Unspoiled Reviews - Daredevil Season 2
Acrobatics, complex romance, interwoven backstories, and a lots of graphic violence. What else can you expect when you have Daredevil, Elektra, and The Punisher in the same story?
Following the great success of the first season, the bar was set high for the return of Matt Murdock's war on crime, and the writers needed to pull something pretty spectacular out of the bag. And in my opinion? well, keep reading to find out more.
The show was filled with great philosophical debates, gripping action scenes, emotional drama, and testing of alliances both old and new by most of the major characters in the show. There was also several shot scenes and small plot points which added additional details to a series which has kept fans entertained throughout the past couple of years.
As with all my unspoiled reviews, I'm not going to go too deeply into the plot of the series, but I will be mentioning bits of it below, so if you want to skip over that, then scroll down to under the first picture to get onto the performance and effects.
The story seemed to have three different plot lines which were competing to take the limelight of the series, and I think that might have let the series down a bit. I'm not going to talk in detail about these plot points, but I found that the Punisher story line much more interesting and engaging than the Elektra portion of the plot.
If I sit now and think of what happened in the season, I find myself thinking about two iconic scenes in particular, the rooftop argument between the Punisher and Daredevil, and one scene from the episode Seven Minutes in Heaven, if you've seen the episodes you know what scene I'm talking about. The writers did a fantastic job of telling his story, and how his actions changed the future of Foggy, Matt, and Karen forever.
Elektra's plot just didn't have the emotional or moral impact on me in the season, maybe because of the more complex nature of understanding her character's motives and history as it's shrouded in much more mystery. This doesn't mean it's badly done, but I think they might have tried to cram too much into the series with this character.
Now, onto the acting and action!
Incase you missed it from my Unspoiled Review of the recent Netlix series The Punisher, I absolutely love the character of Frank Castle, played fantastically by Jon Berthal. His introduction set the tone for the whole series, and his spectacular performance kept me hanging on every word he said, with his ability to show the stone cold nature of Frank, but also the raw emotion which drives the character into his vigilante lifestyle.
As with the first season, the acting of the main three actors, Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock), Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page), and Elden Henson (Foggy Nelson), was absolutely spectacular. These three did a really amazing job of bringing the characters to life, and kept me captivated in the series between all the blood and bullets. The way that these characters work with each other seems so natural and believable, and they made sure that the characters' own stories were just as gripping as the rest of the action.
Arguably he second most important character introduced in this series was Elektra, a wealthy business lady and former lover of Matt. Although I'm not a huge fan of the character, I think Élodie Yung's performance as the mysterious woman was brilliant. She kept the air of mystery about herself well, and conveyed both the casual and darker sides of the character to life as well. I've not seen very much of her other works, but the performance here is natural and very engaging.
As with the first season, this series of daredevil is filled with some brilliant effects, and even more fantastic fight choreography to once again put the Marvel Cinematic Universe to shame! Daredevil makes use of some amazing martial artists and stunt performers, and really makes the action come to life on the screen.
The costume and lighting departments also need a great review, as the use of lighting and character costumes added to the atmosphere while also paying homage to the creative material that the series is based off.
All in all, I think the season was pretty damn good, full of amazing performances and interesting stories, but might have been improved with making the plot slightly less complicated.
But what do you think? Leave a comment, and let me know.
Until next time,
Tim
Plot: ✇ ✇ ✇ ✇ Performance: ✇ ✇ ✇ ✇
✇ Overall: ✇ ✇ ✇ ✇