Yesterday Marvel’s head of television and the cast of Netflix’s “Daredevil” took to the main hall of New York Comic Con to showcase the most exciting Marvel TV property. It wowed the audience by playing as an incredibly gritty take on the street level hero, and they show offed some Bourne like fight scenes along with debuting some official photos.
They also debuted some footage, and for now I’m going to go with IGN’s description of what it was like:
It begins with Karen Page coming to her apartment on a rainy night. The door’s ajar and all the lights are out. She enters gingerly, noticing blood stain on the floor. Understandably panicked, she reaches up into a vent to retrieve a cell phone stashed inside. As she turns to hightail it out of there, a man steps out from the shadows. It’s Wesley who proceeds to throw her into the wall a couple of times, knocking her for a loop. He retrieves the phone she dropped in the struggle, whips out a switch blade and approaches her for the kill.
That’s when we see Matt Murdock — dressed in his black pro to-Daredevil suit straight out of Man Without Fear — enter and immediately start brawling with Wesley. The fight is incredibly brutal and vicious, very much like the hand-to-hand combat scene in the Bourne films or the recent Bond movies. The sounds of punches, knife slashes, grunts, and damage act as the soundtrack. Matt and Wesley’s brawl leads to them crashing out of the window together and down to the alley below. Matt tries to get up but he passes out face down on the road as the rain drenches him.
At the end of the panel, they showed us an extended version of this scene that fades to Matt dreaming of himself as a little boy sitting in the kitchen of his apartment with his dad, Battlin’ Jack Murdock. He tells his tired son to keep up his studies so he doesn’t end up like him. “I never studied. Look at how I turned out,” said Jack, immediately noticing the sad look on his blind son’s face. He takes the boy’s hands and lets him feel the lumps and wounds on his battered face. “Come on, Matty. Get to work,” said Jack and the scene cuts back to Daredevil waking up in alley just as Wesley attacks him with his knife. A brutal brawl in the rain ensues, ending with Matt wrapping Wesley up in a chain he’d heard jangling. Matt retrieves Karen’s phone off Wesley just as Karen shows up, shocked at this black-clad rescuer. Daredevil tells Karen he will take this phone and the data on it to people who can help, but she pleads for him not to take it to police because no one can be trusted.
There was another scene featuring Wilson Fisk AKA the Kingpin:
Wilson Fisk at an art gallery where he first meets Vanessa, the woman who will one day become his wife. He’s staring at white painting, his hulking frame and bald dome seen from behind as Vanessa approaches him. She tries making small talk with him (it appears it’s her art gallery or she works there). Fisk seems agitated not by her but by the painting. She asked him what he sees in the painting, how it makes him feel. “It makes me feel alone,” Fisk replied, far more vulnerable than you could ever expect from this legendary villain. Marvel’s Daredevil would seem to be as much Fisk’s origin if you will as Murdock’s as a vigilante.
I should see the footage soon, and when I do I’ll update with my impressions. For now this is all incredibly exciting stuff.
“Marvel’s Daredevil” follows the journey of Matt Murdock, who was blinded as a young boy but imbued with extraordinary senses, now fighting against injustice by day as a lawyer, and by night as the super hero Daredevil in modern day Hell’s Kitchen, New York City.
Marvel’s first original series on Netflix is Executive Produced by series Showrunner Steven S. DeKnight (“Spartacus,” “Buffy: The Vampire Slayer,” “Angel”) and Drew Goddard (“Cabin in the Woods,” “Lost,” “Buffy The Vampire Slayer,” in addition to writing the first two episodes of “Marvel’s Daredevil”), along with Marvel TV’s Jeph Loeb (“Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” “Smallville,” “Heroes”). “Marvel’s Daredevil” is produced by Marvel Television in association with ABC Studios for Netflix.