‘Daredevil’ Netflix Series To Explore The Dark Side Of Marvel

Looks like Marvel may finally be letting a bit of darkness into their cinematic universe according to Charlie Cox, star of the new Netflix Daredevil televisions series, told The Hollywood Reporter.

“I’ve read comics after comics after comics — I’ve never read so many comics in my life, and we’re finding moments from the comics to reference in the show. We’re trying to make a show that’s new and much, much darker than anything I’ve ever seen Marvel do before.”

This isn’t completely new — though it is a confirmation of what we’ve heard in the past. When Daredevil was first picked up as a series by Netflix, we were told by Marvel Entertainment’s Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada that it would explore a completely different aspect of the Marvel universe (via Screen Rant).

“Although these are superhero stories, this is different now. This is the street level … this is the street level noir side of the Marvel Universe. Something that you haven’t really, really seen in any of our Marvel movies. And probably more ground level, than I think you’ve seen. This is not like us doing Batman, Dark Knight or any of that stuff. This is very Marvel doing street level superheroes.”

So how dark can we expect this Netflix series to go? That remains to be seen. While it is doubtful that the series will go the hard R route of other Netflix shows like Orange Is The New Black and House Of Cards(as it will still need to fit within the Marvel Cinematic Universe to some degree), we still may see the influences in the form of mature, nuanced, long form storytelling — which isn’t something that has quite yet been afforded to the feature films. This can give the series room to explore characters and subjects that aren’t so cut and dry.

While the ten movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have done a fantastic job of modernizing the characters for mainstream consumption, they still tend to be very black and white in some respects. Virtually every villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is so unabashedly evil, almost for the sake of being evil, and even for a brief while Loki, likely Marvel’s strongest villain thus far, played the “evil for evil’s sake” role in The Avengers. On the whole, every modern Marvel live action property has had the good vs. evil dynamic in there somewhere.

Will this new, darker Daredevil go a different route?

[In-Line Image Credit: Netflix]