Just Let It Happen, Fox
A short, but necessary article today, from a movie lover. When I say article, I mean a ‘desperate plea’ to the studios. Several movie news web sites are reporting that rights on my childhood favorite Marvel character, Daredevil, are about to go back to Marvel. Which sounds awesome, right? They’re the reason all the Avengers films have been so good, because they’re giving a crap about their characters, rather than just dumping a movie onto the first A-list actor that shows interest. Well, now reports are saying that Marvel doesn’t want to Daredevil back, which makes me want to scream.
What they want is to let 20th Century Fox do is hold onto Daredevil for free and get the rights to the character of Galactus back. If you remember, Fox is the studio that released both the dreck that is Daredevil (2003) as well as the horrific children’s films, Fantastic Four (2005) and Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007). It’s been suspected that with the Guardians of the Galaxy movie that is actually happening, Marvel is looking to keep the villains on a galactic scale, no pun intended.
I’m all for a ‘Guardians’ movie but you can’t look at that picture and tell me you knew they’d be making this. Ever.
They could be wanting to use the character as a villain for the next Avengers movie as well. Some of you may recall Fox using Galactus in the sequel to Four where he was portrayed as a giant storm that would physically eat the planet. All this, along with the fact that Fox is rebooting FF with Chronicle director Josh Trank at the wheel and may want to use the character of Galactus at some point in the future. Okay, fine, whatever. I only invest in the space/epic characters so much, so let me get to the point of the article.
Evidently, Joe Carnahan, director of films like Smokin’ Aces (2007) and The Grey (2012) has an idea for a Daredevil movie. He wants to stay to true to the Frank Miller stuff and place it in the 70s. Now while I do find the 70s aspect a little strange, to me that sounds like the most amazing idea someone has had for the cinematic portrayal of the character since…ever.
LOOK at him…he knows what he did.
But alas, it looks like it’s not happening due to Marvel’s undesired plan to do a movie that doesn’t involve having one character team up with seven more. This bothers me for a couple reasons. Remember the article I wrote a while back titled Freaking Comic Book Movies? It’s actually on my Top Five most viewed articles of all time, which doesn’t say much being how small-time this site is, but also says a lot in that with what little is on here, that is what they’re paying attention to. In it, we talk about how Hollywood seems to view each comic book property not as a film unto themselves, but part of a bigger whole, something to connect with another so as to maximize profits. ‘We know Captain America now, we know Thor…blahblahblah…now we can make Avengers!’ That’s an example of it working well.
Most examples have worked as such: ‘Got this character out there. Okay, it didn’t do as well as we hoped and people didn’t generally like it, but we got enough for a sequel. Okay, the sequel’s out. Didn’t do as well either. I guess we’ll just leave these characters alone because there’s no money in them.’ It’s obvious I’m not quoting anyone, but that’s the general mindset it seems. Punisher. Fantastic Four. DAREDEVIL. Elektra (kinda) counts as a sequel. Then we go on to talk about how more precision and care going into a character means more of an audience and a greater chance of more sequels (i.e., more money) so the studios shouldn’t just toss the properties in the water to see if they sink or swim, but to ease them in.
Oh, also: don’t go the ‘Catwoman’ way and just directly drown them either.
This is a chance for them to make a fast-paced, edgy action drama. Not a 200 million budget, but much smaller, making it good, and turning in a huge profit. And by ‘good’ I mean someone who isn’t Ben Affleck in the role. 2003’s Daredevil is the perfect example to how a movie is made hoping to generate the same success as the comic book movies before it, only to have it (ultimately) fail because nobody seemed to know the kind of character they were dealing with. He’s not Spider-Man, he’s not the X-Men, he’s Batman without the money. He’s dark and violent, he’s got problems and super senses; but all in all, he’s doing good in his small corner of the world. While A-Team wasn’t the greatest movie in the world, I still liked it for what it was and everybody involved seemed to generally enjoy being a part of it. I imagine Carnahan bringing a similar tone, albeit darker, to Daredevil should he be able to get it off the ground.
LET CARNAHAN HAVE IT FOX. YOU’VE DONE NOTHING WITH THE PROPERTY SINCE ELEKTRA, WHICH ALSO SUCKED. And if you think that nobody would care to see a Daredevil movie after the Affleck version, just look at Batman Begins and what came before it.
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