It's finally here; the first two episodes of Daredevil: Born Again premiered on Disney+ last night. It doesn't really hit the ground running, in fact these two episodes have a real swiss cheese quality with lots of holes. But showrunner Dario Scardapane, who came in to reconfigure the show after half of it had already been shot by a showrunning team Disney decided was inferior, may well fill those holes with--I don't know, brie, pimento, something good. Scardapane was a writer on Punisher, a show within the same formerly Netflix MCU universe. So he probably knows what he's doing and, by the way, don't watch Daredevil: Born Again until you've seen the first three seasons of the old Daredevil (I wouldn't read the rest of my review, either, if I were you).
It's pretty easy to guess what's newer footage and what's from the misbegotten original take, which was going to distance itself from the old Netflix series. Right off the bat, we have a scene featuring Karen and Foggy, Matt Murdoch's two sidekicks from the original, and aside from some bad cgi (getting roundly dunked on throughout the internet to-day), I was pleased with the opening. It had some very good ideas, my favourite being the decision to kill off Foggy. That's something I was hoping would happen throughout the whole of the original series. I'm sure he's a nice guy in real life, maybe, I don't really know, but Elden Henson cannot, and has never shown any ability to, act. His performance is good enough for a guy who gets killed off within the first few minutes but somehow he stuck around for years. And his character was often written as an annoying scold. You know what I don't particularly want from a Daredevil series? A character constantly telling Daredevil he shouldn't be Daredevil.
The first scene has an action sequence that emulates the long take, Oldboy style hallway fight that the first series famously put together, except, of course, it's clearly cgi now so it's not so impressive. Actually, the best action scene so far comes at the end of episode 2 and that one doesn't even pretend to be a long take. Instead, it's wonderfully, kinetically edited. It was the one moment in the two episodes that brought a genuine smile to my face.
It's mostly easy to discern what's new stuff and what's edited in. There's a new, alternate set of supporting characters; a detective who helps Murdoch, there's his new partner at his new firm, and his new love interest, a therapist called Heather. She just so happens to be Wilson and Vanessa Fisk's couples' therapist, which I sure hope is not mere coincidence. New York City is not such a small town, for Pete's sake.
Fisk on the Netflix series was a commentary on Trump even before Trump became a serious contender in politics so it's interesting to see him again now as New York mayor. It's good that he's not simply a Trump allegory: he doesn't have Trump's charisma, bluster, or fragile ego. In fact, it seems odd that this big man who always seems to be fighting the urge to grind his teeth, connected with voters. But interviews within the show have people on the street talking about how they're frustrated with the lack of political change and want a strong man who can do something. This simultaneously makes Fisk's character make sense and makes it a worthier comment on Trump.
It's a rocky start, some of the writing feels like old USA network or CW crap, but I can see this getting ironed out by Scardapane.
Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.
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