Daredevil Director's Cut (2004)

In November of 2004 Marvel entered a film into the ranks of the often despised Director’s Cut DVDs. It’s hard enough releasing a Director’s Cut of a good movie as the average buyer doesn’t want to fork out for another copy of a movie they already have no matter how good it is, let alone one who’s core audience hated the theatrical version. But with just a little word of mouth a fire spread. I’ve already established a little note on several reviews relating to Director’s Cuts/Extended Editions, but this one is so drastically different that it deserves its own review.

The differences between the Theatrical and Director’s cuts are ridiculous and go a long way to show how producers can ruin a movie. While the annoying voice over in the beginning and playground fight scene are still in the movie, there is plenty of other stuff to make up for it. For starters there’s an entire subplot that was cut from the theatrical version that involves a man framed for murder that Matt Murdock is defending. At first this subplot just feels a little tacked on but then surprisingly it ends up being very key to the main plot and at the same time is very entertaining (including a scene with Murdock driving a crooked cop’s car with the cop in it freaking out).

Also with just a few scenes there is far more character development for damn near everyone, even a couple really short ones involving the nearly unused character of Karen Page (who in the comics is a very, very important character in Matt’s life) and Foggy Nelson. It is truly stunning how much character development there is for them in just two very short extra scenes of interaction. Equally short and equally effective is an awesome introduction of the Kingpin that clearly establishes that this is not a guy to fuck with.

But my favorite change is that Matt and Elektra never have their Hollywood-style (see, I told you this comment from my Daredevil review would make sense) “We’ve known each other for an hour maybe, I love you, let’s go boink!” moment. In the theatrical version when Elektra asks Matt to stay while he hears a guy getting mugged (that she can’t hear) he lets the guy get mugged and goes to get some. In the Director’s Cut he just apologizes and walks away to kick the thug’s teeth in (this scene was used in the theatrical version, just in another spot), no doubt with a little extra aggression for the cock-block.

Marvel Movie Score = 5

Why That?: The theatrical version is an embarrassment compared to this. In fact directly compared to the theatrical version the Director’s Cut would be an 8, but the fact is it’s a little hard to gauge how it would have been received if it was released in theaters and no one had ever seen what we got. Still its high points are good and it’s definitely worth seeing.