Daredevil. 2 Minutes 8 Seconds.

It's been a while hasn't it?

So, here's a post based off a 'have you watched' question, and a post written because I feel it deserves a little bit of appreciation, they've done well have Netflix, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe has a brand new beast to add into it's sprawling entertainment empire.

Another admission, yes, this is cheating, it's a trailer and not a clip, the idea is to sell the series. Over that? Brilliant, let's move on.

First thing to say I think is that we're 12 years on from the last time anyone attempted this character on the big or small screen, and I think I'm safe in saying that last effort has been bettered... Yeah, massively bettered. If you've not seen the film from 2003, Ben Affleck mimics the look of the early 2000s Cyclops from the X-Men films and wanders around and the image goes all sci-fi and he wears some uncomfortable looking red leather and beats up people in bullet time and Colin Farrel runs around with a bullseye carved into his head and flies off a motorcycle and throws pens at people and kills them and...

So it's all just a bit of fun really. Nobody would miss out if it had never been made.

Back to 2015 and we have a creation at the other end of the spectrum, and clear influences and ideas on how to get it right this time round. And by get it right I mean make it better than the movie, in my opinion. You may like the movie more, which is fine, but you'd be very wrong to do so.

This current round of Marvel films (and TV show) usually follow the same winning formula of don't go too dark, don't go neo-noir and in essence carve out a personal path for success instead of working along the success formula of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Become known for your own specific character styles (the wise cracking one, the tall, brutish one, deadly (usually) female assassin, etc.) and I reckon that the people running the cinematic arm of Disney are well happy with what's been produced. I mean when Disney bought out Lucasfilm, in between all the mockery and yelling about how George Lucas is a sell out, there were the groups of people reminding the rest that these were the people who provided us with the entertainment of The Avengers, so they must know what they're doing? (Even if everything that gets made is a tad samey)



So, off the back of all that Marvel and ABC got together once more, this time to make a Netflix broadcast TV series, and it's nothing like their formula. At all.

Daredevil Dark

It is dark. Incredibly dark. Batman Begins levels of dark. And as an outsider to the character and the history and the backstory and the comic book storylines, I feel it works incredibly well. I probably should have mentioned that I am in no way a comic book/graphic novel reader, and in all honesty I don't know what the differences are in the definitions or what the base material for this character is classed as. The artwork is rather admirable mind you. So yeah, back on topic. The world depicted in the series and the themes running through the visual aesthetics match up quite nicely. This is not the high class, high budget combat world of S.H.I.E.L.D or Iron Man, this is no budget vigilante brawling in the back streets of 'Hells Kitchen'. When I say brawling, it's often far more one sided than that. I'm led to believe the backstory has been changed somewhat from what people who know the character would recognise, but it gives an incredibly detailed depiction of Daredevil's motivations through a range of flashbacks over the course of the series.

These one sided brawls, not got a better name for them, sorry about that, are meant to appear as realistic as possible, for a TV show about a blind vigilante lawyer with superhuman aural abilities, and throughout you can visibly see Daredevil get more and more tired, as more energy is spent. This is a far cry from almost all other superhero based shows/films, where the characters contain unstoppable energy and then are stopped almost instantly, there's no tiredness as an in-between at all. The closest possible comparison in terms of performance style I think is the famous hallway fight scene from Oldboy, and one scene part way through the series where he takes on 2 or 3 rooms of people in one narrow hallway seems to be a tribute. If you've not seen Oldboy (the better 2003 one) and you enjoy this series, then go have a watch.

Daredevil pulling an Oldboy in a hallway.

What's also quite refreshing is that I don't recognise the cast, admittedly that's because I don't watch Broadwalk Empire/Law & Order (actually I do recognise Deborah Ann Woll from True Blood, so scratch that one), and it's nice to see these people settling into these roles with no previous personalities attached to them, and the results with the Kingpin are truly wonderful. He seems slightly unhinged pretty much all the time, but in a way where it's visibly and very consciously subdued, Vincent D'Onofrio for me is easily the pick of the cast. The three other main and various support just don't get given characters anywhere near as interesting, but there is nobody unconvincing to my eyes.

Now backstory is an extremely contentious issue when it comes to comic book characters, for some it's been done to death, and then for others they've altered it and it's all been made a little ridiculous. I feel it's important in this case to delve as much as they did, given that you're watching a 'blind' guy do things that I'd struggle to do with full vision. I'm led to believe that it's altered slightly from the classic comic character, yet as soon as you're introduced to the story through flashback, it makes a lot through narrative instead of cheesy SFX.

I think I've mentioned before on these how I know very little about the technical side of cinematography, but I know what I like, and this is it. Harsh edges, pools of light, heavy shadowing in the corner of rooms, contrast, restricted colour pallet, and overall incredibly stylized Noir 'film making' (TV making?). Couple that with the rather detailed sound design, lots of rain involved, little details from the sound design accentuated in order to give you Daredevil's perspective, and you have a vast improvement on 2003's effort. I reckon anyway.

I don't think any of that was spoilery? I urge you to seek it out if you have a Netflix subscription, and if you dont, it's a really easy thing to convince the family/friends to share with you because there's a decent amount on there. But I think that's enough dodgy writing for the time being don't you?


I'll try and do this a little more frequently, but probably wont be able to keep that up... The Descent will probably be the next post up, if you like horror as much as I do (which is a lot) and you haven't seen it, there is a lot in there to trigger you!

Until then I guess Marvel binge and adios!