Daredevil: Born Again

The first two episodes of Disney's new Daredevil series were released this week. There was some good, some bad, and some ugly.

Ten years ago, a show called "Daredevil" was quietly released on Netflix. No fanfare, no marketing push, just "here ya go" head first into the world of a Marvel hero with a long and checkered history in the comics. What was known after the first episode all those years ago? This was going to be one helluva show.

After three phenomenal seasons of television, Netflix abruptly cancelled the show, much to the dismay of fans around the globe. Something was up. Disney/Marvel had plans. For years, there were rumblings that Disney was going to inject Daredevil into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Those rumblings never came to fruition, until the last few years. Charlie Cox, who played the titular man without fear, was rumored to be in some upcoming MCU projects. Lo and behold, in 2021, Cox's Matt Murdock shows up in "Spiderman: No Way Home" to provide sound legal advice to the webslinger and show off how good of a "lawyer" he is... and crack a joke. Thus began the "Disneyfication" of one of the darkest superhero characters in the history of Marvel Comics TV.

Daredevil would go on to show up in a few other shows, each time losing more and more of the grit and seriousness earned over 39 hours of television. The cake-topper came in the much maligned "She-Hulk" after he sleeps with Tatiana Maslany's Jennifer Walters, we see Daredevil in his classic yellow suit strut down the street in the classic "walk of shame" style. And from that moment on, fans of the character wondered if we would ever get the Netflix Daredevil back again.

Well, after almost ten years, DD finally gets another go-around... except minus the religion or the vigilantism.

The show changed show runners and scrapped a whole season of TV that was already filmed. What's even worse, rumors spread that they would be mixing and matching from the new creative team's story and what was already scrapped. And if the first two episodes are any indication, the show may be in for a rocky ride.

The MCU, Disney, and The Devil of Hell's Kitchen (Mild Spoilers Ahead)

Marvel media has a big problem. What started as a run for the ages with Iron Man and culminating with End Game will be studied by producers for decades and emulated for even longer. But since then, while still making money, the quality has been on the decline.

The creatives behind the shows and movies have an impossible task of trying to link all of the nonsense going on throughout the connected universe, all the while telling new stories about marginal characters. And the creatives they get to run these shows and films are nowhere near the quality of their predecessors. Daredevil is just the latest to be damaged by the interconnectivity. Since the original show was such a hit and the characters were written so well, fans cared about them. But Marvel doesn't care and they don't play into their plans, so they kill off a major character and chase another one off IN THE FIRST EPISODE of the new series only to be replaced by characters we know nothing about, don't get to know, but are supposed to care aout becuase they are the new Foggy and Karen Page.

On top of these character choices, Disney tries to recapture the magic of the Netflix show by retaining the violence, thinking that is all the show was about. And because of that mentality, the opening 15 minutes of Born Again features a classic Daredevil trope... The hallway One Take fight scene. Except instead of an artfully choreographed dance, Disney does what they do best, cut corners with awful CGI. The actors become rubber bands, CGI smoke to try and hide the CGI, and Daredevil using his baton/grappling hook to fly around the rooftops even though there is nothing above him for his grappling hook to attach to. And I get where the show runners are coming from... that is who Daredevil is in the comics... more an acrobat than a pugilist. But if any lessons have been learned regarding Marvel and the MCU... the MCU doesn't care about the comics all that much, so why start now with a property they know is a hit.

This problem isn't solely one that Marvel/Disney is grappling with... most studios think their audience is dumb and they create content with that belief in mind. "Give them violence and they'll be happy". The executives lost the reason the original was so good in the first place. In the Netflix show's first season, Matt doesn't get his suit until the LAST EPISODE and not one fan cared because the writing was so good. But when the reveal of Matt in the suit happens in that final episode of season one, it feels earned because it was. Another aspect of the character that seems to be lost thus far is Matt Murdock's faith... or lack thereof. There was a tiny moment in episode two that alludes to i,t so hopefully it returns. Matt's faith and relationship with God is a huge aspect of the Netflix series and it would be a shame for Matt to lose it all together.

It's not all bad in "Born Again", though. Hector Ayala (from the comics), played by the recently deceased Kamar de los Reyes, has some wonderful scenes with great dialogue. And a scene between Cox's Murdock and Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) could have been ripped from the Netflix show, as well as a close combat fight scene in an apartment in episode 2 that was visceral. So, with any luck, scenes like that will be more abundant as the show moves on because that's when Daredevil was at its best.

To add a personal spin to this whole thing, like Star Wars, I grew up reading my uncles comics and he had a plethora of Daredevil in his collection. As much as I loved Spiderman and Batman, it was Daredevil who grabbed my attention. When the show came out in 2015, I was beyond excited to see my childhood hero in live action (the Ben Affleck film does NOT count).