Ben Affleck may have managed to win the hearts of fans as Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, but he failed badly in doing so around a decade and a half ago as Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil. One of the key reasons for many fans’ panic when the actor was announced as the DC Extended Universe's Caped Crusader was that they hated the 2003 Mark Steven Johnson flick.
But Charlie Cox, whose take on the Devil of Hell's Kitchen has been widely appreciated in the Netflix series Marvel's Daredevil, is not one of those who hated Affleck's performance in that movie. During a Q & A panel at Wizard World Convention in Pittsburgh (via Screen Geek), the British actor admits that the movie had issues, but he also defends the lead actor. He says:
I actually really, really liked the film and thought Ben Affleck did a really good job. I think the film is tonally a bit confused, [but] I actually really enjoyed it. I think that if you make Spider-Man, and I don't know much about the other characters to be honest, but if you make Spider-man, for example, you can make a movie for kids and adults and it can have that kind of humor, because I think it's true to the characters, for the most part.
According to Cox, the reason why Daredevil didn't work as a movie, but worked so well as a Netflix series, is that "the source material is so dark and so complicated and so sinister at times". He thinks that they benefited from the fact that Marvel and Netflix allowed them to "embrace those darker tones".
Daredevil was actually set to have an R-rated theatrical release, but 20th Century Fox eventually scrapped that and went for PG-13 rating, as they were worried that the former would limit their box office returns. Affleck once said that he would only return as the Man Without Fear if the studio were ready to embrace a much darker tone.
Elden Henson, who portrays Foggy Nelson in the Netflix portion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, agrees with his co-star about Ben Affleck's Daredevil. He adds:
Just so everyone knows out there - it's not easy to make a movie. It's really hard. No one sets out to make a bad movie or disappoint anybody. I think they were [just] making these types of superhero things in a much different way back then.
