Ahead of the new Netflix Daredevil show, Luke Owen asks the burning question – does the 2003 Daredevil movie really suck?
In the early 2000s, comic book movies were riding high on a wave of popularity. After seemingly being killed off by the likes of Batman & Robin and Steel, comic book movies made a huge comeback with critically-praised and fan-adored movies like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Bryan Singer’s X-Men. When X-Men hit it big at the box office in 2000 and Spider-Man followed suit in 2002, movie studios started to snap up as many titles as they possibly could to piggyback off their success. So many of their characters were sold off in fact that not only did it save Marvel Comics from bankruptcy, but there were reports of upwards of 40 movies based on Marvel characters in some stage of development between 2000 and 2002. One of those projects was Daredevil.
The Man Without Fear had not had the smoothest of rides to escape the clutches of the comic book page. A TV show in 1975 couldn’t find the funding, using The Trial of the Incredible Hulk as a platform to launch his own spin-off show was doomed to fail and not even the huge success of the 1990s Spider-Man cartoon series could propel him into his own adventures. Even a PlayStation 2 and Xbox game based on the character couldn’t get out of development hell and was eventually cancelled. But in 2002, 20th Century Fox set out to make a big screen movie based on Daredevil. The result? A pretty lousy movie.
A lot of the hate for Daredevil – particularly from the Internet – has been directed towards the casting. Jennifer Garner was cast as Elektra (despite having about as much Greek in her as a French bagel) and Colin Farrell was cast as the villainous Bullseye even though he’s Irish and doesn’t attempt to hide it one iota. The late Michael Clarke Duncan was cast as The Kingpin in a very forward thinking move for the time, but it was the casting of Ben Affleck as Matt Murdock that really got people’s ganders up.
The decision to offer Affleck the role came from the suggestion of Clerks director Kevin Smith, who had previously been responsible for breathing new life into the comic brand with his Guardian Devil storyline in 1998. Smith, who had used Affleck in every film up until this point bar Clerks, was a huge fan of both the character and the actor and Affleck had even written the foreword in the trade paperback release of Guardian Devil, so Smith knew he was a fan and that would make him perfect for the role. Smith also admits that he would suggest casting Affleck as the shark in Jaws, but that’s beside the point. The problem with Ben Affleck at the time was this was not the Ben Affleck of Argo or The Town, this was Ben Affleck of Pearl Habor and Reindeer Games. His popularity was at an all-time low, and his casting as Daredevil was only seen as a negative in the eyes of fans.
But, really, the cast of Daredevil is the least of its problems. No one is particularly great, but neither Affleck nor Garner are overly dreadful. Garner comes off the worst because she struggles to overcome the terrible dialogue she’s given, but Affleck more or less succeeds in what he sets out to do (if what he set out to do was act blandly). Michael Clarke Duncan is serviceable as Kingpin and future Iron Man director Jon Favreau appears to just be taking notes on how not to direct a comic book movie. Really, the most dire performance of the movie comes from Colin Farrell, who steals the show in the worst kind of way. He is having an utter blast as he hams up every scene he’s in, giving a gleefully ridiculous and over-the-top performance that can only be described as magical. It’s brilliantly bad. He never needs to eat again as he chewed so much scenery on the set of Daredevil, spat it out, and then chewed it all over again.
The cast is not the issue. In fact, all of the problems with Daredevil came in the post-production stage. There were issues with the script, direction and acting of course, but something larger happened during the editing process: 20th Century Fox listened too much to the focus group feedback.
For those of you who may not know about this process, focus groups are a selection of random people pulled off the street and told to sit down and watch an early cut of a movie and then fill out a feedback form afterwards. They may like the movie, they may not, but studios put a lot of stock into their feedback. To them, there word is infallible and must be adhered to. The studios then pass this feedback to the director to re-cut the movie and appease the comments of one small group of random people. The process is then repeated, only with a different random group of people. So the director then re-cuts based on their feedback and the process begins again.
The feedback to Daredevil was very simple: the male demographic liked the action while the female feedback geared more towards the relationship between Affleck and Garner. In the original edit, their relationship was present, but it was not the focus of the movie. According to the feedback, it should be the focus. So 20th Century Fox, wanting to appeal to both demographics, demanded Affleck and Garner to be the focus of Daredevil.
In the early 2000s, comic book movies didn’t really have the wide mass appeal they have now, so studios feared that by not listening to the female demographic, they would lose them when the film was released. Scenes were re-shot and new scenes were added to make more of the relationship between Daredevil and Elektra, but now the film was too long. Fox, in their infinite wisdom, felt that the male demographic would see the film regardless, so cut back on the elements they liked in order to appease the female audience. The biggest casualty of this change? The film’s plot.
Daredevil, in its theatrical form, doesn’t have a plot. It is a collection of scenes badly tied together with early-2000s special effects, rubbish Matrix rip-offs and a horrendous soundtrack (used solely to pander to that early-2000s audience) with the loosest of through lines. There is no character motivation for anyone in the movie, and it suffers because of it. Aside from Elektra, no one has any reason to do what it is they’re doing on-screen. So, in the end, it’s just a pointless film.
There’s an old saying that too many cooks spoil the broth. Sadly for Daredevil, there weren’t too many cooks but too many punters telling restaurant owners what they want to eat, forcing the broth to please everyone’s tastes. That is not to say that writer and director Mark Steven Johnson is free from all blame when it comes to the failure of Daredevil, as he certainly did his part. His post-Daredevil work on Elektra and Ghost Rider proved that he is a man of very little talent when it came to big budget superhero films, and he is one of the men responsible for the downfall of the comic book movie in the early 2000s. With that said, he does have some redemption in the form of Daredevil: The Director’s Cut.
It’s a phrase you’ve probably heard many times during discussions about Daredevil – “the Director’s Cut is so much better.” This, of course, is entirely untrue as the same problems that haunt the theatrical cut are still present in the Director’s Cut. Affleck is still Affleck, Garner is still Garner and Colin Farrell is still chewing all of the scenery around them. The bad CGI is still in effect and the soul-destroying soundtrack is ever present. However it does have one shining light: it has a plot.
In Daredevil: The Director’s Cut, the movie follows Matt Murdock attempting to prove the innocence of a wrongly accused man (played by rapper Coolio), and during his public life as an attorney at law and his secret life as The Man Without Fear striking down those who evade justice, he finds a trail of corruption that leads him all the way to the top: The Kingpin. This story intertwines with a relationship angle between Daredevil and Elektra, who is on a mission to avenge her father who was also murdered by The Kingpin.
Is it a great story? No. But at least it’s a story.
And one can argue that with a small amount of plot, Daredevil is at least watchable.
It wasn’t Ben Affleck who ruined Daredevil, nor was it Jennifer Garner’s bland performance (though neither helped), Daredevil suffered because it came out at a time when studios didn’t really know how to make a superhero movie that appealed to everyone. And because of that, it was instrumental in the quick downfall of the comic book movie uprising started by X-Men and Spider-Man. It wasn’t solely responsible of course as it was also flanked by Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, Hulk, 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Elektra, but it certainly played its part. Since the release of movies like Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy and the rise of Marvel Studios, we now live in an era where comic book adaptations can thrive with mass-appeal. Daredevil, in essence, is a product of its time.
So, in conclusion, does the 2003 Daredevil movie suck? Of course it does, but it wasn’t given the chance to do anything else. And yes, Daredevil: The Director’s Cut is marginally better. Marginally. But they both suck at heart.
Luke Owen is the Deputy Editor of Flickering Myth and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
