“Daredevil” star Charlie Cox is no fan of Ben Affleck’s 2003 “Daredevil” movie. During his recent visit to Middle East Film & Comic Con 2022 in Abu Dhabi (via People), Cox revealed he had never watched the 2003 superhero movie until after he was cast as Matt Murdock/Daredevil in the Netflix-Marvel series.
“I watched it once, and then I wanted to go and do my own thing,” Cox said. “I hadn’t seen it before I got the role. I watched it when I got the role.”
While Cox said Affleck does “a really good Matt Murdock” and that “I like his Matt Murdock,” he added, “I don’t love the movie. I feel like the movie tried to do too much and it was a little tonally confused.”
“They had everyone in that movie — they had Kingpin, they had Bullseye, they had Elektra, they had Karen Page, they had Foggy,” Cox continued. “It was saturated, and it’s two hours. So that was part of that problem. And the suit sucks!”
Affleck would probably not object to Cox’s criticism. Affleck dissed his own “Daredevil” movie in 2015, telling Entertainment Weekly that the movie “didn’t work at all.” The actor added, “If I wanted to go viral I would be less polite. That was before people realized you could make these movies and make them well. There was a cynical sense of ‘Put a red leather outfit on a guy, have him run around, hunt some bad guys, and cash the check.’”
Cox starred as Daredevil for three seasons on the eponymous Netflix series. Starting March 16, all three seasons of “Daredevil” will begin streaming on Disney Plus. Cox reprised the character for a brief scene in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” effectively bringing his iteration of Daredevil more directly into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The door is now open for Cox to continue playing the character in the MCU, but official plans on the matter have yet to be announced.