Daredevil Made Marvel Bleed, and Was Better for It

The early days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe were full of family-friendly adventures. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was the most grounded of the bunch back then in that people could easily die in a fight, and it meant something to see Nick Fury and Black Widow visibly struggle with getting shot. A year later, Marvel and Netflix’s Daredevil made such violence its entire core, which helped change the trajectory of Marvel and the larger live-action superhero media complex. By the time Daredevil premiered in 2015, it’d been over a decade since the Ben Affleck movie became a punching bag as one of many bad superhero movies of the early 2000s. (Aside from its use of Evanescence’s iconic “Bring Me to Life,” of course.) But the movie hardly seemed to matter when the show had pretty good trailers and its opening minutes effectively set up Matt Murdock’s origin and his religious dilemma, and showed he’s really good at beating Hell’s Kitchen’s criminals to a pulp. And if that didn’t wi ... Read full article.