During a recent interview director Mark Steven Johnson opened up about his 2003 film adaptation of Daredevil, which is a movie that a lot of fans don’t really care for. The theatrical version of the movie wasn’t very good, but later on, a director’s cut was released that ended up being decent.
While talking to Yahoo! for the film’s 20th anniversary, Johnson explained that much of the love story in the movie was based on the Marvel Comics storyline from Frank Miller. In the story, their romance ends in Elektra's death at the hands of ace assassin, Bullseye, who was played by Colin Farrell in the movie.
This is a scene that the filmmaker says was “particularly proud of," and he explained: “It's really panel-for-panel out of Frank Miller's comic: Bullseye saying, 'You're good, but I'm magic,' and slashing Elektra's (Jennifer Garner) throat with a playing card, followed by her crawling on her hands and knees with blood coming out."
It turns out that this scene in the film was too bloody and gruesome for the executives at 20th Century Fox. Johnson said: "They were like, 'It's pretty gruesome!' I do remember getting some blowback on that, because her death was quite graphic."
They actually cut out some of the bloodier more shocking scenes from Elektra's death in the theatrical cut. But they were restored for the director's cut that was released. When talking about the director’s cut, which is the preferred version of the movie, the director said: "It's definitely a more complete version.”
Johnson went on to admit a mistake he made while making the movie saying: “Looking back on it, one of the mistakes I made with the film was wanting to put everything in! I wanted to do Daredevil's (Ben Affleck) origin story, and I wanted to do the Elektra Saga and I wanted to introduce Bullseye and Foggy. I wanted everything to be in there, but the film could only support so much. And then when you're told to cut a half-hour out and and make it more of a love story, things start to feel rushed and not quite right. It's a fan thing: when you love something so much, you want to tell it all."
We previously reported that the style and tone of the movie were inspired by films such as The Crow and Blade, and you can read more about that here.
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