8 Reasons Why Daredevil Is Marvel's Greatest Superhero
4. The Netflix Show Is The Best Live-Action Superhero Adaptation Ever
Netflix
To put it bluntly, Netflix's Daredevil makes every other superhero TV show look cheap, tacky and mediocre. Even if we may have a fondness for the unfortunately cancelled Constantine - a show that had one of the best comic book casts of all time - it still doesn't come close to what Netflix achieved with Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Punisher (don't ask about the other one).
The show's success is of course owed to the multitude of creative talents placed firmly at its helm, but Daredevil itself is a property intrinsically linked with quality and nuance - it's a hard thing to mess up. Sure, the 2003 film may not have given the hero the portrayal he deserved, but its supposed status as being 'one of the worst' comic book films of all time is sorely inaccurate, especially when its Director's Cut retained many admirable aspects long associated with its source material.
The point is that a bad character will ultimately be given a bad show, as opposed to an inherently well written character who will most likely be given a good one. Arrow may serve as an exception to this rule, but Netflix's show wouldn't have been such a hit if the character's literature was of poor quality.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
