Daredevil: Born Again may have earned an overall score of 95% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, but the new Disney+ show’s already getting backlash from fans who can’t help but compare its visuals to the Netflix-made original it’s a sequel to.
In episode 1, titled ‘Heaven’s Half Hour’, Matt Murdock soon dons the iconic Daredevil suit quickly before Josie’s bar descends into chaos. At the hands of Bullseye, the assassin Benjamin Pointdexter, returning from Daredevil Season 3, plenty of death soon follows.
As Daredevil arrives on the scene and a full-scale hand-to-hand brawl ensues, it was obvious to plenty of fans that this was a different company behind the production than that of the previous show — with the presumed increased use of CGI over practical effects being blatantly noticeable.
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Users on social media, like ‘Mare hates belift’ noticed differences almost immediately. In their post, they said: “The way I’m only 10 minutes into the first episode of Daredevil: Born again and they already ruined Foggy & Karen, and they did away with practicals and the cgi looks like dog s**t. Disney, why?”.
From ericiskoolbeans, who shared their thoughts in the X post above, mirrored the worries of fans in the past who were worried that Disney holding the reins would lead to Daredevil being “MCU-ified”.
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This is an increasingly used term referring to Marvel properties that have had their more mature, unique selling points watered down to be more in line with a uniform PG-13 tone and lackluster writing, also resulting in instances of CGI [being] laughable”, as they also put.
Plenty of other fans replied with the same sentiment, like NFR Podcast Build. They responded: “For real, bro, and the city looks fake. It looks like there’s this blurry foggy filter placed over it so we can’t tell it’s CGI, but we can clearly tell lmao. Man, the days of those one shot practical fight scenes from the OG show are gone”.
Interestingly enough, the idea of Daredevil: Born Again utilizing CGI was originally brought up all the way back when production of the show was first getting underway. In 2022, Matt Murdock/Daredevil actor himself — Charlie Cox — spoke to GQ following his character’s appearances in the She-Hulk series, the discussion of which CGI came up.
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When asked what in the MCU he’d like to do differently compared to the Netflix show, Cox responded: “Hopefully, on the Disney+ show, Born Again, we will be able to use — and I hope that we do it sparingly, I believe it should be used sparingly — but we'll hopefully be able to use a tiny bit more CGI in the action sequences.”
“Just to emphasize his gymnastic abilities that have been impossible to do. It really should be sparingly. I don't believe there should be complete action sequences that are almost all computer-generated”, Cox followed.
Although critical reviews of the show are still positive, aforementioned fans seem to agree that Daredevil: Born Again’s use of CGI wasn’t as “sparingly” as Cox hoped. On the other hand, the latter are yet to see the full season of episodes on the streaming service compared to the critics.
As the remaining seven of nine episodes drop on Disney+, perhaps everything else good about the show will be strong enough to earn some forgiveness for Born Again’s computer-generated blunders.