Daredevil Born Again Premiere
It’s been seven years since Charlie Cox and company have suited up in their various Hell’s Kitchen paraphernalia. For a brief glimmer of a second, we get to see the series return joyously. Matt, Foggy, and Karen are finishing a day of lawyering to drink at their local favorite bar, Josie’s, which seems a lot cleaner than the last time we saw it on Netflix. But of course, no hero lives without tragedy, and Foggy is murdered by the hands of season three’s villain, “Deadshot.” Matt is pushed over the edge after a lengthy battle sequence and pushes Dex over the roof of the building they’re on. Shockingly, Dex survives the fall, but Matt intended on killing him, which draws a firm line between his life as Matt Murdock and the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. And in the midst of such tragedy, we jump to a year in the future where Karen is absent from Matt’s life, he’s left Hell’s Kitchen, and Wilson Fisk is back, running for mayor.
Don’t get wrapped up in the specifics of why Fisk can run for mayor after the end of season three, it remains unanswered. But as Matt seems to embark on a much holier existence of just lawyering, no vigilante roof jumping in sight, he’s also seen embarking on a new romance. He confronts Fisk, and crumbs of a new villain are beginning to appear over the first two episodes. The end of the season premiere involves Matt once again becoming the devil, as he gets into a fight with two dirty cops that have a Punisher tattoos on their wrists, and we’re left uncertain if Matt has murdered the two men. If not murder, these two are surely paralyzed and comatose from the sounds of several bones snapping.
Born Again has the recipe ingredients to make a good Daredevil show. It brought back the original cast. It has a long one shot fight sequence. We’re seeing new camera work to show Matt’s ‘superpowered’ hearing. And of course, Wilson Fisk is back on the rise to power, while surely using the underbelly of the city to help him gain true power over the people. But what comes out is a poor imitation. The decision to kill off Foggy and estrange Karen from Matt cuts out the heart of the show. In a show where in the last season those two decide to stick by Matt through anything, having one die and the other abandon him is not only out of character, but steals the lifeblood of the series that was built around that trio’s relationships. Born Again introduces new side characters that are void of soul, barely taking time to introduce them and the relationship Matt has developed with them over the past year. The time jump as well doesn’t let us sit in the grief that Matt is feeling, which is antithetical to the character that is canonically grief ridden.
The original series had long monologues between Matthew and his friends, or his closest confidant, Father Lantom. In these speeches and soliloquies, the plot moved by at sometimes an achingly slow pace, but the characters shined. Matt’s constant quandary of good and evil, of loathing himself for following in his father’s footsteps as a fighter or feeling pride in the good he was able to do as a lawyer, are core to the character. Now, without the writing to support these new characters Matt is speaking with, it’s harder to understand quite what’s going on his complicated head. And the series aches for the connections that already existed, but were cast aside in the first fifteen minutes.
It has action sequences, but the choreography is uncomplex and hard to see through the poor lighting and cinematography. The sequence at the end of episode two is so heavily cut and edited the entire scene is unclear and muddy. And apart from the lighting at the end of episode one, there is rare a moment I would call beautiful while looking at the series. Oppose this to the first two episodes of the original series, full of gorgeous shots and breathtaking action sequences. The only thing that really stands out about this series is the multicamera and dolly shots that show Matt’s super hearing.
There are those that will say that it’s only the first two episodes, or that comparison is the thief of joy. But in the continuation of a well revered series, whose first two episodes completely knocked it out of the park, this unstylized, dull, emotionless version of Daredevil should be considered a disgrace: a blunder of epic proportions. And while begrudgingly I will be seated to watch the rest of the series, it will be hard job to earn back my good opinion.