Mark Steven Johnson, the director of the maligned “Daredevil”, recently returned to the failure of the Marvel film led by Ben Affleck. The occasion for a mea culpa.
The Daredevil feature film received, to put it mildly, a mixed reception when it was released in theaters in 2003, both critically and publicly. As the superheroic Marvel adventure led by Ben Affleck celebrates its 20th anniversary, director Mark Steven Johnson has returned to this failure.
“Looking back, one of the mistakes I made when I made Daredevil was that I wanted to put everything in it”declares the American, in mea culpa mode, at the microphone of Yahoo. “I wanted to tell the origin story of Daredevil, I wanted to tell the Elektra saga and I wanted to introduce the characters of Bullseye and Foggy (played by Colin Farrell and Jon Favreau, editor’s note).”
“I wanted to put it all in, but the film couldn’t handle so much”continues Mark Steven Johnson. “Then when you’re asked to cut half an hour and make it more of a love story, things get rushed and that’s not good. It’s a fan thing: when you love something so much thing, you want to tell everything.”
The feature film Daredevil was followed by a series on Netflix, launched in 2015 with Charlie Cox in the title role. A new show, Daredevil: Born Again, still with Charlie Cox in the costume of the blind hero and Vincent d’Onofrio in Kingpin, will see the light of day in 2024 on the Disney+ platform.
When Netflix’s Daredevil defends Ben Affleck’s Daredevil: