Figure 1: Texturally rich costuming of Matt Murdock character in Daredevil.

Post by Piers Britton, University of Redlands.

How far are Marvel Studios’ film and television franchises visually coded for homogeneity? How insistently, that is to say, is brand identity maintained at the levels of design, cinematography, editing and post-production processing? This question seems worth pursuing in relation to Marvel’s Daredevil (Netflix, 2015), which has already been critically positioned as divergent from prior entries in the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” super-franchise. All the MCU films since 2008 have been rated PG-13, while the ABC television series Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013–) and Marvel’s Agent Carter (2014-15) are consistently anodyne, even at their darkest. Daredevil, by contrast, is already notorious for its frequent and intensely graphic violence, which earned it a TVMA certification, and for the conflicted nature of its anti-heroic protagonist. This shift in tone is not the only departure from the prior Marvel norm. Much more assertively than Agent Carter, and even more than the DC offerings on the CW, the new show emphasizes that its protagonist is one of Marvel’s “street-level” superheroes, with the action never straying beyond Hell’s Kitchen and the narrative focusing heavily on the socially disadvantaged and marginalized. While it is not the first Marvel property to introduce comic-book characters without their familiar costume trappings and idiosyncrasies of grooming, Daredevil has arguably gone further than its predecessors in this regard. For example, the series reduces the comics’ hirsute, flamboyantly coiffed and green-ulster-clad Leland Owlsley (Bob Gunton) to a deceptively avuncular elderly man with thinning hair and a short back and sides, dressed in earth-toned tweeds. Indeed, Daredevil even deprives Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) of his red superhero suit until the climax of the final episode.

Showrunner Steven DeKnight has underscored the ways in which Daredevil differs visually from network series like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., noting that he and his D.P., Matt Lloyd, “wanted to be able to do a show that was literally darker than what you would see on a network,” where series tend to be “very bright, very evenly lit,” and further that they “wanted to take more of the color palette of the classic movies of the ’70s, the Dog Day Afternoon and French Connection and Taxi Driver.” The series’ production designer, Loren Weeks, also emphasizes Daredevil’s departure from the sleek, well-appointed and technology-rich environments that typify Marvel’s cinematic tales of billionaire playboys, demigods and super-soldiers. Tellingly, Weeks claims: “We’re more The Wire than other Marvel movies. It’s not the stuff you see in Agents of SHIELD, it’s the stuff you see every day.”

Stress on the quotidian, invocation of the ultra-realist Wire, insistence on chiaroscuro lighting (with its inevitable noir associations), and reference to the subdued palette of dour seventies thrillers all serve to distance Daredevil not only from other Marvel properties but also from other broadly cognate television shows. They rhetorically position the series as something “grittier” than the quasi-realist narratives of street-level superheroes in Arrow (CW, 2012–) and The Flash (CW, 2014–). Indeed, if there is a DC comparison to be made, it is with the notoriously tenebrous and bleak Dark Knight films. So, if we are to take Weeks’ and DeKnight’s remarks at face value, how does the visual style of Daredevil fulfill the branding imperative of offering variety within identity and novelty within continuity?

A number of recurrent or repeated visual motifs both in Daredevil’s paratextual materials—posters, publicity stills, and so on—and in the episodes themselves serve to weld strongly to Marvel’s other film and television, and to its comic-book lineage. Use of strong color in Daredevil represents the most interesting variation on established Marvel brand elements. MCU style in toto is defined by chromatic intensity and richness (in contradistinction to the DC film and television “multiverse” that has gradually developed since Batman Begins). Dominant color values have varied, with Phase Two movies and the second series of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. frequently exhibiting lower values and lower-key lighting than Phase One. Even so, selective, punctuative use of high-intensity colors is endemic to Marvel’s television and film offerings. Only the environments and personnel of S.H.I.E.L.D. are stripped of high value and saturated color; otherwise, the heroes and villains and their worlds are as bright as the Marvel logo, and the comic-book pages we glimpse in the animated version of that logo that heads each film and television show from the MCU. In most cases, focal points of vibrant color are typically located one way or another on the bodies of the protagonists, from Iron Man’s scarlet and gold livery to Peggy Carter’s blue suit, white blouse and red hat (used so extensively in publicity materials for Agent Carter), and from Thor’s flaxen hair to the Hulk’s green skin.

Figure 2: Superficially neutral costuming of Wilson Fisk character in Daredevil

Daredevil largely displaces intense color from bodies, except in the case of the saturated red costume worn by the “ninja” villain, Nobu (Peter Shinkoda), in a watershed fight scene. As befits a faux-realist television series, and especially one that unfolds over thirteen instantly reviewable episodes, the devil is in the details in Stephanie Maslansky’s costumes; bold gestures are correspondingly few and far between. Thus Matt Murdock’s suits are mostly mid-value monochrome but his clothes are texturally rich—shirts, for example, are nubby oxford rather than smooth poplin—suggesting the blind man’s heightened reliance on tactility (Fig. 1). By the same token, wisecracking Foggy Nelson (Eldon Hensen) is also superficially neutral in his dress, but the printed shirt fabrics and animal-motif ties reward leisurely, close inspection and add a “quirky but not flamboyant” note – and so on. Unmodified strong color is eschewed in inverse proportion to the dominance of all these surface nuances, a choice that is most notable in the reimagining of principal antagonist Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio). The white suits and ascot of the comic book Kingpin are relegated to an “Easter egg” joke in the fifth episode, while Fisk’s open-necked silk shirts and mohair-tonic, three-piece suits for the series are either black, gray or muted blue, the surface of the latter sometimes broken up with self-stripes that further mitigate saturation (Fig. 2).

Figure 3: Vivid lighting in Daredevil.

Vivid color is mainly a property of environments, and more specifically the illumination of environments, in Daredevil. Murdock speaks of experiencing “a world on fire,” and in addition to a couple of livid-red POV shots simulating this for the audience, the idea is echoed each episode in the opening credits, which show New York landmarks and finally Daredevil himself forming viscously out of a red haze. A no-less insistent leitmotiv is the acid yellow and green light suffusing the panes of the picture windows that are endemic to the various warehouse and loft spaces in which so much of the nocturnal action takes place — including Murdock’s own apartment (Fig. 3). This sickly glow can in most cases be rationalized as light pollution from neon signage and street lamps (the now celebrated hallway fight from the second episode is one of the exceptions), but this is ultimately beside the point. The device is surely used chiefly because the grid of glazing bars in these windows provides a strong, stylized, quasi-graphic backdrop to action – and perhaps because both the strong color fields and insistent linearity recall the simplified backgrounds beloved of comic-book inkers and colorists (Fig. 4).

Figure 4: Example of simplified backgrounds of classic comic books.

Figure 5: Netflix’s posters for Daredevil.

Very little of this disembodied color creates as potent an effect as Netflix’s Hopperesque banner and posters for Daredevil (Fig. 5), which feature a cityscape bathed in the super-intense blue that hyperbolically represents nighttime in screen media as well as some comic strips. It is in these paratextual images that the “Marvelness” of Daredevil is perhaps most economically and powerfully expressed. Even so, and notwithstanding analogies with The Wire and Dog Day Afternoon, Daredevil’s imagery consistently reflects the fact that, as Loren Weeks puts it: “We didn’t want to be too literal with the real. It is the Marvel universe, after all.”

Ahead of Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and the summer blockbuster frenzy, a smaller Marvel property, Daredevil, launched April 10 on Netflix. The 13-episode season of Daredevil is the first deliverable of a $200 million, 60-hour deal with Netflix to bring Marvel’s “street level” characters to life on the small, streaming screen. This deal includes Daredevil, this fall’s AKA Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist in 2016, and an Avengers-esque team-up show, The Defenders, likely targeted for 2017. As the first of its ilk, Daredevil marks not only a milestone for Netflix’s original content strategy, but also the expansion of Marvel Television, currently responsible for ABC’s Agent’s of S.H.I.E.L.D, which has received, at best, mixed responses from fans and mediocre ratings for a network series.

For the uninitiated, Daredevil follows the exploits of Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox)–blind lawyer by day, extrasensory crime fighter by night–as he attempts to reclaim the streets of a retrograde Hell’s Kitchen from a criminal syndicate lead by Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio). Steven S. DeKnight (executive producer, Spartacus) took over showrunner duties from Drew Goddard (dir. and writer, Cabin in the Woods) after Goddard left the show to pursue a Spider-Man project at Sony Pictures ten weeks before principal photography began. Despite the hiccup, DeKnight was able to keep the ball rolling and Daredevil remained on schedule.

Joining the likes of House of Cards (2012-) and Orange is the New Black (2013-), Daredevil is only the latest example of Netflix’s aggressive original content strategy. Owing to increasing competition in the streaming space with Amazon Prime, Hulu, and HBO (including the recently introduced standalone HBO Now), securing exclusive, licensed content has become more difficult and expensive. Opting to fund original programming means Netflix can brand itself not only through its proprietary algorithmic recommendation engine, but also through its original, critically acclaimed series, the latest of which also happens to be set within the astronomically successful Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) franchise.

Consisting of films like Iron Man (2008), The Avengers (2012), and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), the MCU has broken box office records, revitalized the Marvel brand under its current owner Disney, and arguably spearheaded the golden era of comic book movies in Hollywood. And with the release of 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the MCU has become the highest grossing movie franchise in history, topping the Harry Potter franchise in total box office revenue. Moreover, The Avengers and Iron Man 3 (2013) hold the records for the first and second highest opening weekend box office at $207 and $174 million, respectively. With multiple films releasing every year, and with Marvel expanding its transmedia storytelling to comics and Marvel Television series across networks and platforms, the MCU looks to increase its commercial dominance in the decade to come.

The ascendance of the MCU at the box office and within popular culture is part of a more general superhero zeitgeist in entertainment media. This zeitgeist arguably illustrates the movement of comic book properties from the margins of popular culture to its proverbial center, now prominent not only at the box office, but also increasingly in the living room. The last several years have seen comic book properties invade the television space, led primarily by Warner Bros.-owned DC Comic properties with shows like CW’s Arrow (2012-) and Flash (2014-), Fox’s Gotham (2014-), and NBC’s Constantine (2014-), to say nothing of AMC’s runaway hit The Walking Dead (2010-), one of the few successful franchises not under the Marvel or DC umbrella.

Starting with Daredevil, Netflix has joined the comic book hero zeitgeist, choosing to plant its flag squarely within the MCU. By all accounts, Daredevil has proven a critical, if not commercial, success over the first week of its availability. While praise is spread throughout the series, one particular hallway fight scene–an homage to Park Chan-wook’s Old Boy (2003) in episode two, “Cut Man”–has proven especially popular among viewers, and has been broadcast across social media and featured in dozens of articles.

Yet while it’s easy to scan the Internet for general praise of Daredevil’s 13-episode run, the show’s actual viewership is more difficult to determine. While Netflix claims over 60 million global subscribers, we do not know what percentage of these watched Daredevil during its first weekend. This is due to Netflix’s infamous silence when it comes to ratings for their original programming. Without advertisers, Netflix ascribes very different value to its own internal metrics, placing much more emphasis on shelf-life viewing rather than viewership over any particular period.

Yet one metric pertaining to the program’s popularity we do have access to is its estimated piracy numbers. Despite Netflix being available in over 50 countries for around $10 per month, over 2.1 million users illegally downloaded episodes of Daredevil in its first week of availability, according to piracy-tracking firm Excipio, a figure topped only by the reigning champ of pirated programs, HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011-).

Early indications suggest Marvel Television and Netflix’s 60-hour experiment has so far been a success for both companies. Netflix stock just skyrocketed after a company announcement of higher-than-expected global subscriber gains, making the streaming company now worth more than media giants like CBS and Viacom. Additionally, despite four other Marvel series scheduled to hit Netflix over the next two years, people are already asking about a second season of Daredevil. Owing to the fact Netflix has already renewed OITNB for a fourth season ahead of its June season three launch, one can assume a Daredevil season two announcement is not far off, depending on the particulars of Netflix’s deal with Marvel, of course.

In their partnership, Marvel Television (in conjunction with ABC Studios) gains a robust, popular distribution platform for their franchise product, and Netflix strengthens its catalog of original content while providing a corner of the wildly successful MCU not available anywhere else.

Yet in addition to the context of its production and initial reception, Daredevil seems ripe for further critical analysis. For instance: How does the early success of Daredevil further cement the place of comic book heroes within popular film and television, and how long will this genre remain favorable? Also, having emphasized its on-location shooting in New York City, how does Daredevil evoke authenticity in the construction of its narrative spaces, and what value is there in this authenticity? Finally, what does the deal between Marvel Television and Netflix signal for the future of franchise television and transmedia production and distribution?