Hi Folks,
It’s been a while. Good to ‘see’ some familiar ‘handles’.
I I just got through the first three episodes of the new Disney+/Marvel “Daredevil: Born Again.” I held off reactivating Disney+/Hulu when it started, in order to watch the show with a former co-worker, and fellow long time DD reader, and our schedules didn’t match up very well, these first two weeks.
Lot to unwrap here, but so far, it looks like we’re in a “waiting game” for things to heat up.
Story and Tone: Some said that DD:BA would be a have a far lighter, at times, more comedic tone than the Netflix series. I’m so relieved that they didn’t go in that direction. Matt showing up in the yellow and red outfit, and the relative levity of his role in the She-Hulk series, had me fearing the worst.
Brian Michael Bendis: Three episodes in, you can really see BMB’s influence on the script. Bendis’ run on the title was noteworthy for the amount of time we spent on Matt being Matt, the lawyer, and delving into his personal and interior life (so much so that other long time DD readers I know, like the owner of the comic book shop I patronized at the time, complained about it, saying, “I buy DD for DD, not MM”). So far, that seems to be the case. It’s likely the first half to two-thirds of the series will be about events driving Matt – and Wilson Fisk, for that matter – to reclaim their ‘disavowed shadow selves’. Then I expect we’ll see Matt as DD, in all his ‘violent glory’, so to speak.
Big Budget CGI – It was said that one of the benefits of having a Disney+ sized budget (as opposed to, what I suppose were lower Netflix budgets) was that DD’s fight scenes would be much more acrobatic. That kinda’ worried me then, and worries me still.
One of the great pleasures of the Netflix series was the quality of fight scenes – something that they put great emphasis on – so far, for all of the CGI enhancement, the fight scenes haven’t yet quite matched those in the Netflix show – the scene where a couple of the vigilante cops try to intimidate Matt, and Matt starts breaking limbs, nonwithstanding – I’m worried that an over-reliance on FGI will take something away from the fight scenes.
But it’s still early yet, so we’ll see…
I’m sure some of you remember Drew Edwards, who was a long time regular on the Authority Board, (and might be on this one, I don’t know, and don’t get here often). We had an exchange about the show on Facebook. He said the CGI has allowed the directors to make this series much more cinematic and DD’s movement much more acrobatic.
I really didn’t see it. There were two shots in that first act that showcase Matt’s swinging round that reminded me of the way Gene Colan drew DD swinging around town – but so far those are the only moments that stand out in that way that I can recall. And as they took place at night…
Again, it’s early yet, and so far, 90% of the story has been about Matt, the Lawyer. I expect half to two-thirds of the story will be about events driving Matt and Wilson Fisk to reclaim their alter egos. I expect things to get more dynamic once they cross that threshold.
Supporting Characters: One fun thing about Bendis (whose involvement in the current show is pretty obvious by now) run on the title, and the Brubaker run that followed, was that both writers expanded DD’s supporting cast considerably, managing to work in Elektra Natchios, Peter Parker, Frank Castle, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Danny Rand, Dakota North, Alaqua Cox, and even Reed Richards and Stephen Strange in fun and interesting ways. (That funny rooftop conversation where Peter Parker mentions his ‘hot wife waiting at home’ before leaving, and Cage, Danny and others express surprise that Peter is married to a woman, and confess that they all thought Peter was gay, stands out.)
I hope the showrunners of this current series take some cues from those stories. To my mind, it would be the best way to bring those people back into the MCU: TV Division; by casually reintroducing them, as all living in the same world – something the Netflix shows have already set up for them.
Heightened Reality: Overall, I’m hopeful, but I’m a bit worried about the way many scenes have been directed and edited together. The example that stands out to me, in this regard, is the siner dialogue scene between Matt and Fisk. It was pretty pedestrian: so much of it shot with the two men sitting, facing each other in profile, across the table.
Honestly, it was kinda’ dull. Compare that to the scene in Michael Mann’s “Heat”, between Pacino’s MCU detective and DeNiro’s bank robber: the variety and number of over-the-shoulder shots and the way those were edited together. There were a lot of moments like that throughout these first three episodes that I thought could’ve delivered more dramatic tension.
They way the directors, camera people and editors put together the HBO MAX Penguin series is another good point of comparison. I dodn’t think there was a single moment when they didn’t wring every ounce of drama they could out of every scene of that show.
Three episodes in, DD:BA is missing that sense of heightened reality – something the Netflix version had in spades. This might be intentional… setting up for a time later on, when DD and the Kingpin cut loose.
Supporting characters, continued: Whether it’s in DD:BA, or in upcoming shows featuring other characters from the Netlfix/Marvel era: I do hope the new showrunners bring back Deborah Ann Woll’s Karen Page and Rosario Dawson’s Clare Temple. Those two (along with Carrie Ann Moss’s Jeri Hogarth and Simone Messick’s Misty Knight) played an important role connecting all of the other characters in the Netflix shows. Page in particular was particularly good playing opposite Jon Benthal’s Frank Castle. Barring heavy reliance on first person voice-over narration, the Punisher is a character that needs a ‘relatively normal’ supporting character to ‘play off’ of.
And I’m really hoping the new Disney/Marvel showrunners bringing back Colleen Wing, whom I began to see as the great unsung heroine of the Netflix Iron Fist show – esp. since the actress reportedly turned down a role in the MCU Shang-Chi film in the hopes of ‘keeping the door open’ to playing Colleen again in the future.
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WonK.
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