Charlie Cox is not a fan of the Daredevil movie
The latest Matt Murdock explains what he believes didn't quite work with the 2003 film starring Ben Affleck
Aux News Daredevil
Everyone’s a critic, including Charlie Cox—who is not a fan of Daredevil (2003) which featured Ben Affleck as the titular comic book hero.
“I watched it once, and then I wanted to go and do my own thing,” Cox said during his trip to Middle East Film & Comic Con 2022 in Abu Dhabi. “I hadn’t seen it before I got the role. I watched it when I got the role.”
“I don’t love the movie. I feel like the movie tried to do too much and it was a little tonally confused,” he continued, before adding, “They had everyone in that movie—they had Kingpin, they had Bullseye, they had Elektra, they had Karen Page, they had Foggy.”
“It was saturated, and it’s two hours. So that was part of that problem. And the suit sucks!” he explained.
However Cox did send Affleck a few compliments saying, “[He’s] is a really good Matt Murdock” and “I like his Matt Murdock.”
While we weren’t able to get Martin Scorsese to comment on the nineteen-year-old Marvel movie, someone who does agree with Cox is Affleck himself, who at this point has a history of turning in divisive performances of iconic superheroes. Affleck, of course, also appeared as Batman in both Batman v. Superman: Dawn Of Justice and Justice League.
“Daredevil didn’t work, at all. If I wanted to go viral I would be less polite,” Affleck explained to Entertainment Weekly in 2015. “That was before people realized you could make these movies and make them well. There was a cynical sense of ‘Put a red leather outfit on a guy, have him run around, hunt some bad guys, and cash the check.’”
Cox reprised the role of Matt Murdock for a brief scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which also featured Tobey Maguire and Adam Garfield bringing their interpretations of the friendly neighborhood web-slinger into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This opens the door for Affleck to don that red leather outfit once more, but that seems doubtful.
What the real heads want to know though is: what does Charlie Cox think of Rex Smith’s turn as Murdock in the 1989 made-for-tv picture, The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk?
Netflix’s Daredevil series comes to Disney+ on March 16.
32 Comments
Joey Pants was an iconic Ben Urich. But besides that, I hope one of the things Marvel has the sense to do is bring back Vondie Curtis Hall and say, “Yeah, killing Ben was fucking stupid. We are ignoring that.”
Not by any means an Affleck fan, but I thought the movie was fine. Maybe this guy is bothered that Elektra was capable of kicking Matt’s ass if she wanted to; or that his love for her somehow made him more ‘vulnerable’.
Kinda weird that you’d jump to that when the Daredevil movie is pretty much universally derided.
Lol, fuck the universe.
Elektra kicks Matt’s ass in the show, and he is vulnerable due to his love for her. So I’m doubtful that these are the reasons? In fact, he gives some of his reasons in the article you’re commenting on!
I watched a portion of the TV series but the violence was just too much (for me). It is interesting that Cox reflects on those subjects. I liked the movie because it was campy and ‘lighter’ than some Marvel joints; it was escapist and I enjoyed the romantic play. All of the character actors got to have some fun and, despite my dislike for Affleck, he wore that red suit extremely well.
“Campy and lighter than other Marvel joints”? The only Marvel joints before 2003’s Daredevil were 2 Blades, an X-Men, and a Spider-Man.
As for the Daredevil show’s violence, my wife got in 2 eps and said “I’m done. Too much.” The second season is absolutely brutal.
Fine is exactly what the Daredevil movie was when it came out. It was dumb fun but was clearly made without any particular care or consideration for the source material. It was as Afleck says, “Put a red leather outfit on a guy, have him run around, hunt some bad guys, and cash the check.” Daredevil the show, on the other hand, is roundly good bordering on great. Even with all its faults, you can’t deny that the people making the show were running a whole different game than the people making the movie. Some of the worst comic book media these days are paying way more attention to detail and working with people who actually want to tell a story rather than just cash a check, which was definitely not the case twenty years ago.
I’d argue the DAREDEVIL film has too MUCH affection for the source material, and un-wisely tried to jam too much of it into a short running time (as Cox states above). The director clearly had an affection for the comics, but not the discipline to not gorge himself at the buffet, nor the talent to adapt the stuff he likes with much skill (see his adaptation of A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANEY for more of the same).
One thing I give the movie credit for that I have to take away from the TV show is that it held to the comics continuity of not giving Bullseye a real name or a real backstory. In the comics, he’s had a bunch of backstories, including the Ben Poindexter one from the show, and they’ve universally turned out to be lies. He’s one of the very few Marvel villains whose tragic story we don’t know. He’s just a weird powerful murderer and that’s what the movie gave us.
I wasn’t really a fan of the movie, mainly because they decided to immediately portray Daredevil as an unambiguous murderer in it within 10 minutes of the movie starting, which was never the character’s thing in any of the source material.
It’s sort of strange that you leap to that conclusion, considering that Charlie Cox starred in a version of Daredevil where Elektra hurts Daredevil so badly during their fight in the Defenders that he has to go through the longest period of recovery that I think has actually been portrayed in any superhero movie or television show.
Is it strange? Did I leap to a conclusion? Because you believe something else blah blah blah…lol
Well, I was trying to avoid just calling you a clueless dumbass when you said something that was blatantly contradicted by the story of the show the actor was actually in.But hey, you do you.
It was a decent pre MCU flick, at that time, Daredevil seemed like such a low tier character, at least to the general public, that I would never live to see the Elektra Saga adapted into a live action movie. So I was pretty happy that we got what we got. Loved Netflix Daredevil, I just hate that they didn’t do a fourth season, so we didn’t get to see Bullseye in costume. Since I’m on Daredevil, if anybody involved in making this stuff happens to read, please, please, please, bring Heather Glenn into it, she was a major part of Miller’s original run. Sadly, another writer killed her off later, so no one really thinks of her anymore, but man, would I love to see her brought to life, my favorite Matt Murdock love interest.
Sort of – Denny O’Neill is the credited writer on that issue but Miller was in essence co-writing issues of Daredevil at the time (this was leading into Born Again).
Oh, didn’t know that, but whoever wrote it, I would still love to see Heather Glenn show up in tv or movies.
There are two scenes that exemplify what’s wrong with the movie: early on, Daredevil is in a fight in a bar (I think, it’s been a while); gunshots are ringing out around him in the relatively small enclosed space, and he has no problems with that. Later, though, he’s in a church, and the sound of the church bell (not in the same space) brings him to agony. Why? Does he hear at some special ultrasonic canine frequency that is way louder than dozens of gunshots? There’s some good bits in there (Colin Farrell as Bullseye was particularly effective; I also thought that it was a nice touch that Matt slept in a sensory deprivation tank), but not enough.
I’d actually go as far as saying Affleck is the second best “Batman”. Not to be confused with my ranking of Bruce Wayne’s. His movies also sucked but goddamn does he look fantastic in the batsuit.
It’s his big ol’ head.
I’m not a huge Ben Affleck fan (nor a detractor) and I *am* a huge Batman fan. I think his Batman is really good, though I don’t really buy his story in BvS. I like Batman in that sweet-spot of experienced enough to have an advantage over his allies, but still young enough to get stuck in and Affleck absolutely nails that.Also, while I’m on about Affleck detractors, that Razzie for The Last Duel is a complete bag of bollocks. Self-aggrandising tone-deaf cheap shot artists that they are.
that Razzie for The Last Duel is a complete bag of bollocksI’m with you on the dragging of Affleck in The Last Duel. I was halfway through the film before my wife informed me that he was playing the Count. It’s unusual to see him perform so far away from his actual persona.
I don’t know whether I’d go that far, but I would say that Affleck-as-Batman wasn’t the problem with BvS or JL just as Affleck-as-Daredevil wasn’t the problem with that movie. He was a reasonable casting in both.
I hated Daredevil, but I’ve had a few people tell me that the extended version is good. I dunno, seems like potentially putting myself in the situation of watching that movie again, but this time more of it, is an unwise decision.
Yes, the director’s cut is much better. There’s a whole subplot with Coolio. Matt and Foggy go breaking into apartment to investigate things for their client. It’s funny.
Having only ever seen the director’s cut, I thought the movie was fine. Little too much Seether and Evanescence in the soundtrack, Colin Farrell was a bit too over-the-top , but it wasn’t bad by any means.
I’d actually forgotten until a couple years ago that it was Jon Favreau as Foggy in that movie and I’m glad Cox’s cameo in Spider-Man was short enough that they didn’t have time to work in a quip about it.
The Daredevil movie is one I’ve got a soft spot for as a huge fan of the character.As someone else said above, as such a low-tier character it was once considered inconceivable that we’d get to see The Elektra Saga on-screen.It’s a movie which tries to do way too much in the one film – Kingpin, Bullseye, Elektra, the Coolio subplot which got cut from the theatrical version.But I like the costume, I like the billy club, I like Affleck in the role and the whole cast. Michael Clarke Duncan is absolutely brilliant as the Kingpin.It’s got a lot of problems (and it’s weirdly nu-metal heavy soundtrack is one of them, though the Evanescence tracks are nostalgic fun for me).But its overstuffed plot does at least mean that the film moves at an incredibly brisk pace and has an incredible amount of narrative momentum, something the TV struggled with mightily at times which a lot of wheel-spinning and lots of slightly-too-long fights in warehouses or dark corridors.
I remember the Daredevil movie as having a pretty neat radar-sense effect, and… not much else, though I think Affleck was fine in it. But really – there are superhero movies before the MCU and after. It’s kind of hard to judge those before ones really. Even the good ones (Superman 1 & 2, for instance) don’t hold a candle to what can be done now.
The one thing Affleck’s movie has over the series is that we got to see the character actually be a daredevil. By that I mean his leaping off buildings and performing acrobatics around Hell’s Kitchen – an aspect that’s as central to the character as Spider-Man’s web-swinging. That it was dropped entirely for the Netflix show was always disappointing to me. They turned him into a simple brawler with some heightened senses.
Movie was terrible and so was Affleck. But whats really funny is Snyderfanboys holding this film up along with his Batman and saying he paved the way for all these other actors. Its delusional.
The movie wasnt great , but Colin Farrells Bullseye was the probably the best reason to watch it ,
Cox thinks Affleck’s suit “sucked.” Has he seen his own?