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I don't really like affleck as DD either.  I couldn't see him as much of an action hero.  He doesn't act all that much, he just plays Ben Affleck...  Maybe he'll surprise us, but whatever.  Oh, and Tobey McGuire is absolutely perfect for Spiderman, I don't see how you can't like that decision.  He looks exactly like Peter Parker and is an incredible actor.  This is one of the best comic casting calls I've seen.

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I have no problem wiht Tobey McGuire as Spidey. My problems with Affleck are follows: It's not that he's terrible, because I would be lying if I said I hated or even disliked everything he's been in, but for a superhero role, one which viewers are familar with, teh requirements and expectations are higher. If Affleck goes and does a romantic comedy (shouldn't take TOO much imagination to picture him doing that) then he was room to work with the character and he can not be exactly who the screenwriter or director wanted him to be, and we as an audience won't care. But playing a character we already know, he has to nail it. Plus, I've already seen him in so many other things, I can't picture him as DareDevil, I'll just be seeing a Bartalbe or a Boston Genius' best friend or some damn whiny WWII soldier.

 

Toey McGuire I haven't seen much elsewhere (just Pleasantville) and lets face it, he has Peter Parker written all over him. He doesn't seem to have Spidey's unique sense of humor and cocky backtalk, but anyone who has read Spidey in depth knows that Peter Parker's the deeper more important character to the story than his alter-ego as Spider-Man. Not saying he couldn't screw it up, but from all the trailer and info out there now, it is not a forgone conclusion. It's still very much in the air.

 

I also had no problem with Snipes as Blade, at least in the first one, I haven't seen the second one yet. I need one of those whatcamacallits...money.

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Tobey McGuire is an awesome actor, he was in PleasantVille, Wonderboys, The Ice storm, Cider House rules, and some others.  The guy can really act, I could definately see him becoming one of the greats when he gets some more movies under his belt.

 

And as for Snipes as Blade, I think he's great.  Without him Blade would be very, very different.  As far as I know it was kind of his idea to make it a martial arts movie, and he choreographed the fighting of the first movie.  I agree with not casting such recognizable people as other recognizable characters.  That's what killed Clooney as batman, other than the bad movie thing.

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1)Kilmer was 10x better than Clooney.

2)Superman = on hold, thank god.  Cage, sadly, went comic book movie hoppin - hes apparently a huge fan - and after ditchin Ghost Rider, ended up on Constantine (Hellblazer).  He's got some range, so ill give it a chance.

:D shoulda been Sting....

3)Marvel has nothing to do with the movies. They didnt even make a penny offa X-Men.  Check out "Come In Alone" over in comics for details.

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  • 9 months later...

Wow, i actually get first go at a review, check it out...Ill try to keep this as spoiler-free as i can.

 

It was cool, but left me feeling a bit like Spier-Man: really cool fight scenes but didnt raise the bar on the comic movie genre. Adaqueate time was spent on the origin & they actually pulled off all those characters without it feeling rushed (most of the time). Here's my being picky with the movie:

-I think the early fight scenes werent choreographed well. It felt like the director was going for the strobe-light fight scene from the Crow, only it came out like...like the last fight in the final highlander movie, where you see bits of it and it looks like it mgiht be cool but its not flowing like it should, mgiht just be me tho, i had a shitty seat.

-there were a few cheezy "this is a comic book movie" parts to it, i know that's expected but was hoping for less of it.

-I know DD's not half as popular as Spidey but I still dont thnk the audience gets into him completely, even after the tearful backstory.

 

Granted, this is my fault - i re-read Frank Miller's infamous "Born Again" storyline earlier today to build hype, and that's some of Marvel's greatest shit out there, gets you really into Murdock's head, was hopin for a bit more of that.

For a far less budget, the effects with the billy club/cane were great, and some of the fight scenes were excellent. Bullseye was one of the movie's highlights, Farell was cooler than i thought he'd manage. Also, whats-his-name really worekd as Foggy Nelson, that was good supporting cast there.

The cameos & comic jokes were funny as hell (almost every famous DD writer/artist got a mention in there somewhere), and dont get me wrong here I liked it, it was a cool flick, but again i liked it the same way i liked X-Men & Spider-Man: very entertaining, definetly go see it, ill buy the DVD & all but im gonna expect more from the sequels in terms of character development & overall presentation.

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Damn!! I wanted to win to get review up. Oh well.

 

It just that you have higher standerds for watching it cuz you have read the comic. For a person how dosn't really know much about him the pace and overall movie was great. Yea it did have some cheesy parts but was very cool.

 

Would have been better if Sun hadn't been cock blockin' me all night.

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Alright just got back, thought I'd write something whhile its fresh in the memory.

 

I thought the overall movie was good, didn't really enjoy it as much as Spiderman but still an overall cool film. I have some criticisms about stuff they changed but its easy to be a snob about it so I'll keep it to a minimum. I thought the main flaw was with Elektra. While in the comic she came across quite mysterious and unpredictable, here she was just Lara Croft with a heart. The romance stuff between her and Affleck felt corny at the best of times and left me uninterested.

 

Still, the action scenes were cool and Bullseye kicked ass. Also, I loved the casting of the film, my faves including the kid from The Sopranos as the bully, the early Kingpin dude played by the guy who is Sol in Pi, Jon Favreau (?) as Foggy and the actor who played the journalist (name escaped me).

 

Also, enjoyed how they did the blindness effects with the blue outlines, altho it seemed far-fetched at times with some of the stuff he could visualise just from soundwaves. (A dude behind a concrete post 40 feet away! Come on!).

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I saw it on Thursday and wanted to be the first to review it, but, ah well, stuff got in the way.

 

Overall, I liked the movie. Hell, I liked it enough to have seen it twice, already, and it came out...yesterday. I did have a few problems with it, and a lot of them revolve around one simple thing - the Kingpin. I did not like the way they portrayed the Kingpin. His organization didn't seem big enough, he didn't seem powerful or infamous enough. He just seemed like a thug who managed to be promoted high enough so that now he was a thug with an office. It just wasn't the huge unbeatable businessman that I had always envisioned from the comics.

 

I also think that the movie really could have used Turk. For anyone who's a fan of the comics, Turk is the smalltime crook that Daredevil (and many other characters) constantly beat up to get information. In the movie, the characters seemed to get from place to place, and we have no idea how they knew to get there. How is it that Daredevil and Bullseye and Elektra keep finding each other so easily in frickin' New York City?

 

And my final qualm...and I don't even know if this is even a qualm, but it differed quite a bit from the comic version. In the movie, Daredevil is a lot more coldblooded than I remember him. He certainly no longer seems to have a problem killing criminals, throwing people through windows and such.

 

But all that aside, I enjoyed the movie. I thought the normally hammy Affleck actually did a good job as Matt Murdock. And Colin Farell was hilarious in a part that had way too little screentime. Jon Favreau was the perfect Foggy. An', hey, three cheers for the three amusing comic-writer cameos. Stan Lee, as the bewildered man (Stan acting is always fun to watch - like his "startled man" performance in Spider-man) Matt saves from a truck. Yes, that was Frank Miller with a pen shoved through his forehead, just before Bullseye steals his motorcycle. And, of course, Kevin Smith as a lab technician amusingly named "Kirby".

 

And yeah, IC, that bar fight was a bit . . . off.

 

I think this is one comic movie that needs a sequel. It all felt like set-up to me. It was like they were saying "here, American audience, this is Daredevil - kinda cool, huh? Have fun watching this little movie before we get to the really good stuff". They showed us the characters, they showed us the premise, but not much else. Now they just need to make a movie version of Born Again, or Guardian Devil and it could be great.

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And I've talked too much about the subject already, but one more thing. Am I the only one who couldn't help laughing at the fact that they gave the name of Marvel's editor-in-chief to a rapist? That was kinda . . . daring. But then again, Kevin Smith did turn him into a pizza delivery boy. Poor Quesada. He doesn't get much respect in the movies.

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Yeah, but Joey loves it..he' s a good sport. Was that really Miller? fuck i didnt even notice, cool!

Ok few more comments:

MLB - yeah somethin was off with Elektra...*quick spoiler*

then again i thought it was sad..."here she is, she's a badass with these sais huh? Now here she fights and *DEAD* damn that was a short career eh?

But at least in that scene i thought it really cool that Bullseye used the exact lines & moves he did in the comic...cool.

The 40'-behind-the-pole thing i could buy cause he does it in the books & all, and yeah the casting was great.

 

Bob - Good points.

1) DD is rough, like Marvel's batman, but outside of how he goes at Bullseye he's one of the Spidey types that doesnt kill - he didnt seem to mind it one bit here, especially early on in the flick, that seemed off...

Affleck didnt agree with that either, read more here.

Also, apparently some fans didnt like DD's use of perscription drugs; i dug it m'self - he's a flawed character, that's part of what makes him interestin. He's got handicaps that cause him to feel more pain than most & takes a beatin out there, i thought it was kinda realistic m'self, didnt mind it one bit.

2) I really thought he was a good casting call but Kingpin did come off as a thug - i think it was the script. Again, i just read Miller's top-notch work before the movie, and Kingpin was brilliant, controlled the whole damn town, down to the cops. He'd even bump one of his guys off in the middle of a meeting to show he couldnt be fucked with...i didnt get that from him here, either.

 

Cant fuckin wait to see the sequel either - parts of "Gaurdian Angel" could work but i dunno if theyd go that way....I'd love to see a version of Miller's "Born Again" storyarc; seriously people if you dig this movie, pick up that trade & watch comic legend Frank Miller break Daredevil down in ways ive never seen before.

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So, for years fanboys have argued for comic movies that were more like comics and now that Xmen Spiderman, Blade and now Daredevil have come out we have it.

 

We're fucked.

 

Because by 'it' I mean that comic movies are copying the comics tradition of using issue one as a setup. Remember how the mainstream complains about "You can't just buy one comic and get a good complete story"?

 

They're gonna start doing that to comic movies if this get's worse.

 

It's going on elsewhere too. Matrix was planned as 3 movies from the start as was Lord of the Rings.

 

At least Matrix delivered a good one off story while setting up the world.

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Yeah, you might have a point - Spidey, X-Men & Daredevil, to me, seemed at times like they were written to be part 1 of a series, which i dont mind as long as the next 2 are stronger now that theyre past the intro shit.

What im more worried about are bad comic licenses - im happy to see the Superhero ones doin well & the lesser known ones (League of Extraordinary Gentelmen, Bulletproff Monk, Road to Perdition etc) gettin some attention, but im afraid its opened the doors for ones im less hoepful of: Namor, Hellblazer, etc. Im also not lookin forward to another Blade movie but that's prolly just me.

Ah well, ill enjoy it while its big, hope some more cool ones come out while they can.

PS Silent Bob - ya like how they got DD in the "Gaurdian Devil" pose around the steeple a few times? Thought that was cool.

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Hells yes, that was my favorite shot in the whole movie. And I agree with you that it was very cool that they used the same lines and moves when Bullseye fought Elektra. That was a nice bit of faithfulness. I also thought they did a great job with the radar sense. I always hated when he used that in the comics cause it seemed pretty farfetched. Wouldn't he have to be emitted some kinda noice for the radar to work? But in the movie they modified it a little to make it at least make sense, if not realistic. And the times when he'd tap something with his billy club to get an image of the room, I thought were nice touches.

 

As for these movies being made as a series. It's not such a bad thing, sometimes, because with a lot of these characters, there is so much to tell that squeezing it all into one movie would just ruin the story. From what I've seen of the X-Men sequel, and the reviews I've read of the script, it is even better than the first, and having that first intro movie as a foundation for an even bigger story isn't such a bad thing. I hope they can do the same with Spider-man (though I wish they could have chosen a more interesting villain than Doc Ock) and now with Daredevil. Many of these characters, Daredevil especially, are more complex than you imagine super hero characters to be, and sometimes one two hour movie just isn't enough to showcase that.

 

As for the Daredevil sequel, I've heard that the director would like to do a Frank Miller storyline (probably Born Again, since this one covered a lot of the Elektra saga) or Kevin Smith's Guardian Devil. I'm not sure if Guardian Devil would work, theatrically. It'd need a lot of set-up. Karen Page, for one thing. She had about ten seconds in this movie, so she's not exactly well defined for the audience. The Black Widow is a big part of the story, as well. And they might not be able to use the bad guy for legal reasons, which would hurt the whole story. I think the Born Again storyline would probably be the one they go for. It'd be a perfect extension from this movie.

 

By the way, I hope they still plan to release the R-rated cut for dvd. It might help a few of the scenes flow better.

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Did you guys catch Stan Lee's cameo at the stoplight? Was a cool one.

 

 

+ I thought Bullseye was the shit. Farrel's done alot of really good work & he really comes off disturbed & believable in this one.

 

+ Jennifer Garner's the hizzle-bang-shizzle-dizzle! Don't know if I'm crazy about the way they portrayed her, but it worked w/ the movie I guess. She's too hot tho.

 

+ The portrayal of the sonar was awesome. I'd never guessed it.

 

- That ending left me upset. If there's one thing I hope movie folks are catching on to is the setups for the sequels. It's pissing me off. That film should've left the Kingpin alone & given the DD/Bullseye battle more of an asswhoop, at least that way people wouldn't be pissed about the setup for the sequel.

 

- I think the story was too rushed at several points. Kept me feeling like "all of a sudden they're here, then all of a sudden he's somewhere else & she's gone, then all of a sudden he's somewhere else..." Maybe its just me.

 

I know trilogy's & sequels are a cashcow, of course, look at SW, LOTR, HP... but still, why sacrifice a good movie for the sake of making money, when in the end slacking on the movie might make loyal fans angry? Power of the $$.

 

BTW - Hulk looks cool, Phone Booth is a must see, Head of State will be fuckin' hilarious, X2 will rock, Bulletproof Monk looks like fun...

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Is Born Again out in TPB? You guys are gushing over it so I might take a look if it is.

 

**slight spolier stuff**

 

I agree that the Kingpin battle was not really needed. Altho, was it just me but it reminded me a little of the Daredevil fight with the huge wrestler dude in Man Without Fear? Especailly the bit where he kicked the kingpins legs (ow!).

 

The Bullseye stuff was good but was unconvinced by Daredevil being able to dodge hundreds of pieces of pane glass window by just doing backflips. Bullseye must have been losing his touch near the end methinks. Half ther cinema audience missed the end bit during the credits with the fly, haha!

 

And yes, Garner did snizzle my nizzle but I thought her character was weak, the only good scene of her being her training scene with the bags of sand. She needs toughening up in the sequels I reckon with better weapons than the Raphael-esque garden trowels.

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Yeah Born Again is out in trades. I just got it a few weeks ago, but I don't know if it's new. And as for Elektra's, uh, Raphael-esque (which I groan at because she pre-dated the Ninja Turtles) garden trowels, they can't change that. Those are her weapons of choice in the comics. They're a big part of the whole Elektra image.

 

And I agree with Chief that it did seem a bit rushed. That's why I'm curious to see the R-rated cut, because it might clear some of that problem up.

Edited by Silent Bob
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