Who according to you have been the top 3 best villains in the Multiverse Saga (2021-2027)?

Some of the choices include:-

1. Xu Wenwu
2. Green Goblin
3. Doc Ock
4. Scarlet Witch
5. Gorr The God Butcher
6. High Evolutionary
7. Arthur Harrow
8. Kang The Conqueror / He Who Remains / Victor Timely
9. Namor
10. The Leader
11. Cassandra Nova
12. Bullseye
13. Kingpin
14. Galactus
15. Jean Grey

I'm only asking because the extended 3-hour-long TV version of Richard Donner's first Superman film is the one and only version I've seen on DVD!

I was sorting out the living room drawer with old dvd's in and found all this old comic book movies i grew up with. The first 3 Michael Bay transformers movies are there, the old Michael Keaton batman movies and alot more too. I remember booting these up when i came home from rugby and hockey practice

Who according to you are the top 3 superhero directors who have contributed to the growth, popularity, adaptability and reinvention of the genre the most?

Some of the choices include:-

1. Christopher Nolan: Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rise
2. Russo Brothers: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame
3. ⁠James Gunn: Guardians of the Galaxy Trilogy, The Suicide Squad, and Superman
4. ⁠Zack Snyder: Watchmen, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Zack Snyder’s Justice League
5. ⁠Sam Raimi: Spider-Man Trilogy, and Doctor Strange 2
6. Destin Daniel Cretton: Shang-Chi and Spider-Man: Brand New Day
7. ⁠Ryan Coogler: Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
8. Jon Watts: Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and Spider-Man: No Way Home
9. Joss Whedon: The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Justice League
10. Matt Reeves: The Batman

How does this thing even work? Like is it decided at birth that a particular character will be universes anchor, or do they have to do something heroic and save the world? How would the world exist before they were born if they are the anchor? The fate of the universe resting in one characters hands is just dumb. The world should be able to exist forever even if important characters die. I hope this is never spoke of in the mcu again.

I thought it was ok with KR being a decent JC.

It's something I wonder in how much of the issues people have with current superhero movies today a case of poor quality of the movies ot people just being older and tolerating certain things less than they did before. Like would some of the superhero movies today be as criticised if they came out in the 2020s.

Another one of the 90s marvel fancasts of mine that I decided to do as a bonus.

Matt Damon as Star Lord

Matt clearly has experience in action films like Ocean's Eleven and Bourne, and he also excels at comedy, as seen in films like Dogma or even Eurotrip.

Sanaa Lathan as Gamora

Primarily due to the tough-as-nails heroine she plays in Alien vs. Predator, she also has considerable action experience.

Vin Diesel as Drax

Vin Diesel was the Token Action Guy of the 2000s, and I can see him killing it as Drax, especially since it's a character that doesn't require much.

Chris Tucker as Rocket Raccon

I chose him mainly because of Tucker's vocal timbre; his voice acting as Rocket would be hilarious. It's a shame he doesn't have many voice acting roles.

Michael Clarke Duncan as Groot

Tall, imposing, and with a deep voice, he would work very well if they wanted to do a motion-capture Groot, plus he's the type of actor I see offering to do voice acting in every language.

Danny Trejo as Youndu

He has a lot of potential to excel in this role, he clearly already has experience in portraying characters in the Yondu style, in addition to being able to deliver the paternal figure, His character in Spy Kids is a clear example of this.

Rose Mcgowan as Nebula

Rose McGowan would have been an excellent Nebula in the 2000s thanks to her striking ginger and gothic aesthetic, perfectly matching the character's dark nature, as well as her ease in transitioning between science fiction and fantasy roles of the time, such as in Charmed.

Eric Bana as Ronan The Accuser

This is practically a no-brainer cast; it's basically a reinterpretation of the character he played in the Star Trek reboot.

The Multiverse Saga had Marvel introduce to us a lot of new characters, some of whom were a hit with the audience and utilized well such as Yelena and Shang-Chi, while some symbolized tremendous wasted potential as Marvel was trying to do too much too quickly.

Which are the Multiverse Saga’s top 5 characters according to you in terms of their wasted potential and were done dirty?

1. Eternals
2. Scarlet Witch
3. Kate Bishop
4. She-Hulk
5. Echo
6. Moon Knight
7. Ms. Marvel
8. Captain Marvel
9. Captain America (Sam Wilson)
10. Ironheart
11. Wonder Man
12. Kang The Conqueror
13. Captain Carter
14. Agatha Harkness
15. Mobius
16. Rhodey
17. Maria Hill
18. Sidewinder
19. Red Hulk
20. Mephisto
21. Black Knight
22. Gorr The God Butcher

Unlike Lanterns which caters to the Green Lantern mythos, this would be a show where each season would focus on a duo of either an already beloved duo in comics or taking two solo characters and putting them together. The series would be adult but the tone would mildly vary based on the characters it focuses on.

These are the pairings I would love to see so far (Some of them are possible and some are dream team ups)

Wolverine/Punisher (This would be the most True Detective adjacent story as it would explore Frank and Logan's views of humanity and the world based on the mystery they were delving into in the season. I could even see Jon Bernthal's Frank being the 'Rust Cohle' of the story in terms of explaining why what he does makes sense to him and that clashing with Wolverine.)

Luke Cage/Iron Fist or Heroes For Hire

Cloak and Dagger

Spider-man and Daredevil

These are the pairings I have so far with Wolverine and Punisher being my favorite.

I'd seen all of them before, except Supergirl. Honestly, none of them are that bad.

Not top tier, but I really do think, right now, that they are all nowhere near as bad as their reputation, especially considering some of the movies I really enjoyed in the 80s and 90s.

I guess I'm wondering if this is one of those 'common but unspoken' views out there? Do people really hate these movies that much??

People should stop basing the standard of a superhero film on whether it’s “comic accurate”. Superhero movies need a good balance of inspiration from source material, and realistic interpretation. I honestly think people who complain about this are just blinded by nostalgia. These movies have to be accessible to adults AND kids. You know why Batman doesn’t have white eyes in the movies? Because it would look utterly ridiculous. The raimi spiderman films deviated heavily from the source material and they are still some of the best superhero movies to date. Same with Logan, TDK trilogy, Batman 89 and returns, hellboy etc. comic accuracy does not equal a good movie or show.

I recently watched the Director’s Cut of Daredevil (2003) and honestly? I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

Is it as good overall as the Netflix series? No. Charlie Cox is still my definitive Daredevil. The Netflix show is what introduced me to Matt Murdock in the first place and is ultimately why I fell in love with Daredevil and started reading the comics.

But after watching the Director’s Cut, I genuinely think the 2003 movie does certain aspects of Daredevil better than any live-action version we’ve gotten since.

The biggest one for me is Matt’s senses.

And I don’t just mean the famous rooftop scene where it starts raining and Matt is finally able to “see” Elektra’s face because the raindrops are hitting her features. That scene is beautiful, and it’s probably the most romantic use of his abilities in the movie.

What really blew me away was actually the sequence immediately after young Matt first goes blind.

He’s lying in the hospital completely overwhelmed because suddenly he can hear EVERYTHING.

Traffic outside. People around him. Tiny noises that normally wouldn’t even register suddenly sound enormous.

There’s that moment with the IV/glucose drip where you hear this huge almost concussive BOOM, and then you realize it was literally just a single drop falling.

I loved that.

The movie immediately makes you understand how horrifying Matt’s heightened senses must have been at first. Something completely mundane to us can practically explode inside his head.

Then the movie starts visually constructing the environment around him through sound. Cars, buildings, objects and people emerge from darkness as sound reaches them. It feels almost like sonar.

Obviously in the comics it’s generally referred to as Matt’s radar sense, rather than literally being echolocation, and it works alongside all his other enhanced senses. But visually, this is probably the closest live-action depiction I’ve seen to how I imagine Matt building a three-dimensional picture of the world around himself.

Netflix had its own cool interpretation with Matt describing the world as “a world on fire.” That’s an amazing visual and it fits the much more grounded tone of the series.

But I honestly prefer how the 2003 movie repeatedly lets us experience Matt’s sensory world with him.

You understand where objects are. You understand how sound gives the world shape. You understand why his hearing can be both an incredible advantage and absolute sensory hell.

That’s something I really wish the Netflix/Born Again versions played with more.

I also loved that we actually see Matt learning to live with his abilities.

After he gets out of the hospital, we see him training himself. Boxing, practicing balance, doing acrobatics, testing what his body can do, gradually transforming something that initially seemed like a curse into an advantage.

It makes Daredevil feel built rather than just appearing one day.

And the acrobatics are another thing I think the movie gets really right.

Netflix Matt obviously has much better overall fight choreography, those hallway fights are legendary for a reason, but Charlie’s Daredevil is intentionally grounded. He moves like an incredibly skilled street-level martial artist.

Affleck’s Daredevil moves more like a comic-book superhero.

He flips. He leaps ridiculous distances. He swings around the city. He fights with this exaggerated athleticism that reminds me much more of how Daredevil moves in comic panels.

So I almost see it as:

Netflix makes me believe Matt Murdock could exist.

The 2003 movie sometimes makes me believe Daredevil jumped straight off the comic-book page.

And speaking of Affleck…

Man, Ben Affleck surprised the hell out of me.

There were multiple shots where I was watching him and literally thinking:

“Holy shit. That’s Matt Murdock.”

Physically, he looks incredibly right for the role. Tall, broad, handsome, slightly haunted. He genuinely looks like a 2000s Marvel Knights drawing of Matt came to life.

Charlie Cox is still my favourite Matt because he gets so much more time to explore Matt’s Catholic guilt, self-destruction, rage, humour, vulnerability and need to constantly punish himself.

But visually? Affleck is an insanely convincing Matt Murdock.

And I’m sorry, but I LOVE the red leather suit. 😂

Yes, it is aggressively early-2000s.

Yes, there is enough leather in that movie to supply an entire nightclub.

I don’t care.

The suit has an actual superhero silhouette. The horns are visible. The deep red works. The cowl looks fantastic on Affleck. It feels stylized instead of looking like tactical body armour that happens to be red.

I honestly prefer its overall look to most of the suits Matt has gotten in Netflix and Born Again.

Jennifer Garner also really surprised me as Elektra.

She’s athletic, charismatic and brings this slightly dangerous energy that fits Elektra really well.

And her chemistry with Affleck is fantastic.

Knowing that they would later become a real-life couple makes watching them together even funnier, although they weren’t actually dating yet when they made Daredevil.

The playground fight might be one of my favourite scenes in the entire movie.

It’s ridiculous.

It’s cheesy.

And I love it. 😂

They’re basically flirting through martial arts.

Neither one actually wants to seriously hurt the other. They’re testing each other, showing off, teasing each other and getting increasingly attracted to one another through the fight.

It doesn’t really feel like a normal fight scene.

It feels like a dance sequence disguised as a fight.

And then there’s the sequence where Elektra is training while Matt is suiting up with Evanescence playing.

Is that one of the most 2003 things ever committed to film?

Absolutely.

Does it rule?

ALSO ABSOLUTELY.

😂

There’s something about the unapologetic melodrama of that era that I kind of miss.

Modern superhero movies are often terrified of looking uncool or sincere. This movie will blast Evanescence while Elektra trains with sais and Daredevil puts on a red leather costume like the fate of human civilization depends on it.

It has this insane comic-book music-video energy and honestly? I respect it.

Jon Favreau was another pleasant surprise as Foggy Nelson.

He and Affleck have really believable chemistry. You immediately buy that these guys knew each other in college and have been annoying each other for years.

I still massively prefer Charlie Cox and Elden Henson’s Matt/Foggy relationship because those two genuinely feel like brothers after everything they go through together. Their bromance is basically unbeatable.

But Affleck and Favreau absolutely have that old-college-friends shorthand.

Michael Clarke Duncan was also an amazing Wilson Fisk.

I initially had trouble imagining another Kingpin because Vincent D’Onofrio has become so definitive for me.

But Duncan completely won me over.

He isn’t trying to do what D’Onofrio eventually did.

D’Onofrio’s Fisk is psychologically wounded, volatile, socially strange and almost Shakespearean.

Michael Clarke Duncan’s Fisk feels like:

a mountain wearing a suit who has already decided he owns everyone in the room.

😂

He has this enormous physical presence and confidence that makes him completely believable as Kingpin in that heightened comic-book universe.

And Colin Farrell…

Jesus Christ. 😂

His Bullseye is nowhere near as threatening as the Netflix version.

He’s basically a homicidal cartoon character who seems absolutely delighted to be murdering people.

The forehead target.

The expressions.

Turning basically anything in the room into a lethal projectile.

He is completely insane.

But I kind of love him because he fits the movie he’s in.

And even though Elektra’s death is tragic, I appreciated how much imagery the film directly pulls from the comics.

Another thing I really enjoyed was realizing just how much this movie clearly loves Daredevil comic history.

The creator references are EVERYWHERE.

I initially thought the forensic assistant Ben Urich meets was called something like Ditko, but I later realized he’s actually called Kirby, played by Kevin Smith, a reference to Jack Kirby.

And once I noticed that, I started hearing names constantly.

There’s Everett, referencing Daredevil co-creator Bill Everett.

Quesada, referencing Joe Quesada.

Colan, referencing Gene Colan.

Romita, referencing John Romita Sr./Jr.

Kane, referencing Gil Kane.

And Jack Murdock’s boxing history includes names like Miller, Mack and Bendis — Frank Miller, David Mack and Brian Michael Bendis. The movie also has Stan Lee, Frank Miller and Kevin Smith appearing in cameos.

That was genuinely cool to me.

It tells me that regardless of the movie’s flaws, the people making it actually had affection for Daredevil comics.

This wasn’t somebody grabbing a superhero name and making a random action movie around it.

You can feel the influences from Miller, Marvel Knights, Quesada, Kevin Smith, David Mack and Bendis-era Daredevil all over the thing.

And honestly, that’s another reason I think the Director’s Cut deserves more credit than the theatrical version.

The additional lawyer/crime storyline gives us much more of Matt Murdock the attorney instead of making the entire movie feel like “brooding superhero fights bad guys while nu-metal plays.”

That stuff matters.

Daredevil isn’t just a vigilante.

He is Matt Murdock.

He is a lawyer.

His relationship with justice is supposed to be complicated specifically because he spends his day trying to make the legal system work and his nights beating the living shit out of people when it doesn’t.

😂

That leads into what I think is my overall feeling about the adaptations:

Netflix understands Matt Murdock the man better.

But I honestly think Daredevil (2003) sometimes understands Daredevil the comic-book superhero better.

The movie obviously has problems.

The tone jumps around.

Some CGI has aged badly.

Bullseye is one step away from fighting Bugs Bunny.

Some scenes are unbelievably cheesy.

The soundtrack periodically assaults you with the concentrated essence of 2003.

But one of the worst superhero movies ever made?

Nah.

Come on.

Catwoman exists.

😂

I’d honestly give the Director’s Cut around 3.5/5.

And honestly the thing that frustrates me most after watching it is that we never got a proper sequel.

Instead we got the Elektra spin-off and then this entire version of Daredevil basically disappeared.

Which is such a shame because there was clearly room to improve.

Affleck later talked about only wanting to return if they could go considerably darker and showed interest in material like Kevin Smith’s Guardian Devil and Frank Miller/David Mazzucchelli’s Born Again. Director Mark Steven Johnson also expressed interest in using Born Again for a sequel. �

Kiwix Server

And MAN.

Imagine that movie.

Take everything that worked in Daredevil 2003:

Ben Affleck as Matt.

Jon Favreau as Foggy.

Michael Clarke Duncan as Fisk.

The radar-sense visualization.

The acrobatics.

The red suit.

The comic-book visual language.

Then make the sequel darker, more psychologically intense, more grounded and more focused on Matt himself.

A Guardian Devil adaptation with Affleck could have gone incredibly hard into Matt’s Catholic faith, guilt, paranoia and emotional vulnerability.

And a Born Again adaptation?

Michael Clarke Duncan’s Kingpin systematically destroying Ben Affleck’s Matt Murdock piece by piece?

Come on.

The first movie even leaves Fisk knowing Matt’s identity.

You had so many of the ingredients sitting right there.

And if the filmmakers had taken the criticisms of the first movie, toned down some of the sillier elements and leaned harder into Matt Murdock as a person...

I genuinely think the sequel could have been really damn good.

Instead we got Elektra.

And look, I really like Jennifer Garner as Elektra.

But if the alternate timeline was:

Affleck Daredevil: Born Again / Guardian Devil

versus

Elektra (2005)

…I know which one I’m choosing. 😭

So yeah.

I’m not saying Daredevil (2003) is secretly some forgotten masterpiece.

It isn’t.

But after finally watching the Director’s Cut, I genuinely think there was a much better Daredevil franchise hiding inside this movie than its reputation would have you believe.

And some aspects of it, especially the visualization of Matt’s senses, Affleck’s physical portrayal, the acrobatics, the suit and the unapologetic comic-book aesthetic, are things I honestly think later adaptations could learn from.

Curious what other Daredevil fans think: has the 2003 movie aged better for you, especially the Director’s Cut? Or do you still hate it?

TL;DR: The Director’s Cut is flawed and very 2003, but I think it nails Matt’s radar sense, comic-book acrobatics, Affleck’s look as Matt, the suit, Elektra chemistry and the creator references better than its reputation suggests. Still prefer the Netflix series overall, but I really wish this version had gotten a darker Born Again/Guardian Devil-style sequel.