‘Daredevil: Directors Cut’ (2003)

Dave’s 3-Word Review:
Dark and Focused

Back in the early 2000’s, Marvel released two movies that wound up finding their spots on the shelf titled “Worst Marvel Movies Ever”, at least for many people. Those two movies were “Daredevil” in 2003 and its spinoff film, “Elektra” in 2005. Even to this day, I am completely thrown as to why these films were understood to be bad, as I honestly loved them. To be honest, I have already seen both editions of “Daredevil”, which were the theatrical and director’s cut. Both are good in my opinion, but as most people say, the director’s cut wins by a landslide, and that is also true. The main question is if you can spot the differences, and you can.

Ben Affleck stars as the man without fear himself, Daredevil. Daredevil is a blind superhero that uses his innate ability to use his sense of hearing as a sonar to guide him and fight crime. His style of fighting crime is delivering justice where justice is blind. When guilty criminals go free, he defends Hell’s Kitchen by taking them down, often killing them in the process. When word comes up that there is a Kingpin that controls the city, killing people and their entire family, Daredevil may have one last chance to save the people that he loves before they are taken away.

There is one main difference between the director’s cut and the theatrical version of the film. Basically, the part where I wrote “When word comes up that there is a Kingpin that controls the city, killing people and their entire family, Daredevil may have one last chance to save the people that he loves before they are taken away.” I would have instead wrote “When Daredevil meets Elektra, he immediately falls in love, but the Kingpin keeps pulling them apart.” The original version of the film is very focused on the brooding romance between Matt Murdock and Elektra. That subplot was almost completely removed, and instead a new, and more expansive and important subplot was put in.

This secondary subplot involved Dante Jackson (Coolio), who was charged with a crime that he did not commit. So Matt Murdock and his associate Franklin Nelson (Jon Favreau) investigate the crime, finding bread crumbs that lead up to a number of roads that all point fingers to Wilson Fisk (Michael Clarke Duncan), the Kingpin. This subplot was very focused on Daredevil and Kingpin, the man that killed his father. Everything fit together in this movie, which is why so many critics prefer this version to the first.

Not only did they remove and add different things, but because of that, the movie had a different tone altogether. The movie was dark before, but this time around it was even darker, it was depressing, it was somber, you feel for the guy, you feel for Elektra. Not only that, but by getting rid of most of the romance, you get a good consistent vibe of how the movie should have felt the first time around. They did things right this time around, which had a lot of initially disappointed fans cheering. Again, I like both versions, but this one is clearly the victor.

There were some obvious CGI problems that it had. The transitions from live-action to CGI shots were pretty obvious, but that is to be expected for films made in the early 2000s such as this. That being said, someone who has never seen the film before may be chuckling at how bad it looks here and there. Especially the opening city sequence; that looks the worst out of everything else. The acting was pretty good, nothing particularly spectacular there, but the movie relishes off the tone. It really is captivating, and makes you want the characters to win. It is always a good thing when a film can supply this.

The basic idea of a blind man risking his own life in order to make sure justice is served is also relatively new. Not the justice part, obviously, but the blind aspect. The entire movie almost feels like a noire, and the idea is poetic. There are a lot of things about the movie to actually enjoy. Obviously, we have a lot of superhero clichés thrown in, like both superheroes having dead parents, which led them to that life.

What can I say, superheroes have a style. Who am I to rip on that?