Amph Marvel's Daredevil (Born Again, Now Streaming Again)

Let's assume not everyone is trying to cram the whole series in before Celebration (even if some of us are...).

I'd say say spoiler tags and good judgement- you'd probably use spoiler tags for a movie for a few weeks to a month after release to give people a chance to see it- I'm sure doing the same for 13 hours of TV is reasonable.

That said, I've signed up for Netflix and am about to start...

 

The first episode is a little dry- and you're right, it had some pacing issues, though I think the back half of the episode improved on that a lot.

The one thing it's coming up short on is explaining his abilities- the sonar vision from the movie left no question as to how Matt could function so effectively.
Here, we don't even get a sense of his hearing being more than only slightly enhanced until the final shot of the episode- and, even then, it lacks the sense of it being so enhanced as to being able to navigate unfamiliar environments better than even those with regular vision.

Not saying they need to copy the movie effect or concept but I think it could be conveyed better. And while it's possible subsequent episodes will do that , it seems like something the pilot episode should be doing- and doing better.

 

The fight scene at the end of the second episode was fantastic- I'd love to see the BTS on the camerawork there (I kept wondering how the camera guy got over the door so easily- must be rigged from above somehow).

Second episode was definitely better than the first- and it starts to achieve what I talked about re: powers as well.

 

I wish I was at home watching this instead of being stuck at work all day like a sucker.

 

Third episode starts to hit home the feeling of hopelessness as far as the tone goes- which makes Daredevil's presence seem warranted.

Though I'm also noticing it may have come at the expense of the moments of humor that have binded the MCU together til now.

I'm also noticing that Stark Tower is definitely absent from the skyline despite being post-Avengers (it's also amusing how the first episode basically takes the notion of how much damage was done to NYC in Avengers and uses it as the genesis for the construction company-related issues at play in this series).

I'm also wondering if there'll be a connection between Iron Fist's mask and Daredevil's black mask as I'm just noticing how similar they are with the long tails coming off of the knot.

Lastly I'm amused that Netflix paused to ask me if I'm still watching Daredevil. It's like "We want to make sure you didn't die on the couch and are just wasting our bandwidth".

EDIT- Episode 4 continues the pattern kf ending on an "Oof!" moment.

Also,

Spoiler

"Heh heh heh- you want to know his name? Ask him yourself."

EDIT 2- Episode 5 certainly escalated things. I'm still trying to decide on how I feel about the portrayals of Matt and Kingpin so far, though...

Spoiler

Vincent is good so far but I'm unsure about the emotionally stunted child aspect for how he's written. On the flipside, Matt is written well but I haven't been fully engaged by the actor yet- he is doing an acceptable job so far, just missing that extra pul that makes you go "Great!"l.

As far continuity goes,

Spoiler

the series placement so far isn't too specific- it's post-Avengers ("the incident" took place long ago enough for rebuilding to be taken advantage of by Fisk but recent enough to where rent rates in affected areas dropped significantly), and a couple references to heroes (as well as that armor and hammer comment from the trailer) but not much else. Creeder is Matt's father's last bout but we never see him (and the camerawork intentionally hides what year the match takes place in on the fight poster).

For now I'm slotting this series in between Item 47 and Iron Man 3. It may not be a good tonal match to bridge those two, but it seems like not too much craziness has happened yet, post-Chitauri- particularly with the lack of references to SHIELD or HYDRA which feels like it is pre-Winter Soldier (though, of course, one could argue their lack of mention is a result of Winter Soldier, but I digress...).

Gonna watch one or two more tonight and spread out the balance across Sun & Mon night.

 

I had planned to spread it out more but I have a feeling it'd be impossible to avoid spoilers at Celebration.

 

This. I usually do an episode a day for hour-long Netflix shows. So I have about two whole weeks to go with little to no spoilers.

That said, I enjoyed the first episode. Great tone, great atmosphere, and acting seems pretty good so far.