Bonus Entry: Daredevil: Director's Cut

Daredevil: Director’s Cut

Today, we’ll be doing something a little different. As was mentioned in the Daredevil entry, a lot of footage was left on the cutting room floor for the theatrical cut in order to push Elektra for a spinoff. The director’s cut was released on DVD a few years later, following the release of Elektra’s film, which reinstated the deleted footage. For this, I’ll be looking at the new scenes instead of doing a summary of the whole film. If you want that, you can read the Daredevil entry again.

Report Card: Young Matt throws his straight A report card into a puddle when he can’t find his dad at his supposed place of work. The version of this scene in the theatrical cut, where Matt drops the report card while running away after seeing his dad beating someone up for the mob, works better than this one. The theatrical cut better conveys how Matt’s dad upset him, whereas here it’s more like he sulks a bit.

Boxing Entrance: Matt walks out with his dad as he enters the ring. This is a nice scene that adds to the relationship between father and son, but it isn’t really necessary.

Going to Bed: Matt can’t save everyone. As he goes to sleep, he hears a woman being shot, but he cannot save her and she soon dies. This is the start of the major addition to the director’s cut, a reinstated subplot. A nun watches over Matt in his dreams.

Kingpin Smash: Kingpin kills his bodyguards because someone wrote about him in the paper. This serves to establish his strength earlier in the film, instead of having his wrecking Daredevil at the climax be a “Nanomachines, son!” type surprise. The scene also provides proof that Kingpin is the bad guy, just in case you hadn’t figured it out yet.

Hiring Dante: Small time crook Dante is accused of murdering the woman from earlier, a prostitute named Lisa Tazzio. He was found passed out in an alley with the murder weapon in his hand. Matt believes from Dante’s heartbeat that he is innocent and accepts him as a client.

Discussion of Dante: Matt and Foggy discuss Dante’s innocence and almost get run over by a taxi driver who wasn’t looking where he was going. To be fair, they walk into the road without looking too.

Bullseye Goes Through Airport Security: Hilarity Ensues as Bullseye makes a show of smuggling a pen and some paperclips through airport security. Notable as being the only scene in the film where he doesn’t try to or succeed in killing anyone.

Matt Murdock Ace Attorney: Matt and Foggy go to Tazzio’s house to investigate. Matt figures out that she was shot in her house and dragged outside by the killer, who then planted the gun in Dante’s hand. The writing MOM 6-8 is also found.

Matt Murdock Ace Attorney 2: The opening statements of Dante’s case. Matt goes for the sympathy vote, facing the wrong way and making a show of sitting down. Officer Mackenzie, the policeman who found the crime scene, gives his version of events, which contradicts Dante’s. Matt suspects someone is lying, even though their heartbeat doesn’t indicate it.

Matt isn’t Distracted by the Sexy: Matt doesn’t let Elektra flirting with him stop him from fighting crime. The following scene of Daredevil beating up a criminal in front of his terrified son came at another point in the theatrical cut.

Matt Goes to Church: He says he doesn’t like the crowds on Sundays, but the priest suspects that Matt just wants to be alone.

Foggy Nelson Not So Ace Attorney: Foggy makes a pig’s ear of the trial since Matt is at Nikolas’ funeral. Dante isn’t helping his case by talking about not owning a handgun, then going on to say that he prefers shotguns because he finds them easier to use.

Extended Funeral Scene: Kingpin leaves a rose on Nikolas’ grave. Matt shares a taxi with reporter Ben Urich, who tells him that Tazzio was his source for the Kingpin article he wrote, and that Officer Mackenzie is being bribed.

The Matt Murdock Interrogation Technique: Matt takes a page out of Jack Bauer’s book and frightens Officer Mackenzie by handcuffing him in his new car, then driving it back and forth at speed, crashing it into the walls. Matt out Mackenzie is the killer and he couldn’t detect that Mackenzie was lying because he wears a pacemaker (A plot twist that came up in the comics at one point.) In this version, Mackenzie tells Matt about the Kingpin’s family killings, whereas it was Ben Urich in the theatrical cut.

Eureka: Karen Page, the legal firm’s receptionist realizes that MOM 6-8 is upside down, and it actually means 8-9 WOW. 8-9 was the date of the murder, and WOW are the initials of Wesley Owen Welch, the Smithers to Kingpin’s Mr Burns.

Extended Morgue scene: Foggy phones Ben Urich to tell him what about the discovery.

Bullseye Kisses Elektra: He does this after stabbing her. Yuk. He also leaves a rose behind before making his escape.

8-9 WOW Purple Monkey Dishwasher: Ben Urich tells the detective in charge of Dante’s case what Foggy told him. The detective then talks to Wesley.

Dante is Off the Hook: Dante is found not guilty and gets very emotional with his new friend Foggy. This scene is quite sweet because it shows how Matt and Foggy take clients that no one else would, and that means a lot to the clients.

The Secret Keeper: Matt goes to church, but he is unfortunately too late for the service. Outside, he meets Ben Urich, who reveals that he knows Matt is Daredevil and is writing an article about it. He later changes his mind and erases the article.

Orange is the New Black: Kingpin and Wesley are in prison. Kingpin braces himself for the inevitable Green Mile jokes and vows to throttle anyone who puts a mouse in his cell. On the bright side, he has Wesley to be his prison bitch. A scene with Bullseye in the hospital is moved here. In the theatrical cut, the Bullseye scene was after the credits.

The main difference with the director’s cut is that we get to see a lot more of Matt Murdock and his day job as a lawyer. In the theatrical cut, the Matt scenes had him being overshadowed by Elektra a lot of the time, and their relationship was the main focus, which hurt Matt as a character in his own right. The new scenes added improve the film’s pacing by spacing out the action scenes. This is particularly beneficial for Kingpin, as in the theatrical cut, he is fought minutes after Bullseye and goes down quite easily after the initial wrecking. This had the unfortunate effect of making him an anticlimactic pushover. Look again at the Daredevil entry and compare the final battle with Bullseye and Kingpin. Bullseye got an entire paragraph to himself, whereas Kingpin got one sentence. The added subplot makes Kingpin the mastermind behind everything, which makes him more of a threat and sets him apart from Bullseye. It is quite enjoyable to see Matt and Foggy following the case and figuring it out, not to mention being a different angle for a superhero film.

Another benefit is that the subplot gives Foggy more to do. While he did appear in the theatrical cut, it was as unnamed comic relief who believed alligators lived in New York’s sewers and grumbled about Matt refusing to accept guilty but rich clients. The director’s cut paints him in a more positive light, as he helps with Dante’s case without complaining, even if he is sceptical of Dante’s innocence initially. Compare the scene of Matt agreeing to represent Dante to the end of the film and Dante being declared not guilty to see how far Foggy has come as a character. Speaking of Dante, he is a good portrayal of the type of client Matt Murdock represents- a person who has no one on his side. Despite his being a small time crook, he remains likeable and you’ll want to see him declared innocent. Hopefully, he’ll stay on the straight and narrow afterwards.

While the problems with the action scenes do remain in the director’s cut, they’re easier to forgive due to being futher apart. The Elektra romance is also more tolerable for the same reason. These two elements dragged down the theatrical cut because they were overemphasised, but the new scenes in the director’s cut don’t feature Elektra or any action sequences, which helps to balance them out. The addition of more humour even helps Bullseye fit the tone of the film a little better. Overall, the director’s cut is a noticeable improvement on the theatrical cut.

Next time: Will this sequel Xceed the high Xpectations set by the original?