A Spoiler-Free Daredevil: Season One
Strong characters, subtlety, incredible action and Toby Leonard Moore
This review does NOT contain spoilers. Well, I do mention that Daredevil’s secret identity is Matt Murdock , but beyond that there isn’t anything that will ruin your viewing experience. Also, Soylent Green is made of people.
What is it?
Daredevil is the first of four shows that Netflix will bring out in partnership with Marvel Studios. Each of the shows will center on a third-tier superhero who may not have the following to justify a big screen outing (though people said the same thing about Iron Man once upon a time). Ostensibly, the model is the same as the big screen version: establish each character, then bring them together. The end result, assuming all goes well, will be a mini-series featuring all four of the supes as a team called The Defenders, which will presumably be like a television version of The Avengers. Secondarily, it is assumed that these characters, played by these actors, may pop up occasionally in some of the big screen Marvel Universe productions.
Who made it?
The show was created by Drew Goddard and the show-runner for Season One was Steven DeKnight. Though both have extensive production histories at this point including everything from Lost to Spartacus, the most important thing you need to know is that both of them cut their teeth alongside Joss Whedon on Buffy and Angel.
Who is in it?
Charlie Cox (The Theory of Everything, Boardwalk Empire) is in the lead role. Vincent D’Onofrio (of all his numerous and notable credits, the most relevant here are Men in Black and Full Metal Jacket) plays the big bad, Wilson Fisk. A very capable supporting cast includes Deborah Ann Woll (True Blood), Elden Henson (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay) and Rosario Dawson (Top Five). Equally impressive in smaller roles are Vondie Curtis-Hall, Toby Leonard Moore, and dueling “that guy” actors Bob Gunton and Peter McRobbie. If it all goes wrong, it won’t be because they didn’t cast good people.
Did it all go wrong?
Thankfully, no. In fact, it went very, very well.
I’ve heard more than a few people lament that the Marvel films are too bright, shiny, and funny. While I generally like all three of those things, I do see their point. Take the post-credits shawarma scene from The Avengers. Amusing as it was, it seems a little glib considering the unquestionable loss of life that just occurred. They may have saved the world, but at best they saved maybe half of New York City. I don’t think that anyone wants Marvel to go full-on dark and dreary pathos á la what DC is doing with Superman and Batman, but some type of street-level storytelling in the rapidly expanding Marvel Universe seems called for. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. certainly isn’t going to do it with its network-fitted straitjacket cinched tight (though to be fair, Agent Carter seemed to do just fine with the same restraints, and targeting the same demographic). A more adult take on a darker character delivered via a system that doesn’t take its direction from Nielsen families seems like a perfect fit. And for the most part, it is.
Despite its recent success, Marvel has always struggled to bring their smaller, grittier characters to any size screen. We’ve had three different takes on The Punisher at this point and none of them figured out how to bring the character off the page. Ditto for the Ben Affleck Daredevil film, though to be fair, all of those were in the early days of the superhero takeover of Hollywood, when filmmakers still thought that the only way to make a superhero movie was to go big and hope that the spectacle distracted the audience from the unabashedly campy nature of the proceedings. Costumes were all style, no function and A-listers were lining up to twirl their mustaches, and monologue their way to hefty paydays playing classic villains. Longform storytelling with character and subtlety seemed impossible.
This show turns that paradigm on its ear. Though there is no shortage of action (more on that in a minute), it is always secondary to the characters. If there is one thing that Goddard and DeKnight seem to have learned from their early days in the Buffyverse, it is that the best action scene in the world won’t work if the audience doesn’t care who is throwing the punches (and kicks… and kicks off of walls…and crazy sideways flips with punches and kicks). It is no small feat that they managed to keep the show as grounded as it is, while avoiding the overblown laughable bluster that lesser shows about superhumans lean on. Audiences are too savvy for that kind of nonsense these days and this show bets on that intelligence and wins big as a result.
That level of audience trust comes with benefits. It means that when you do need to indulge in some “straight from the comics” hijinks like introducing an aging, blind, wise but harsh sensei that takes in the young hero in order to teach him the ways of the forc…uhhh…to teach him to hone his superhuman skills, the audience will roll with it. It doesn’t hurt that the creative team was smart enough to do away with most of the trappings of the genre for as long as they possibly could. In the comics, “The Owl” is the banker to the world’s supervillains and he dresses in a ridiculous green cloak that makes him look like he just stepped out of a Dickens novel and has twin pillars of hair that rise up from the sides of his head. Get it? He looks like an owl. On the show, Leland Owlsley (also his real name in the comics) is the banker to the world’s supervillains, who dresses in boring but well-tailored tweed suits and has neatly combed gray hair. In short, he looks precisely like you would expect an accountant to look, even the villainous ones.
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