7 Takeaways From The Daredevil Trailer

Marvel already dominates the box office and they currently have two television shows on air, but now they're looking to invade our homes through other means as well. Soon, the first of their four Netflix series, Daredevil, will air on the streaming service. Starring Charlie Cox as the titular Man Without Fear, Daredevil premieres in April and will explore the street-level heroes and villains that inhabit the world populated by the big screen Avengers. What we could expect from the show has largely been a mystery, but today we were treated to our first real glimpse of the show in the form of a bloody and brooding new trailer. Clocking in at a little over a minute and a half, the trailer packs a powerful punch, and has a lot to say about Marvel's foray into the world of Netflix programming. There was definitely a good amount to digest in this first bit of footage, but here are our seven biggest takeaways and observations from the trailer. 7) Daredevil Is Darker Than Anything Marvel's Done Before Despite the fact that we knew that Daredevil would be darker than any of Marvel's other projects to date, it was still a bit jarring to see just how dark the series will be. In both color palette and tone, Daredevil stands apart from its cinematic counterparts, which is very reassuring. We've long been promised that the series would deal with the street-level side of the MCU, and that's clearly evident here. Iron Man may face off with international terrorists while Thor battles supernatural creatures from the various nine realms, but Matt Murdock's jurisdiction begins and ends in Hell's Kitchen. In this trailer we see glimpses of drug trafficking and everyday street crime, meaning Daredevil's biggest worries will be gang violence, dealing with the police force, and the own questionable morality of his vigilantism. Bigger isn't always better, so it's encouraging to see that Daredevil will be a more character focused. 6) Radar Sense Daredevil can be a particularly tricky character to adapt, simply because of how one interprets and handles his handicap. That means that the showrunners will have to find clever ways to portray his blindness, and show us Daredevil's one "super power:" Radar Sense. The 2003 film starring Ben Affleck portrayed Daredevil's Radar Sense by showing us how Matt Murdock saw the world, using a sonar-inspired visual effect. The new Daredevil series seems to be taking a simpler approach. In the brief glimpse of Radar Sense that we see in the trailer, the camera focuses only on what Matt is listening to, while the rest of the frame is out of focus. It's a simple, but effective visual trick, and much cheaper to pull off than Affleck's sonar sense. Of course, there could be more visual trickery in store for us when the whole series hits, so we'll just have to keep our eyes and ears open. 5) Matt Murdock: Religious Vigilante Religion is something you don't see much in comic book films. Outside of a brief joke in The Avengers (in which Captain America claims that there's only one God, and that he doesn't dress like Thor or Loki), it's something that we've seen even less of in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That's about to change with Daredevil, who's famously a Catholic superhero. A voiceover runs throughout the trailer, which in itself is a confession Murdock is making to a priest. How much of Murdock's religious beliefs factor into the series remain to be seen, but the little tidbit is, in and of itself, another thing that sets the series apart from the other superhero projects on screen at the moment, and yet another sign that Frank Miller - who didn't introduce but definitely popularized Daredevil's Catholicism - had a huge influence on the show. 4) Meet Karen Page And Foggy Nelson Two of the most important people in Matt Murdock's life are Karen Page and Foggy Nelson, who are being played in the series by True Blood alum Deborah Ann Woll and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay actor Elden Henson, respectively. Page is one of Murdock's more famous love interests, and works at his and Nelson's law firm. She appears to begin the series at a different place, though, because we see her on the opposite end of an interrogation table from Nelson. Is she the woman seen holding a bloody knife, kneeling over a recently-dead body? As for Nelson, he's one of Murdock's only friends and his partner at law. Expect to see lots of him when Matt's not in his crime-fighting garb, jumping around on rooftops. 3) Blood. Lots And Lots Of Blood One of the most striking things about the series is the amount of blood on display. It's not a spectacular amount, especially by today's standards, but it is substantial when you consider that it's the most we've seen in the MCU so far. This goes hand-in-hand with the amount of grit and darkness we'll be seeing on the series. It also shows just how lenient Marvel will be with these Netflix series. If this new, bloodier take is popular with audiences, does that mean that there's hope of seeing The Punisher get his own show? One could only dream... 2) Meet Stick And The Kingpin Two more important members of Matt's life are Stick and Wilson Fisk, the villain known as the Kingpin. Unlike Foggy Nelson and Karen Page, however, they factor closer into Murdock's nighttime activities. Stick, played here by Sucker Punch's Scott Glenn, is a blind martial arts expert who trains Matt to hone his senses, and is instrumental in helping him become Daredevil. His inclusion in the show means we'll likely be seeing some of that training, most likely in flashback form. Kingpin (played by Law and Order alum Vincent D'Onofrio) is not just one of Daredevil's biggest adversaries, but a vicious foe to several Marvel heroes. Daredevil won't just be the story of Matt Murdock's rise to heroism; the series' showrunners have teased that Daredevil will also delve into Fisk's fall into villainy. We don't see much of him here, but what we do see are brief shots that help to build him up as an imposing and scary figure in Hell's Kitchen. 1) No Red Suit. Yet. One of the biggest takeaways from not only this trailer, but all of the marketing thus far, is the lack of Daredevil's iconic red suit. Instead, Matt is seen patrolling the streets in a rudimentary getup, similar to what he wears in Frank Miller's early Daredevil stories. Despite its runtime, Daredevil will be an origin story for the Man Without Fear, so it makes sense that he wouldn't immediately don the red costume. The fact that he'll gradually evolve from vigilante to costumed hero is a sign that the show will ride the fine line between comic book adaptation and realism, which should suit the show quite well.