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Reviews Series / Daredevil 2015

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maninahat Grand Poobah Since: Apr, 2009
Grand Poobah
08/10/2015 15:17:06 •••

Why Daredevil is Better Than All the Marvel Movies

[With the exception of Guardians of the Galaxy]

Before I go into the reasons, I should mention I have a really uncanny viewing experience of Daredevil, because I am the spitting image of Charlie Cox. It actually feels really odd watching myself on screen as a badass martial artist who gets to make out with Rosario Dawson. Ignoring the self-projection, I argue Daredevil still beats most marvel movies into a cocked hat in terms of constructing an engaging superhero story. There are a lot of reasons for this.

First and foremost, it has scale. Most Marvel movies depict a superhero as an unstoppable machine, capable of wiping the floor with hordes of mooks and being tasked with stopping a World destroying disaster. Daredevil is about a guy who can just about manage to beat four guys up at once and win, and who's mission is to save one district of one city. Ironically, ever superhero these days is over-powered, to the point that they might as well all be Superman. Nothing poses a threat to them other than other super humans, and nothing is worth doing unless an entire metropolis is at stake. That makes the hero less relatable, the threat less tangible, and the world less plausible.

Daredevil is grounded and "realistic" in a way that no Nolan movie or gritty remake has managed, by scaling everything down to a very human level. When you watch Daredevil fight through another -exceptionally well choreographed and presented - fight scene, you can clearly see how much he is struggling to stay on top. If he manages to save a person's life, that feels like an achievement, unlike in a movie, where there must me people dying by the thousand from collapsing skyscrapers or alien hordes.

It also makes the villain more dangerous too. Daredevil can punch a few gang members, but how is that going to stop a city controlling king pin? Speaking of Kingpin's character, I really like how he is presented. He too is this very human individual; a villain who hides in the shadows, not because he is some super-genius chess player, but because he is an awkward guy with social anxiety issues. He's a clever and dangerous son-of-a-bitch, but he is flawed in a temperate, uncommonly depicted way.

I had no idea I would enjoy Netflix's Daredevil so much, but goddamn, I most certainly did, and maybe you will too.

Theokal3 Since: Jan, 2012
08/10/2015 00:00:00

I respect your opinion, but frankly you are being subjective. For starter, a superhero is only overpowered if he is constantly stronger than his opponents, which isn't the case with all the Marvel heroes. Second; while I will give credit to Daredevil for having more scale, I like it because this makes him different and brings more diversity to the MCU, NOT because he is better. There is really nothing wrong with seeing god-like superheroes defeating armies of mooks and stopping a major conflict; in fact, it's one of the reason fans like me enjoy this movie. I welcome a change like Daredevil, but I wouldn't consider the others bad for it.

There is also the fact you are being slightly hypocritical, in that Daredevil, despite being "normal", is still capable of taking on and defeating an entire squad of russian mobs who almost mauled him sooner, while he is still injured. And that was in his second episode; my father stopped watching the show right there because he saw that as a prove the hero was unrealistically invincible. Now I don't necessarly agree with him, but my point stand that you are neglecting some issues.

Still, I respect your opinion and can see why you'd like that better.

XenosHg Since: Oct, 2013
08/10/2015 00:00:00

"Scaled down" is actually a very good description of what exactly is different from usual MCU, whether you like it or not. Among superheroes there are fragile speedsters, or flying bricks, or glass cannons, so some are implacable, and some just try not to get hit. And most of them are superhuman and some go around occasionally saving world.

Daredevil, on the other hand, is a normal human, without the Super-part, looking after a couple of city streets. Maybe like Batman, only without money and gadgets and cars and class.. low-key small-territory batman. Moreso, if you count daredevil's sonar bat-vision. While he's supposed to be handicapped, his superpowers make him.. crouching cripple, hidden normal?

And, as I like to point out, there has already been a fight that looks just like DD's, in one of MCU movies - specifically, when Tony Stark's boxing trainer is fighting some nameless mook while Widow's swiftly incapacitating everyone else.

OK, that's realistic. So, we get long and tedious supposedly realistic fights where a hero is hitting someone in the head, then someone hitting hero in the head, then hero hitting someone, and so on, and they exchange blows until someone drops dead. ...Well, who am I kidding? It's practically always bad guys dropping dead, and the hero dropping nearly dead, and then the determinator OVERCO~~~MES and goes home to heal. And each time it might look like an achievement, if you say so. But it still looks like a struggle. *hero defeats 1 man* Ok, he's nearly dead after fighting 1 mook, but it's pretty obvious he would lose if there were 2 of them. *hero barely wins against two* Okay, 3. *hero barely wins against 3* Now 4? *hero barely wins* OK, 5? *hero barely wins* Are you kidding me? It's the same undefeatable hero yet again, only now he's constantly coughing blood and spitting out teeth. One can't help but feel that Murdock's father, a hard-hitting professional boxer, would be a hundred times more succesful superhero, while having no superpowers at all - just cause he wouldn't need to punch them again, and again, and again, and again, and..

Also, if I'd enjoy seeing people hit in the face with blunt metal objects, my young life might include more football hooligans, and going to slums with a baseball bat, for beating out thugs. And certainly fewer superhero movies.

maninahat Since: Apr, 2009
08/10/2015 00:00:00

@Xenos Hg, strictly speaking, all superheroes are undefeatable, though a well constructed scenario will convince the viewer that they might not win, or rather, that they could very easily lose. It's why Indiana Jones is a compelling action hero - his action scenes are cool because we are shown Indy getting his ass kicked, making mistakes, and generally struggling just to barely survive - and yet he still makes it. No human being could plausibly take that many punches to the head or survive being dragged along behind a speeding truck, but by showing that these things hurt like hell - that Indy is actually vulnerable - the tension is greater, the action more grounded, and his triumph in overcoming the obstacle feels far more potent. Daredevil seems to understand this, by giving us a guy who - whilst able to take on a gang of crooks at once, still can't beat a trained martial artist in a one on one, and still has to surrender to a guy pointing a gun at his chest. At no point did I ever feel like a character was ever this vulnerable in The Avengers, so there was never that tension, realism, or triumph.

The thing is, even in superhero stories with big, mythic, god like powered heroes like Superman, you can still make a better movie using the above rules. But you do it by making the people around the superhero vulnerable - that's why it is important to see superheroes saving the lives of Lois Lane from an Earthquake, or Spiderman saving a cable car full of tourists - there is still that fragility and stakes, and a good superhero movie doesn't lose sight of that. A bad superhero movie sees no problem in trashing a whole city and killing thousands of people like their lives mean nothing - if the movie doesn't even bother showing the cost in human lives, let alone how important it is to protect these lives, you've diminished the very threat the villain presents. Again, protecting civilians in The Avengers feels like an afterthought to simply killing more alien mooks, or punching Loki.

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