I spent this last week slowly watching, Marvel’s Daredevil on Netflix trying to follow the multifaceted story lines that revolve around Matt Murdock aka Daredevil’s life.
The story is very slow. The season consists of thirteen, hour-long episodes in which the first six episodes are merely exposition. This made it very hard to get attached to the show. A lot happens in the pilot, in which Daredevil, played by Charlie Cox, is introduced, as well as his sidekick, best friend Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), and their leading lady Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) who works as their secretary. Four different villains are displayed in the pilot but all it really shows is that they work for an unknown head villain that will stay hidden until further notice. Not only does the show leave you wondering who the main villain is but also who exactly is Daredevil.
How did he develop super hearing? Why did he become a vigilante? What’s his motive for being Daredevil?
However, none of these questions are answered for about four-five episodes. The show goes in and out of flashbacks of Daredevil’s childhood, but they are inconsistent throughout the season and barely answer any questions about Daredevil. This makes the underlining plot rather choppy and hard to follow, because the connection to whom the real villain is and his evil scheme doesn’t get explained until the sixth episode, “Condemned”. This is actually when the exposition ends and the story finally picks up and grabs the audiences attention.
I’ve personally never read Daredevil the comic or any other comic, so I started watching the show knowing nothing and even after six episodes I was still lost. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that you don’t really need to know anything about this particular comic to understand the conflict between the vigilante superhero that is fighting his personal inner struggles, by taking it out on saving his city, because he may have lost someone he was unable to save earlier in his life. Sound familiar?
The only difference between this show and Gotham, Flash, and Arrow is that this vigilante is blind, so does that make him an underdog? I will say that this is a cool niche to the story, and even cooler that they don’t give him his sight back once he becomes Daredevil. It definitely makes the fight scenes that much more suspenseful and thrilling.
However, my other and main problem not only with Daredevil but all of the other superhero shows that they’re adapting from comics is that they’re creating dark tragic stories, that are not uplifting in any way. From what I’ve heard about comics, is that their main audience’s age range is around nine to fifteen years old. The stories will usually possess some sort of humor and leave it’s reader with hope because these badass superheroes saved the day.
Daredevil, like Arrow and Gotham, all contain a dark tone and are written to keep the audience suspenseful, leaving no room for hope. If I was the mother of a twelve year old boy who read the comic, I would not want him to watch this show.
Perhaps this show is made more for the fans and they would understand and enjoy it more then a person watching with no knowledge of the story, but this show plays with so much darkness that it’s hard to want to keep watching it because though I’m only halfway through the season, the villain is winning the entire time, and who wants to watch a show where the villain outsmarts the superhero.
image courtesy of Roger Wong/INFphoto.com