Joe Carnahan’s Daredevil saga took an interesting turn Tuesday evening. Days after the director revealed via Twitter that his planned version of the gritty comic book hero had stalled at Fox, Carnahan returned to the social media tool with two sizzle reels of footage he had pieced together to explain his approach to the material. Carnahan promised to share the clips on YouTube if he could reach 6,000 Twitter followers. It only took a few minutes.
“The deed is done. Here they come,” Carnahan Tweeted.
There are two clips. One is NC-17, while the other is PG-13. They use comic-book panels, footage from 1970s dramas, Robert De Niro voice over and some fight-sequence footage from Mark Steven Johnson’s Daredevil feature. The action in Carnahan’s clip is set in Hell’s Kitchen in 1973, and they establish Wilson Fisk, aka The Kingpin, as Matt Murdock’s rival. (As it should be.) Check the clips out below.
Here are Carnahan’s clips. First, the NC-17 one, with blood and guts:
And the PG-13 version, with more comic-book paneling, and less violence:
Granted, these are visual blueprints, and far from a finished product. But it’s pretty clear from these clips that Carnahan understood the bleak current running through Marvel’s Daredevil books, and he likely would have been able to translate them to the screen. Yet, as we posted earlier, Fox appears ready to let the rights to the Man Without Fear return to Marvel in October, meaning someone else likely will be telling a Daredevil story on screen in a distant future.
What do you think of Carnahan’s approach to the material?
