Daredevil
Finished watching this yesterday. My one-line review:
It's a noble failure.
The longer version:I've read a lot of DD comics - not as many as some, and not for a while, but enough to get a feel for the elements of a really good DD story. They're many and varied: the series has a lot of stuff it can draw on. To list a few:
- terrific martial arts action.
- Hell's Kitchen.
- Foggy and Matt helping the little guy in the courts.
- Kingpin.
- street-level atmosphere.
- good-hearted Foggy.
- Battlin' Jack Murdock.
- creative use of super-senses.
- Catholicism.
- Stick being badass.
- Ninjas.
Now, all those elements are unquestionably present in the series. So, what's the problem?
There's more than one, unfortunately. The first is that the mix of those elements is just wrong. OK, you don't want to overdo some of this stuff. Stick works best in small doses, for example. But it's no coincidence that the two best episodes, by a distance, are the one featuring Stick and the one where DD fights a goddam ninja.
The other 11... good, but flawed. There's too much emphasis on the grim'n'gritty elements, and too much repetition. Too many fights with various mob guys who're not distinctive enough to make them interesting. Too many scenes of mob bosses trying to out-sinister each other at conferences in dark car parks. Too many conversations where Matt ponders if he's really any better than the Kingpin (clue: he is) and whether he should kill him (he shouldn't). Too many scenes that go: Matt needs to know something, so he goes out and beats someone up, then threatens and/or tortures them until they tell him what he wants to know. Sometimes, for variety, the bad guys do this scene instead. By episode 6, I had seen just about enough versions of that particular scene to do me for quite a while, thanks. I kept hoping characters would try just asking someone a question.
So that's the first problem, and it stems from the second. That problem, to be fair, ought to have been obvious when Jeph Loeb said, a while ago, that this was 'a crime drama first, superhero show second'. That's not a great sign. What has made the Marvel films work, above all, is that they're not embarrassed to be superhero films. Something like Winter Soldier is a political spy thriller second, arguably - but it's a political spy thriller with Batroc the Leaper and Arnim Zola and Crossbones and Cap and Black Widow kicking ass, in costume. First and foremost, it's a superhero flick, and it revels in being one.
By contrast, DD never seems to want to be a superhero story. It doesn't bring in any of the trappings of the superhero story. The red costume doesn't appear until the very last minute. The billy clubs appear earlier but are hardly used. The super-senses are front and centre, to be fair, but they kind of had to be for Matt to be able to do what he does in the first place. The name Kingpin is never used at all, that I recall. We get a sort of nod or two towards it, but nobody ever says it. Matt's other opponents are all just regular criminals, with the exception of the one ninja and another character who hints at being more.
Again, being fair, there are some hints that there will be more superhero-y bits in future plots, but that's assuming that there are future plots. This may well be the only Daredevil series ever. And it takes until the end of episode 13 to even say the word 'Daredevil' out loud. It's practically false advertising.
This, of course, is the third problem. The first twelve and a half hours are all origin story, leading up to the climax of Matt actually donning the costume. It's an approach with a lot of history behind it, I suppose. (Too much, IMO.) But there are sooo many stories you can tell about DD, as fifty years of comics show. Why use 13 hours just to tell the one about how he becomes Daredevil? It makes the whole series feel really slow. Why not cut or re-order some stuff, do that arc in five or six episodes, and then do something else? Proof of concept, show that the series has legs, if given the chance. That would have been much cleverer and more original.
The other problem is that this series just doesn't have any fun at any point. It tries sometimes, but its heart isn't in it, and it comes off rather stilted and artificial. Again, the series really suffers from comparison with the rest of the MCU, which is confident enough to relax on-screen from time to time.
More minor grumbles: why introduce a well established character like Ben Urich, do him so much justice, and then bump him off so cheaply? Aaargh! That was really frustrating. And Wesley... I get what they were trying for, and the part is well acted, but guys, nobody gives a shit about Wesley. He is pointless and just takes screen time away from Kingpin, excuse me, Fisk, and the other, better characters on the mob side. Cut him. Also, not a fan of Deborah Ann Woll. She was out-acted by absolutely everyone she shared a screen with, including some of the corpses.
OK, enough complaining. The good stuff is very good. Their treatment of Kingpin is smart: the decision to make him more than just a monolithic villain, particularly by giving him a genuine romance plotline (less so the troubled past) was inspired. A Kingpin that did nothing more than order people dead would have been tedious and disappointing.
Of course, a large part of why that works is that Vincent D'Onofrio is amazing. In fact, with the above-noted exception, pretty much all of the acting is top-notch. Scott Glenn, Ayelet Zurer, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Bob Gunton, all superb. The set piece fights are great, the technical elements are superb: the series looks a lot better than I hoped.
That's the frustrating bit, and why it's a noble failure, for me, in the end. It's got so much going for it, this series. But it flubbed the tone.
It's a noble failure.
The longer version:I've read a lot of DD comics - not as many as some, and not for a while, but enough to get a feel for the elements of a really good DD story. They're many and varied: the series has a lot of stuff it can draw on. To list a few:
- terrific martial arts action.
- Hell's Kitchen.
- Foggy and Matt helping the little guy in the courts.
- Kingpin.
- street-level atmosphere.
- good-hearted Foggy.
- Battlin' Jack Murdock.
- creative use of super-senses.
- Catholicism.
- Stick being badass.
- Ninjas.
Now, all those elements are unquestionably present in the series. So, what's the problem?
There's more than one, unfortunately. The first is that the mix of those elements is just wrong. OK, you don't want to overdo some of this stuff. Stick works best in small doses, for example. But it's no coincidence that the two best episodes, by a distance, are the one featuring Stick and the one where DD fights a goddam ninja.
The other 11... good, but flawed. There's too much emphasis on the grim'n'gritty elements, and too much repetition. Too many fights with various mob guys who're not distinctive enough to make them interesting. Too many scenes of mob bosses trying to out-sinister each other at conferences in dark car parks. Too many conversations where Matt ponders if he's really any better than the Kingpin (clue: he is) and whether he should kill him (he shouldn't). Too many scenes that go: Matt needs to know something, so he goes out and beats someone up, then threatens and/or tortures them until they tell him what he wants to know. Sometimes, for variety, the bad guys do this scene instead. By episode 6, I had seen just about enough versions of that particular scene to do me for quite a while, thanks. I kept hoping characters would try just asking someone a question.
So that's the first problem, and it stems from the second. That problem, to be fair, ought to have been obvious when Jeph Loeb said, a while ago, that this was 'a crime drama first, superhero show second'. That's not a great sign. What has made the Marvel films work, above all, is that they're not embarrassed to be superhero films. Something like Winter Soldier is a political spy thriller second, arguably - but it's a political spy thriller with Batroc the Leaper and Arnim Zola and Crossbones and Cap and Black Widow kicking ass, in costume. First and foremost, it's a superhero flick, and it revels in being one.
By contrast, DD never seems to want to be a superhero story. It doesn't bring in any of the trappings of the superhero story. The red costume doesn't appear until the very last minute. The billy clubs appear earlier but are hardly used. The super-senses are front and centre, to be fair, but they kind of had to be for Matt to be able to do what he does in the first place. The name Kingpin is never used at all, that I recall. We get a sort of nod or two towards it, but nobody ever says it. Matt's other opponents are all just regular criminals, with the exception of the one ninja and another character who hints at being more.
Again, being fair, there are some hints that there will be more superhero-y bits in future plots, but that's assuming that there are future plots. This may well be the only Daredevil series ever. And it takes until the end of episode 13 to even say the word 'Daredevil' out loud. It's practically false advertising.
This, of course, is the third problem. The first twelve and a half hours are all origin story, leading up to the climax of Matt actually donning the costume. It's an approach with a lot of history behind it, I suppose. (Too much, IMO.) But there are sooo many stories you can tell about DD, as fifty years of comics show. Why use 13 hours just to tell the one about how he becomes Daredevil? It makes the whole series feel really slow. Why not cut or re-order some stuff, do that arc in five or six episodes, and then do something else? Proof of concept, show that the series has legs, if given the chance. That would have been much cleverer and more original.
The other problem is that this series just doesn't have any fun at any point. It tries sometimes, but its heart isn't in it, and it comes off rather stilted and artificial. Again, the series really suffers from comparison with the rest of the MCU, which is confident enough to relax on-screen from time to time.
More minor grumbles: why introduce a well established character like Ben Urich, do him so much justice, and then bump him off so cheaply? Aaargh! That was really frustrating. And Wesley... I get what they were trying for, and the part is well acted, but guys, nobody gives a shit about Wesley. He is pointless and just takes screen time away from Kingpin, excuse me, Fisk, and the other, better characters on the mob side. Cut him. Also, not a fan of Deborah Ann Woll. She was out-acted by absolutely everyone she shared a screen with, including some of the corpses.
OK, enough complaining. The good stuff is very good. Their treatment of Kingpin is smart: the decision to make him more than just a monolithic villain, particularly by giving him a genuine romance plotline (less so the troubled past) was inspired. A Kingpin that did nothing more than order people dead would have been tedious and disappointing.
Of course, a large part of why that works is that Vincent D'Onofrio is amazing. In fact, with the above-noted exception, pretty much all of the acting is top-notch. Scott Glenn, Ayelet Zurer, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Bob Gunton, all superb. The set piece fights are great, the technical elements are superb: the series looks a lot better than I hoped.
That's the frustrating bit, and why it's a noble failure, for me, in the end. It's got so much going for it, this series. But it flubbed the tone.