Dare… to Believe You Can Tonight
raininva bought the Director’s Cut of Daredevil the other day, and I realized one of the things that dissatisfied me about the theatrical release. The story arc is almost completely pointless – there is little character growth and almost no resolution to anything. The minor character Joe “Pants” plays gets more growth than anybody, as he considers whether there are things out there more important than his next story.
But really, it sucks to be Matt Murdock in this movie. (As I’ve pointed out, it generally sucks to be a Marvel superhero, while DC heros tend to get a minimum of grim statisfaction from their jobs. I digress.) His girlfriend has allowed herself to be consumed by vengeance and violence. (I wanted to say “their relationship is left hanging,” but if you saw the movie, that’s a bad pun.) Bullseye will be coming after him soon for revenge, and Kingpin will be able to help him with a knowledge of who Daredevil really is – what he does for a living, and where to find his friends.
X-Men, Blade, and Spider-Man did a much better job with “This specific problem is over.” Sure, you go through a lot of villians that way, but this is comic books – there’s plenty of villians to go around before you have to start bringing them back from the dead. (Which really isn’t all that hard anyway.)
It seems that said Director’s Cut includes a subplot about someone Murdock is defending, which ties the villians in better, and allows Matt to accomplish something during the film. It’s interesting to consider the idea of DVD releases which don’t just provide a “cooler” movie, but a superior one to what was shown on the big screen. I can forsee films that fail, and are completely revised for DVD release.
I know what you mean about the garbage that was Daredevil. I didn’t even see as much redeeming about the movie as you’ve described here.
The movie that got me along similar lines just before C was born was Dungeons and Dragons. My mother and I watched it on DVD, and then watched the director’s comments. Basically, what he said, over and over, was “This part with character growth and exposition slowed down the action, so I cut it out.”
I suppose that it says something about me that my favorite Teen Titans comic book was a campout with no “action” and my favorite Star Trek episodes are the “day-in-the-life” ones.
I always thought the deleted scenes in D&D were the holes that might’ve made it a decent movie. I hope they can pull their heads out of dark smelly places in time for the sequel.