Charlie Cox is our man when it comes to bringing a live-action Daredevil to life. After three popular seasons on Netflix, the character and property are now back in the hands of Marvel and Cox can be fully integrated into the MCU as the character. Before Charlie Cox became the definitive embodiment of the role for most fans, Ben Affleck brought the character to the big screen in 2003’s Daredevil and Cox is making it clear that he’s not a fan of that adaptation.
During a recent visit to the Middle East Film & Comic Con 2022 in Abu Dhabi, via People, Cox expressed that he had never watched the 2003 film until after he was cast as Matt Murdock/Daredevil in the Netflix-Marvel series. Cox said, “I watched it once, and then I wanted to go and do my own thing. I hadn’t seen it before I got the role. I watched it when I got the role.” Cox went on to say that he thought that Affleck does “a really good Matt Murdock” but he added, “I don’t love the movie. I feel like the movie tried to do too much and it was a little tonally confused.” Here is the rest of what Cox had to say:
“They had everyone in that movie — they had Kingpin, they had Bullseye, they had Elektra, they had Karen Page, they had Foggy. It was saturated, and it’s two hours. So that was part of that problem. And the suit sucks!”
Cox isn’t exactly wrong and it would appear that Affleck would even agree with him. Back in 2015, Affleck dissed the movie and told Entertainment Weekly that the film “didn’t work at all.” Affleck then added, “If I wanted to go viral I would be less polite. That was before people realized you could make these movies and make them well. There was a cynical sense of ‘Put a red leather outfit on a guy, have him run around, hunt some bad guys, and cash the check.’”
Daredevil was directed by Mark Steven Johnson and, in addition to Affleck, starred Jennifer Garner, Colin Farrell, and Michael Clarke Duncan. The film featured Affleck as Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer who fights for justice in the courtroom and on the streets of New York as the masked vigilante Daredevil. The movie received mixed to negative reviews from critics, securing a rotten score of 44% on Rotten Tomatoes and it underperformed a bit at the box office. On a budget of $78 million, the film grossed over $102 million domestically and just over $179 million worldwide.
Do YOU agree with Charlie Cox’s criticism of the 2003 film?