have presented ideals and principles as being more important than power and safety. And even the Batman story of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy can be interpreted as a story in which the use of violence is a tragedy without a distinction between vengeance and justice. And violence used as a means to an end only escalates the cycle.
The latest offering from Marvel Studios is Netflix's Daredevil, which plays with many of these ideas and is much different than anything Marvel has done before. It's gritty, violent, and explores the consequences of this particular genre, both physical and emotional, on a much smaller and grounded scale. Created by Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) and produced by Steven S. DeKnight (Spartacus), both veterans of Joss Whedon shows, Daredevil follows the exploits of blind lawyer Matt Murdock as he tries to defend the 10 blocks of Manhattan known as Hell's Kitchen from drug dealers, human trafficking, government corruption, and a new kingpin.
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Some get more than they deserve, because they believe they aren’t like everybody else. That the rules—the ones people like me and you, the people that work and struggle to live our lives—just live—don’t apply to them. That they can do anything and they can live happily ever after while the rest of us suffer.
They do this from the shadows, shadows that we cast with our indifference, with a pervasive lack of interest in anything that doesn’t directly affect us, we in the here and now. Or maybe it’s just the shadow of weariness, of how tired we are. Struggling to claw our way back to a middle class that no longer exists—because of those who take more than they deserve. And they keep taking until all that’s left for the rest of us is a memory of how it used to be before the corporations and the bottom line decided we didn’t matter anymore.
But we do, you and I. The people of this city—we still matter. There’s someone in Hell’s Kitchen that doesn’t share this belief. He’s been among us for quite some time. You’ve never heard his name. You’ve never seen his face. He’s stayed in the shadows. Because men like him, men that want to control our city, our lives, fear the light and what it reveals. This man must no longer be allowed to operate in the darkness. If he has nothing to hide, let him step forward. —Ben Urich
Similar to Batman and Green Arrow,
Daredevil goes down many of the familiar paths for the "lone hero driven by will and grievance to running around at night beating the shit of people" story. But this series is probably the closest Marvel has come to sticking to the overall comic book character archetype, and all of the tropes that go with it. This is a character who worries about whether he should kill to save people, and draws a line against it. There are multiple scenes of the hero declaring, "This is my city!," before charging into the night. And most notable for Marvel, this is the first of their adapted characters in which a secret identity is a significant aspect of the overall story. However,
Daredevil has a bit more of an edge and is also grounded in a very human way too. While the Avengers fight gods, robots, and mad Titans over cosmic MacGuffins, a blind man is bloodied and bruised fighting monsters of a different kind. And the blood and bruises are not just patched up simply or heal fast. They endure and have consequences.
Created by Stan Lee and Bill Everett, Daredevil is one of Marvel's many street-level vigilantes fighting crime in New York. And this Netflix series is only part of a planned five that will expound on the characters defending the streets of the city, with A.K.A. Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Defenders coming soon. The nature of Netflix's "binge" release model allows for the narrative of Daredevil's 13 episodes to jump around but also keeps things coherent. DeKnight, Goddard, and the writers have created a serialized story, but each episode spotlights different aspects of the Daredevil narrative and disparate ties to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Netflix's
Daredevil does away with a lot of the absurdities from the
Ben Affleck film (which Affleck has called a "
source of humiliation") and borrows elements from throughout the comic book's run, which has included contributions from Ann Nocenti, John Romita Jr., Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev, Ed Brubaker, Kevin Smith, Mark Waid, and Michael Lark. However, the overall tone of the series comes directly from
Frank Miller's time with the character, and Miller's takes on both Batman and Daredevil are usually considered seminal in the turn to "dark and gritty" storytelling with comic book characters.
While the series opens with the Daredevil origin of a child blinded by chemicals screaming to his father for help, it doesn't dwell on it and doesn't treat the audience like they're stupid and need everything explained. The audience jumps right into the action of a man dressed in a homemade black outfit tracking criminals. That action is gruesome and brutal. But it's also deliberate, with Charlie Cox's performance walking a line of being affable, charming, noble, tortured, and intimidating. This has been called a "hard PG-13" series, and it doesn't shy away from spilled blood and what all that spilled blood does to a person. The dichotomy of Matt Murdock is that he's a lawyer sworn to defend the law by day, and spends the night breaking it in search of the justice that he can't achieve in a courtroom. This leads to a character dripping in Catholic guilt about whether he's doing the right thing or making things worse.
Like many superhero characters, Murdock's emotional balance comes from friends and acquaintances like law partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), client/secretary Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), nurse Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), and reporter Ben Urich (Vondie Curtis-Hall). But these people also exist as targets and innocent people not particularly well-suited for a corrupted world where it's not guys in costumes who are the biggest threats. It's the system itself, through insurance companies, oil companies, law firms, and the police, which is bent towards elements of Marvel's 1 percent that's closing in to destroy liberty and throw old women on the streets.
And no character represents that destructiveness more than Vincent D’Onofrio's Wilson Fisk. D’Onofrio loves to chew scenery and he chews it damn well here with an amazing performance. He creates a version of Fisk which is both terrifying and sympathetic that would be right at home in Miller's
Sin City. The character exhibits understandable despair and rage that boils under the surface, but also serves to justify his horrific choices. And, like a lot of hero-villain relationships, this iteration of The Kingpin is a mirror of Daredevil. Both are reflections of their fathers and burdened by daddy issues. Both feel the circumstances of life have treated them unfairly, and their goals are driven by it. And when the viewer sees both characters beating on some mook, both Fisk and Murdock seem to gain satisfaction from it as more of a release of their frustrations than any desire for cruelty for cruelty's sake. If Murdock is walking the hero's journey, then Fisk is the hero of his own story and probably the most compelling aspect of this show.
- The Incident: Since the gentrified Hell's Kitchen of the 21st century is nothing like the "wretched hive of lawlessness" that Lee and Everett created in the 1960s, Daredevil explains the high crime of New York as being an after effect of the Chitauri invasion that occurred in The Avengers. The destruction to New York allowed criminal elements and profiteers to move into Hell's Kitchen and take advantage of the situation.
From Darren Franich at
Entertainment Weekly:
The most surprising thing about Daredevil is its full-throated support of the little guy. Much is made in the early episodes about how Matt and Foggy left lucrative gigs at a whiteshoe law firm to fight for the everyday people of Hell’s Kitchen. And there’s a moment in an early episode when a disaster-capitalist bad guy says he doesn’t mind superheroes; wherever they go, destruction follows. And destruction is a great opportunity, in the let’s-rebuild-Treme-without-the-poor people sense. A superhero show that’s skeptical of superheroes? What a devilish, daring concept.
- Old Boy and The Raid: In the second episode, there's a single-take action scene that pays homage to Park Chan-wook's Old Boy. What makes it work is that this is a hero whom the audience sees get winded and struggle. And the producers have said in interviews the overall look they were going for was "Jason Bourne, The Raid movies and not a lot of flying wire CGI stunts."
From Peter Sciretta at
/Film:
Charlie Cox: It was incredible. It was as a special day as it was to as the scene has turned out. We dedicated our whole day to it. The first half of the day was just the camera movements. And then we got into, it was as you know it’s one take, so we had to get everything right. Each attempt that we had at it. And it’s incredibly tricky because it’s not like a long tracking shot with two people speaking, it’s a long tracking shot with people punching. And if one punch doesn’t land, it no longer works. It ceases to work as a scene. So I think we did it 12 times. I think three of them we made it all the way through to the end. And one of them was the one in the show, which is kind of almost flawless. I mean, it’s very hard to pick holes in that.
Peter Sciretta: So its really not stitched together at all?
Charlie Cox: No, that’s one take. And…
Rosario Dawson: The choreography though, that’s what kills me about it, ‘caus just that whole idea of when you’re seeing it and it’s not static, it’s not just looking in one direction, it moves, it goes and it looks in other places. The camera, it–
Charlie Cox: It tells a story.
- A World On Fire: As I mentioned above, the series keeps Murdock's abilities vague and ambiguous. They're consistent with the comic book, but we only see things from Murdock's perspective once, and it's not the most pleasant of images.
- The Black Proto-Costume: The black costume Matt Murdock wears in the series is almost a direct lift from Frank Miller and John Romita Jr.'s "Man Without Fear" miniseries, which depicted the early days of Daredevil. For those wondering, they do reveal the red Daredevil costume by season's end. Since it could be considered a spoiler, I'm not going to post it. But you can find it here.
- Night Nurse: Rosario Dawson's character is a combination of two separate characters from Marvel Comics. She performs the same role as Linda Carter, who is known as the Night Nurse, and provides secret medical attention to the Marvel superhero community. Her name though is Claire Temple, which in the comic book is the ex-wife of Black Goliath and a girlfriend of Luke Cage.
- Steel Serpent: An Iron Fist series is coming down the line, with there already being considerable online argument over whether or not the character should be Asian or (as in the comic book) a white guy who learns martial arts. But there are a lot of elements of the character's story in Daredevil. Beyond the faux-Asian mysticism that The Hand and characters like Stick bring to the table, Madame Gao (Wai Ching Ho) seems like she might be an important element for the future. Gao runs the Chinese heroin trade in New York. However, the symbol on her heroin is the same symbol of Iron Fist enemy Steel Serpent. Gao also gives a cryptic response when she's asked where her homeland resides, with many fans speculating she might actually be the Crane Mother.
- Elektra: While never mentioned by name, a flashback shows Foggy and Matt discussing a Greek girl during their college days.
- The Workshop Of Melvin Potter: The man who builds Fisk's armor and the Daredevil suit is named Melvin Potter. In the comics, that's the name of Gladiator. Also of note, in his workshop was the legs for Daredevil villain Stilt-Man.
- St. Agnes Orphanage: The orphanage where Murdock grew up is the same one Skye (Chloe Bennet) from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. lived at as a child. Also, Murdock's father fights Carl "Crusher" Creel, which is the real name of the Absorbing Man. Creel appeared at the beginning of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s second season working for Hydra.
- Possibilities With Spider-Man: The next Spider-Man film, due to be released in 2017 as part of an agreement between Sony and Marvel Studios, will probably build on and take elements from the New York created by the Netflix Marvel series. However, Marvel's version of Spider-Man is rumored to be a part of the third Captain America film, Captain America: Civil War, and it's not outside the realm of possibility the character could appear in one of these before the 2017 film. The biggest connection to Spider-Man in the Daredevil series are Kingpin and Ben Urich. Kingpin was originally a Spider-Man villain before becoming Daredevil's arch-nemesis. In his comic book iteration, Urich works at the Daily Bugle for J. Jonah Jameson. And DeKnight has stated that, if the deal between Marvel and Sony had come earlier in the production, the show may have acknowledged the Daily Bugle and shifted some of the things that happen with Urich.