Netflix Daredevil

Against spies, people like Ward or Garrett or Rumlow people who lie for a living and know how to do so without showing signs, his powers would be far less effective

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7IHY0sH94

Like that?

edited 15th Apr '15 6:57:35 PM by Guy01

That's exactly what I was thinking of, yeah.

In the MCU, Ward in particular is a very good example of the kind of person who would stop Matt's powers cold. Ward feels nothing when manipulating, lying and half-lying, does so as easily as breathing, and had that drilled into him from a young age.

If Ward's mindset, at least, is that of a typical HYDRA agent, Matt would likely be much less effective against them as a whole.

edited 15th Apr '15 7:03:55 PM by KnownUnknown

I never disagreed of that. Matt is kind of an awful person for relying on beating people up so much. Which I actually think is kind of the point (the whole internal Devil and all). I am just saying that the main practical arguments against torture are mostly solved by Daredevil's powers. I never meant to claim there aren't other, better, alternatives.

Actually, Ward have demonstrated he can't fool a lying detecting machine in the first season. He had to fool the man handling the machine and was only able to do so by saying the truth. And, btw, said machine is less powerful than Daredevil, as physical pain muddled up the results. Daredevil would totally see through him.

In the context of the series, Daredevil is almost omniscient on that regard. He detects lies even when it shouldn't be physically possible. Technically, beating the suspect and scaring them to death should make the lie detection impossible. Their biological signs would be too messed up thanks to the pain, adrenaline and fear. I just chalk it to "super power" and move on. As far as the series has shown us, Daredevil is foolproof.

edited 15th Apr '15 7:11:16 PM by Heatth

In the old movie and comics, things like pacemakers have thrown off Daredevil's powers before. I'm sure the same applies to the MCU version.

I forgot about that scene with Ward, but just because Ward isn't actually a good example doesn't mean that characters who could have enough self control to avoid it don't exist.

Again, Daredevil only uses his powers on mooks and regular people, who don't typically control themselves to a large extent during their lies and and near all people who aren't particularly skilled at covering themselves under pressure. He uses anxiety to his advantage, not just the fear of death - I don't remember if I pointed out Sitwell before, but he's a good example: it became far more obvious when he was or wasn't telling the truth when he was threatened than it was beforehand.

I'd be more willing to buy Matt's powers being omniscient rather than biological if he ever needed to use them against someone who posed a challenge to them. As far as we know, he didn't even use it to snoop out Wesley - since Wesley made the situation as obvious as humanly possible without it.

edited 15th Apr '15 7:32:49 PM by KnownUnknown

My point with Ward example is that regular strategies to throw off lie detectors don't work will with Daredevil because his abilities are super human. He is able to tell a lie as easily from someone who is calm as from someone who is in massive distress. That shouldn't be logical possible given the description of how his abilities work^note off course the suspect's biological signs change, they are being beaten up and, yet, they do. Because that is Daredevil's "gift".

At any rate, even if they didn't work with extremely well trained super spies, it is beyond the point I was making. Daredevil doesn't torture spies. He torture street punks. And his methods are effective there thus the practical concern of torture are lessened in the context of the show.

If that's the case, it doesn't work for the same reason it didn't work for my earlier point. If Ward can't fool a polygraph, he would never be able to fool Matt because Matt is a super-polygraph. In order to show that Matt is outright infallible in relation to existing lie-detecting tech, he would at the very least need to use his powers on someone who could fool a polygraph.

edited 15th Apr '15 8:01:14 PM by KnownUnknown

Matt's senses have shown to have some workarounds in the sense of guys like Nobu masking their heartbeat to his detection. Presumably, for a man to be able to fool Matt's lie-detecting methods, he'd need to have a inhuman control of his heartbeat and blood flow.

And all of this is irrelevant because my last point still stands. He would eventually start to wonder why he keeps hearing his coworkers whispering "Hail Hydra" to each other when he got his morning coffee.

"World on Fire": fantastic episode. Excellent juxtaposition of how Matt and Fisk's inner darkness affects (in different ways) their attempts to pursue relationships with women who interest them. And further juxtaposition of that with Foggy and Karen's very cute, innocent 'date'.

Foggy's really growing on me. At the start of the show he felt like the crooked one of the pair, but after the scene at the big law firm and his help in fixing up his client's apartment he's coming across much more as a Knight in Sour Armour. I like his way of helping people better than Matt's; there are thousands of ways to make the world a better place and improve the lives of individuals without hurting others. Not sure how I feel about him and Karen as a couple - not every woman in the show needs to be a love interest - but their interactions are very fun, particularly in this episode and the one where they got drunk together.

The other parallels between Matt and Fisk - their mutual desire to make something better of the city, and desire (claimed, on Fisk's part) to end crimes like trafficking in children, using extreme violence when necessary - now feels like they could shape up to be a very interesting story. Plus, there's the cliffhanger.

The first three episodes were only okay, if that, but the last two have been two major steps up and have made strong moves forward in terms of the plot, themes, and characters.

Okay, question. In the show's intro credits, the symbolism of Blind Justice (the law) and the church (Matt's Catholicism) and the buildings and bridge (New York; also, for the buildings under contstruction, the Union Allied company) is obvious, but why the water tower? Does it have some significance that I'm missing?

edited 16th Apr '15 12:15:10 AM by Galadriel

...I don't think he does? I didn't think he changed it that much, to be honest.

He made his voice rougher, more gravelly, and less easily identifiable during at least some of his interrogations.

If he did it was much more subtle than how Christian Bale did it. Though still, I couldn't help but throw in some "I'm Batman"s in that voice when watching it.

Glad Cox didnt try all that hard to make his voice scarier. It sounded more naturally low and aggressive.

@Galadriel

I think the water tower just represents the rooftops that our hero tends to frequent when out vigilante-ing.

edited 16th Apr '15 1:47:58 AM by nervmeister

Just finished episode 4. That was... Holy crap, Fisk is as scary as I wanted him to be. Still miss the white suit and purple scarf but my god, he was a sympathetic and relatable dude in one moment and a frightening crook in the next. He's perfect. The actor for him is perfect. He's just... Yeah, it's amazing so far.

Maybe it's a Mythology Gag? It's been noted that Frank Miller put a lot of water towers prominently in the background when he was drawing Daredevil.

...okay, probably not, but it's the best answer I've got.

Yeah, I'm all for the idea that Torture Never Works. Except for the fact, in this case, it working really is justified.

Matt being a Living Lie Detector to level that he is really does make zero sense in the real world. Polygraphs, already notoriously unreliable, are downright useless if someone is already in a high-stress situation (like, say, getting punched in the face). But for whatever reason, it does work in this one.

Personally, I feel like it has to do more with what Matt hears in their voice; it can't be their heartrate given he's interrogated men immediately after he's fought with them and ended up breaking their arms (when your heartrate and adrenaline are already at maximum, lying isn't going to speed it up any).

But the moral aspects... well, it's sort of addressed. Matt sure as hell isn't painted as a saint for doing it, that's for sure. He's shown as pretty damn gray.

He is able to tell a lie as easily from someone who is calm as from someone who is in massive distress.

Nope! He detects lies due to heartbeat. If someone is calm and their heartbeat never wavers, he can't do that. This is also one of the failings of lie detectors — another failing is if a person is so nervous, their heartbeat is all of the place all the time, you still can't tell if they are lying or not.

See, it's not a magical lying detector. It's a heartbeat detector. Just because Matt can hear heatbeats doesn't mean he can always tell if someone is lying or about what.

Yeah, that's what they're saying. Realistically, Matt's methods should be flawed since he uses all the same techniques as your standard polygraph, and that wouldn't always work in these situations for the many reasons stated above.

However, despite that, the show portrays it as always working anyway. So in this universe, Matt is a reliable lie detector, the subject's stress level aside.

In real life, polygraphs can be confused with pain, since it produces similar results to lying. This was never accounted for in the show.

I like to think that the reason it works is because they don't know what he's doing. I don't know what it takes to beat a polygraph properly, but I imagine you really have to concentrate and focus on it, at least for your average non-Romanov bum, so if they don't realize what he's doing they're not going to try anything. This, again, would probably only work when the subject is in a relatively stress-free environment. Not one where their teeth are on the floor.

On an unrelated topic Vincent D'Onofrio is insanely good. I always forget he was also the bug from Men In Black. The only time I saw that at all was in that last scene with him and Daredevil when he's acting a little bit drunk.

I think Daredevil does do the Batman thing sometimes and doesn't do it other times. It's like he wasn't sure if he really wanted to commit to it or not.

They play the heartbeat sometimes, but I think that's more The Coconut Effect. As many people have pointed out, that makes no sense in the context of the show when it comes to more violent interrogations. As I mentioned, heartbeats can't get much faster than when you're in the middle of a fight and someone just broke your arm.

Then again, I only recall the heartbeat sound during "standard" questioning. Maybe it's part of what he uses to determine truth in calmer times, but during violent times he has to rely on something else, hence my suggestion that there's something in peoples' voices that only he can pick up on.

edited 16th Apr '15 9:01:21 AM by Larkmarn

I think his case is pretty close to Toph's tremor sense in ATLA. She can spot a liar, except if it is an exceptionnally good one - someone who can tell lies without even giving a hint it is one (Azula).

However, despite that, the show portrays it as always working anyway.

How many times has he used it in the show? During the trial with the jury, during that one interrogation with the mook, and...when else? Because I don't actually think he used his lie-detecting ability that much.

And at the end, even though he could tell something was wrong with Karen, he couldn't tell what it was, so again, nothing magical, just the ability to tell if someone is nervous.

edited 16th Apr '15 9:01:43 AM by alliterator

I don't remember specific instances but he says, "If you lie I'll know," a lot, in both intense and calm situations. Usually the way it goes is: Matt asks a question and tells them not to lie, they lie, he breaks a bone or threatens them, they tell the truth, he goes away.

At the least he also used it on Karen a few times when they first met (initial meeting and when she lied about the documents), but those were nonviolent situations. He did the don't-lie-to-me thing on that one guy on the rooftop near the end of the series as well. That's all I can remember off the top of my head.

IT is explicitly mentioned at one point that he uses it at all times. And even if you don't consider all the times he claims he will know when someone lies to him, "that one interrogation with the mook" involved massive distress for the mook involved. The mook's heartbeat would be way far too out of sync if Daredevil's ability worked any way realistically.

Given that the show makes it a point (in later episodes, I doubt that's a spoiler) to criticize Matt's methods and the fact that he seems to get a bigger rise out of hitting people than saving people like he claims, the torture stuff seems like it's supposed to bother you.

First couple of episodes you're rooting for it and Matt but then Fisk comes in and you start to question Matt (and yourself) a bit; like maybe neither of these lunatics are good for the city but ultimately Daredevil is A Lighter Shade of Grey - though certainly the grayest hero in the MCU at the moment. I like him a lot for it.

And I think he only really Batman'd in the third or fourth episode towards Bowling Alley guy with the "I want a name!" line and that was more just a generic angry grunty voice than anything.

edited 16th Apr '15 10:17:22 AM by HisInfernalMajesty