Daredevil

The man without fear.

Where Spiderman was colorful and almost cartoonish, Daredevil is gritty and merciless. Whatever you thought couldn't happen in Peter Parker's world will more than likely happen in Matt Murdock's neck of the woods. Because people die here. Sometimes they die slowly and painfully. The superheroes go home with scars on their backs, broken teeth, and more than a few gruesome images that need to be repressed. For all of these reasons I liked Daredevil, because it takes chances by offering a hero that is by no means invincible or conventional.

The origin story of the character Daredevil is pretty complicated, but, as the helpful gentleman in the theater so aptly put it, "He's blind, but he can see stuff blind." Let's just leave it at this: As a kid, Matt Murdock was blinded by radioactive material in a freak accident. This caused his other senses to become phenomenally acute, to the point where Matt can track criminals by their scent and use sound waves as a sort of radar. He uses his newfound abilities to protect those who will not be protected by the justice system, all the while hoping that one day he will find the person who killed his father.

The core storyline was based on Frank Miller's story arcs. The introduction/flashback was taken from his mini-series "Daredevil: Man Without Fear," and many of the sequences follow John Romita Jr.'s art work shot-for-shot. The Elektra storyline occurred in Miller's original run on the comic in the early 1980s.

Lawyer by day.

Hero by night.

If you're a fan of the first two Batman movies, you'll find a lot to love in Daredevil. There are still some comic book elements that require some suspension of disbelief, like the fact that Matt could construct an entire high-tech lair beneath a church while working as a pro-bono lawyer, but the movie is not fantasy-driven. The fight scenes will make you wince at their realism, the love story is not corny or forced (as opposed to a certain flick called Just Married), and the characters are complex, uncertain people who just happen to don masks and fight on rooftops.

Do you remember the parts in the old Christopher Reeve Superman movies where Clark would hear someone crying for help in the distance? He would always be having dinner with Lois Lane at the time, and had to make up some dumb excuse for ditching the scene like, "Oh! I just forgot. I have a book due at the library." Then he would dash off to save the day, leaving Lois high and dry. Well, in today's feature, Matt hears someone crying for help, but when his love interest, Elektra, asks him to stay, he actually does. With out-of-left-field scenes like this, I couldn't help but enjoy Daredevil.

Kingpin.

Bulls Eye.

Some might be surprised at how little screen time the villains get in this movie. Kingpin, a Don Giovini mobster type, and Bullseye, an Irish nut with a couple of loose screws, are important parts of our story, but they don't steal the show. Going back to the Batman comparison, many movie buffs think that Jack Nicholson's role as the joker actually become more interesting than the winged knight himself. Not so in this movie, as Daredevil is the guy whom the role shebang revolves around. By deciding to focus on the hero more than the villain, the audience can get into his head and root for him to the last battle. Matt is a cool guy because he's not a wealthy playboy or Kryptonian who can smash through walls. Other than his heightened senses and combat skills, he's just a regular guy who happens to like read leather.

After X-Men and Spiderman became huge hits, it was expected that Hollywood would start churning out more superhero flicks as fast as they could make them. Thankfully, Daredevil doesn't seem recycled or rushed and actually brings something new to the table. However, compared to today's Marvel cinematic universe the film feels like a made for TV movie.

Heroes...

...and lovers.

Trivia

-Although Ben Affleck is a fan of the character, acting him out was such an unpleasant experience that, in November 2006, Affleck stated that he would never reprise the role, having felt "by playing a superhero in "Daredevil," I have inoculated myself from ever playing another superhero. Wearing a costume was a source of humiliation for me and something I wouldn't want to do again soon." It is believed that the Daredevil costume was very uncomfortable to wear. However, in 2013 Affleck accepted an agreement to play Batman starting with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). Money talks!

-Ben Affleck was virtually blind as he had to wear heavy-duty contact lenses which blocked out most of his vision. 

-Elektra often wears red satin, but in the film she wears black leather. Jennifer Garner explained, "The red would never have worked for hiding a harness, and I know this sounds ridiculous, but you have to protect your skin a little bit. They throw me around so much on the rooftop I got cut through the leather, so imagine if I hadn't had anything."

The dark...the man without fear!

Elektra's real deadly weapon.

-After negative critical and audience reactions, and Ben Affleck's refusal to play the character a second time, a number of producers and screenwriters attached to potential Daredevil reboot. An initial deadline of 10 October 2012 was set so that if the movie didn't start filming before that date, the rights would go back to Marvel Studios. Director David Slade was originally attached to direct, before dropping out over a scheduling conflict in August 2012. Director Joe Carnahan pitched a sizzle reel to 20th Century Fox executives, depicting the character in a hard boiled, 1970s-set thriller in Manhattan. But the studio chose to let the live action film rights lapse, and go back to Marvel. Marvel chose to reboot Daredevil (2015) as a live action television series for Netflix, with the character fitting within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  

-The film was originally envisioned as R-rated with nudity and hard violence. 

-Stan Lee disliked the film, because he felt the film was "too tragic". 

-The Shadow World effects took the better part of a year to be designed. 

-Getting Daredevil's costume right was one of the hardest aspects of the production and took approximately 7-8 months. 

-In 2003, this became the lowest grossing movie to make over $40 million on its opening weekend. 

-In the closing scenes, Daredevil calls himself a "Guardian Devil," title of a Daredevil storyline (running in DD Volume 2, #1-8), written by Kevin Smith (who plays lab assistant Kirby in this movie). As these words are spoken, Daredevil is shown upside-down in mid-air, with his baton strings surrounding him, replicating one of the covers in that series. 

Do not fap son.

a Thing for black leather.

 -Originally this was going to be a relatively low-budget film of roughly $50 million. However, during shooting in the summer of 2002, another film about a Marvel Comics character, Spider-Man (2002), became a spectacular success and the director was soon asked by 20th Century-Fox executives to enhance the film's visuals and his budget was raised to approximately $80 million to accomplish that. 

Here's the movie trailer and see you sooner than later with the missing Marvel Cinematic Universe reviews:

One of the hottest rock songs from 2003, by the now defunct alt goth band  Evanescence:

And finally the second trailer for the new Daredevil netflix series coming on April 10th: