STUDIO: Fox
RELEASE DATE: September 30, 2008
STARRING: Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, David Keith, Jon Favreau, Michael Clarke Duncan, Coolio, Jon Pantoliano, and Colin Farrell
WRITTEN BY: Mark Steven Johnson
DIRECTED BY: Mark Steven Johnson
FEATURES: Audio Commentary By Writer/Director Mark Steven Johnson and Producer Avi Arad
Enhanced Viewing Mode - Takes You Behind The Scenes
Beyond Hell's Kitchen: Making Of
Men Without Fear: Creating Daredevil
Daredevil: HBO First Look TV Special
Jennifer Garner Screen Test
Featured Villain: Kingpin Featurette
Moving Through Space: A Day With Tom Sullivan Featurette
Giving The Devil His Due Featurette
3 Music Videos
5 Photo Galleries And More!

I forgot how bad Daredevil ended up. Maybe it's because the much-worse Elektra clouds my memory of the franchise or because I've suffered through junk like Ghost Rider and The X-Men: The Last Stand since, but I had kind of rewritten history and told myself that Daredevil kind of got a bad rap. I believed that Ben Affleck refusing to return to the franchise for the potential sequel that occasionally rears its ugly head and calling the Daredevil experience "embarrassing" was him kind of being jerk. Nope. He was right. Daredevil is a much bigger mess than I remembered and totally embarrassing. The absence of the red horns have not made the heart grow fonder. Part of the problem is that the superhero bar has been insanely raised by a couple of little movies called Iron Man and The Dark Knight. In light of those good and great flicks, Daredevil looks even worse. And you can say that's unfair to compare but if you think that the Director's Cut of Daredevil is hitting Blu-Ray on the same day as Iron Man than you're kidding yourself. Fox is hoping that comic fans heading out to pick up the gorgeous Iron Man disc will take another chance on Daredevil. The Blu-Ray itself is flawless with great video, sound, and special features but the movie itself is worse than you remember.

There's just something wrong with Daredevil from the very beginning. It's a tone thing that people like Christopher Nolan and Jon Favreau understood that Mark Steven Johnson did not. Think about the difference between some of the best graphic novels and the men in tights who made up bad Saturday morning cartoons. Actually, the best comparison for Daredevil are the syndicated shows of the '80s and '90s like Renegade and Hercules. Daredevil just feels cheap and misinformed, like people playing dress-up and a team trying to recreate a comic book feel having never actually cracked one in their life. This year, Marvel tried to reboot the Hulk franchise. That was a mistake because the reason that Ang Lee's failed wasn't distinct enough to make people want to see what essentially looked like a remake again. What they should have done (and could still do) is to completely dismantle Daredevil and start fresh. Ignore the origin. Ignore Elektra. Jump in to one of the most popular Daredevil stories from the books and give the blind vigilante another chance.

Until then, Daredevil fans will be more than satisfied with the Director's Cut Blu-Ray version of the film. My disdain for the movie is clear but the Blu-Ray presentation, which is what we're really reviewing here, is hard to criticize. The video in particular is one of the best that Fox has produced. Daredevil is too colorful a film but they all pop in dazzling 1080p. The DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio track is also completely unimpeachable. I did watch Daredevil again, front to back, and didn't have a single problem with the audio track. Also, it should be noted, that this is the Director's Cut, which adds another 30 minutes to the theatrical version, including a subplot with Coolio. Yes, Coolio was in Daredevil. Who knew?

The special features on Daredevil are spectacular but all imports from the standard version. If you own the Director's Cut on standard, the lack of new special features don't really make the upgrade necessary, but you can watch them as the film plays, picture-in-picture, one of my favorite things about the Blu-Ray format. If you don't own it, the extras are really impressive. The movie falls apart because of an overabundance of things (choppy editing, overdone score and dialogue, etc.) but that doesn't apply to the special features, which include featurettes, music videos, galleries, a commentary, and more. It's overwhelming. If only all the passion that was clearly put into Daredevil and even into the production of this Blu-Ray version of it could have resulted in a better movie.