Morality, Religion, and A New Type of Humanity in Marvel’s Daredevil

I’d seen many other Marvel films and action films and thought I already knew the pattern.

There’re always problematic tropes in action movies. If a fifty-something-year-old actor plays the main hero, expect a twenty-year-old love interest. Too many action movies don’t know how to make a strong female character unless she physically kicks ass.

Here’s the definition of a strong female character according to too many action writers: she has a huge spilling bust and a perky butt and a tiny waist. …Wait, is that sexist? Just to emphasize that she’s no damsel in distress, they’ll put her in an impractical jumpsuit and make her go beat up bad guys and match them muscle for muscle. Now she’s a strong female character, right?

And then, the men in action movies are hyper-masculine, with impossible muscle mass and bulging spandex and knowledge of three types of martial arts stored in their proportionally-small heads. They can take one hundred blows to the groin because their package is made of steel and they lack proper tear ducts. What is emotion? For a character to be “strong,” whatever gender, they must be able to compete on that level. And while we’re watching him, there’s a weird sense of déjà vu, like we’ve seen this same character a million times before.

Apologies to those whose fantasies I’m shattering—these people aren’t real, and they won’t ever be. I enjoy action movies as much as any other person, and I can understand wanting to live vicariously through other character’s romances and struggles and triumphs. But in my opinion, these movie tropes are unfair to audiences. And there’s a difference between identifying with fantastical characters and identifying with realistic characters that can be applied to real life situations.

We need diversity of all kinds in our characters. We need complexity of behavior and interests. We need to stir things up a bit.

Daredevil really impressed me in this sense. Its characters are extremely complex, flawed, and you can’t help but feel like you’ve seen pieces of them in your friends and family and people you meet on the street.

Spoilers below the cut.

For those of you who don’t know what Daredevil is about, I’ll give you a quick summary. Matt Murdock is the hero of the series. Though blind, he has super-senses from a chemical accident that happened when he was nine. He is fledging lawyer by day and vigilante/superhero “Daredevil” at night, using his incredible hearing, smell, taste, and touch to move around. Meanwhile, kingpin Wilson Fisk, a philanthropic villain of sorts, is quickly on the way to the top of his rings of corruption and greed. His criminal dealings are usually the ones Matt intercepts.

Matt Murdock is an extremely complex character. Yes, he’s built, and he’s good-looking, and he has incredible abs, but he’s also incredibly human.

He struggles with a multitude of issues, including but not limited to: guilt because of his Catholic faith, an incredible amount of trust and abandonment issues, anger problems, and quite probably depression. Perhaps most importantly, he’s not made of steel—he’s blood and bones. When he takes a beating, you can see him begin to fade and sag. He gets tired. A kick can bring him down, as it would anyone else. When he punches people, his knuckles hurt. He nearly dies from stab wounds, like any normal human being.

There’s one particular scene that I absolutely love that portrays this: a scene where Daredevil goes into a Russian hideout to rescue a kidnapped child. (A/N: For the youtube link, Daredevil’s the one in the black mask.)

All five minutes of it are filmed in one shot. There’re no breaks, no cuts. The actor and stunt double do the entire scene in one shot. A ceiling camera gives it smoothness, and the result’s incredible. And fantastic cinematography aside, we can really see Matt hurting here. He’s in pain. It’s raw and intimate. He’s brought down by punches, he stumbles, he leans against the wall for support, his energy is expendable. It makes us root for him all the more. Because we can see him struggling, and it gives the scene more suspense, and we’re one the edge of our seats because we want him to succeed.

The Murdock boys always get up. We know that in the end, Matt’s going to make it. He has to.

It’s important to note that Matt can’t make it there by himself. A theme in Daredevil very important to Matt is friendship. In Daredevil, friendships have just as much importance as (if not more importance than) romantic relationships. As they should, for even romantic relationships are in equal parts friendships.

Through much of the series, Matt’s friends Foggy and Karen are kept in the dark about Matt’s identity as the nighttime vigilante. Part of the reason why is because Matt doesn’t want his friends getting hurt—he wants to suffer the hero’s fate by himself. Yes, that cliché again.

But here’s the thing that’s interesting—Matt’s attempts to keep his secrets locked up actually end up hurting his friends and himself more. Though Matt insists that he needs to suffer alone, he’s actually stronger with his friends than without them. He’s human, and he can’t handle the weight of New York on his shoulders, however much he takes it upon himself.

It nearly breaks our hearts when Foggy finds out that Matt’s Daredevil, because Foggy doesn’t understand why Matt’s lied to him all those years. Weren’t they supposed to be friends?

This is Foggy after finding out.

It breaks my heart, too, Foggy.

Friendship is extremely important in this series. Matt needs his friends to help him bring down Fisk—they’re what give him drive and fuel his protective tendencies—and he needs them for something even more important—keeping him from crossing the line of morality and corruption.

“Be careful of the Murdock boys. They got the devil in ‘em.”

Matt has always struggled with what he thinks is the “devil” inside of him (aka anger issues), and between his Catholic faith and violent nighttime activities, he shoulders a lot of guilt. Though he reconciles these contrasting parts of him by making sure he never takes anyone’s life, the times that he’s most lonely are the times he comes closest to doing so.

This is an extremely precarious and important balance for him—he defines himself in accordance with it, and he’d lose a huge piece of his identity if he crossed that line. It’s his friends who keep him grounded. They make sure his loneliness and anger issues don’t drive him insane.

There’re many other reasons why this show is fantastic that we could talk about—how the plot is intricate, the villains are complex and morally gray, the bromance between Matt and his best friend Foggy is so heartwarming, and the cinematography is fantastic—but I’d like to close by saying that Matt’s friends are honestly (I think) some of the most interesting, complex characters in the Marvel universe.

There’s Foggy, who we’ve met, who’s not particularly good-looking, but has a heart of gold and is extremely smart. He has an incredible sense of humor, and though he provides occasional comic relief, it isn’t what defines him or his function in the show. What’s more important is his friendship with Matt and his complete anger and betrayal and frustration when he finds out that Matt’s lied to him for a long time. One of his greatest struggles in the first season is learning to forgive.

Then there’s Karen, who is constantly searching for the truth while struggling with PTSD and secrets that she’d prefer to keep hidden. She’s attractive and good-looking, but she also works in an office—she doesn’t need unnecessary cleavage shots or tight clothing. She’s constantly pushing limits and on the trail of justice between drafting articles with her friend journalist Ben Urich and doing undercover work to bring down Fisk. Strong female character right there.

And there’s Claire, who’s an ER nurse. She saves lives in a quiet, fierce way, but she’s also gentle and firm and steady. Though she and Matt have a fledgling romance in the first few episodes, when she decides that such a relationship wouldn’t be healthy for her, she doesn’t disappear. She’s more than a romantic interest. She patches Matt up multiple times and saves his life a few more, and honestly, Claire kicks ass better than a few comic-book spandex women.

These complex characters are what make the plot of Daredevil so much more interesting. We witness their struggles and trials and we know their character flaws. They’re so much more relatable than fantastical characters, and we see bits and pieces of people we know in each one—bits of our mom in Claire and bits of our younger selves in Karen and bits of our best friends in Foggy.

Shows like this are what make the real world a more beautiful place for us, instead of something to escape from into a fantasy land.

I loved Daredevil’s first season, and if the second season is as good as the first, it’ll be well on its way to becoming my favorite series. I highly, highly recommend it to anyone interested in superheroes or action movies or films that are dark and raw. Talk to me after episode 10—I’m hosting therapy sessions with brownies and tissues.