May 7, 2015

Hello, blogosphere. This is Neil Cullen Rush, and I am here today to give my first ever official TV show review. The show I chose to review is the new Netflix show, Daredevil. There will be mild spoilers for this review, and while I'll try to keep them few and far between, I would recommend seeing the show before reading this if you can.
Set in the same universe as the Avengers films, but in a "darker corner" far removed from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in which there really is no interaction with and very minimal mention of Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, S.H.I.E.L.D., or any normal Marvel thing, it focuses on Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), a law school graduate that has just gone into the business of being a defense attorney with his best friend Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson). Every night, he goes out into his neighborhood and fights crime in a black ninja costume that is supposed to be a precursor to the well-known Daredevil costume (at least it's not the yellow costume from the 1960s). He struggles to keep it a secret from the rest of the world. One day, Matt and Foggy come across their first client, a woman named Karen Page (True Blood's Deborah Ann Woll) who has been framed for murdering an associate of crime boss Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), known on the streets as the Kingpin. Matt was blinded as a child after getting an odd chemical in his eyes from saving a man from getting run over. He was the child of a single father, Jack, who had a boxing career and was killed after refusing to throw a fight. This, combined with his enhanced hearing allowing him to hear all of the crime going on in his neighborhood and "motivation" from his blind mentor Stick (Scott Glenn), made Matt decide to become a vigilante. Matt's blindness gives him superhuman hearing, smell, taste, and touch, allowing him to do things like detect things with radar, dodge attacks before they're thrown, tell honesty through heartbeat, and a variety of other skills. Matt uses his abilities and fighting skills to go after associates of Kingpin and bring him to justice while struggling to remain "the good guy" in the situation. He tries to keep his other identity secret from everyone else and knows that what he does as a vigilante that does anything he can to criminals to stop them except kill them isn't much better than what the criminals he fights do. Wilson Fisk is an equally complicated individual. Having killed his father in a fit of anger as a child after snapping from both himself and his mother dealing with frequent physical, mental, verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse at his hands, he knew he never wanted to be without power ever again. As a result, he managed to build up power in the criminal underworld over the years, gained control of most of the police, and managed to run nearly all of the street-level crime in New York City. Fisk even falls in love with an art gallery owner named Vanessa Marianna (Ayelet Zurer) and starts an awkward but loving relationship with her, who convinces him to announce himself to the public as a humanitarian that will reform and stop crime in the city, hiding his true criminal nature. This is one of the best things the show does- make its hero struggle to keep from becoming the villain and make its villain the kind of person that, were it not for his brutal methods, violent temper, and unethical dealings, could be seen as the hero. Kingpin is my favorite character in the show, and my favorite villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe besides Loki and Thanos.
The relationships between all of the characters are believable and realistic. Matt and Foggy's friendship is truly heartwarming, which makes it all the more sad when it falls apart after Foggy learns of Matt's double life. This isn't a friend thinking it's really cool that his friend is a superhero; this is more like someone confronting a friend with a harmful addiction. Yes, they reconcile, but things can never be 100% between them ever again. Fisk doesn't have much experience with women, so he constantly stutters when talking with Vanessa, yet she is fascinated by him, pudginess and all, making it all the more bizarre when Kingpin brutalizes his enemies.
The show is definitely better than the 2003 Daredevil film, though I don't think that one is as bad as people say it is. People say that Ben Affleck is why it's bad, though I think that, while Affleck is definitely better at directing films than acting in them, he's not a bad actor as long as he has good material, something Mark Steven Johnson did not provide with his Daredevil film. I do think that the actors did the best with the material they had, and would have definitely enjoyed seeing Jon Faverau as Foggy, Colin Farrell as Bullseye, and Michael Clarke Duncan (RIP) as Kingpin in a film or TV show written and directed by someone other than Mark Steven Johnson. Affleck was passable as both Matt Murdock and Daredevil, though was still better as Murdock. I never expected Affleck to want to play Batman after comments he made in a 2006 interview saying he never wanted to play a superhero again due to how uncomfortable the costumes are, but here we are. I think he will be a better Bruce Wayne than Batman, but passable as both, as long as Chris Terrio, David S. Goyer, and Zack Snyder give him good material, which I have a lot of reasonable doubt that they won't.
Anyway, back to Daredevil. With strong acting, thorough character development, a darker tone than most other things set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, just the right amount of comic relief, and Netflix binge-watching convenience, I found myself enjoying this show much more than many other things in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to have come before it, like Iron Man 2 and 3, Thor: The Dark World, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, and even Avengers: Age of Ultron, though probably not as much as the first Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, the first Thor, both Captain America films, the first Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy. If you can stomach a hefty amount of blood and more generally disturbing content in superhero stories, and would want to see a darker side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I would highly recommend this show. I can't wait for Season 2 in 2016 and the upcoming Netflix series for Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist that go along with this show and are supposed to team up in a Netflix miniseries about the Defenders, and feel that Netflix shows are a good alternative to making films for Marvel's darker characters. I score the show a 9.9/10. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you again for my next blog post.