Daredevil (2003) with Deece Casillas

On this episode of Movie Smash!, we discuss 2003's Daredevil directed by Mark Steven Johnson and starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, and Colin Farrel. The film follows the origin story of the blind superhero, Daredevil. Lawyer by day, and hero by night he fits the crimes the court system can't solve and finds himself against Bullseye and Kingpin.

Hosts: Christopher Roberts and Jeremy Parmentier

Guest Host: Deece Casillas

Kickstarter: Deece Casillas — Kickstarter

Edited By: Christopher Roberts

Produced By: Off Panel Creations, LLC

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I miss Virgil because this is the he's gonna be very upset he was not involved in an episode where he said the words organ fight over and over again.

(00:05):
That's not how you get dressed in the morning?
I don't know what else this director has done because I don't care.
I went into a thing like this is going to be terrible.
I have never understood Jennifer Garner as a person.
Hello and welcome to movie-
SMASH!

(00:30):
Hello and welcome to movie smash the show where we dive headfirst in the cockpit movies outside the MCU.
If you're new to the show, thanks for joining us.
If you've been here before, you know the drill.
Each episode we're going to smash a movie whose source materials from a graphic novel or comic.
Is it worth revisiting?
Should it be forgotten?
Let's find out.
This is movie smash.
I'm one of your hosts Chris Roberts.
I'm the founder of all panel creations with me today.

(00:50):
I'm Jeremy Parmentier.
Hi, this is Jeremy Parmentier also of the retrovaniacs podcast and not Virgil again.
You are correct.
Virgil is not with us today, but with us today.
We do have all the way from San Antonio comedian Deez Kasiass.
Yeah, yeah, I am a comedian writer.
Oh, and a production company produced comedy shows across the country and getting ready to launch my debut comic book series.

(01:15):
Kill Stan, which will be out in December about approximately.
Fantastic.
Thanks for joining us today.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks for having me.
Our movie today is 2003's Daredevil starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Gardner, Colin Farrell written directed by Mark Steven Johnson.
He can hear it before it makes a sound.

(01:41):
He can sense it before it happens.
He can vanish before you realize he's there.
And he's the last person you never expect.
Police suspected the vigilante.
Daredevil was the one to bring the criminals to justice.

(02:01):
I don't know why you read that trash.
So before he's jumping this movie, you chose this movie.
You chose Daredevil for us.
Why did you put us through this?
Well, I feel like it chose me.
This is here's the thing.
I love bad movies and I love movies so bad that they like transcend being bad and come full circle and can potentially be good again because of their bad value.

(02:28):
Does that make sense?
Oh, yeah, there's some movies like that.
They're out there.
I'm not sure this is one of those, but there are movies out there like that.
I'm not sure it is either.
Well, I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of that for the end of this episode.
But I wanted to know if it was it been a long time since I've seen this movie.
Like I'd rather watch a bad movie than a good than a movie that I don't know anything about because it means at least I know what I'm getting into.
I don't want a movie where everyone's like, oh, this was great.

(02:52):
You know, like I hated the new Batman movie with Robert Pattinson and I'd see it twice just for reasons.
And it's like everyone loved it.
I went to him like, hate this movie and I hate you all because you loved it.
So both you guys, how familiar were you with Daredevil before you saw this movie for the first time?
Me personally, very, very.

(03:13):
I'm a big comic book reader, avid nerd.
So I was very familiar with Daredevil.
All the lore probably read a good chunk of his comic book history over the years.
Yeah, I was not a reader of Daredevil.
I mean, I knew Daredevil.
I worked in a comic store for a while, so I didn't know the character.
But as a kid, even before that, I kind of knew Daredevil as one of the 95% of the Marvel characters.

(03:37):
I only knew from the Marvel trading cards and thought they looked cool.
So I didn't really know much about him except that, you know, he looked like he had a cool red suit.
I knew he kind of fought on the same tier as like a Spider-Man or, you know, not he wasn't the Hulk or Thor.
He was like a regular person more or less with some like fighting ability.
So I was not a fan of those as a kid.
I wanted comics that were more ridiculous, right?

(03:58):
But now that's the exact exactly what I aim for.
I like Daredevil. I like heroes that are kind of just slightly better than you and me.
That's what I'd rather read. It's more interesting.
There's only so many times you can watch Superman blow a planet up and you're like, all right, that's good.
He's done it. Great. He threw this giant thing and stopped the enemy because he can fly and do everything else.
But Daredevil can't. So I knew him okay enough to understand the character for the movie,

(04:18):
but I wasn't like a big fan of the comic before.
I would like to note that if there's listeners out there that are interested in the comic book,
I've said this for a long time that Daredevil might actually be consistently the best comic book Marvel has produced.
Quietly, it quietly has been the best comic book they've produced.
If you go back and look at like its creative teams over the last 30, 40 years from like Mark,

(04:43):
or not Mark Miller, but Frank Miller all the way up till currently,
he's had just phenomenal runs of creators and arcs.
So I think quietly he's been the unsung hero of the Marvel Universe.
Are you reading the current run? Because the current run is very good. I'm fully up to date on it.
I'm kind of reading what is Ahmed, what's his name? Ahmed something run.

(05:07):
I was reading Chips at R's keys, which I like quite a bit.
And then the new one I kind of sloughed off on and I've been picking it up more recently.
But it was a slow start, but it's picked up. I'm enjoying it thoroughly.
I'm a big fan of like Bendis and Brubaker's era is my where it's gold for me for sure.
Well, I think I'm gonna get my nerd card revoked on this one.
I only learned about Daredevil from the Spider-Man cartoon,

(05:30):
and that was about the extent of my knowledge of it before seeing this movie.
I'm glad you guys are on the show that can actually talk about Daredevil because I can't.
I think when we did the Electra episode last year, I kept calling him like Blind Devil or something.
I don't know. I kept messing his name up. Or the blind guy. I don't know.
So my knowledge is quite limited when it comes to Daredevil.

(05:51):
Now I know who he is, obviously, and I know quite a bit about it.
I love that the TV show run. But at that time, yeah, he was one of the other heroes in Spider-Man's orbit.
When did you guys originally see this movie? I assume not for this show.
No, for me, it was in the theater. Yeah, full on in the theater.
I said as a comic book nerd, I went and saw all the stuff even if it wasn't good.

(06:13):
Because like my whole life, all I wanted was more comic book stuff.
Like dreamed of a comic book movie, like movies about comic books that I liked.
So even when they started making bad ones, I was there for it.
I watched Ang Lee's Hulk. You know, I watched the third X-Men movie.
All of the... even the old Howard the Duck movie, I will watch.

(06:37):
You got some badges of honor there.
Well, but then there weren't superhero movies every three months like there are now.
Like they're constant. You don't have to wait for one.
I mean, Daredevil Wolverine just came out. Not Daredevil, sorry.
Deadpool Wolverine just came out. We're talking about Daredevil.
So I just said it out loud. Well, no, I meant Deadpool.
They look a lot like... The crossover nobody wanted.
Hey, you know what? I'd still watch it.
Oh, yeah. At the time, this was not...

(06:59):
I don't think this came out and everyone thought this was going to be a bomb.
I think everyone's kind of like this could be okay.
The Spider-Man had been pretty good.
The first couple X-Movies been pretty good.
I mean, at least from people that I was hanging out with.
I'm sure that, you know, maybe critics were like, oh, this is going to be terrible.
But like we were excited. They were...
We all worked in a comic store for a while so that I went with my comic friends.
They were excited to see this Daredevil movie.
Ben Affleck was kind of a maybe he'll be okay.

(07:20):
But it was still like they at least tried to get a real star.
So you're like, okay, this could be good.
And so I did see this in the movie theater as well,
despite not knowing a ton about Daredevil at the time.
We're going to get into it too a little bit later about the budget.
The studio thought just what you thought.
The original budget was only $50 million.
And they were like, this is going to be good.
Let's give an extra $30 million on top of that.
So this movie was a double down by the studios.

(07:41):
But we'll get more into the production part of it later.
Me, I do not remember when I saw this movie.
I've seen it. I owned it at one point, but I don't remember when I saw it.
Which is probably a testament to the movie.
It's one of those movies where like I just I just forgot it existed.
Electra, the spin-off that very different.
By the time Daredevil, yes, I don't know when I saw this thing.
I have no idea if I saw it in the theater.

(08:02):
I may have. Who knows?
This is 2003. So I think it was still in Maryland by that point.
But so Jeremy, do you have any comic book history for us?
Normally, Fergal does this again.
So I will do my best.
He's much better at this than I am.
But Daredevil was created in the 1960s by Stanley and Bill Everett.
He is a blind lawyer named Matt Murdock, who is secretly the crime fighting superhero Daredevil.

(08:23):
He fights to clean up Hell's Kitchen in New York, facing foes like Bullseye and the Kingpin,
who are conveniently also in this movie, using martial arts and super senses that kind of balance out his lack of vision.
The Daredevil character that we kind of all know now and what I was more familiar with was the Frank Miller run from the early 80s,
which kind of made him a little more gritty.
It added Electra. It added in kind of Bullseye.
These other characters that now are are big landmarks of the series.

(08:47):
Up to then, it wasn't like it wasn't a good comic, but it was just not the same feeling.
So it's kind of all built off that Frank Miller era.
It was actually exactly a bi-monthly comic before Frank Miller took over.
Back in Marvel used to do some comics would just be bi-monthly if they didn't sell really well.
You'd only come out six times a year and then Frank Miller took it over.
And it was like a D-list, one of Marvel's least selling comic books.

(09:11):
And it actually became their best selling comic book for at a time under Frank Miller and just skyrocketed.
And like I said, no idea who that was.
Frank Miller also brought us...
I know who Frank Miller is. Very familiar with Frank Miller. I'm talking about Daredevil.
This was the line that really made Frank Miller a name.
I mean, he was an artist before him, but this was like his big kind of comic break was becoming the writer of Daredevil.

(09:35):
That's how he got able to be writer and artist is because it was such a low selling book.
Marvel's like, we could give two shits what you do with this book.
And it turns out became one of their biggest books.
He's actually in this movie too. Makes a little cameo for it.
So spoiler warning, if this is your first time joining us, just a heads up.
We'll be discussing this plot of this movie and may discuss certain plot elements, some storylines that may be considered spoilers.

(09:58):
So consider yourself warned.
Do you want to give us like a quick synopsis of the plot?
I would say this is a movie about a blind lawyer that doesn't realize how handsome he is
and sees everything in shitty rejected special effects from Tron and force ghosts.
That's kind of the basic.
And that's basically what I got from this movie.

(10:21):
It also is gets superpowers of being a ninja when he gets blinded with radioactive goo in his eyes, I guess.
This movie obviously is a superhero movie.
So superhero movies are really built around the characters, around the main superhero, any sidekicks and mainly the villains.
So why don't we do a dive into the characters themselves and start with the titular character Daredevil.

(10:45):
What do you guys think of Daredevil and how did Ben Affleck do?
Personally, I forgot how every time I watch a movie from 1998 to 2000, it was made from 1998 to 2005,
I forget how much they're all made exactly the same.
With the same slow motion effects, the same shitty Evanescence backdrop music, the same weird angles.

(11:12):
Every shot is a weird angle for some reason.
They're all the same.
You've seen one, you've seen them all.
It's like, oh, this is the first Underworld movie.
Oh, this is the second Matrix.
Oh, this is Requiem for a Dream.
They're all the same movie, the way they're shot.
Also, I kind of try to view it through that prism.

(11:34):
And with that in mind, I mean, I don't know what else this director has done because I don't care.
That's fair. That's fair.
But a lot of I think Ben Affleck did as good as you could do given the movie and probably the direction he was given.
I don't blame him for the movie is what I guess I would say.

(11:58):
And on that note, I didn't even look up who directed this movie until you just said who wasn't.
I had to know it's Mark Steven Johnson, whose only other superhero movie was Ghost Rider.
So that makes a lot of sense.
Makes a lot of sense.
He didn't even get to do Ghost Rider 2, Spirits of Vengeance. Oh my God.
That's the first one.
No. And he wrote and directed this and he also wrote Electra and then went on to do and write and direct Ghost Rider.

(12:24):
And actually, I know we're sort of off script a little bit, but his original screenplay, Kevin Feige said, was the best Marvel movie he's ever seen on paper.
That was before they started filming.
Interesting. So like what was the I wonder what happened in filming that it became so?
Yeah, we'll get to that a little bit.
There's a lot of things that happened during that time period. But Ben Affleck, I think he did a pretty good job personally.

(12:48):
Supposedly, he read all the Daredevil comics to get ready for it.
He studied how to be blind, how to fold his money.
He really wanted to get into this, but he did not like it so much.
Just being in that costume.
That's why there was no second Daredevil.
It was actually greenlit for a second movie, but he's the one who stopped it.
He said, I don't want to do another one.
I don't like being in superhero costumes.

(13:11):
He did not do a superhero movie until Batman v Superman.
There's a lot of PTSD that went with that.
You're telling me the guy who did the Dunking's donut commercial didn't want to be in a superhero costume.
Again, that's where you do the lines.
He's like, no, no, I'll do the Dunking's donuts.
Obviously, that is a super group I am down with.

(13:33):
What a red costume. You're out of your mind.
He said the costume itched too much and he found it embarrassing to walk around in.
I'm sorry.
If someone wants to rate me a $10 million check to walk around in a red leather suit, I will do it.
Yeah, I'm in.
I thought he was okay.
I thought the suit looked good.
I was actually pretty happy with how it looks.

(13:54):
Sometimes you'll get that transformation into film and it either looks just like bad spandex or they try to go like what I think they do with Bullseye in this movie, where they go another route where you're like, why?
Why would you make any of those choices?
I thought the costume looked good.
I thought he was okay as Daredevil himself.
Now, on the flip side of that coin though, how do you think that Ben Affleck did as Matt Murdock?
I mean, again, I try not to...

(14:16):
I'm hoping to not blame him.
And again, it's just a lot of direction.
Because I assume the director is making a lot of decisions on how these things, how that character is pushed forward, not Ben Affleck necessarily.
I could be wrong.
I could be wrong, but I would assume there's a lot of directorial input on that.

(14:39):
I think he was better as Daredevil than he was as Matt Murdock.
I think Matt Murdock was pretty...
He's like a little bit of a scamp in the comic books.
Like a fun scamp.
He was kind of like creepy scamp.
Like he came up as kind of a creepy blind guy.
Like a guy pretending to be blind.
He was a little stalker at some points.
Yeah.
That's funny.

(15:00):
He actually dyed his hair for the movie.
I was watching an interview with him about it.
He said that he thought the haircut and the hair color was so bad, he gave him low self-esteem, he would not look at himself in the mirror.
The entire filming of Daredevil.
That's the thing that did it?
Oh yeah.
That's what broke the man.
All right.
Well, you know.
And what do you guys think about Jennifer Garner, the love interest of the movie?

(15:23):
I have never understood Jennifer Garner as a person or an asset.
As a human being.
I don't know who she is.
Her existence baffled me for so many reasons.
Because there was this time, and it was this time, that she was this weird kind of sex symbol, I guess.

(15:45):
Which I did not understand.
She's the seventh best good-looking girl on a volleyball team.
I don't know.
She's kind of tall and gangly.
She's not ugly, but I'm like, this is not...
What's happening right now?
She's on TV.
That's it.
That's all.

(16:06):
That's the only thing that is...
Yeah, I think she was coming off alias by that point.
Yeah.
I don't know if it's still on.
It might have just ended.
It was around then, though.
Yeah.
You mentioned that we had covered Elektra before.
It was actually our first episode.
Unfortunately, I hadn't seen Daredevil pretty much since I saw it in the theater and not since.
I've seen Elektra more recently.
I was surprised at how very much not like Elektra she is in this movie.

(16:30):
If you wouldn't have known that this is a character from the comic that has these other back story, you would just be like,
Yeah, I don't know.
She's like the daughter of a rich guy that learned how to fight.
She's not a big focal point.
I mean, she's a focal point of the movie, but in Elektra, she is clearly the focal point.
It's her movie. Her skills are much more interesting.
She is a more interesting character in this.
It was just kind of stock love interest that happened to also be able to fight.

(16:51):
I'm very disappointed, but I think that's not fair because this movie came out before the movie that I knew her from more recently.
Yeah, it was.
I mean, I'm sure we'll get into this more later, too.
I think the arcs of every character were very underdeveloped.
You know, like none of them.
Like Kingpin is a villain, was wildly underdeveloped, Bolzai is a villain, wildly underdeveloped, Elektra has a love interest, flat, undeveloped.

(17:17):
I mean, even like Foggy and Matt's friendship was not even really a thing besides they had coffee one time.
You know, they said we're friends.
You're like, all right.
Yeah, I believe them.
They read that line in the script, so it must be true.
Yeah, the director was during what the same interview was talking about that.

(17:38):
He said that there are so many cool things he wanted to put into this movie, which there wasn't enough time to develop those relationships.
He just wanted to get them all in there.
He thought they were really cool.
And I think we see that a lot with these kongma movies around this time period.
People are just like, this is pretty cool.
I want to stick it in there.
They just don't spend the time to develop these characters.
And you sort of touch on the Kingpin.
I really felt that was sort of jammed on the end.

(17:59):
Like he finds out what in the last 15 minutes, the movie that Kingpin's behind it all and goes and fights Kingpin.
He's not like he's not really sort of hanging on the background unless you knew who Kingpin was.
Right. Right.
You're only you're only kind of following what's going on with these characters if because you if you know the comic book characters.
Otherwise, you're like, I don't really know why.

(18:21):
Like you said, Jeremy, I don't know why Electra is around.
She's kind of around.
And then all of a sudden she stabs sandbags and she's a ninja.
And you're like, all right, cool.
That's new.
You know, Michael Clarke Duncan is is Kingpin and he's just kind of around nebulously maybe doing evil stuff or not even evil.

(18:42):
We don't even know what he's doing.
We don't know what he's just evil.
He's just bad.
He stands there looking out on the city, just looking cool.
That's about it.
You think the cops are coming for you.
They know about everything.
He says at the end, I mean, I'm like, but what did he do?
We don't even know.
Let's just jump to bullseye because I think that's Jeremy sort of touch on.

(19:04):
That is not at least I believe that's not compact accurate, is it?
No, no, he doesn't.
Because I mean, again, the costume, I can see either way.
Sometimes you want to go with as accurate as you can.
But sometimes you're like, we thought about it.
We did it and, you know, test and it looks like garbage.
So we're going to change it up.
OK, fine.
I can live with the comic with the costume being different.
But I also think the characters just Colin Farrell does one bad guy.

(19:26):
And so he does it here.
He does the same Colin Farrell bad guy in every movie that he's the he's like the,
you know, he's a loose cannon bad guy.
He's just killing people for fun to show that he can.
Like, OK, and that's the character.
It's like they brought him in to be chaos.
And that's fine.
But the actual character, you know, much like most of the Marvel villain
Pantheon actually have some backstory and things to them.

(19:47):
So they just kind of threw him in here is like, oh, he can throw things.
He's like a big dark player.
So you can see him do that.
And he's really fast.
He's really, you know, got a lot of good dexterity.
Throw things and kill you with it.
Like, OK, I get it.
But other than that, it's just him like being chaos for the sake of chaos.
Yeah, he's a little too cartoony and over the top to for this film.
It has like this dark tone.
And then all of a sudden, this guy kind of this like drunk Irish dude just rides in on a motorcycle.

(20:11):
And he's like, hey, man, look, who's crashing the party?
And it was like, who's this guy?
And he's like, I don't know.
But what kill your dad?
And then, you know, here's Daredevil's Kane, also Matt Murdoch's Kane.
Whoops.
OK, found that out.
It just seemed unnecessary.
And the funny thing is that this the way they made him in the comic book actually in for in the movie actually influenced the comic book.

(20:37):
And they made a comic book.
Kevin Smith started a series that still famously is gone unfinished.
It was in like 2000 around this time, 2003, 2004, Daredevil Bullseye Target.
And they did like one issue and the rest of it never saw print.
I feel like that's the thing with Kevin Smith starts a project doesn't finish it.

(20:58):
He should not finish more.
Finish less projects, I think.
Well, I think Bullseye actually illustrates a problem I think this movie had, which is there are some serious tonal shifts that occur.
You sort of touched on it, right?
It's dark and it's brooding.
And then all of a sudden Colin Farrell comes and he's chewing up every scene.
He's so over the top.

(21:19):
It's then it becomes more cartoony sort of campy.
And and that creates a problem, I think, between the like the whole movie has those sort of tonal shifts and we'll probably get to the playground scene eventually.
And I don't know much about these characters, but I assume Bullseye when he puts his jacket on and moves in the comic snake sounds don't happen because in this movie, every time you put his jacket on or he moved really fast,

(21:42):
there's a rattlesnake sound that's happening.
It's not that costume, right?
He has a standard supervillain.
It's black and white, has a target on it.
It looks like what you'd expect.
If I told you superhero villain that's going to fight Daredevil, he's got a costume very similar to Daredevil in layout.
But in this they're like, no, no, we'll give him the trench coat that has studs all over it.
OK, that's fine.
Yeah.
It's like his choice of weapons, too, for a guy that can hit anything with any item, you know, he's like, I'm going to use paper clips and throwing cards.

(22:12):
It's, you know, it's like, I don't know, man, you know, you had some shirkens, maybe more of those, you know, maybe a bolt, maybe a gun.
Yeah.
You know, it's like it just didn't really come across as that dire.
He came across to me as a guy who feels he's really cool, but he isn't as cool as he thinks he is.
Right. Yeah.

(22:33):
Just be Colin Farrell, to be honest.
Playing himself. He didn't even know he's in the movie.
How can we make this work? I know, put a bullseye in his head.
This was stock footage from a whole nother movie that I used for it.
So let me change gears and start going to some of these scenes.
There I mentioned the total shifts that happened this, but there's some scenes that really stand out to me. What scenes stand out to you guys you think are worth talking about?

(22:59):
Well, I mean, you mentioned the playground one. That's one for sure.
That's like I think that's the biggest one to me.
But I also like I really wanted to talk about there's two scenes besides that that got me early on.
One of them is the gang of kids that goes after young Matt Murdock, which I think is so funny that for some reason they like and these are weird things that I noticed.

(23:23):
But I know the studio had this conversation.
It was originally three black kids, but they're like, no, no, make the leader a white kid.
Then that softens the racial issue.
It's such a weird thing because you know that conversation happened.
They're like, we can't make it three black kids like you got to have it by racial make the leader a white guy.
Then it's OK that these other two black kids are being portrayed as gang members or like hooligans or whatever.

(23:50):
Not gang members. Yes, if they're cruel bullies, whatever.
But I'm sorry if a kid becomes blind, I don't think the bullies will keep bullying them.
It's just that did not feel natural to me.
I mean, that's really thuggish. It was a little over the top.
Yeah. And also that's the first that that's the only scene. That was the first time you watch.
You see the first part of the movie. It kind of explains here's Daredevil growing up.

(24:12):
Here's why he kind of became you lost sight.
And his father is a boxer, so he's going to train with his dad.
That's supposed to explain how he's learned how to fight.
I guess you know he's blind. But this is where you're seeing like, OK, it's working because these same kids beat up on him earlier, like picked on earlier, are going to come back.
He's going to kick some butt. But the special effects for the kid doing it are horrific.
Like he does like the thing where like he does a flip, but you can tell clearly like it didn't actually get a kid who could do acrobatics at all.

(24:35):
So they have done serious tricks to make it work. Look good.
And it didn't. You just it did. That effect did not hold up.
There's a lot of that did not seem too bad, but that one was clearly awful.
But but you need it to show like, OK, fine. He's gotten this training now, even though he's still like what, eight or nine.
He can kick these kids asses.
Yeah, but like somehow his dad, who's a boxer and these this enhanced senses power, also gave him ninjitsu.

(25:00):
Like that's the thing that is like, you know, it's like I get you're like, OK, you learn how to brawl a little bit.
How are you doing flips and handstands on the edges of buildings?
You know, two weeks after coming out of the hospital being blinded.
The other scene that really got me is when his dad is supposed to like throw the fight, right?
And his dad sees the mobster in the crowd and looking at him and he sees his son like, you know, Murdoch's don't quit or whatever.

(25:29):
And then he makes the choice. He's like, I'm going to beat this guy anyway, knowing full well that this mobster is for sure going to kill him.
There's no way he doesn't think like he's like, you know what?
I can't blemish my record and let down my son. I'll just get killed by a mobster.
I'll just orphan my son. I'm going to batman my kid.

(25:50):
You need that for every good superhero. That's true.
Yeah. You mentioned earlier all these things, how to find the same fight.
They follow the same beat. This definitely is the same beat as that Batman beat, right?
You see him with his parents. Something bad is going to have to happen.
Otherwise, why would he turn to this life of fighting crime on the street and in the courtroom?
And that's exactly what it is. Oh, oh, yeah. I'm going to watch my parents get killed.
OK. I mean, watch, I guess whatever he does since my parents get killed.

(26:14):
That's the only thing, too. The kid is sitting there in that room and back in the hospital, he was overwhelmed by all the sounds.
The sounds of the city are so bad, he has to sleep in a water coffin.
But somehow he's in a fighting, he's in a boxing ring and he can watch his dad and pay attention to block everything else out.
It's not really consistent on how those sound powers really work.
Yeah. Well, you know, you get older, things start working differently.

(26:37):
Things that, you know, not everything is as smooth as it used to.
How do you guys feel about the Electra training montage?
Oh, yeah, with the sandbags? Yeah.
Well, you know, I will say I applaud them for back to back Evanescence scenes because they literally went straight from one Evanescence song to another one with that training sequence.

(26:59):
So where were those sandbags coming from? How much is her cleaning deposit going to be in that, you know, Bronx loft?
Well, you know, there's a butler up there on the rafters just lowering them down for her.
Yeah.
And the other scene I did want to bring up was because it's funny, like the time this movie came out, it feels like there are a lot of cliches that were happening around that time period, such as the Matrix movie had just come out, X-Men.

(27:24):
That's why everything's in tight leather.
The big one was Daredevil putting on his costume for the first time.
That's suiting up. I got a feeling that it felt very much like Batman and Robin with the bat nipples.
Yeah. Yeah, it was very, very cheesy, a little too long.
The thing where you have to like, yes, like whip his bowler thing around a little bit just to make sure it's still working and oiled up.

(27:48):
You know, like, what's this for? What are you doing?
You know, just get it. Just put it on and go. He's got to just put on love. Just warming up.
You got to warm up the old joints. I can't just go vigilante, you know, when I'm cold. That's how you pull a hammy.
That's not how you get dressed in the morning.
With Evanescence blaring, I like to get stuff on real slow.

(28:09):
Why don't we transition then into the soundtracks as you guys keep bringing up Evanescence.
This came out, of course, obviously during that time period where soundtracks were a big thing.
How did you guys feel about the soundtrack as a whole?
This whole time frame is terrible for most movies.
Evanescence is a great example. It's just like the radio, butt rock era where everything was very dramatic sounding instead of being actually rocking sounding.

(28:31):
And it's a lot of that. And it just it it comes on at times where I'm sure in 2003 it wouldn't have bothered me because that's what you hear on the radio.
But when I turn it on this time, it's like it's all over this movie. It's every scene. It never stops.
Yeah, yeah. It's very much like from the opening credits, there's a song that or the first song they play like a very kind of whiny, not emo, but like just emotional rock kind of.

(28:55):
And this whole movie is like a like a time stamp. Like you could play someone five minutes of this movie and they could they could probably nail down within a week of when it was released.
You know, you're like, oh, yeah, that was May 14th, 2003, obviously.
Well, this is this movie was a Valentine's Day movie. Came out February 14th.

(29:19):
Oh, well, you know, every every good couple has that story of spending Valentine's Day watching a terrible movie.
This is a perfect first date movie. This movie clocks in at about 103 minutes.
And if either of you watch the director's cut, I did. Normally I'm the one that watches it, but I didn't have it pacing wise.
How do you feel about the movie? I mean, it was faster.

(29:40):
It was shorter, not shorter, shorter than I thought it would be. It was longer than I wanted it to be.
That's like I remember thinking I'm like, all right, I'm because I watched it today.
I'm like, OK, how much of maybe I'll watch this whole thing.
And then I, you know, I'm like, how much is left? I'm like, oh, there's only 37 minutes left.

(30:01):
Yeah, I'm in at this point. Pacing wise, it just felt like a lot of scenes kind of kind of stapled together.
And again, the arcs of the characters were there's no full breadth of them, even like the even the arc of Daredevil.
Like he didn't like learn a lesson. He didn't become a better person.

(30:24):
He didn't, you know, like get vengeance. Nothing happened to him.
He didn't even really like reflect on losing Electra. Like nothing, nothing happened.
It was like just another four day weekend. And then he's just back to be a daredevil.
Then trying to hit on another girl at the coffee stand or whatever.

(30:45):
I think they tried jamming that arc in for that one part where the keys, the keys, the kids crying or whatever.
He's screaming because he sees Daredevil and he's like, I'm not that monster.
He says it three times in a 15 minute span. Yeah, that's his character arc right there.
I eventually during the editing scene, they're like, you know, we don't have an arc for him.
Let's make him not the monster. So we just say, have him say it three different ways.
We'll plug it in there, get it done in 15 minutes.

(31:08):
Can we ADR that?
Do it from behind his head.
Yeah, well, because yeah, and then he does not, I mean, he doesn't kill Kingpin.
He's like, I'm not the bad guy, he says. But I mean, that idea barely lands.
And that is like as far as like a theme of the whole movie is not consistent or through light at all.

(31:32):
You know, he killed Bullseye five minutes earlier.
I did not. He doesn't seem to be dead. Remember, he's still moving when he's on the police car.
Well, he's right. He is. There is a post credit scene where we see him in the prison trying to kill a fly.
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah.
So he does survive the fall somehow from the top of the cathedral on the car.

(31:54):
But no, even the mobsters is going after the I don't know if they're mobsters, but the criminals, he goes after like in the subway at the beginning.
He was hit by a train like there's all he's he doesn't he does have an arc, but without him saying things like I'm not the bad guy or whatever.
Then with that arc even works. And even then it's it's real flimsy. It's really real.
So there isn't no one has an arc and they do it does feel like they like they need to add electric at all.

(32:17):
I know why she's in there because they need to have a love interest or whatever for a movie in a in a studio's mindset.
Well, we have to have a love interest in this works and we can have this character later on.
We could have to expand the story or whatever, but she doesn't need to be there because her her whole role would have been served with anyone.
It didn't have to be Electra.
It could have been any, you know, hot looking woman that would be the daughter of this other person who's working with Kingpin and it would move the story along just fine.

(32:40):
You wouldn't have had to have the weird scene where they fight in the street after the coffee shop that didn't make any sense except for to say like, oh, look, she can fight.
Isn't that cool? But it's like it was just too many things that were like thrown in here.
I mean, Kingpin as as the main bad guy, sure, they they show in the movie, but they'll the end scene where he actually has to fight Kingpin didn't need to be there.
They could have they could have wrapped it up with just bullseye and just have Kingpin just kind of know that his plans have failed for whatever reason, whatever his plans are to take over the city of crime.

(33:08):
But they just crammed everything in there.
So instead of even planning on saying, oh, we're going to have a sequel and we can set it up so we can have Kingpin later on all these other things, they just threw everything in this one movie to hope it stuck, I guess.
And it does make it so that it it moves fast. But afterwards, you're like, I don't I don't really like I was watching a music video kind of the the weight of none of it sticks because there's so much happening, but also nothing happening.

(33:31):
You know, like, you know, because I mean, they took them. They wanted I get why they were like, I get why they wanted to lecture in there, because that's like probably the most pivotal and emotional story for their their devil in his history.
And then there's this weird turn where he kind of goes over the edge a little bit for a while because he's kind of loses it. And but that we didn't see that effect in the movie. We didn't see them fall madly in love and have this long like buildup.

(34:03):
It was just like one date. Yeah, they one day then she then like she dies. And, you know, sorry, I don't know, man.
It's just to suck. As is waiting for you to be OK. And so that that the weight of that didn't even land. And I like, well, now we kind of wasted this whole electric story because her and her and Bulls Eye even was had this big like showdown.

(34:31):
And that was just a huge story in the comic book. So it was just completely kind of thrown away in seven minutes in the in the movie.
And I think, you know, I think it's actually thinking about it. It's there should have been more time on these characters. It should have been longer. I don't want to be longer. So the only choice is just cut more stuff out.
I think it would have better serve. Kingpin was more of a background character. The story ends with the killing of Bulls Eye. There is no time for me to really appreciate his law. No. What he does for his day job.

(35:02):
And at the same time, I don't really believe the foggy connection. And then you're right. She goes on one date with Electra. That's it. There's no long term love interest. And even that at the end, there's that medallion he sees and it's in Braille that spells her name or something.
So it sort of takes away that loss. Now, the director's cut is 30 minutes longer. Do you want those extra 30 minutes?

(35:24):
I'm curious what they were. Right. I don't I'm not going to hunt it down to watch it because a lot of the time these directors cuts you'll tell me like, oh, there's like 20 more minutes of training scenes. Like, well, I'm glad I didn't see that. Like, I didn't need any. So I wonder what the 30 minutes was.
Yeah, I hope it's just a longer fight scene in the park.
I haven't seen it from what I understand.
It's all that scene. It's just a 30. That scene is now 45 minutes long. Fighting in front of just like, yeah, how about how about I fight a blind guy during the middle of the day in a park in front of children?

(35:57):
I'm going to come back to directors. Let's stick on the playground for a second. There's no good outcome of that fight, right? If she loses, a blind guy beat her.
If she wins, she beat up a blind guy. Like, who goes into that fight? Like, why would you do that? I don't get it. They were flirting. I don't know. That's, you know, I don't know much about the Greek people.
But the Greek way of flirting. So the 30 minutes is, I believe from what I was reading, it's just more trial time. They try an entire case. It's like a law and order episode jammed into there. Sounds weird. Sounds riveting.

(36:31):
That's really, really. Yeah. I mean, because I mean, not to derail, but like to obviously Daredevil had a Netflix series that ran for four seasons, which in my opinion was fantastic.
And the best way to do a character like that, because you have the ability to tell these storylines over multiple episodes, multiple seasons, and like you can make it occur. You can add in the element of him being a lawyer and make it compelling actually and play up that dichotomy of, hey, I'm a lawyer that has to play by the book during the day, but also vigilante and how that weighs on his conscious as a Catholic.

(37:11):
You know, like those things all play into the character, the depth of that character. But when you're like, oh, he's in confession. Look, he's a lawyer. Look, there's a Greek girl. Look, she's dead.
The thing on his head. Boom.
I'm not a bad guy.
Bad guy.
Like, all right. I think from here on out when you something wrong in your life, just go, I'm not the bad guy.

(37:36):
Yeah. So this movie came out early 2000s. Obviously, this is sort of the advent of CGI and special effects and this movie had those in them, obviously. What did you guys think about the special effects overall? And did any of them stand out to you for good or for worse?
Oh, well, I will say the first thing that I did when the movie started in the little windows were turning into Braille. I actually looked them up to make sure they were accurate because I was convinced that it was bullshit.

(38:08):
There's no way this is God did not actually spell these words. It does. At least the ones I checked did. So Michael Clarke Duncan was spelled correctly in Braille. That would be great if it wasn't like just like just trolling you with other things.
Yeah. So, but I mean, it's again, I mean, it was of the time where every movie had that same like kind of like slow motion blur effect that they would do around things when it was trying to be kitschy. It had a lot of like, I think the director had a fever dream and wrote a fanfic of the crow.

(38:51):
And he's like, and then there'll be a, he'll throw a lighter and his symbol light up and they'll be, you know, you're like, what's the scene when he first becomes Daredevil?
Where he first puts on the suit, though, and he dives off a building. Oh, yeah. And he falls down like 30 stories and then just lands on a scaffolding gently and like jumps from it. I'm like, I don't think that's how, I don't know if that's how it works.

(39:17):
I actually have a detail for you about that one too. So this like originally this movie is for $50 million. Spider-Man had just come out and did amazing in the box office, which is why they doubled down to $80 million. And the notes and executives were make it more like Spider-Man, which is why that scene exists.
Because that's a Spider-Man move right there. That's not a Daredevil move. Right. Daredevil would break his legs.

(39:40):
Dead. He's like, he's just dead guy now. Shortest movie ever.
But I mean, the special effects are not great. I don't think they're terrible, but I don't think there's an overuse of them either. They're just kind of like, you know, some city scape stuff, some kind of tricks of the film. I mean, angles and stuff like that, but nothing major.

(40:03):
The, the offset of the, the thing where it jumps off a building and it's like, oh yeah. And then he spins around and he wraps his little cord around her. Then there's another one where he's, he's looking at something from a building top and he's going to swing down to like stop it. And the, the effect literally looks like they just had, like, I don't know, put them on a statue. Just like, pretend you swing from it. And they didn't do any effects on it at all. So it just looks like it's, it's just Daredevil going whee right around the side of the little, little tiny statue. Then he lands on the ground. The guy's like, oh, it's two levels of effect there on the same exact feel.

(40:32):
The other effect you talked about earlier, which is the, the vision effect, right? His, his, whatever it is. Yeah. His echolocation. So I thought it was neat because it does kind of help you understand what he's seeing. Like, yeah, the effects a little cheesy, but it works. It actually kind of makes it, you know, you're not just watching guys saying he's deaf or saying he's blind. And then he does much stuff. You're seeing how he's seeing it makes the, you know, the scene where they're on the roof and the rain hits her. And you're like, okay, he's hearing how the rain hits her and he can see what she looks like sort of. And then also ties into the end more or less.

(41:01):
Of what he does with Kingpin. So that also some foreshadowing there that explains it. I didn't mind it. It was better than I remember it being. Cause in my mind, I'll remember the movie was like, oh yeah, there was Ben Affleck and this terrible vision thing that it does. It wasn't as bad as I recalled. Maybe that's why I didn't hate it as much. Cause I went into a thing like this was going to be terrible, a terrible effect, but it wasn't as bad as I remember. And how about the fight scenes guys overall? How was the choreography? How was the fighting? I mean, I don't think Ben Affleck is a martial artist in any way.

(41:31):
I mean, he probably did some brawling on the streets of Boston back in the day. But I mean, they're pretty, pretty stiff, pretty stilted. And then at the, I think, oh, this kind of ties into special effects. That last fight where they're climbing up the organ.
Yes.
That gets a little messy with the fights and the special effects and kind of the laws of gravity. I'm like, I don't know what you're stepping on and continually to climb upwards. I don't know how your vertical is happening right now. Cause you're kind of stepping on nothing nebulously.

(42:09):
You know, Ben Affleck or as Daredevil, he just jumps like 20 feet there when he cuts to the top. It's not that you see him like, oh, I throw my rope up and I pull it up real quick or anything. It's just like, nope. He just looks like he green screen jumps from the bottom of the top. It gets to the, yeah. It's not great either. But that whole scene is so ridiculous in general. That's my least of my concerns. Breaking the glass and turning it into a bunch of throwing stars also ridiculous.

(42:34):
The way he catches it too. He just does like this, you know? And I'm like, how are you just catching glass perfectly? Like, I don't know if glass just falls in little shards perfectly for you.
Yeah, perfectly horizontal.
Yeah.
That's kind of tonal shift. I mean, some of the fights are dark and gritty and then all of a sudden you get that sort of slap scene cartoony. I think it's that Spider-Man influence coming into it. In fact, there's a scene near the beginning when he goes to the bar to take down that first criminal and Daredevil jumps on a ceiling fan and spins around on it. I'm sorry. A ceiling fan would fall down.

(43:10):
That was the one thing I'm thinking about when I'm watching. I don't know where these industrial ceiling fans come from, but I've never been in a bar where it is even thought of that decline those things.
Yeah.
Though you mentioned the organ fight. There's a part of it where I was watching it. It actually takes the way out. Colin Farrell takes a pipe and beats Daredevil with it. If you watch it, it bends in the scene.
Oh, really?

(43:31):
Yeah. I rewind and watched it a couple of times. Did I just see that? But no, he hits him with a foam. It's obviously foam. Obviously, they'll hurt each other. Yeah, that scene went on way too long.
Yeah. What I really like is the thing that made me laugh so much is after that, when Bullseye hits the car and is incapacitated and they look up and Daredevil is in the church, he, without running or anything, just from a standstill, leaps across the street.

(44:02):
From the next building, from rooftop to... That's a whole road and sidewalks. That's like, how far is this dude's vertical? For a guy that is just a regular blind dude with some sonic power, echo location powers, he sure is pretty...
That's what lack of fear does to you. For some reason, gives you the ability to jump really far.

(44:27):
I have to say, Fergal is very... I miss Fergal because he's going to be very upset he was not involved in an episode where he said the words organ fight over and over again.
About really big pipes beating each other with big pipes. Yeah. I wrote my notes. WTF voiceover. What the fuck is about this voiceover? How did you guys feel when you heard Ben Affleck talking at the beginning of this movie?

(44:50):
I mean, I didn't hate it to begin with, but it just, again, I think it just doesn't match the rest of the tones or any through line. That isn't consistent. If that stayed where he's narrating this to us, he's telling us a story, but it constantly breaks that and becomes kind of a...

(45:13):
Just almost a different narrative perspective. So there's just, again, no consistency with it. That is the theme of the movie. No consistency.
Well, and they didn't have time to build these characters up in a way that you wouldn't need that voiceover. So I wonder if it was just added on after the fact because someone watched it and was like, I don't understand. Explain this to me.

(45:34):
So like, fine, we'll do a voiceover. And that's why they didn't make it consistent because it was just thrown in to help someone understand parts of the movie. Yeah. Yeah. I always feel that when I hear a voiceover movie, it's like, do they believe the audience is too dumb to follow this? And if they are, then you've got some serious problems with your screenwriting.
And there are times where it works, but if you're making a superhero movie, you probably don't need it, right? I mean, the source material leads to... You have lots to work from. You have things to build off of. You're not just like, I came up with this idea. I had better explain that background of this universe. Like, you don't need to.

(46:02):
It's a comic. Everyone that's coming to see this knows the basics. You don't have to explain Hell's Kitchen. You don't have to explain any of that. Just go. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's like, you know how Marvel in the new MCU, they just... When they introduced Spider-Man, they just... They didn't do the origin story, nothing. It's like, here's Spider-Man. Everyone knows who Spider-Man is, you know? So you can just kind of throw them in there and it just happens. It's just there.

(46:24):
And it works. We've done so many origin stories over the years. I'm personally tired of them. I want to see just get right to the meat of the story.
Well, yeah, and it would allow you the time to tell a different story because the origin story is like, yeah, I guess you needed to get to the angst of Daredevil, but you could tell that so succinctly and quickly.

(46:45):
And then you're like, okay, that is a part of him. And then, you know, kind of highlight the points you need to know and then actually tell a story for that character instead of just, hey, this is 20 minutes at the beginning of the movie about him as a kid, ninja kid. Yeah.
Like, I don't need to see Batman's parents killed again in Crime Alley. I think we've all understood that. I could see Martha die over and over. That bitch deserved it.

(47:10):
I know it came up about the Daredevil TV show. I had never watched any of it. I watched the first a little bit of the first episode right before we did this.
They summarize the whole reason that he is blind everything else and like the first 30 seconds of the show. And then it starts. You don't need 20 minutes of his background. You don't need it. You just need to be like, here's a guy that that he had said as a kid.
Now he doesn't. Here's what happened. Kind of. And then it goes to the future. You'll figure the rest out. They could have done that. They could have easily done that here. But instead, they did the very clear, hey, we're going to make this movie for everyone.

(47:38):
Doesn't matter if you like comics or not. Doesn't matter for seven. You're going to see this movie. We're going to explain it to you. Here's 20 minutes of backstory. Don't need it.
It's so because it's a Valentine's Day movie. It's for your date. So they have an idea what's going on. It wasn't a kid. I'm not going to jail.
Not in 2003. No. Even in 2003, I wouldn't have taken a seven year old on a date. It's not going to happen. Over 20 by then. Never mind. Am I going to go there? So this movie, obviously we had Bed Affleck as our Daredevil, but there were actually several other options that they were exploring.

(48:06):
And I want to get you guys take on these. So first off, Guy Pearce. Maybe I can't even picture Guy Pearce right now. Hold on. He was in the terrible Time Machine movie. Okay. Wow. All the pictures that come up of him. He is old now. So that's not good.
Old man Daredevil. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. That's a good response to Matt Damon. I think that all these characters, I mean, not all of these, but at least Guy Pearce, I think I have the same problem I did with Ben Affleck, which is he's way too handsome. Yeah. Way too handsome. I mean, not that Daredevil is hideous, but he looks more like an average person, not a supermodel. Then how about Matt Damon? I think Matt Damon is less handsome than Ben Affleck.

(48:50):
Yeah. Yeah. I don't think Matt Damon is good at anything.
Yeah. He bought a zoo. He did buy a zoo. Sorry. That Mars movie was okay.
Yeah, not great either. I think like Jeremy said, I think maybe someone less handsome, more because it's almost like distracting. It's like, why don't you just be a model? Like, what are you doing being a lawyer? You don't need to see. You just be a model. You're a good looking, you got a strong chin.

(49:23):
How about Ed Norton?
Also bad.
He doesn't mind Ed Norton as Bruce Banner though. So he could have maybe pulled it off.
I liked him as Bruce Banner, but again, like I said, I think he's too wavy for Daredevil. Too much of a small, like he's just kind of a little guy. You need someone a little bit bigger. He could play kind of nerdy, small, mousy scientists really well.

(49:45):
Well, if you want a guy a little bigger, how about Vin Diesel? He could have been your Daredevil.
I do want that movie. Yeah.
And lastly, the last person we're going to go with right before they signed Ben Affleck was Colin Farrell.
Oh, you got the consolation prize.
Well, what's even funnier about that is Bullseye was going to originally be Ben Affleck. And then after seeing them in some test footage, they flip flopped them.

(50:11):
Oh, wow. That would have been a very different movie.
Yeah.
Probably not for the better.
They should have had Matt Damon be Bullseye. Then you could have really played up this rivalry, this friendship rivalry thing between Daredevil, Gordon Bullseye, and Matt Damon, Ben Affleck.
I can't even imagine Matt Damon playing Bullseye the same way though, the Carl Farrell. Imagine him trying to pull that off. It would be the worst.

(50:36):
Well, here's your other Bullseye. It's your last one I have for you from Bullseye. Vin Diesel again.
The other guy was everywhere.
Yeah.
At that time, because he turned these roles down by the go-to Chronicles of Riddick, by the way.
Wow. Good career choice. This guy. Well, you know, I never said that guy made a bad move in his life.
This movie, when it first came out, when they first writing this movie and developing it, it was going to be a rated R movie that was hyper violent and full of nudity. Do you think that would have been a better version of Daredevil?

(51:05):
I would say no, because I don't think they would have done it well. I think it would have just been gratuitous. I think you can make that movie with the right people and the right tone.
But again, I mean, hyper violent and gratuitous nudity, that's not really ever been Daredevil. So it just wouldn't have made sense.

(51:29):
You can include those things in it because, you know, it is a little more gritty, dark street level book.
But if you want to do a lot of it, it seems like you're just doing it for shock value and to get it in there. It's not that it makes sense for the story at all.
Yeah. I mean, I guess if you're going to try to build on what the villains are doing, you could be a little more ultra violent and have it make sense still.

(51:51):
I don't think of Daredevil as that. Yes, he's violent, but it's not like extremely graphic. And the nudity, again, it would have to make sense. It'd be fine. But why?
Like, it's not like he can't see it. So what would you say?
He can't see it. Well, I'll answer for Fergal since he's not here. Yes. Yes, I want to see that.
I mean, Fergal's Daredevil.
Now, there were some other directors that originally had to go with this for this movie that would have probably changed the tone. I want to hear if you guys want to see this movie or not. Daredevil by Sam Raimi.

(52:20):
Sure. Yeah, I think he did a great job with those. Here's my one concern is that it may just end up being a Spider-Man movie, though.
You may end up with like, you know, you're not getting a Daredevil movie. You're just getting a Spider-Man movie with a different costume.
And this came real close to that, too. I mean, there's a few scenes that are very much Spider-Manny added in, like the jumping from the cathedral.

(52:44):
Like, we came real close to getting another Spider-Man movie that happened to be about Daredevil. And this is pretty much a Spider-Man movie with the lights turned off.
I guess saturation cranked up a little.
So the other one is Tim Burton.
I'm going to pass. As long as I like his Batman movies, I'm going to pass on a Daredevil one.
But it would just be his Batman movies, right? It would be the same problem we have with Spider-Man. It would be, this is just like Batman, but he's red.

(53:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then I mean, Bullseye probably would have been even weirder. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Under Tim Burton, you know. The last one who I didn't even know this was Mark A. Z. Dippay.
Now, I bring him up because he just, I don't know, but it doesn't matter.

(53:31):
He just came off doing the Spawn movie. Hard pass then. That movie is terrible.
He's duck shit.
Borderline unwatchable as a film.
And you should be glad because after this, his movie skyrocketed into the Garfield movies.
Yeah, big shift.
He's like, well, I'm not doing those anymore.

(53:54):
So, yeah, you know, I mean, I get, but, you know, think again, think of the time.
It's not like it was now for superhero movies. So, you know, Sam Raimi was kind of the guy who took a chance.
Bryan Singer did the X-Men movies and was, but I mean, it's like there wasn't really comparison.
Like they were doing OK for their movies, but you couldn't really compare it to anything else because what else was there?

(54:19):
Right. Spider-Man was kind of the perfect salute, you know, perfect situation.
All these other super movies since the Batman, the Tim Burton Batman movies really kind of fallen flat.
So, yeah, 100 percent. Yeah. Yeah.
And is that it was they're moving from campy superhero movies and the gritty dark superhero movies.
When it comes to movie guys, what do you love about it and what should they have done better?

(54:41):
Well, they should have cast Vin Diesel as Daredevil and Bullseye and Kingpin.
If he would have played all three characters, that would have been a film, my friends.
Vin Diesel is and like directed by Vin Diesel.
Yes. He's the gaffer. He's the key grip. He is everyone in this movie.

(55:09):
He's Electra. He does it all.
It was concise. And by that, I mean short, not not necessarily well put together, concise, but short.
I think I think the costume looked OK.
It did annoy me, the zipper in the front that just seemed like a flaw when you're jumping around and fighting a lot like that could be troublesome.

(55:31):
But overall, the costume looked OK for him.
You know, I didn't hate it watching it this morning, but thinking about it, I also did not like it that much.
Like nothing, nothing made me hate it, but nothing stood out as like, oh, that was good.
It's very unremarkable. Yeah, it is. It is not bad.
Like there are many worse movies, some of which we've covered, but it's it's also not good.

(55:55):
It's not it's not memorable. Like there's other than things you didn't like.
Like, I mean, I think Bullseye is memorable for the wrong reasons.
And I think the movie in general, though, the rest of it's like, yeah, it was OK.
The idea that they would have a follow up that maybe is more concise or has a better overarching story or something would would be it would have been a better deal.
But they I don't know. You kind of blew kingpin on it too early with his minimal performance in this movie.

(56:18):
He should have been the bad guy of the second movie.
And you focus a lot more on on that. Instead, here he's just kind of this, you know, nebulous, nebulous.
He's a rich bad guy. That's what he does. He's just rich and bad.
Like there's nothing else to him. Yeah.
And he literally they never give you any insight.
Even Electra's dad, he's like, I'm out. You're going to buy me out.

(56:40):
I'm like, of what? A timeshare and Boker at all.
I'm talking about right now. No idea what you guys even do.
You're just in a high rise in ties. We do crime. OK, great.
You do crime. Just general crime. I do crime.
Is that I think that's a misdemeanor in New York anyway.
They should be OK. I should put on my business card. I do crime.
For me, I think totally this movie is all over the place.

(57:05):
That's one of the biggest issues it has with it.
And because of that, because I don't remember when I saw this at all, I remember I owned it at one point because I used to love collecting superhero movies.
But beyond that, it's it's it just disappears.
We reviewed Whiteout recently and the same thing for that.
I will forget I ever watched that movie. And when I have to if I had to watch this movie again in a decade from now, I'll forgotten everything else about it again.

(57:28):
Yeah. Weirdly, Electra is more memorable than this movie.
And I don't know why it tries to do more with the source material.
Maybe it's not any better overall, but it does delve back more into the backstory with stick and everything else that's not in this movie.
Yeah, I think they pick a tone and stick with it a little better in Electra also.
Like it's it's it's more totally consistent, which at least you can give it that, you know, it's again still not a great movie, but it does deliver a consistency throughout it, which at least kind of keeps you a little more engaged.

(58:01):
As I think you may you guys may or may not know, but they're coming out the new Daredevil movie.
Daredevil Reborn, I think it's called or a new series.
Show. Yeah.
Yeah, show. What storylines you hope they as two Daredevil experts compared to me.
Are there any storylines you hope to explore?
Oh, man.
You know, they burn through a lot of the source good source material in the original Netflix show.

(58:25):
And this is going to be a continuation of that.
They've said they went back and forth on that a lot.
And I think finally they cave to the fans, which is smart.
But I think there's they've introduced Echo, which was a kid in the in the Disney Disney show.
That was a character introduced in Brian Michael Bendis's run.

(58:47):
So I think you're probably going to see some of Bendis's run stuff where where Kingpin finds out Daredevil is Matt Murdock.
And that story starts to leak a little bit.
And you might see some of that. So hopefully, hopefully we see some of that.
We also never really saw bullseye in the show that much briefly in this, I think, the last season.

(59:08):
But probably some more bullseye would be great.
Yeah, I mean, I guess compared to you, Chris, I might be an expert, but I'm really only very familiar with the more recent runs, which are I enjoy them.
They're very good, but they are not.
They build up that they're kind of doing this rebirth of the character to some level to where he gets really involved with the church and some themes.
And I'm enjoying it, but it may not be the most easy or enjoyable thing to put on TV.

(59:31):
So I hopefully go back to some like maybe the older runs that made it bigger.
But the stuff I'm reading now I'm enjoying. But I just think it'd be a big jump from what they're doing now.
Should people go out and find this movie?
I would say you don't have to. If you stumble upon it at some point in your high on mushrooms and you've got an hour and 17 minutes.

(59:54):
Yeah, do it. Have a good time. Watch it. You know, fall asleep to it one night.
But I don't think it's something you need to seek out to see.
Yeah, it's forgettable. I mean, it's it's I would not hunt this down.
I you know, if you're on a flight and for whatever reason, the only movie they have is 2003's Daredevil, which would be a shocking development.
But that's fine. It would get you through the plane ride. But it's not it's not worth hunting down.

(01:00:17):
I've only watched that first episode. Not even the full episode. It's already more appealing to me than this movie was the one episode I saw.
And and again, even just his appearance in the She-Hulk show that happened a couple of years ago, I think was better than this movie for the character.
Here's the thing. It's so forgettable. If you're like, I've never seen that movie. It's you probably actually have.

(01:00:39):
Yeah, you just forgot. So don't bother. You've seen it probably.
And if you haven't actually directly seen it, you've seen all the parts of this movie. Oh, yeah.
You watch The Matrix, Spider-Man, X-Men. You probably have seen this movie.
You get it. You get it. But yeah, go go get Evanescence Greatest Hits. Put Evanescence Pandora Station on for about 17 minutes and you'll get it.

(01:01:04):
Guys, thumbs up, thumbs down. What would you rate this movie?
OK, I'm going to shove a thumb directly into my eyeball and just walk out of the room.
I don't know if I've ever given a full thumbs down on this podcast because everything else have been like, well, there are some redeeming features of it.
Being forgettable is maybe the worst sin you can have. If you're a bad movie, then I enjoy a bad movie.

(01:01:25):
You brought that up earlier, Deez. I do like a bad movie. This is not bad enough to be bad. It's just OK.
It's almost like playing it too safe for a superhero movie. So it gets a thumbs down from me. First one ever.
I would probably give it a thumbs down, maybe three quarters of a way down because you're right, there's not really much.
I will forget this movie again in about a couple of months and forget I ever saw this thing.

(01:01:48):
And I don't think people should go find it. It's not worth it. It's not worth the effort.
I mean, I went to a Goodwill and a second edge Charles looking for this thing and I could not find it.
It's on Disney Plus, so it's a good find, but you don't need to because this is also on there. So you're good to go.
I actually speaking of being on Disney Plus, I get all the way to the dare D before it came up.
It was often many other shows, including the Daredevil TV show before it was trying to suggest that one to me.

(01:02:14):
I think there's no one you were looking for that. It's trying to use AI. You're fine.
Yeah, well, I was surprised it was on Tubi. Yeah.
Oddly enough, this series, this movie probably really only got made because like Daredevil had a crazy renaissance in the late 90s in the comic books.

(01:02:35):
Like Marvel was in bankruptcy and then Joe Cassata, who is a character named after him in the movie, was actually an artist who became the editor in chief of Marvel for a long time.
But he took over Daredevil and like brought it back to life as a series. It was like literally was canceled.
And they brought it. He brought it back to life and it became wildly popular for a while in around 2000 in the early 2000 stuff.

(01:02:58):
So that kind of really the only reason this probably even saw the light of day. It was probably one of the only times they could have made this movie because a couple of years later, it's popular and waned.
And, you know, studios probably wouldn't even have looked at it.
So Deese, thanks for joining us this evening or today.
Whenever you're listening to the show, where can people find you? What projects are you working on?

(01:03:20):
Yeah, you can find me. You can find me in my comedy at Deese.comedy on Instagram, Facebook, or Deese Comedy is my website.
But also an exciting project. I am launching my debut comic book series, Kill Stan, like I mentioned earlier.
The Kickstarter, the landing page should be up now.

(01:03:41):
Kickstarter backslash Kill Stan.
Or you can follow us on Inferno.earth. That's the website. That's the Instagram. That's the Facebook.
And it's just Inferno.earth. There's no dot com now. Earth is the domain or the whatever it's called, not domain.
There's a million. It's no coms anymore. They're all gone.

(01:04:02):
So, but yeah, the Kickstarter is running from September 15th till October 15th.
So please follow the page. At least we can help get us in the algorithm.
And if you want to support the campaign, that'd be great too.
The comic book is done. It's at the printers now. It's really great.
We've had a lot of publishers who've looked at it and really liked it.

(01:04:25):
We actually had a deal at one point that I've walked away from because I just didn't want to do a couple changes they wanted to make.
So it's gotten some stamps of approval. We think you'll love it.
It's a 10 issue series we're going to do. And then I got more projects after that I'm going to do.
So, yeah, follow the pages and check out the Kickstarter please.

(01:04:47):
That's fantastic. We're going to make sure that's on the show notes as well as being on the site too.
You can find me here every two weeks talking about some other superhero or comic related movie.
But also anytime you want to talk about old video games on retrovideo.net, we have podcasts on the YouTube channel and I am there as well.
And for me, I'm always over at Off Panel Creations. We're always trying to build some piece of nerdy furniture.
So I want to thank you, our listeners, for spending some time with us today.

(01:05:09):
If you have any thoughts about Daredevil, how you think this is the best Daredevil, please let us know.
Send us a note over at movie-smash.com and we'll see you in a couple weeks.
Thank you again for listening and I hope you enjoy the show.
This has been Movie Smash with Chris Roberts, Jeremy Parmentier, and Fergal Amayo, produced by me, Chris Roberts, executive produced by Off Panel Creations, LLC.

(01:05:32):
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