{"id":1142286,"date":"2026-02-06T04:42:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T04:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=535176"},"modified":"2026-02-06T04:42:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T04:42:14","slug":"daredevil-born-agains-first-big-action-scene-deserved-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/daredevil-born-agains-first-big-action-scene-deserved-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Daredevil: Born Again\u2019s first big action scene deserved better"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I have to be honest: I was never quite as high on Daredevil<\/em>\u2019s famous one-take hallway fight scene as everyone else seemed to be<\/a>. It’s pretty good, and certainly stands out within the superhero subgenre as an example of cogent action design. But it lacks the impact of the fight from Oldboy<\/em> it’s very clearly imitating<\/a>, and isn’t nearly as impressive as Tony Jaa\u2019s mind-melting oner in The Protector<\/em><\/a>, or Sam Hargrave\u2019s 21-minute oner across multiple locations in Extraction 2<\/em><\/a>, or James Nunn and Scott Adkins\u2019 stunning work in the One Shot series<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To be fair, those are some of the best to ever do it. So it\u2019s no surprise that by comparison I always thought Daredevil<\/em>\u2019s hallway oner was just solid, and mostly appreciated it for the exhaustion depicted by the end of the sequence and how faithful it was in its approach to the comics, which are known for some of the most gorgeous, intricate fight scenes in the Marvel Universe. (My colleague and comics expert Susana Polo quipped a key part of any Daredevil story <\/em>is \u201cmaking Matt Murdock getting the shit kicked out of him look like the coolest thing you\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d) But I have a renewed appreciation for it after the Daredevil revival Born Again<\/em> nakedly attempted to recapture that magic with an underwhelming one-take fight sequence in its opening episode.<\/p>\n

[Ed. note:<\/strong> Spoilers follow for the first 10 minutes of Daredevil: Born Again<\/em>.]<\/p>\n

The new sequence starts a little less than nine minutes into the opening episode of Born Again<\/em>, with an attack by Bullseye on a group gathering at a bar. Bullseye throws a smoke bomb into the bar, setting up a hard-to-follow showdown between Daredevil and Bullseye as the other patrons clear out. <\/p>\n

The fight starts with a great stunt fall \u2014 Daredevil swings in, grabbing Bullseye and launching both of them through the bar\u2019s window, bouncing off a table and onto the floor (it looks like it really hurt).<\/p>\n

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As the smoke fills up the room, the two brawl, Daredevil repeatedly punching Bullseye in the face. And it\u2019s here where the problems really start: Because the images are so undersaturated, it\u2019s hard to follow the nighttime scene through the smoke. Darkly lit scenes can look cool and be legible<\/a>, but there has to be a contrast between the focal points of the image and what surrounds them (or a clear intent behind the muddy image). Daredevil: Born Again<\/em>\u2019s <\/em>opening one-take fight scene mostly lacks this, resulting in a largely obscured mess that hides much of the hard work and choreography that went into the sequence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is especially true as bar patrons continually cross the sight lines of the camera while trying to escape \u2014 a choice that was probably meant to sell the chaos those people felt in the moment, but instead just blocks the action and breaks immersion. There\u2019s a slick moment where Daredevil fully twists his body around for a spinning kick, following it up by throwing his baton off of Bullseye\u2019s face, catching it on the rebound. It\u2019s actually quite cool, but took me rewinding three times to fully appreciate it, because in the middle of that approximately five-second sequence, a panicked bystander walks directly between the camera and the fighters, disrupting our ability to track the action.<\/p>\n

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In one of the better parts of the sequence, the fighting accidentally takes out the bar\u2019s lights, setting up a brief, beautiful moment where there is<\/em> contrast in image, as the brown and gray tones from the smoke lose out in favor of the darkness, resulting in pronounced silhouettes of Daredevil and Bullseye.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The camera retreats backward, finding a nice moment of synergy between camera and action as two people close surprisingly ornate sliding glass doors and setting up a fun moment where the fight continues in the shadows before the doors get broken down. We see Bullseye get to flex his unique powers, ricocheting pool balls off walls to knock out unsuspecting targets in another standout mini action beat, before marching up the stairs of the building and murdering some hapless passersby.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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All told, the sequence is a little more than four minutes long, and while it has its moments, it\u2019s ultimately a pale imitation of the modern action style it\u2019s trying to imitate \u2014 the long takes, exhausting choreo, and motivated camera movements you see in modern action standouts like the John Wick and Raid franchises. In those movies, those techniques are used in concert with top-notch lighting, editing, sound design, and general spatial awareness, as all elements work together to form a greater violent symphony. In Born Again<\/em>\u2019s version, it\u2019s like half the orchestra is out of tune. While a lot of the fighting in the sequence successfully matches the current action choreography trend of \u201ccomplex, but realistic,\u201d<\/a> it\u2019s hard to follow the action here, and even when we can, it\u2019s not all great: Even at their most exciting, both principal fighters have moments where their movements look unnaturally augmented by CG (Bullseye\u2019s strange arm movements while fighting Daredevil in the bar; Daredevil\u2019s uncannily smooth Spider-Man-style movements while he swings outside).<\/p>\n

The original fight, mostly taking place in a hallway, also has a similarly low-saturation visual style. But the original Daredevil <\/em>relied more on yellow and green tones for this scene rather than the sludgy grays and browns of Born Again<\/em>, making the silhouettes of Daredevil and his opponents pop more against their background.<\/p>\n

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