Daredevil (2003)
Release Date: February 14, 2003
Like the two Blade films, Daredevil
skews towards an older audience than the bigger films like X-Men and
Spider-Man. It could be described as a darker and edgier version of Spider-Man
in tone, try to examine how a person’s life would be affected by being a
superhero. In this respect, it’s similar in ideas and tone to the later Dark
Knight Saga, though the Batman films did it better.
For this origin story, we’re going back
to the protagonist’s childhood. The young Matt Murdock was coming home from
school one day when he saw his father, former boxer Jack “The Devil” Murdock,
working as a mob enforcer. Matt idolises his father and his very upset to see
him doing something like this, so he runs away, but he doesn’t look where he is
going and an accident results in Matt getting toxic waste in his eyes. As
opposed to dying a horribly slow and painful death, Matt gets off relatively
easily, instead only being blinded with his other four senses being boosted to
superhuman levels in exchange. After being inspired by how his son copes with
his new disability, (not to mention taking down the most cowardly bullies in
film history. They pick a fight with a blind kid for goodness sake!) Jack goes
back into boxing, but he is murdered for refusing to throw a fight, since Matt
was in the audience.
In the present day, Matt Murdock is
living a double life. By day, he’s an Atticus Finch-style defence attorney who
accepts only innocent clients and refuses financial payment. By night, he’s the
costumed vigilante Daredevil, who attacks those criminals he faces in court who
get acquitted. His hobbies include freerunning that would make an Assassin
jealous, leaving behind petrol arranged in the shape of his insignia that
ignites when people carelessly throw away cigarette butts and dressage. One
day, Matt meets Elektra, the daughter of billionaire Nikolas Natchios, and is
immediately smitten. One fight in a playground later and the two are head over
heels in love for each other. As the Welsh would say, “Drwy cicio a brathu, mae
cariad yn magu.”
Nikolas is working with Wilson Fisk, the
CEO of FiskCorp who also rules over the criminal underworld as the Kingpin, but
he’s getting cold feet and wants to back out. Unfortunately for him, Kingpin
doesn’t accept resignations and hires the assassin Bullseye, who is introduced playing darts, to kill him.
No, Not that one
Bullseye does just that at a party Matt and Elektra were attending, and because
Daredevil dodged one of Bullseye’s attacks, thus making him miss, Bullseye gets
pissed and uses Daredevil’s staff as the murder weapon, implicating him in
Nikolas’ murder. Elektra swears vengeance on Daredevil and tries to shoot him,
though he manages to flee. It seems she wasn’t paying attention minutes earlier
when Daredevil and Bullseye were fighting, as she really should have seen that
Bullseye was responsible, not Daredevil.
Daredevil is tipped off that Kingpin
kills his victims’ entire families when he kills them, which means Elektra is
next on Bullseye’s hit list. Daredevil rushes off to find Bullseye, but Elektra
finds him first and incapacitates him. She is crushed when she takes off
Daredevil’s mask and finds Matt Murdock underneath, but she gets over the fact
that he supposedly murdered her father as soon as Bullseye shows up draws attention
to herself. Despite having trained herself to her limit, Elektra is no match
for Bullseye, who promptly kicks her ass and kills her. I guess it’s better to
have loved and lost…
Moving on!
Daredevil retreats to his local church,
but is followed by Daredevil. After Bullseye figures out that Daredevil is weak
to loud noises, he makes a racket on the pipe organ to defeat him, before
taking the opportunity to reveal in his evil gloating that Wilson Fisk is the
Kingpin and that he leaves a rose at the site of each of his murders, which
allows Daredevil to work out that Kingpin murdered his father. This news gives
Daredevil a heroic second wind, which allows him to pull Bullseye’s hands into
the path of a sniper’s bullet, then throw him through a glass window onto the
roof a car. He then goes to fight the Kingpin and beats him, but decides not to
kill him, instead leaving him to be arrested by the police.
The film tries to show a more realistic
take on being a superpowered vigilante- Matt Murdock is covered in scars and
bruises, he’s addicted to painkillers, he has to sleep in a sensory deprivation
tank because his powers never turn off, his law office is failing because he’s
too scrupulous to accept guilty but wealthy clients and he never gets paid for his
work, and his social life is a mess. At least, that’s how it starts. As soon as
Elektra appears, everything else is put on hold and their relationship is
pushed to the forefront, cheesy dialogue and all. Daredevil stops doing
vigilante things. Elektra even stops him from doing his job to have sex with
him at one point, the foul temptress! The given reason is that Twentieth
Century Fox wanted an Elektra spinoff and pushed the romance angle, at the
expense of other material, most notably a subplot involving Matt Murdock
investigating a paper trail leading to the Kingpin. In addition, Ben Affleck
was a media darling at the time, so having him romance an attractive young
woman would presumably sell more tickets.
The villains are much more interesting
than the protagonists are. The Kingpin, played by Michael Clarke Duncan is an
intimidating presence, just as ruthless in his CEO day job as he is ruling as
the Kingpin. He’s the straight man to Bullseye’s antics, which serve to make
the Kingpin more of a threat, since he actually has plans, whereas Bullseye
kills indiscriminately and in as show-offy a manner as possible. The Kingpin is
even able to toss around Daredevil for a bit without breaking a sweat before
Daredevil turns the tables. It’s a shame that he doesn’t get much screen time. The
big difference is that Michael Clarke Duncan is black, whereas the Kingpin is
white in the comics, but his performance is strong enough that it doesn’t
matter. Interestingly, Kingpin was originally intended to be black in the comics, but he was changed to white because Marvel were concerned that a black villain in the 1960's would be considered racist. In 2006, Michael Clarke Duncan said that he would like to reprise the
role of the Kingpin, with the explanation for his real life weight loss given
as Kingpin working out in prison to become faster.
Bullseye is the most entertaining
character. It’s true that he can’t go a scene without killing anyone or at
least trying to, but his methods are so ridiculous and he’s so hammy that it’s
easy to root for him despite him being a bad guy. The flipside of this however,
is that he doesn’t fit the film’s tone and is a little too silly. He’s the one who
should have gotten a spin-off, not Elektra. Maybe he could have picked a fight
with Hawkeye to see who has better aim?
The soundtrack is a haphazard mix of
rock and hip-hop, seemingly thrown together with little rhyme or reason. While
there is the odd occasion where the background music works well with the scene,
this isn’t usually the case. Wake Me Up Inside by Evanescence is the biggest
song on the soundtrack, as well as being possibly the most goth song ever made.
If this doesn’t make you want to wear
black and put on eyeshadow, nothing will.
The effects used to show Daredevil’s
sonar do a good job of portraying his sensory overload. Unfortunately, this is
done by overwhelming the viewer with booming noises and flickering images. I
found it rather overwhelming myself. Daredevil’s costume doesn’t translate well
to screen, sadly. The red leather makes the costume look like a sex outfit.
Bullseye fares better, wearing a vest, jeans and a long coat instead of the black jumpsuit from the comics.
The biggest fault with the film are the
action scenes. In many cases, they ruin suspension of disbelief, such as the
playground fight or Daredevil fighting his way through a bad guy bar. The
freerunning is even worse at this. At one point, Daredevil jumps off a building
and falls several hundred feet, landing feet first on a window washer’s metal
platform, before carrying on without so much as a pause. An impact like that
should have shattered his legs at the very least, if not killed him outright,
and it clashes with the effort made to portray Daredevil as being realistically
hurt by his vigilante lifestyle.
Ben Affleck doesn’t look upon this film
fondly. He said in a 2006 interview that “I have inoculated myself from playing
another superhero… Wearing a costume was a source of humiliation for me and
something I wouldn't want to do again soon.” It wasn’t all bad though, as he
did meet his future wife Jennifer Garner while working on this film. It has
since been confirmed that Ben Affleck will be the next cinematic Batman, so maybe
he’s softening towards it nowadays. Then again, Ben Affleck has a better reason
to dislike Daredevil than most of us, as it was one of the films that signalled
his early 2000s career was in trouble.
This was the deathblow.
Ultimately, Daredevil is a disappointing
film that is made more watchable whenever the focus of a particular scene is
Kingpin or Bullseye.
Stan Lee Spotter: Stan Lee appears as a
man reading the newspaper who isn’t paying attention to his surroundings. He is
stopped from walking into the road by young Matt Murdock. A Mr Lee is mentioned
as one of adult Matt’s clients who pays him with fish. Kevin Smith, who wrote
the Guardian Devil comic arc, appears as a forensic assistant. Frank Miller,
whose work on Daredevil in the 1980’s has had a major influence on the
character’s portrayals since then, appears as a man who gets a pencil through
the head courtesy of Bullseye. In addition, a number of minor characters are
named after people involved with the Deadpool comics. There are boxers named
after John Romita, Brian Michael Bendis, Frank Miller and Gene Colan, the
forensic assistant is named after Jack Kirby, and the rapist Daredevil goes
after because he was acquitted is named after Joe Quesada.
Next Time: An extra entry.
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