The newer generation of Marvel fans who have been blessed with the ever-strong Marvel Cinematic Universe and its rich content and variety would have not stood the test of patience with getting sub-par live-action movies in the 2000s and 90s. Mark Steven Johnson’s Daredevil is one such classic superhero movie, which many would agree is held to that regard for all the wrong reasons.
Starring a young Ben Affleck in the role of Matt Murdock, Johnson’s version of the blind vigilante is quite ambitious, including multiple characters and multiple storylines. However, such a huge vision is what let fans down, a movie can only have so much content in it- and the director agrees, although he doesn’t regret race-swapping Kingpin at all!
Mark Steven Johnson Admits 2003’s Daredevil Was Too “Crammed”
The 2000s were a wild time, the release of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man in 2002 which effectively set off the three-movie trilogy was met with critical acclaim and also became a commercial success, the movie earned over +$800 million at the box office!
However, the success of Raimi’s movie, unfortunately, spawned a multitude of in-development projects about superheroes that were rushed by production houses. The end result is an over-cramped and messy narrative with mediocre visuals.
These words sound a lot like the critical reception that Mark Steven Johnson’s Daredevil got, which came out the very next year after Spider-Man. But after all those years of fan criticism and so on, Johnson has gone on to admit that the Ben Affleck-led movie was, indeed, “over-crammed”.
During an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, the director admitted his mistake-
“Looking back on it, one of the mistakes I made with the film was wanting to put everything in! I wanted to do Daredevil’s origin story, and I wanted to do the Elektra Saga and I wanted to introduce Bullseye and Foggy. I wanted everything to be in there, but the film could only support so much.”
“And then when you’re told to cut a half-hour out and make it more of a love story, things start to feel rushed and not quite right. It’s a fan thing: when you love something so much, you want to tell it all.”
It’s safe to say every fan of Daredevil can relate to Johnson here, who wouldn’t have thought of everything when making a movie about your favorite superhero?
However, Mark Steven Johnson Won’t Go Back On His Choice For Kingpin In Daredevil
While all the criticism regarding Daredevil‘s story, visuals, and narratives were fair (although some were not), one of the most unwarranted takes from fans over the years has to be the racist outcry over Mark Steven Johnson deciding on a race-swapped Kingpin.
During his same interview with Yahoo Entertainment, the Killing Season director revealed that he did indeed get a lot of criticism from racist fans after deciding on Michael Clarke Duncan as the man best suited for the job-
“I got a lot of blowback. It’s the strangest Catch-22, because you want to have opportunities for everybody. You say, ‘I’m not going to pay attention to race: I’m just going to cast the right person for the role.’ But then you get killed for that [from some fans] who say: ‘The Kingpin should be white’ or ‘He’s not my Kingpin’ and all that kind of stuff.”
He further asserts his hold on the decision to cast Duncan all those years ago, and he still has praise for his casting choice-
“So I definitely got heat on that, but I don’t regret the decision at all. Michael was fantastic. It’s hard to find a guy who is that big and also that formidable, and Michael was definitely that guy. God bless him.”
For die-hard fans of the Drew Goddard version, you may want to pass on this one. However, it’s quite nice to see a director defend his casting choice with such passion.
Daredevil is currently available for streaming on HBO Max.
Source: Variety
