Did I like “Daredevil†more than “Spider-Man?†No, not really, that was just a way to get you to read the column (either out of curiosity or outrage), but I did enjoy both movies. Truth be told, it’s hard to compare the two films, as they really are like night and day. Whereas “Spider-Man†was a bright and colorful movie, the perfect ambassador from the comics world to the “real one;†“Daredevil†is far more stylized, darker, and more of a niche film. It won’t have as much widespread appeal as “Spider-Man†or gain the comic industry as much, but “Daredevil†has the making of a cult classic that will inspire a very dedicated fanbase.
Though some people have said all the reviews for “Daredevil†have been negative, I have not found this at all. While Entertainment Weekly panned it, Roger Ebert loved the movie; the average moviegoer has been pretty divided. I actually think somebody who has never picked up a Daredevil comic book (and though I know the gist of the character and his history, I don’t actually own a single issue…though I did read a bunch of my friend’s in preparation for the movie) will like this more than a DD super-fan; that sucks for a lot of loyal readers, but in a business sense, it will pay off in the long run.
Before I dispute some arguments people have had as to why “Daredevil†was a flop or get to some of my favorite parts, let me analyze some of the big factors that people were wondering about going in.
-Ben Affleck as Daredevil: The most pleasant surprise of the movie by far. Just about anybody who saw the trailers (not to mention his last few movies) was skeptical of Affleck’s performance, but he came through in a big way in a role that should hopefully prove he does have action star chops, given the right role. Affleck is a big fan of the character and it showed. He struck a nice balance between making Daredevil/Matt Murdock untouchably confident and still learning the ropes. If Spider-Man is the dorky kid we can all relate to, then Daredevil is the underdog who made good that we all root for, because maybe we could be that someday; I think Affleck captured this perfectly. He was cool, but not so cool that we forgot that Matt Murdock is a flawed character; and I thought the flaws (the obvious physical imperfections as well as his misplaced desire for vengeance) actually came out better here than in the comics. I felt a lot more sympathy for Matt in this movie, when he lost Elektra or when he was having a crisis of conscience over his methods, than I ever did for Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker. Also, Affleck did a superb job actually conveying the fact that the character was blind with facial expressions and body language. This was imperative, given that the script seems to lose the blindness aspect at times, blurring the line between radar sense and just plain being able to see normally, something I never really was sure of in the comics either; through Affleck’s physical performance, you can tell that even though Daredevil has a radar sense, Matt Murdock is most definitely still blind.
-Colin Farrell as Bullseye: This was the performance that even naysayers thought would be a high point, and it does not disappoint. Farrell is one of the fastest rising stars in the film right now for a reason: the man practically sweats charisma. At times the character of Bullseye came off as slightly comic, but Farrell made sure to play even those scenes with a twinge of “damn…this guys is nuts.†The character is entertaining in every scene he’s in, but it is also not tough to take him seriously as a threat. From the moment he says, “Drop something†and produces DD’s billy club, I cringed every time Bullseye was on screen, knowing somebody was about to get hurt. I dug the look; not having a costume allowed Bullseye to be both part of the “real†world and DD’s world, and that was a nice touch, as he crossed over from reality into the fantasy, making him even creepier.
-Michael Clarke Duncan as Kingpin: Not really much to say here; he did a damn fine job, but he didn’t need to do much. I could say that MCD was ridiculously huge here, but that’s akin to saying “gee, the ocean sure is wet today.†The scenes he was in had the right feel to them, thanks to the cool that MCD exudes; you never really thought that he was in that much trouble, even when he was beat, which is as it should be with the Kingpin.
-Jennifer Garner as Elektra: The weak link of the movie, if you ask me, but due more to writing than through any fault of Garner’s. The character was written very flatly and was not given any time to develop. I thought killing the character off within a few scenes of her getting a costume, when she was finally developing, though it added to Affleck’s character, was the nail in the coffin for Elektra (pun somewhat intended). Garner looked good in the role, which is all she was really given a chance to do. There was a lot of lip service given before the film to the amount of time she (and Affleck) put in training, and it did pay off, as the two DD/Elektra fight sequences were a treat. Elektra never really gets treated as a strong character, transitioning directly from helpless girlfriend to incompetent victim, and I have to blame the writer’s need for DD to have something to avenge, while still wanting the Elektra character to become a protagonist; they should have all the way one way or the other. Her chemistry with Affleck, both in fighting and in the love scenes, is solid though (and the scene where she pulled the sai out of her hand…ewww…).
-The supporting cast: Jon Favreau as Foggy was an inspired piece of casting. I’m not that familiar with the character, but Favreau nailed everything an action hero’s sidekick/foil should be spot-on. Joe Pantoliano was also fun as Ben Urich. The supporting cast was a real strength here, providing a nice bridge between the action/love/etc. scenes.
-The FX: Yeah, DD did look a bit too much like Spider-Man in the CGI-rendered jumping bits, that I will concede, but it didn’t detract too much from the movie. The radar-sense was rendered perfectly; kudos to the FX people for coming up with a good way of portraying it and not running it into the ground either.
-The soundtrack: Awesome, didn’t subtract from the movie at all and added an extra layer of cool to the montage scenes; I am now an Evanescence fan.
Now then…I’ve heard two or three major criticisms among most fans that saw the movie and didn’t like it, which I will attempt to address here.
The thing I’d like to address first is the thing that also bothered me during the first half of the movie: Daredevil kills. When he first killed the rapist, I was upset; I didn’t know much about the comic, but I don’t like heroes that kill needlessly, and as this guy presented no physical threat to DD and had done nothing personal to him (unlike, say, Bullseye), I thought it was unnecessary. However, by the film’s resolution, after he does not kill Kingpin, I saw that the way the character grew, and learned not to kill, was a far better, more interesting arc than him not killing from the beginning. Why? Because the best heroes are flawed and realistic; if a normal persona experienced the personal tragedy Matt Murdock had and then received these powers, the question over vengeance over justice would be a very real one for them; a lot of people might not hesitate to kill. Spider-Man, in his movie, had to learn the power & responsibility lesson; despite having a great role model in Uncle Ben, Peter Parker had to learn the lesson for himself, and it made him infinitely more interesting and easier to relate to. Having Matt Murdock undergo an arc in which he learns, with the help of Elektra and experience, that his place is to protect the innocent, not judge the guilty, is a hundred times more fun for an audience then the perfect, impenetrably virtuous hero.
This brings me right into another fan gripe: there are differences between the comic DD and the movie DD (i.e. not killing is a major part of the comic DD’s character, as my colleague, Matt Morrison, noted in his review). Obviously it’s sort of a given at this point that movies can not stay 100% faithful to their source material, but the question is: how much is too much (as far as staying true to the character)? I think the line comes when a movie changes a character for the sake of change, and not to create a good (albeit different) story for the movie going audience. So as long as the change contributes to an entertaining work, I think most changes can be justified; case in point: the killing thing. Daredevil never kills in the comics, but here it serves to make for an interesting dynamic and helps transition the character to film. The bottom line is that comic DD and movie DD are two separate entities, at the end of the day. The job of the writer of the Daredevil movie was not necessarily to stay 100% true to the vision die-hard Daredevil readers have, it was to create the most entertaining possible story for the maximum amount of people, while not completely changing the character. If I’m not a hardcore Daredevil addict going into the movie (and I wasn’t), I’m not going to care whether or not the character’s views on killing are the same as in the comic, so long as they entertain me. Comic book fans are a very faithful (sometimes to a fault) and territorial lot. If comic fans want this movie to be successful and this character succeed, they need to accept that changes may be made to appeal to a larger audience. If the comic version was 100% perfect, the millions of people who saw the movie would all already be reading the comic, and they’re not. Fans of the Daredevil comic should take solace in the fact that no matter what happens in the movie, their favorite (and separate) character is still the same guy on the printed page; what more can you ask for?
The final caveat was that too much was packed into the movie. On this point, I somewhat agree. As I said when discussing Elektra, her entire sequence is rushed, and I think she would have done better as strictly a love interest in this movie, becoming an assassin in a sequel, and maybe not dying until a third movie. Also, the conflict between DD and Bullseye could have gone longer, or there could have been multiple battles, and really the fall of the Kingpin should not take place in the first movie. However, we must acknowledge that when writing this movie, Mark Stephen Johnson had to assume there would be no sequel; DD is a fairly obscure character to the mainstream, and not a surefire franchise like X-Men or Spider-Man. Even so, I too would like for him to have saved something for a sequel, but I acknowledge his reasoning. And to his credit, unlike the awful Batman sequels, though there are cool villains and friends in this movie, at no time do they overwhelm the principle character,
So in conclusion, Daredevil is not a film for everybody, for every comic fan, or even for every Daredevil fan, but it is a well-done movie. Give yourself, as a viewer, a bit of distance from the source material, and enjoy the fine work of the actors and crew.
I’ll respond to any comments I receive via e-mail in my next column, but go out and enjoy this movie!
