by: Rachel Wicks
Ever since April 4th, 2014, when my
friends dragged me to the Dartmouth theatre to go see Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I have pretty much entirely
sold my soul to Marvel. I never intended for this to happen; I liked the films
but I wasn’t particularly obsessed with them, but Winter Soldier was just so good I accidentally gained an automatic
faith in anything Marvel slapped their name on. Sometimes this loyalty pays
off, other times it doesn’t. I never could get into Agents of Shield and I’m certainly not jumping up and down over Ant-Man, but when I heard that Marvel
had hooked up with Netflix to make their blind superhero Daredevil into a
series, I had to see if this would pay off.
I wasn’t disappointed. The first time I sat
down to watch Daredevil was also the
last time (until the inevitable rewatch), because I marathoned the entire
stretch of thirteen hour-long episodes in one go. Usually, I don’t have the
attention span to be capable of this feat, but Daredevil held my focus from one scene to the next because it gave
me something I had been looking for in Marvel for a long time: darkness. Daredevil is not a show for the faint of
heart. There’s a lot of murder, violence, blood, and even a guy who gets beaten
to death with a bowling ball, but in all honesty this is what Marvel has been
missing from most of their other ventures. Marvel specializes in superheroes
that fight against terrible people, but often times the true scope of how
terrible these villains can be is swept under the rug in order to keep a
lighter rating. Of course, the reason for this is because Marvel has a huge
fanbase among children. Half the time when I’m trying to buy some superhero
merchandise to deck out my room I have to wade through a sea of nine-year-olds
dressed as Spider-Man just to get to what I want, but I’m not complaining
because it’s important for kids to have entertainment geared mainly towards
them. After seeing Daredevil,
however, I’ve realized what I’ve been missing from the Marvel cinematic
universe, so it’s nice that once in a while Marvel is willing to throw its
older fans a bone and present them with something truly dark, grisly, and an
awful lot of fun.
However, Daredevil
isn’t just something to watch for the darkness. At the core of the writing, the
show is carried by one of the most compelling superheroes Marvel has created to
date. His name is Matt Murdock, he’s blind, he’s a lawyer during the day, and
at night he becomes a vigilante who protects Hell’s Kitchen from the dangers
that the city brews on its own streets. Despite the fact that he is one of few
examples of a disabled superhero, the part that makes Matt Murdock so unique is
his struggles with morality throughout the show. Often times in action-based
series, nameless extras are killed left and right by the main character and
very little thought is given to how the hero of the show just took someone’s
life. Matt Murdock, raised Catholic and terrified of the possibility of
darkness within him, is one of the few action heroes I’ve seen who actually
cares about whether or not he takes a life. In the beginning, he refuses to
kill anyone, but as the main villain of the series poses a larger and more
terrifying threat, Murdock starts to consider the only way to protect Hell’s
Kitchen may be to give into the darkness within him and commit murder. Whether
or not he sides with murder, I won’t say. Watch the show and find out.
If you do decide to embark on this
thirteen-hour journey, however, it’s important to know that the villains get
nearly equal screen time as the heroes do, so don’t zone out whenever Murdock’s
not on screen. It’s crucial to keep track of the names of all the players in
the game, and there are a lot. Near
the beginning of the series, there is a villainous team of individuals who all
have separate motives, separate parts to play in the grand scheme of the plot,
and even separate languages, hosting a considerable amount of Russian,
Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and more throughout the show. In an age when it’s
common for networks to avoid the use of subtitles and stick to diversity held
within the confines of English speakers only, it’s refreshing to hear some
foreign tongues actively spoken, so don’t tear your eyes away from the screen
if you don’t want to miss important subtitled dialogue. Keeping track of the
criminal side of the Daredevil plot
is vital to understanding what is happening episode to episode, and I assure
you that the ending will not have the impact it should if you are still
learning names by the second to last episode.
Perhaps the warning to pay attention is a bit
redundant though, since if you experience this series like I did, you’ll be on
the edge of your seat the entire time. Daredevil
is a fantastically dark ride from start to finish that has just enough
positivity to emphasis the struggle between good and evil, balancing light and
dark between both opposing forces and within the characters themselves.
Hopefully the success of this Netflix original will inspire Marvel to make more
dark series along the lines of Daredevil,
but until then, we’ll just have to wait until season two.
No comments:
Post a Comment