Marvel’s Cinematic Universe is no longer too big to fail, but this isn’t the first time the company has struggled to bring the world of the comics to the big screen. Before Iron Man, the franchise was scattered to the winds, with nearly every major studio trying its hand at a big blockbuster, and few fully achieving it. Aside from a few bright spots, like Blade and X-Men, Marvel’s cinematic history was checkered, to say the least. And for a long time, it didn’t get much bleaker than Daredevil or its spinoff, Elektra.
Daredevil and Elektra are two sides of a very strange coin. The former is the kind of film that’s truly impossible to take seriously, and 20 years later, is regarded as one of the worst superhero films of all time. It’s a far, far cry from the grounded, calculated adventure we’d later get in Iron Man, and even from the campier joys of its most successful predecessor, Blade. Every choice reads as either accidental comedy or try-hard melodrama, but its now-infamous “Wake Me Up Inside” needledrop is just one of many moments that make this perversely brilliant in hindsight.
