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A Daring Time
Finally the script review for Daredevil. I had the pleasure of reading the script too and it's a blast. This project can't fail. Still, I would have liked Jolene Blalock to play Elektra. Along with the review are a few tidbits on Timeline and Montreal-bound movie shoots. Next week will have the best of 2001 column and a script review of I.D., soon to be directed by James Mangold featuring John Cusack. Have a good weekend!
Daredevil Script Review
"Hollyfeld, here, with a long-anticipated review of the script to Daredevil, as written by Mark Steven Johnson with revisions by Johnson and Academy-Award winner Brian Helgeland, and set to star heartthrob Ben Affleck. In the interest of directness I will say right now that the project is in good hands. Unlike most comic book adaptations of the last 10 years or so, the writers of Daredevil have crafted a screenplay that is at once thrilling and true to the spirit and plot of its source material. (Batman, for instance, was a good movie but hardly what Bob Kane or even Frank Miller had in mind.) It has a few flaws, sure, but overall the project is one of the more solid genre scripts it has been my pleasure to read.
More on that to come. One of the trickiest elements of adapting popular serialized comic books is the task of condensing as many as 30 or even 50 years of narrative into one film (sadly, one can hardly assume a sequel will be made). How much time should be spent on their origin? Should the villain be more closely tied to the hero’s creation? Which characters - some come, some gone - should be included, or left to future films? Should the story be a new one, probably an amalgam of various storylines, or closely follow one of the existing plots? Mark Steven Johnson clearly toiled long and hard on these questions, and has come to some important, and successful, conclusions.
Which elements of the comic book made the transition? His origin, for one, is pretty clearly ported over - Matt Murdock is the son of Jack 'The Devil' Murdock, a professional boxer (minor, forgivable difference from the comic book: 'Battling' Jack Murdock was his father first title). His father is getting on in years, however, and has taken to working for local hoods, 'Rocky' style, and Matt’s discovery of his father’s turn to the dark side is punctuated with a horrible accident involving radioactive chemicals that leaves the young boy blind. Blind, but with all of his other senses heightened to superhuman levels and a 'radar-sense' to boot, Matt has to re-learn how to live his life while his father, grief stricken, learns to be an honorable man again. Tragically, this change of heart sits not well with the criminals for whom he was working, who take his life. Matt, grief-stricken and filled with a heated desire for justice, becomes both a lawyer and Daredevil: The Man without Fear. The former fighting for justice within the system, the latter’s mask being donned when the system fails.
Years later, the Daredevil has become an urban legend in Hell’s Kitchen; one that reporter Ben Urich (as yet uncast) is determined to prove is real, along with another urban legend of New York: The Kingpin of Crime, a mythic, Keyser Soze-esque figure who single-handedly controls all of crime in the Big Apple. This, as anyone who has ever read a Marvel comic knows, is Wilson Fisk (Michael Clarke Duncan), an outwardly legitimate business man whose entire body seems to be one inhuman lump of muscle. Meanwhile, Matt has fallen for the beautiful Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner), the daughter of Greek tycoon Nikolas Natchios, and a master martial artist. Those who are familiar with Frank Miller’s run will not be terribly surprised with how the story plays out, but it is still interesting, and very entertaining, to follow Matt and Foggy Nelson (as yet uncast) in their efforts to preserve justice and just maybe make money doing it. That, of course, and just watch the master marksman and assassin Bullseye (Colin Farrell) work his murderous magic.
The script for Daredevil works overtime to portray a more realistic world of superheroes. In fact, square in the middle of the first page, it makes the bold statement, 'So forget what you know about superheroes. Because this is the real world. And in the real world there is no such thing as 'mutant healing' or 'spider sense' to keep a man alive. In the real world there’s just a guy in a mask.' The fact that this guy can sense the presence of objects 360 degrees around him and feel fingerprints on a desk seems forgotten in this statement, but to be sure there are no energy beams or telepathy to be found here. Daredevil takes place in a world like our own, but one in which a spoiled rich girl is among the world’s greatest kung fu experts, blind men fight crime, a Mafioso is one of the strongest men in the world and a man could kill you with the flick of a quarter. This slightly exaggerated world of crime fighting is a pleasant change of pace, though occasionally reminiscent of Tim Burton’s original Batman. Here, too, the hero is a seemingly supernatural figure written off by the public as a spook story criminals tell their kids at night, but here, unlike almost every adaptation of this kind, we have a superhero who seems unafraid to kill.
Though a fan of Daredevil in his comic book form, I am by no means a purist. Even so, the fact that he is not unwilling to kill the criminals he fights is something I find problematic. I cannot help but worry that this decision will make him less sympathetic as a hero, although one cannot deny that it is, for sure, a more realistic approach to vigilantism. Still, in the comic books Daredevil was more than any of his peers concerned in upholding the law. He believed that the system worked, even if it was imperfect. The only option that occurs to me, of course, would be in forcing the criminals to confess their crimes, and this of course seems an optimistic view of crime fighting at best. The most memorable scene in the script for me, however, does result from Johnson and Helgeland’s desire for realism: a simple scene in which, after returning from a huge fight sequence, a battered and bruised Daredevil returns to his apartment to dress his wounds, takes one of the myriad of painkillers he has in his medicine cabinet, while listening to his girlfriend dump him. It’s an excellent moment which perfectly captures the sacrifices Matt has to make in the interest justice.
It is this kind of moment in a movie that defines a character, and unlike most action movies... well, ever... Daredevil excels in making each of its characters well-defined, unique and interesting. Unlike Batman, again as an example, Daredevil is not relegated to the sidelines in his movie. He remains the most interesting and complex character in the script (though Bullseye is without a doubt the coolest). Still, the other characters make their marks: Foggy Nelson is far more than the comic relief he could have been - he is a humorous person who perhaps doesn’t have enough faith in his abilities as an attorney. Ben Urich is a journalist with a passion for his story, but above all is a good person who would far rather have justice served than a good headline. 
The Kingpin and Bullseye are significantly less complex, perhaps - Wilson Fisk seems interested only in his reputation and business, but nonetheless is crafted as an effectively threatening and genuinely terrifying villain. Bullseye, in contrast, is a cocky son-of-a-bitch who cares little for anything, except his pride at being the world’s greatest marksman - once this is threatened he goes from being the world’s deadliest assassin to the world’s most evil. Elektra retains her tragic but strong figure in the world of Daredevil continuity, but I couldn’t help but feel that her character was slighted in being the privileged martial artist rich girl. And somewhat curiously, Daredevil staple Karen Page is barely in this draft - it wasn’t before I reviewed my script that I even remembered that she was present at all. One can only assume that she will become more prominent in the sequel.
There are no gigantic explosions in Daredevil, no nefarious schemes to poison New York’s water supply. This is a film interested in the workings of the Marvel Universe version of organized and petty crime - extreme, action-filled measures are taken in the interests of protecting one’s own interests, be they money, love or revenge. Still, these motivations lead to exciting though small-scale (when compared to recent blockbusters) action sequences, focusing more on individual struggles and fights than on special effects razzle-dazzle. As scripted, these scenes are crackerjack entertainment and seem like they could yield nothing if not spectacular results. One hopes that Mark Steven Simon Birch Johnson is capable of pulling off these sequences in a manner befitting the awesome achievement they can be. American films are not known for having excellent fight scenes, and those that are are rarely known for being excellent besides. Daredevil has the potential to be one of the few films to bridge this gap between excellent fight choreography and story.
True, Daredevil is an excellent script, and like all scripts of its quality it leaves you wanting more. It speaks well of Johnson and Helgeland’s work here that Daredevil leaves you wanting much, much, much more - at least fifteen pages thereof. This draft of the script, dated 7/03/01, tops out at 106 pages... rather short, all things considered. Still, Daredevil seems finished, like there is just as much story as is necessary. Nothing seems forced, rushed or tedious. When released early next year, it would seem that we can expect an exciting, well-crafted superhero story, surpassing most every other in its quality, but leave us aching terribly for the (hopefully) inevitable sequel."
Timeline News
Right now shooting in Montreal are Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Beyond Borders. Both shoots are going great apparently. Julia Roberts has finished her scenes in Confessions and left two weeks ago. In pre-production right now is Richard Donner's Timeline. Rumored to be coming to Montreal is a Tom Cruise project (acting or producing?) and get this, maybe Terminator 3. It's from a good source, but I'm still skeptical that T-3 would come here.
Timeline will apparently be completely shot in the greater Montreal region. It's prepping for a May start, for possibly four months of shooting. They're building sets and get this, not one castle but two castles. Yeah, TWO CASTLES!! It's gonna be huge, around $115 million Canadian are going to be spent here. Perhaps the biggest movie ever shot in Montreal. Having read the script, I can say this movie will kick some serious ass once it's released in a year and a half. I'm glad this movie has picked the greatest city on Earth (yeah I'm crazy) as the place to shoot their film. More details eventually...
Stay tuned...
That's all folks...
Jean-François Allaire (aka DeadPool)
Questions, comments, praise etc. Email me at deadpool@tnmc.org
Jean-François Allaire is TNMC's first columnist. At only 24 years old he has become a respected entertainment journalist, with his columns appearing in Corona's Coming Attractions and Scr(i)pt magazine. He also writes a monthly column in Screenwriters Monthly entitled 'The Last Word.' Hailing from Montreal this young writer is determined to dig up all the details on the movies before they hit your local theater. If you're part of a movie production then you really need to be talking to him.
