10 Movies That Were Massively Improved By A Director's Cut

4. Daredevil (2003)

Daredevil Ben Affleck
20th Century Fox

The reputation of Mark Steven Johnson's superhero movie has taken a battering over the last decade, and while it isn't quite as awful as many claim it to be it is a disappointing and mostly forgettable entry in the comic book genre. Bogged down by tedious exposition and the turgid melodrama between Matt Murdock and Elektra, the action sequences showed the potential for a much better movie. Which is exactly what we got when the R-rated Director's Cut was released the following year.

While it hardly elevates the movie to instant greatness, the Director's Cut of Daredevil is a marked improvement on the theatrical version, which ultimately suffered from heavy-handed studio interference. Adding 30 minutes of footage, the most notable inclusion is a subplot featuring Coolio as a man framed for murder, which both ties up many of the narrative's loose ends and allows Ben Affleck to give a more layered performance to create a richer character than the one-dimensional Matt Murdock seen in the theatrical release.

The nauseatingly cheesy romance angle is also thankfully downplayed, while the action scenes have much more impact and entertainment value when freed from the shackles of a PG-13 rating. Daredevil is a superhero ill-suited for a family blockbuster, and the Director's Cut of the movie realizes this to present a more immediate, visceral and far superior take than the disjointed mess that landed in theaters.

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