Marvel Comics once had little success in getting movies made about its superheroes. DC Comics, Marvel's arch-nemesis in the comics industry, had seen its two foremost characters, Batman and Superman, turned into hugely successful film franchises that generated tons of money for the company. Marvel, on the other hand, could only claim "Captain America" and "Howard the Duck" to its name, and both were huge critical and box office failures.
But all that began to change in 1998. New Line Cinema released "Blade," a film based on an obscure Marvel superhero, and enjoyed surprising box office success. Suddenly the film industry began to show interest in making Marvel's more popular characters into movies and momentum began to build for such projects as "X-Men" and "Spider-Man." Meanwhile, DC Comics had seen the Batman film franchise self-destruct the year before with the release of the utterly abominable "Batman & Robin."
Five years later, Marvel now can bask in the glory while DC must satisfy itself with "Smallville" and reruns of "Lois and Clark." "Blade" and "X-Men" have both become franchises, while "Spider-Man" is now the 10th highest grossing film in the world. Anyone who watched the Super Bowl knows that "The Hulk" is coming out this summer and CNN reported just the other day that an Iron Man film is in the works.
Marvel's current attempt at transforming comic book success into box office success is, of course, "Daredevil." Here's a superhero that has never shared the huge popularity of Spider-Man or the X-Men. While the latter have had cartoon shows made about them and received exposure to the non-comics audience, Daredevil is mostlyknown only to comic book fans since his TV appearances have been limited tocameos on Fox's "Spider-Man" cartoon.
Within the realm of comic book fans, however, "Daredevil" has developed a substantial following. "Daredevil" originally was not especially popular, despite the intriguing premise -- a man blinded by toxic waste develops super-enhanced senses that allow him to fight crime despite his blindness -- yet, his character remained relatively unknown until Frank Miller began working on the comic.Miller introduced an extremely dark atmosphere to the comic and made Daredevil and his alter ego, Matt Murdock, undergo intense moral self-scrutiny over his vigilantism. Fans were hooked and sales went through the roof.
"Daredevil" tries to replicate the atmosphere and tone of the comic books during Miller's tenure. Unfortunately for "Daredevil," that template has become all too familiar in comic book movies. Miller also did a stint at DC, where he helped to revitalize "Batman" by introducing the bleak atmospherics that later inspired Tim Burton to turn Batman into a Gothic nightmare. And, after the success of "Batman," nearly every comic book movie, including "The Crow" and "Spawn," imitated the same style.
The film thus is replete with images of Daredevil looking morose on top of Gothic cathedrals and creeping about in the shadows. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but the film simply never does anything to distinguish itself as anything other than derivative. "Daredevil" is a mishmash of other comic book movies thrown together in a blender and put on frappe.
Mark Steven Johnson, the director, appears to have learned everything he knows about directing from "The Crow." But, whereas the poorly edited and murky fight scenes in "The Crow" were due to Brandon Lee's death during filming, "Daredevil" has no such excuse for its haphazard direction. All the fight scenes are poorly lit and pass by in a confusing blur.
The special effects crew took their cues from "Spider-Man." Daredevil becomes an unconvincing CGI phantom during many of the action scenes, much like the Web-slinger himself. The flips and turns that his character executes might have been interesting if only the effects weren't blatantly fake.
Apparently the screenwriters wanted to cram in as many storylines and characters from the comic book as possible, much like the vastly overpopulated "Batman & Robin." Not only are there four main characters: Daredevil (Ben Affleck), Elektra (Jennifer Garner), Bullseye (Colin Farrell), and Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan), but a whole horde of minor characters such as Murdock's law partner (Jon Favreau) and a nosy reporter (Joe Pantoliano). Daredevil often seems like a minor character in his own film, and no character receives any appreciable amount of development.
Finally, the acting is straight from "Batman Forever." Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner do adequate work with what they're given. Neither are great thespians but both manage to look pretty and say their lines halfway convincingly, much like Val Kilmer and Nicole Kidman did in "Batman." Colin Farrell and Michael Clarke Duncan both chew scenery and overact as the villains, although -- thankfully -- neither quite reaches Jim Carrey's excesses as the Riddler. At the very least it's amusing to see the other halves of J.Lo and Britney duking it out on the silver screen. Now if only Daredevil and Bullseye would team up and get them to stop making music ... that would be a good movie.
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