Daredevil and the Relationship Media Has With Christianity

Being a pastor's son it's safe to say that I've been in the church since before I was born. When you hear stories about preacher kids there tends to be one of two stories; they're either super devout or super rebellious. While I myself am a true believer *wink wink* in the lord Jesus Christ and his word, ask anyone who knows me and they'll likely tell you that I'm pretty chill, down to Earth, and not at all the stereotypical Christian out to convert every stranger he meets. Now while my passions lie with comic books, video games, heavy metal, and anime, my first loyalty is first and foremost to the one who put himself to death to redeem me. Being a Christian isn't just going to church for an hour on Sunday, or regular readings of the Bible followed by prayer every day. Those are part of it, but there's more to it. Being a Christian is coming to terms with the fact that I am fundamentally a sinful person and my only hope is to surrender myself to Christ. Okay, I've accepted Jesus as my savior, everything's coming up roses, right? Wrong, that was just the first step. Till the day I die, my life needs to emulate the example Jesus provides in the Bible and don't think it's easy trying to live my life like he who was without sin. Some days it seems downright impossible, but the whole point is that by emulating Jesus I am able to become the best version of myself and live a life transformed where even though I still make mistakes I'm no longer a slave to sin.

Now, what does any of that have to do with Daredevil? Trust me I'm going somewhere with this. In this day and age, it has more or less become in vogue to either ridicule or outright vilify Christianity and by extension Christians. We live a post-modern world where everything must be deconstructed and cynicism is the order of the day. We live in a world where the secularism of the Enlightenment has become the new religion. Now don't take this as me bemoaning Christians losing their purchase on society, because to be frank we're not completely blameless given that the church became complacent and sanctimonious. Instead of being a hospital to heal the spiritually sick, we became a luxury cruise line for the self-righteous. But none of this changes with how modern pop culture has chosen to represent us as either hopelessly naive, foolish, bigoted, detached or in certain cases evil. One of the most egregious examples of this is Ned Flanders from "The Simpsons" whose Christianity was originally just supposed to be another character trait to make him annoy Homer because of how good a neighbor he was and therefore, highlight Homer's own shortcomings as a human being. But as the show went on that became Ned's only character trait and rather serve as a contrast to Homer, he became the butt of a joke, "Christians sure are silly". So when Marvel and Netflix produced the excellent Daredevil tv series with full intent on including the faith of Matt Murdock as a central character trait well I was certainly glad to see it. Even Charlie Cox, the actor who plays Daredevil, grew up Catholic and demonstrating an understanding of what makes the character tick. And so far the show has handled Matt Murdock's Catholicism rather well, the first episode has him in a confessional, he seeks the advice of his priest when presented with a moral dilemma, and in another from the recently released second season, he prays to God when Elektra's life hangs in the balance.

Now Matt's Catholicism isn't just something that was added to the character for this show, it's been a part of his character since Frank Miller took over the book back in the 80's. Frank Miller - who also grew up Irish Catholic - incorporated that as part of Matt because according to him, "Only a Catholic could be both an attorney and a vigilante." No more was Matt's faith more put on display than in the excellent "Born Again" arc where the Kingpin systematically tears Matt's life apart after learning the blind lawyer from Hell's Kitchen and the vigilante that has been a perpetual thorn in his side are one in the same. At his lowest point having lost his home, his career, reputation, and even costume - which for the majority of the story he goes without - Matt finds himself in a Catholic shelter where he is nursed back to health. The story is ripe with religious symbolism that includes a splash page where Matt assumes the position of the crucifixion, a sequence where he walks through Hell's Kitchen in a manner similar to Christ's walk to Golgotha, and even an allusion to the Pieta where Matt takes the role of Jesus and his absent mother the Virgin Mary. Kevin Smith's run, Guardian Devil, also included heavy use of religious themes, which also came from Smith's own experiences being raised Catholic. Smith's run shows how Matt's faith simultaneously both a source of inner strength but also a weakness that can be exploited the wicked, and to explain any further, would spoil this story. (In fact, read both "Born Again" and "Guardian Devil")

While I wish that Matt's faith was more deeply explored I understand that concessions need to be made to keep the plot moving. Even Matt's job as a lawyer has to take a backseat at certain points to his nighttime vigilantism. So to include it at all without falling back on how pop culture tends to treat Christianity is something I can certainly get behind. And given that it's a show there's always the chance an episode can be devoted to examining Matt's faith a Christian in the future, hopefully showing the positive aspects. What I like about Daredevil is that it can hopefully open the door for Christianity to be reexamined with perhaps more sympathetic eyes. I'm not calling for media to go for converting viewers. What I'm hoping for is more nuanced portrayals of Christians that not only portray the personal struggle one goes through as a follower of Christ but also how through that struggle we are able to draw strength and become better people for it. More than being an excellent adaptation of an underrated comic book, Daredevil shows that pop culture still has room for Christianity without it being turned into a farce or overly criticized.

Review of Justice League vs Teen Titans

This isn't a bad movie. Just want to make that clear. Also I did not hate it either. I just hated parts of it. But the overall package was passable. But that's kind of become the trend with the latest straight-to-DVD DC animated films based off the New 52 universe, going all the way back to Justice League: War. While none of them have been outright bad, they've either been unexceptional or flawed enough to be passable, and Justice League vs Teen Titans is no exception to that trend.

Now the basic plot should be familiar to any DC fan because it's an adaptation of one of the most seminal plots from the Teen Titans comics during Marv Wolfman and George Perez's tenure. Even if you didn't read the comics, you likely saw it in the Teen Titans animated series. I know I did. Raven's demon father, Trigon, is coming to the Earth to bring eternal darkness and Hell on Earth - as demons are wont to do - and to get here he needs Raven. Now what this move does is that it introduces a clever twist on this familiar story by having Trigon possess the Justice League and set them against the Titans. The Titan roster in this version features classic characters like Starfire, Beast Boy, and Raven but also throws in Blue Beetle and Damian Wayne. And there is where this movie's biggest Achilles Heel lies, Damian.

If you could stamp the word "Hate" on each individual cell in my body, it would come just a little bit shy of how much I despise Damian Wayne. This is his fourth appearance counting "Son of Batman", "Batman vs Robin", and "Batman: Bad Blood", and being a likable character still seems to be his proverbial white whale. Now to the credit of the writers, Damian has shown some genuine growth as he's graduated past "Kill the bad guy" being his first instinct to a given situation, but he's still kept that superiority complex and open hostility. Now in his defense, given that he was raised originally to be R'as Al Ghul's heir it's to be expected that initially he would act like that and that was fine at first. When Damian's inner conflict with what R'as taught him and what Bruce is trying to teach him was front and center like in "Son of Batman" and "Batman vs Robin". In fact with those two movies he had a genuine character arc, but by "Batman: Bad Blood" he still had the aforementioned superiority complex and open hostility. I'm not saying that I was expecting him to act friendly and crack jokes like Dick Grayson, but the problem with the type of character Damian is that he doesn't make for a likable protagonist unless he can show more than fleeting hints of humanity. It's great he doesn't resort to kill the bad guy first but I've long filled the tank on Damian proving how he's better than everyone, even Batman his own father.

You're probably wondering what I mean by that.

The movie opens with the Justice League fighting the Legion of Doom and beating them. But Weather Wizard flees, gets possessed by Trigon, wreaks havoc, and the Justice League try to stop him. Now Batman has Damian on crowd control, much to Damian's displeasure.So Damian hijacks the Batwing to use as a giant missile against the demon possessed Weather Wizard and he's probably lucky it doesn't kill Weather Wizard. Batman - much like me - gets fed up with Damian acting uppity and decides to put him in the Teen Titans in hopes that Damian can learn to follow orders and work on a team. Now I get why, the movie needed to show why Damian is being put on the Titans but this ends up giving the wrong impression that Damian is the protagonist when in reality this isn't his story.

Remember how I said this was an adaptation of the Trigon arc from Teen Titans? Now who do you suppose the protagonist of that story should be. If the answer was Raven, congrats you won. Luckily the writers picked up on this and devote enough the story that Raven is a protagonist, but she's sharing that with Damian. It might seem like a nitpick but this story would have been stronger if it had put Raven front and center. With Raven as the main character, the story could focus on her own inner turmoil and journey finding real friends and a home. How that could have been accomplished is keep the opening with the Legion of Doom more or less the same, with Damian being absent. After the battle's over Raven would introduce herself to the Justice League to tell them about Trigon and she needs their help. At first, they're skeptical, but then Weather Wizard gets possessed vindicating Raven. They put her on the Titans so she can be supervised while they work on dealing with Trigon.

The best part is that even with that change the majority of the movie's plot can remain intact. Even Damian being there with a line alluding to him disobeying Batman being the reason he was put on the team. The part of the plot that includes Damian and Raven bonding can stay as well. In the movie, the catalyst for this is during a training session Damian pushes Blue Beetle's scarab so far that it overrides Jaime's will and hits Damian with a chest cannon that severely burns him and Raven heals him. While healing him she picks up on his past and the two discover a kinship through their respective dark pasts. That scene can still be used in the version I suggested that places Raven as the main character, but I'm still glad that the writers had the good sense to at least split main character status between Raven and Damian, even if the story is weaker for it.

Another thing that I'm counting as a flaw is this one song they used in a montage of the Titans at an amusement park. The song sucked and I muted it the whole way through. Don't ask me the name of the song or the artist because the credits deigned to not speak of either, I checked.

But in all honesty, this wasn't a bad movie, DC has certainly done worse (Superman: Brainiac Attacks). One thing I really loved was Starfire being the leader of the Titans in this version along with being a big sister type figure which fits the character very naturally. Raven and Damian's budding friendship felt more or less organic and pitting the Titans against the demon possessed Justice League was a welcome twist. I also like how the story kept Batman benched for the majority of the story as too often DC treats Batman like their own Chuck Norris. It was also cool how they included Cyborg in the final battle, no doubt as a send up to the classic Titans roster. One weird thing is that they had Beast Boy randomly change into monsters once the Titans got to Hell. One of them resembled the were beast from the TT episode "Beast Within" so you're left to conclude that they're Easter eggs I guess, but I can't recall Beast Boy turning into an imp, a chimera, and griffin (I think that's what they were) in any other media.

Voice acting was inconsistent. There are really good performances from Stuart Allen as Damian, Brandon Soo Hoo as Beast Boy, and Jon Bernthal as Trigon (Although his was brought down somewhat by being filtered in order to sound more demonic) Kari Walhgren's voice for Starfire was too high pitched and didn't communicate the character's maturity properly. Taissa Farmiga, who voices Raven, was sadly the weakest as her performance was very wooden although I'm willing to put that down as lack of experience in voice acting. I get that DC likely wanted to use someone different from Tara Strong (Raven's voice in the TT animated series), but given that Raven is one fo the main protagonists she demands a better performance. Everyone else was just kind of there.

The animation, as is standard for DCs straight to DVD films, was top notch. Fluid movement and exciting action scenes are very much present and accounted for here. Sadly the same can't be said for the animation style, which while not horrible by any means lack any real identity unlike the Bruce Timm DCAU, the Teen Titans animated series, or even some of the straight to DVD films like Batman/Superman: Public Enemies, Batman/Superman: Apocalypse, or the Dark Knight Returns Parts 1& 2 which emulated the art styles of Ed McGuinness, Micheal Turner, and Frank Miller respectively. It's just a little too generic looking to stand out.

So all in all Justice League vs Teen Titans is an okay film that could have been better with a major change. It's good for some light viewing, but outside of being a hardcore DC or Teen Titans fan, I can't see much reason to own it. Causals rent it at most.

Also, why is Nightwing featured in a group shot during the credits when he was only in two scenes, neither of which were fights and not even that long?