I don’t know. I tried to like it because I am such a big Marvel fan, although I have never been a Daredevil fan. The few times the character Elektra bumped into the comics I did read, as a child I thought she had a really cool costume, but was not very nice or interesting.
So Elektra is an extraordinary martial artist with issues. Her mother was killed when she was a little girl, and on top of that she was killed in the Daredevil movie and either revived or brought back to life-I dunno. The movie is unclear. So to work through these issues, she becomes an assasin instead of taking Prozac. Um, yeah.
She is hired to assasinate a father and thirteen year old girl. The father is played by hunky Goran Visjnic who is pretty much useless and wimpy. Instead of assinasinating them, she decides to rpotect them. Without going in to more depth of this very boring storyline, let me just say, the little girl is your typical teenager-she steals, she acts up etc. The father is useless as a character and as a man. He always running as Elektra, Super Woman De jour protects them over and over again until it is revealed the teenage girl is also a prodigy martial artist and protects him. Typical modern day feminist trite. Then to top it all off, Elektra’s sensei played by Terrance Stamp admits that he always knew she had a “pure heart” even though she was an assasin for awhile trying to find herself. What-ever.
I actually would not have cared at all about the slightly offensive story line if they just gave me more martial arts fighting scenes. I am a simple minded sucker for special effects and action. But action scenes were few and far between with lots of scenes of Elektra staring out a windown remembering her mother’s death, which they never really explained. There are movies where the story is simply an “excuse” to show fun stuff. Drumline‘s story is merely an excuse to see some really neat badn scenes. Strictly Ballroom is an excuse to see some neat dancing. Any Jet Li movie is an excuse to see him do his thing. Anyway, Elektra didn’t cut it.
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Oh, how disappointing! I was really looking forward to seeing this movie. I’ll probably still see it, but maybe I’ll wait to rent it when it comes out on DVD. 🙁
Personally, I thought that the reason that this movie was hard to understand was because there was a lot of stuff that was hard to pick up on if you didn’t know the comic book. Elektra did actually die in Daredevil. What they don’t tell you in the movie is that Elektra was actually trained by the Hand (the badguys) and that’s where their bad blood comes from. Kirigi, the bad guy with the katana who fights Elektra in a cool scene is actually supposed to be an undead fighter himself, who is ranked second to Elektra. Typhoid Mary, the character that makes people sick by blowing on them and such is actually another one of Daredevil’s ex’s. Now the point is that the Hand has the power, along with Stick (the mentor) to bring back to life their best warriors. Little known fact is that Elektra turned to being an under world bounty hunter when her father died, hence the reason for her problems in the movie. Also, if you noticed, Stick was a blind martial artist, so it’s fairly obvious that in the comic book he was really someone else’s mentor…you named it…he is Daredevil’s mentor. Hopefully that cleared up some rougher points. The fact of the matter was that for the movie they took a Daredevil storyline and tried really hard to avoid mention of Daredevil, probably because they weren’t able to get Ben Afleck to reprise the role.
One more note that I think is rather comical…for those of you that noticed the ninjas in the movie were a clan called the Hand. Part of the movie is loosely based on a Daredevil storyline circa 1980. In 1984, a comic book was created that was meant to be a spoof on Daredevil named Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, where the Turtles fight a ninja clan called the Foot.
Yes, but the problem in a movie sense-a decent movie is one you can follow without having to know all the inside stuff, such as LOTR.
Yes, I did remember the TMNT comparison right away. master Roshi rhymed with Master Yoshi. I also thought the fact that he was “Master Roshi”, like in Dragonball Z, was funny. Also remember in Marvel that The Hand were the ones who kidnapped Psylock and made her into a Chinese assasin.