Well, now that Deadpool and Wolverine has just crossed a billion dollars at the box office, it appears Disney may be warming up to more R/MA-rated content in the MCU, perhaps realizing that its audience has aged in the last 15 years or so when this whole thing started.
Now, we’re hearing reports that the upcoming Daredevil: Born Again, a direct follow-up to three seasons of the show on Netflix, will be even more brutal than that series which by the end, got pretty brutal indeed.
This information comes from Kingpin himself, Vincent D’Onofrio, in a recent interview where he says:
“There’s one thing in particular that my character does that I can’t believe made it into the cut.”
It is, however, easy to be somewhat skeptical of claims like this, as I don’t know if I trust what was filmed may actually make it into the final cut if Disney gets cold feet.
I am very much reminded of when Kevin Feige said the following about the Moon Knight series:
“He’s brutal,” Feige told Empire. “It’s been fun to work with Disney+ and see the boundaries shifting on what we’re able to do. There are moments [in the series] when Moon Knight is wailing on another character, and it is loud and brutal, and the knee-jerk reaction is, ‘We’re gonna pull back on this, right?’ No. We’re not pulling back. There’s a tonal shift. This is a different thing. This is Moon Knight.”
If you have watched Moon Knight, while there were of course fight scenes, there was nothing especially “brutal” about any of it, no scenes where you’re going “I can’t believe they did that on a Disney Plus show!” Rather, the show became somewhat infamous for having Marc black out, wake up, and see that his alter ego had brutalized a number of opponents, fights that we never got to see at all. This happens many times.
Daredevil, at least, has precedent for this, and hopefully Deadpool and Wolverine will help the idea that you can unleash a character like Daredevil and go all-out here. This feels like this should be the tone of the entire “street level” MCU which includes both Daredevil and Echo now, though may expand to other characters, including the possible return of other Netflix heroes like Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Iron Fist. And of course Punisher is already showing up in Daredevil, one of Marvel’s most brutal characters period.
I’ll believe it when I see it, but I hope D’Onofrio is right.
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