Review - Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra

During the first few months of her freshman year at college, life seems to be idyllic for Elektra Natchios. She makes new friends and falls in love with law student Matt Murdock. Everything begins to unravel for Elektra when one of her best friends is assaulted on campus. After the police fail to press charges against her friend’s attacker, Elektra decides to seek out justice on her own.

Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra is a four issue mini-series, written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Salvador Larroca.

Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra reimagines the college years of the titular characters, plotting their romance from its beginnings to its end. While the series gives Daredevil top billing, it is Elektra who is undeniably the main character. It is through her perspective that the events are filtered through. It’s a nice reversal of her original introduction, where she was a supporting character in Daredevil’s narrative. Rucka and Larroca present Elektra as the daughter of a middle class businessman who owns a dry cleaning company in Queens. She enters college uncertain of what she’d like to study and spends much of her time building friendships with her roommate Phoebe and fellow student Melissa. During this time, she meets Matt Murdock and starts dating him shortly thereafter. Their relationship strains as Elektra’s focus shifts to exacting justice (with a slice of vengeance) for the sexual assault of one of her friends at the hands of a privileged rich boy named Trey Langstrom.

This mini-series reads like an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (there’s even a detective who resembles Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson that shows up). Its remains focused on the central theme of how privilege and wealth are used as tools to evade justice, as well as weapons against those without or with less privilege. I struggled with the use of sexual assault as a plot point in this mini-series especially since it was used as motivation for Elektra, which taints the story with the whiff of fridging. I think that the creative team could have come up with a different reason for Elektra to go after Trey Langstrom, but I also understand that it could also be of importance to acknowledge the very real problem of sexual assault on campus colleges and how perpetrators often get away with their crimes. Rucka and Larocca do ensure that the story never strays too far from Elektra and her friends. The decision to have her supporting cast as two women and to portray them as layered individuals was smart. It was neat that Stick was reimagined as a woman as well, which helped to further populate Elektra’s world with a female presence. This is especially noteworthy as this character has largely been devoid of such friendships in the main Marvel Universe. It’s refreshing. It’s also nice to have an origin story for Elektra where she isn’t fridged at the end.

Larocca’s art pairs well with Rucka’s writing. He’s able to accurately present the necessary range of emotions that occur throughout this trauma-filled mini-series. While there aren’t many action scenes, the final fight sequence between (spoiler?) Elektra and Daredevil. One of the things that interest me most about Larocca’s work on Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra is his redesign of Elektra. She’s given a mane of curly hair, which recalls Mike Deodato Jr’s version of the character from the ‘90s. She’s also given a black leather costume that looks suspiciously similar to the one Jennifer Garner wore in Daredevil (which came out the year this mini-series was published). The costume is totally impractical as she’s bearing her stomach and it only has one strap, but it’s kind of cool. As a side note, we never actually see Daredevil in costume aside from on the covers, which is a bit odd and mildly anti-climactic.

Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra is an admirable attempt at updating Elektra’s origin story. It re-centers the narrative to be about Elektra and gives women the most prominent roles in the story. I like Rucka’s take on Elektra since she isn’t presented as an emotionless assassin without any interiority. As I said earlier, I’d have preferred if the narrative eschewed the use of sexual assault as a plot device and motivation for Elektra. That’s the one major issue I had with this otherwise topical and layered mini-series.

RATING: B

Review: Daredevil Season One

As a result of being blinded as a child, defense attorney Matt Murdock gains superhuman abilities and becomes a masked vigilante to protect the streets he grew up on. He is tasked with the harrowing responsibility of ridding the city of its dirty cops, crooked politicians and powerful gangsters, all while keeping his double life a secret from those he cares the most about.

Daredevil is a Netflix Original Series, starring Charlie Cox, Deborah Ann Woll, Elden Henson and Vincent D’Onofrio. Its first season, which premiered April 10, 2015, consists of 13 episodes.

The world of Daredevil is grim and unyieldingly brutal. Despite the fact that it is set in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, it is the antithesis of everything that has been done previously. The pithy banter between characters that culminates in punchline after punchline in the films is kept to a bare minimum, while the bright and saturated aesthetic of the films is eschewed in favour of a darker and more claustrophobic cinematic style. Furthermore, Daredevil’s characters seem organic and writers go out of their way to make them flawed and relatable. Tonally and thematically, it fits somewhere between Batman Begins and the CW’s Arrow. It’s a gritty, slow burning origin story that sees the lead protagonist evolving from an amateur vigilante to costumed hero. The irony here, of course, is that Daredevil is the epitome of everything that Marvel’s more rabid fans have negatively (and often unjustly) criticized DC Comics for.

The casting for the show is nothing short of perfection. Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock is played like a middle class Bruce Wayne or Oliver Queen. He’s a brooding man whose past is marred by the tragic loss of a parent and who has developed an obsessive desire to protect his city from the criminals that have seized control of it. Several jokes are also made about his apparent tendency to bed the most attractive women possible, something which is more told than shown in the first season. My only issue with the portrayal is how Matt seems capable of just about everything despite the fact that he is blind. His abilities are played up to the point where his abilities are less like radar and more like omniscience. This is especially deflating in scenes involving physical confrontation, where it seems the only real threat to his character is exhaustion.

Much has been made about Vincent D’Onofrio’s turn as the Kingpin. Indeed, he looks the part and acts his butt off with the writing he’s been given. He’s not a mustache-twirling villain with a maniacal laugh. Instead, he’s a highly flawed individual man that is deeply affected by events in his past. In essence, he’s the dark flipside to Cox’s Daredevil. That said, I do have a difficult time taking Kingpin seriously as a genuine threat. He does some really despicable things, but they seem to be done in such a way that they seem less calculated and more like the impulsive actions of an impetuous child who doesn’t get his way. His immature behavior seems to stem from a very serious lack of control, highlighting his desperate need for anger management. In this way, D’Onofrio’s is reminiscent of Faye Dunaway’s infamous role as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest, which makes me view his performance as more comical and campier than what was intended. I keep expecting him to bust out the “no wire hangers – ever!” line.

For me, the most likeable characters are Claire and Karen, played respectively by Rosario Dawson and Deborah Ann Woll. Claire becomes entangled in Matt’s world when she takes on the role of being his on-call nurse. Dawson plays the role with a kind of calmness and wisdom that contrasts her against the more impulsive and emotionally unstable characters in the cast. She’s compassionate and has a strong moral compass. Similarly, Karen is portrayed as a woman who is dedicated to the pursuit of truth and justice. Admittedly, she’s kind of like Lois Lane Lite. She’s an intrepid young woman whose investigations into the criminal underworld see her getting in over her head. Regardless, Woll’s performance is incredibly layered and she makes the character really loveable. She’s not as one-note as Matt or intended to be the comedic sidekick like Foggy is. Arguably, she’s the character who shows the most growth. She goes from hapless victim to leading lady.

There’s a lot to like about Daredevil. The casting, cinematography and choreography are on point. It feels very much like an HBO or FX-style take on the superhero genre, grounding its characters in a more familiar real world setting. We’re not seeing rainbow-hued heroes fight aliens or super spies duking it out against shadowy terrorist organizations. Daredevil is far more interested in exploring a narrative where seemingly normal people are trying to do the right thing as they face off against a very human oppressor. Even still, Daredevil is hardly innovative within the genre and should be enjoyed for what it is – yet another series of a costumed heterosexual white male fighting against another heterosexual white male. It meets the needs of Marvel fans who want to see the company produce something akin to Batman or Green Arrow, or something a little more mature than the typical family friendly fare of the MCU. As for me, my only real issue with the series is its pacing. It’s slow and each episode is about 10 minutes longer than it needs to be, which tries my patience and gets a little boring. There’s a lot of talking and plotlines are stretched out across the entire season when they could have easily been tightened up and resolved much sooner.

RATING: B-