You can’t have a good superhero movie or TV show without a great bad guy. The villain might even need to be better — in terms of character and intrigue — than the hero.
Sometimes, that can be taken too far, as with the bad guys in the Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher Batman movies. Maybe that applies to Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight too. But ideally, the two (or more) adversaries should be on equal footing, with each exploiting their particular talents and advantages.
Based on the full trailer for Netflix’s upcoming Daredevil series, it appears that showrunner Steven S. DeKnight realizes that a good guy needs a strong bad guy for a compelling narrative. Though the first season of Marvel’s street-level superhero presumably follows the title character’s origin story, the series will also depict the origin of Daredevil’s arch-nemesis, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio).
The teaser trailer released in February only hinted at D’Onofrio’s character, a crime lord who’s also known as The Kingpin. But Fisk is front and center in this new preview, making it clear that the villain is just as integral to the storyline as the hero. In the best Daredevil comic book stories, Kingpin has actually beaten his foe, pushing him to rock bottom as a human being.
We’ll see if the TV show goes to that extreme, which would be quite a change from what we’ve seen in previous superhero fare. Based on the trailer, it certainly looks like Daredevil is going to take a severe beating as he adopts his vigilante persona and goes out to knock around criminals. For Marvel, the dark tone and palette of the show is much different from the world The Avengers inhabit.
Daredevil will be released April 10 on Netflix.
