Daredevil: Born Again Has a Bad CGI Problem

Daredevil is officially back in action, as Tuesday night brought the long-awaited premiere of Daredevil: Born Again to Disney+ and ushered in a new era of Marvel Television. Many of the stars from the Netflix Daredevil series have returned to reprise their roles, which is awesome news for fans who spent years campaigning to ‘save Daredevil.’ Unfortunately, the transcendent fight scenes that were as much a Daredevil calling card as Charlie Cox himself didn’t manage to survive the trip to this sequel series. When it comes to action, Daredevil: Born Again has a serious CGI problem – and it’s impossible to ignore.

The first two episodes of Born Again were just released on Disney+, and the series premiere begins with a showdown between Daredevil and Bullseye. We won’t divulge any spoilers about the situation, or why they’re fighting, but their minutes-long brawl is hard to watch, and a lot of it has to do with the CGI added to the fight sequences.

We’ve seen Charlie Cox’s Daredevil and Wilson Bethel’s Bullseye square off on TV before; everyone who watched Daredevil knows what those two actors are capable of, and that together they can deliver breathtaking fight scenes. For some reason, their showdown in the Daredevil: Born Again premiere is nothing like their previous bouts.

The fight takes Daredevil and Bullseye through a bar, down a hallway, up some stairs, and onto a roof. It’s a great set up for a classic Daredevil skirmish. The problem is the focus of the fight itself is on all the wrong things. Daredevil is given a lot of Spider-Man-like movements and abilities in the fight: he swings from a rope and leaps way higher than he should be able to, and those high-flying moves are worked into nearly every moment of the confrontation. Any time the camera zooms out, Matt Murdock looks and feels more like a video game character than an actor on the screen.

Then you’ve got Bullseye’s projectiles. The realism of Bullseye from Daredevil Season 3 is replaced by all kinds of CGI wizardry. Knives hitting bodies don’t look real or natural, and every injury sprays loads of digital blood that looks even less realistic.

Remember the sequence from the Daredevil: Born Again trailer where his mask was falling to the ground and one of the missing horns made a very clear “D” as it turned through the air? That was some overly smooth, annoyingly unnatural CGI, but we all excused it because we were sure it was either a promo shot just for the trailer, or that it would look better in the final version of the show. Well… it wasn’t and it doesn’t, and the computer generated mask falling from a rooftop was a much bigger red flag than we realized. Bad CGI has officially made its way to Hell’s Kitchen.

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The fortunate part is that Daredevil vs. Bullseye is the first fight, in the first episode, of this series. There are opportunities for things to get better as the show goes on – especially after the creative overhaul Born Again experienced throughout production. But to be the first big scene in such a highly anticipated show, it really leaves a bad taste in your mouth as you move into the rest of the series.

The first two episodes of Daredevil: Born Again are now streaming on Disney+.