This Is How Charlie Cox Really Feels About Ben Affleck's Daredevil
When it comes to superhero movies and TV shows, it's hard to find a character whose Hollywood depictions are simultaneously both loved and hated the way Marvel's Daredevil has been. Ask any comic book fan, casual viewer, or even the actors themselves, and they'll pretty much all agree that Ben Affleck's 2003 cinematic crack at Matt Murdock was god-awful, while Charlie Cox's 2015 to 2018 run on Netflix is widely considered to be one of the greatest Marvel adaptations of all time (as demonstrated by the latter's Rotten Tomatoes score).
Affleck, also a fan, wouldn't disagree. "I hate 'Daredevil' [the movie] so much," Affleck once opined during a 2021 TimeTalks appearance. "It frustrated me," he said, adding, "The Netflix show does really cool stuff. I feel like that was there for us to do with that character, and we never kind of got it right. I wanted to do one of those movies and sort of get it right."
That said, while the world knows exactly how Affleck feels about his Daredevil movie, and how he enjoyed Netflix's critically acclaimed iteration of the Man Without Fear, what about Cox? How does he ultimately feel about his predecessor's take on the character — and 2003's "Daredevil" as a whole?
Charlie Cox liked Ben Affleck's Matt Murdock, but hated everything else — especially the Daredevil suit
When it comes to 2003's "Daredevil" and Ben Affleck's performance as Matt Murdock, Charlie Cox says he was actually impressed. But don't expect the London-born actor to say the same about the film itself.
"I hadn't seen it before I got the role. I watched it when I got the role," Cox recently explained at the Middle East Film and Comic Con in Abu Dhabi (via The Direct). "[A]nd, to be fair ... I think Ben Affleck does a really good Matt Murdock, I like his Matt Murdock ... I don't love the movie."
According to Cox, the Mark Steven Johnson-directed "Daredevil" could have been something truly special had it not been so bloated with characters and clashing tones, which is an opinion that many fans also offered when the movie first came out. "I feel like the movie tried to do too much and it was a little tonally confused," he said. "They had everyone in that movie, they had Kingpin, they had Bullseye, they had Elektra, they had Karen Page, they had Foggy. It was saturated and it's two hours. So that was part of that problem." In contrast, the Netflix series took three seasons to cover all of that same material, demonstrating Cox's point pretty effectively.
In addition to that, there was a glaring issue with Affleck's Daredevil, Cox thought, though it had nothing to do with his acting: "The suit sucks!" Cox said.
Cox's version of Daredevil was recently brought back into the MCU by way of a "Spider-Man: No Way Home" cameo, while his archenemy the Kingpin returned in "Hawkeye" on Disney+. Daredevil's MCU future in Phase 4 and beyond is unclear, but he's almost certain to return.