In 2018-2019, during the last years of my being a teenager, I ended up spending a lot of time in cities. Whether that was in real life visiting San Francisco or Downtown San Jose with friends and family, or experiencing different fictionalized stories in various mediums. What stuck out to me most during this time was how humanizing the whole experience was. I interacted with a lot of different people and gained new perspectives on different types of people through the media I consumed. It helped me to realize that everyone has a story, especially after graduating high school..it brought a new layer of interest in people I hadn't had before. Add on top of that the various psychology and sociology classes I was taking at the time and I felt I had gained a new level of understanding of the common man. Everyone has a story whether or not it's benign, it is interesting to hear them tell it or be a part of it. In a way, this also made my journey into film more fulfilling as well. I started to watch different types of movies beyond your standard action blockbuster fare and was genuinely more interested in stories with more drama and intrigue than I was used to.

Ok but what does this have to do with Daredevil: Born Again?

When watching the first two episodes of Born Again, it struck me how "human" the series felt in comparison to the superhero films of late. I was pleasantly surprised by how little time our titular hero spends as a costumed vigilante (though I do hope he does suit up again soon) and how much more time was spent on the seemingly ordinary characters of the show. The show doesn't open with a bombastic action sequence (well right away anyway) or quippy meta exchange, it opens up with three friends going to grab drinks at a bar to celebrate the retirement of a pillar of their community. During this first scene, we cut between our main hero and the regular people in the bar just talking. A far cry from the "action figure cinema" of the MCU's more recent endeavors. This focus is then carried throughout the first two episodes with the introduction of "the BB report" spotlighting your average New Yorker and asking them questions about the goings on of the series thus far. It gives us a new perspective that is often lacking within the MCU, we see the normal people of this world's opinions on the state of the world they find themselves in. It provides contrast to the 'in-group' of the heroes we often find ourselves behind the perspective of within these projects.

I previously called more recent MCU projects action figure cinema, so what does that exactly mean? I began using this term after watching Deadpool & Wolverine last year when I noticed how the priorities of these stories have really changed. I'm not saying Deadpool & Wolverine was a bad movie, I actually quite enjoyed it, but that movie's plot was more like a string of excuses in order to get the two main characters from fan service moment to fan service moment. Often times feeling like a kid with a box full of toys from different eras of superhero movies just smashing them together and making up dialogue they think the characters would say rather than what those characters actually would. The story for that movie feels more like the writers wanted to have cool moments where Deadpool would fight Wolverine or we'd have Blade say his iconic "ice skating uphill" line again rather than having a story they genuinely wanted to tell with the characters given to them. This movie is not alone in this endeavor as the marketing for Captain America: A Brave New World shows, with that movie marketing itself mostly as a WWE-style headliners fight between Captain America and the Red Hulk.

Daredevil: Born Again may be early in its run and it is too early to entirely make a judgment call on it but I'm seeing more threads here and more interest in its titular character than either of those examples mentioned above. The first two episodes center around Matt's reaction to a devastating loss, and that loss is felt in almost every action we see him take in the series so far. Everything he does is in the shadow of his grief, and the position he finds himself in here is more interesting because of that. Matt finds out that the man he has spent almost his entire adult life fighting against is now one of the most powerful men in Manhattan, elected by the people he was fighting for. It presents an interesting ethical quandry to Matt and the viewer by proxy, what was Daredevil good for if all that resulted from Matt's time in the horns was a corrupt man taking office and his best friend being murdered? It's an oversimplification and surely a question that the show will tackle going forward, but it's something that feels a bit more daring than the middle-of-the-road political takes of A Brave New World. 

It's not all positive though as the first episode's weakest spot is easily the effects work. While the directing and cinematography of the first episode are pretty top-notch, the VFX is subpar. You can see every time the scene shifts between Charlie Cox, or a stunt performer, to a CG character model and the fight loses its momentum and weight every time that happens. While it's presented in a well-done one-shot take, and there are moments the action does work..it does make me worried for future episodes as we will assuredly get more fights and action sequences that will have heavier effects usage. I just hope that they're done with a little more grace in comparison to the presentation on display in the first episode. Especially since the fight scenes in the original series, this show is a sequel to, were was so beloved because of their grittiness and weight. Right now the action sequences reminded me more of Daredevil (2003) than Daredevil (2015-2018).

Regardless, this is definitely the most interested I've been in a story from the MCU in quite some time and I'm interested to see how it plays out over the coming weeks. I just hope it doesn't suffer from the same issues that every other MCU show has at this point where they start out strong and end with a whimper.