Spoilers Daredevil: Born Again (Spoilers)

[Ruin Explorer]

I think this is the same, especially as we're dealing with superhuman sense that (a) don't exist and (b) we have no way to model.

The problem is B is seemingly not true.

Or if it is true, the superhuman sense isn't actually just "super-sensitive touch", it's some far wilder and more interesting.

But B not being true is why this was so jarring to anyone who knows what the textures of oil painting are actually like (and the sheer amounts of paint they can have on them). Sorry I don't want to re-litigate the actual point, I get that we disagree and in the comics he does this, but talking specifically about A & B here, B is just not true for me unless it's far, far more than just extremely sensitive touch. And given how many outright errors and blunders in the writing and direction there have been in this series of Daredevil, it seems easier to me to see this as another one of those rather than an intended "even fancier" superpower.

Whereas something like most mutant powers, you're absolutely right! I can't ever argue with Spidey's Spider-Sense, for example, because who the hell knows how that works? It is an actual psychic power (i.e. short-term but vague precognition)? Is it just a subconscious melding of his super-human senses? Is it the Spider-Goddess sending him a divine warning? Some kind of Spider-Force? I think it's been all of these things in the comics. Hell it's probably something else right now. That's a much more strange ability.

And there wouldn't need to be many changes to make it better.

What I think is striking to me is that some shows and some writers tend to be much better "across the board" at these things. Like, they'll just manage to roundly avoid major issues, because the showrunner/writers are thoughtful enough that instead of making up dumb bollocks with computers or law or whatever, they elide it or reconfigure it. I.e. we don't see what exactly is going on, or this is expressly something that doesn't work in a normal way (rather than being an extreme version of a normal thing). Whereas others just blunder blunder blunder.

C.f. the infamous One Keyboard Two Idiots scene from NCIS:



Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiist. Even the entirely fictional angelic monstrosity-involving hacking sequence in Neon Genesis Evangelion is more realistic/grounded than that (like, that's kind of how some very nasty cyberattacks work). The level of "I've never used a computer in my life" that must have been going on for them both to be using the same keyboard and monitor... (This is presuming the scene wasn't intended as parody/satire, but my understanding is that it was not.). So at least it's not that bad!

(Also the writing is just hilariously bad there "He or she" - who talks like that! Humans say "they", scriptwriter!)

 

[Ryujin]

What I think is striking to me is that some shows and some writers tend to be much better "across the board" at these things. Like, they'll just manage to roundly avoid major issues, because the showrunner/writers are thoughtful enough that instead of making up dumb bollocks with computers or law or whatever, they elide it or reconfigure it. I.e. we don't see what exactly is going on, or this is expressly something that doesn't work in a normal way (rather than being an extreme version of a normal thing). Whereas others just blunder blunder blunder.

C.f. the infamous One Keyboard Two Idiots scene from NCIS:



Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiist. Even the entirely fictional angelic monstrosity-involving hacking sequence in Neon Genesis Evangelion is more realistic/grounded than that (like, that's kind of how some very nasty cyberattacks work). The level of "I've never used a computer in my life" that must have been going on for them both to be using the same keyboard and monitor... (This is presuming the scene wasn't intended as parody/satire, but my understanding is that it was not.). So at least it's not that bad!

(Also the writing is just hilariously bad there "He or she" - who talks like that! Humans say "they", scriptwriter!)

The thing that always annoys me about scenes like this is something that would have bothered me before I ever got into the industry. It's the existence of three things, that would instantly stop that hack.

• Network Cable being unplugged.
• Power switch being hit.
• Yank out the damned plug.

 

[James Gasik]

Hackers being Wizards is a long-established (and terrible) trope that the entertainment industry seems really loath to let go. Sometimes you need a deus ex machina, and since apparently the average consumer has no idea how computers really work, it's one many people will accept, especially with a little technobabble. Just watching something like Hackers or Leverage (which I love, but fully admit it's run by rule of cool, not realism) would likely make any real Comp Sci major's head explode.

In superhero fiction, the industry has trained us to mostly not think about the ramifications of what we're being shown. When The Hulk transforms, where does the extra mass come from/go? Why are characters who can grow in size rarely left nude, instead somehow bits of their shredded clothing managing to stay on their bodies (not even going to touch violations of the square cube law)? Characters with super healing also can somehow generate new biomass without any apparent source. Characters with super strength but not invulnerability rarely destroy their muscles or bones when exerting too much force (I remember a scene from the Invincible comic where Mark's invulnerability is on the fritz, and he punches someone so hard he obliterates his own arm!). Or when a super strong character lifts something with much greater mass than they have, as if it's somehow been rendered weightless, and super massive objects don't instantly collapse under their own weight (Superman deciding to casually lift a cruise ship, for example). And that's just the tip of the iceberg-

X-ray vision, heat vision, probability manipulation, psychic powers (both telepathic and telekinetic), FLIGHT (dear God, no wings, no source of propulsion, just some BS handwavium like "subconscious gravity manipulation")- the list goes on. Or how characters with "cold" powers seem able to generate infinite amounts of ice without dehydrating anything and everything in their vicinity (don't even get into "cold beams", which make no sense in anything ever- yeah I'm looking at you, D&D!).

Superheroes don't make sense, their powers are basically "black boxes" that cannot be explained and are described by what they do, not how they work. It's true that some writers try very hard to figure out the science, but eventually, they just give up, because it often leads to nonsensical concepts like the "punch dimension" (if you know, you know).

Even characters who don't actually have stated powers to perform tasks still do them routinely- Captain America's ability to bounce his shield off of multiple targets, it always moving in the direction he wants, without any appreciable loss of force (yes, I know, handwavium shield, but he's done it with objects made of regular metal too). Oh sure, you might say, "Super Soldier", he has better senses, can process information faster, has greater strength, accuracy, blah blah blah- and then Sam Wilson learns how to do the exact same thing!

You can, in light of this, still be flummoxed by Daredevil's "heightened senses" not working the way they should, but it seems like a strange hangup to have if you can accept the rest of supeherodom. Sure, the writers of the show have tried harder in some areas (like having Matt use sonar instead of the "radar sense" of the comics), but at the end of the day, he co-exists in a world with other individuals who also routinely do impossible things.

Heck, on the topic of super-senses, I always wondered why characters like Wolverine (who has them, even if most of the time he's depicted merely as an angry stabby man who heals fast) cannot replicate Matt's feats on a regular basis!

In summation (because damn I'm long-winded), I'll say this. If you can still watch Frank Castle in action and are not bothered by him, you know, living and breathing, after all the, ah, "punishment" his body has taken, you've already accepted the fantasy- and probably don't even think twice because this sort of thing has been established action hero plot armor since at least the 80's (and probably longer).

Look how long it took Hollywood to figure out that mere Kevlar* doesn't make you immune to bullets! And even now, people wearing body armor still tend to be moving around afterwards, acting like they've just been kicked by a mule, instead of, you know, laying there on the ground being lucky to be alive, lol.

*Sure, nowadays, we've got things way better than Kevlar, like Dragonscale or graphene, but the prop department isn't always kitting out actors in top of the line armor, lol.

 

[MGibster]

Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiist. Even the entirely fictional angelic monstrosity-involving hacking sequence in Neon Genesis Evangelion is more realistic/grounded than that (like, that's kind of how some very nasty cyberattacks work). The level of "I've never used a computer in my life" that must have been going on for them both to be using the same keyboard and monitor... (This is presuming the scene wasn't intended as parody/satire, but my understanding is that it was not.). So at least it's not that bad!

I watched that scene from NCIS in real time when it first aired and was embarrassed on behalf of everyone involved. I simply cannot think of a more surprisingly terrible scene to appear in a series than that one.

 

[pukunui]

Why does no one ever use a mouse on screen?! (With the exception of Lexi in Jurassic Park.)

I love that scene in Star Trek IV when Scotty is trying to talk to the computer and the guy tells him to use the keyboard. “Keyboard? How quaint!”

 

[billd91]

Why does no one ever use a mouse on screen?! (With the exception of Lexi in Jurassic Park.)

I love that scene in Star Trek IV when Scotty is trying to talk to the computer and the guy tells him to use the keyboard. “Keyboard? How quaint!”

Because it appears less active? Keyboards may not technically be more active, but the foley artists get to make sure there is a flurry of clicky keyboard noises that emphasize "something is happening". I think it certainly does more to that effect that rubbing a mouse around the pad and occasionally clicking.

 

[Ryujin]

Because it appears less active? Keyboards may not technically be more active, but the foley artists get to make sure there is a flurry of clicky keyboard noises that emphasize "something is happening". I think it certainly does more to that effect that rubbing a mouse around the pad and occasionally clicking.

And if they're playing around with network switches/firewalls then they're likely using text commands via SSH, but they still manage to screw that up anyway. Watch for the impossible on-screen IP addresses.

 

[Voadam]

That's going to vary by user, and our need to adjust our suspenders is going to differ per consumer. For example, anything computer related I have to adjust my suspenders very tightly because all of it is just... wrong. And there wouldn't need to be many changes to make it better. But I get why they wouldn't do it for the %age of people that will take umbrage.

For me that is the lawyer scenes. Daredevil with the punisher in court and She-Hulk were disappointing.

And in relation to all the other fantastical things going on... I get it. I think this is the same, especially as we're dealing with superhuman sense that (a) don't exist and (b) we have no way to model.

I disagree on b, I was on board with him hearing and feeling the vibrations of the safe combination lock, this was jarring because it didn’t seem a thing that would work with touch.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For me that is the lawyer scenes. Daredevil with the punisher in court and She-Hulk were disappointing.

What I really, really didn't like about some of the She-Hulk court scenes was that they implied she was absolutely astoundingly bad lawyer, like worse than a trainee would be. In more than one of the scenes, she hadn't done ultra-basic stuff that you'd do when taking a case, or the earliest stages of prepping a case, let alone when you're appearing in bloody court!

Like, I don't mind fairly wild liberties with court procedures or objections or whatever (though there is a limit), that's just how TV is, but don't make this supposedly fantastic lawyer look like she's either doesn't give a sod about herself or her client, or is just staggeringly dumb. Clearly neither is the case! You've told and shown us that she's a good lawyer, and now you're inexplicably showing her as thick and incompetent and careless?

It was just weird and dumb and not even funny.

The Star Trek SNW court episode was kind of insultingly stupid too, but in a way that Americans or people whose only knowledge of legal proceedings is US drama were unlikely to notice. I ranted about it at the time, but the idea that the Federation's court would use the doctrine of the Fruit of the Poison Tree (in the sense that they did, even naming it) was completely insane and very definitely the result of having watched Law & Order one time too many. It's not a doctrine a court of an organisation like the Federation is going to find acceptable. It'd be better suited to the Romulans or Ferengi.

 

[Voadam]

What I really, really didn't like about some of the She-Hulk court scenes was that they implied she was absolutely astoundingly bad lawyer, like worse than a trainee would be. In more than one of the scenes, she hadn't done ultra-basic stuff that you'd do when taking a case, or the earliest stages of prepping a case, let alone when you're appearing in bloody court!

For me She Hulk was a disappointment because I went in with high expectations on three fronts: as a superhero story, comedy, and legal stories. I had seen her in Avengers, West Coast Avengers, a long run in Fantastic Four, Hulk, and a few odd appearances but not a subscription to her own title when I was reading comics in the eighties and nineties. I enjoyed her superhero storylines and particularly the later humor, and I saw some of her lawyering but not a lot. Before her Disney series I read an ABA article raving about some storylines in the comics as surprisingly some of the best portrayals of trials and trial issues in media from the perspective of actual trial practitioners which piqued my interest for the series when it was announced.

Daredevil I was cautiously hopeful that the legal scenes would be as well thought out as the rest of the series elements.

In both the legal scenes did not feel to me like A-game focus in the writing but more as somewhat obligatory secondary flavor vehicles for plot advancement that fits in with them as day job attorneys being part of their character descriptions so it is part of the story.


Reborn felt a bit better on this front than the prior Punisher defense, but I still felt Matt was off in his role and moral role as a defense attorney in places such as promising White Tiger that he would see Puerto Rico again and his interactions and promises with the niece. Whether this was to show his not great state of mind and his confusion and desperate faith in idealism and the system and himself and right prevailing over what his actual role at those moments as a legal defender who can help but not be a guarantor of justice or whether it is just the writing setting him up to be reborn to vigilantism was not clear to me as a viewer even in reflection.