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Daredevil: Born Again trailer is available
Thursday, January 16th, 2025 08:13 amThe trailer for Daredevil: Born Again dropped yesterday. Watch it on YouTube. The show will premiere in March. This, of course, is the Disney+ re-launch of the Netflix Daredevil TV show; it got retooled in development to more closely resemble the Netflix incarnation than what the previous Disney+ boss demanded during the pandemic (which retooling contributed to the very unfortunate post-production gutting of Echo, but was otherwise much desired).
The coming of the trailer reminded me to go back to finishing up my watch of the Netflix run, which I'd dropped away from. I've never had Netflix, so I didn't get around to those shows until they appeared on Disney+, which of course I got for WandaVision ("shut up and take my money").* The Netflix shows (except poor Danny's) were always highly praised and discussed, so I was surprised neither at the excellent quality nor at the extreme violence. And I knew enough from fannish osmosis to hide my eyes a lot. Especially certain scenes. Even so, I often cringe at the violence coming to me through my ears alone.
I personally have a love/hate relationship with the Netflix Daredevil. In so many ways, it is the perfect show for me. So well written, acted, filmed. So full of symbols, metaphors, themes. So powerfully aware of friendship, faith, grief, responsibility, choice, community, striving, mortality... Yet it is far, far too violent for me. I cannot look. I know the world can be a violent and terrible place; that tragically belongs in my news, not in my entertainment. (Highlander's action is almost ballet-like by comparison, gesturing through fantasy metaphor toward real violence and its consequences. Similarly, Forever Knight, and yet there are things in FK that I don't like to watch, also; the vampire metaphor is violent and icky, and is supposed to be.) And, yes, I am aware of the irony that my reaction is precisely the reaction the creators wished to evoke. Matt is the perfect "man for others" in service and is also inhumanly destructive in self-centeredness. Matt honors life and deals [nearly]death. Matt is angel and devil. I know. I know!
In comics, of course, every reader is her own director (for more on this, see Scott McCloud's non-fiction). Unlike any other narrative art form, the comics audience almost fully dictates the pace; it's in the reader's hands, not the creator's. So when I read a comic, a battle panel may flash by in a split-second, while a scene-setting or conversation panel may linger long, and that is my own seamless experience of the story. Yet even given that, Doctor Strange is usually as far as I go toward that side of comics.** I rarely wander into the orbit of characters like Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Blade, Moon Knight, and certainly not The Punisher! etc. (give or take when a particularly awesome writer gets hold of them) (*cough* Jed MacKay *cough*). I hunkered down with Captain America and The New Mutants and Elfquest through the era of anti-heroes and came away mostly unscarred.
Still. I'll keep watching. And I'll keep covering my eyes.
* I don't need Netflix to know these characters. I read my first Daredevil in first grade (same as my first Green Lantern). Natasha was in it, btw; she was Matt's sidekick at the time of that issue's printing, not yet an Avenger. I watched the Affleck and Garner movies in theaters, for goodness sake.
** I started reading Monstress without knowing how violent it was. I may yet continue. We'll see. Beautiful and intriguing, but so very violent.
The coming of the trailer reminded me to go back to finishing up my watch of the Netflix run, which I'd dropped away from. I've never had Netflix, so I didn't get around to those shows until they appeared on Disney+, which of course I got for WandaVision ("shut up and take my money").* The Netflix shows (except poor Danny's) were always highly praised and discussed, so I was surprised neither at the excellent quality nor at the extreme violence. And I knew enough from fannish osmosis to hide my eyes a lot. Especially certain scenes. Even so, I often cringe at the violence coming to me through my ears alone.
I personally have a love/hate relationship with the Netflix Daredevil. In so many ways, it is the perfect show for me. So well written, acted, filmed. So full of symbols, metaphors, themes. So powerfully aware of friendship, faith, grief, responsibility, choice, community, striving, mortality... Yet it is far, far too violent for me. I cannot look. I know the world can be a violent and terrible place; that tragically belongs in my news, not in my entertainment. (Highlander's action is almost ballet-like by comparison, gesturing through fantasy metaphor toward real violence and its consequences. Similarly, Forever Knight, and yet there are things in FK that I don't like to watch, also; the vampire metaphor is violent and icky, and is supposed to be.) And, yes, I am aware of the irony that my reaction is precisely the reaction the creators wished to evoke. Matt is the perfect "man for others" in service and is also inhumanly destructive in self-centeredness. Matt honors life and deals [nearly]death. Matt is angel and devil. I know. I know!
In comics, of course, every reader is her own director (for more on this, see Scott McCloud's non-fiction). Unlike any other narrative art form, the comics audience almost fully dictates the pace; it's in the reader's hands, not the creator's. So when I read a comic, a battle panel may flash by in a split-second, while a scene-setting or conversation panel may linger long, and that is my own seamless experience of the story. Yet even given that, Doctor Strange is usually as far as I go toward that side of comics.** I rarely wander into the orbit of characters like Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Blade, Moon Knight, and certainly not The Punisher! etc. (give or take when a particularly awesome writer gets hold of them) (*cough* Jed MacKay *cough*). I hunkered down with Captain America and The New Mutants and Elfquest through the era of anti-heroes and came away mostly unscarred.
Still. I'll keep watching. And I'll keep covering my eyes.
* I don't need Netflix to know these characters. I read my first Daredevil in first grade (same as my first Green Lantern). Natasha was in it, btw; she was Matt's sidekick at the time of that issue's printing, not yet an Avenger. I watched the Affleck and Garner movies in theaters, for goodness sake.
** I started reading Monstress without knowing how violent it was. I may yet continue. We'll see. Beautiful and intriguing, but so very violent.
