Daredevil: Born Again is not for the faint of heart. A revival of the original Netflix series that ran from 2015 to 2018, the Disney+ show picks up seven years later and charts the unraveling of its titular vigilante, lawyer Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), as he descends further into darkness. Born Again is bloodier, more violent and sees Murdock at his most disillusioned.
This tonal shift is made no clearer than in the show’s fight sequences.
Crafted by martial artist Philip J Silvera, the show’s supervising stunt coordinator and second unit director, Born Again’s fight scenes are more than kicks and punches. Silvera, who’s worked on numerous projects over the last two decades, including Season 1 of Netflix’s Daredevil, Deadpool and the Halo TV series, is responsible for crafting the show’s visual language.
“We have a nonverbal dialogue that tells our story,” he told Yahoo Entertainment. “There’s an emotionality to the body language, to the physicality of these characters. … I think the thing that [has] resonated with fans is they can feel the emotion of every fight scene that they’re going through.”
In Born Again, Murdock tries to uphold the law, but a corrupt justice system ultimately pushes him back into old habits as his alter ego, Daredevil. Murdock’s rivalry with Kingpin, also known as Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), takes center stage. As Murdock grapples with his disintegrating belief system after his best friend Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) is murdered, Fisk, who is now mayor, is putting forth his plan of building a New York free from vigilantism. Murdock and Fisk have yet to face off on Born Again — they went blow for blow only twice in the original series — but a fight appears imminent.
Murdock’s fighting style can be broken down into two halves, Silvera explained. The first half draws from his upbringing. Having grown up with a professional boxer for a father, Murdock continuing his own boxing training is a way he remains connected to him after his death. The second half draws from Murdock’s professional training under Stick, a blind sensei, who taught him how to harness his heightened senses after losing his eyesight.
Murdock is more of a refined, technical fighter who only pulls from his boxing side when he “falls into his rage,” said Silvera.
“If he’s going in to capture someone, he doesn’t approach them the same way,” he explained. “If he was going in to stop someone from killing someone he loved, he would not approach them the same way. If he’s going into a blind rage and you think he’s going to kill, he would not approach them the same way.”
Charlie Cox as Daredevil in Daredevil: Born Again. (Disney+/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Fisk, however, leads with emotion. He’s typically “very collected” and “always composed,” but all that changes in the blink of an eye when he becomes enraged.
“We used to have a joke behind stunts and we told Vincent recently, we would call him ‘full metal rage,’” said Silvera. “We’d treat him like this big, silverback gorilla pounding. … You would always see him striking these big hulking fists, just dropping down. And it would look like that of a gorilla fighting.”
For Silvera, fight sequences on Born Again are meant to feel emotional. Nailing down the choreography for a scene hinges on understanding its overall tone and what showrunner Dario Scardapane wants to achieve with that moment.
“What is the goal? What is [Murdock] going through mentally? And how do we design around that?” Silvera said of his process.
Conversations with the show’s writers and actors are also integral to crafting a fight sequence. Silvera uses the Daredevil-Muse fight in Episode 6 as an example of how collaborative the design process is.
In the episode titled “Excessive Force,” Murdock, as Daredevil, tracks down serial killer Muse (Hunter Doohan) in his lair inside a subway tunnel. The sequence marks the second time we see Daredevil on the brink of killing — the first being when he threw Bullseye (Wilson Bethel), a Fisk-employed assassin, off the top of a building after he murdered Nelson. Daredevil’s fight with Muse is intercut with a fight between Fisk and Adam (Lou Taylor Pucci), Fisk’s wife Vanessa’s (Ayelet Zurer) former lover.
“We had just started talking about how great it would be for these two sequences to intercut because it was a return to both of their characters,” Silvera said. “That was the beginning of it all right there. … So I wanted to go and immediately start [to] design moments within that sequence that would reflect both their pain and their emotion.”
Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio in Daredevil: Born Again. (Disney+/Courtesy Everett Collection)
The scene articulates a return to form for both Murdock and Fisk. Through their brutal uses of force and violence, it’s clear that both Daredevil and Fisk have fallen into similar fits of rage. They’re two sides of the same coin.
“Charlie said he felt like he wanted to get so angry that he wanted to just walk through punches,” Silvera said. “There’s a moment when you see the rage build up inside of him [and] you see him just taking every shot, and he’s getting angrier and angrier and angrier, which leads into Fisk as he’s losing his temper on the reverse side.”
With one episode left of the season and Season 2 already in the works, Silvera says fans should expect to see Murdock struggling with his inner demons.
“I think he’s riding a line again after returning to being Daredevil,” he said. “You’re talking about continually almost losing someone he cares about. So I think that’s what keeps you [wondering] if he’s going to cross that line or not every time. I think coming off of [Episode 6 and 7], he’s constantly fighting that. That approach of crossing the line fully.”
Daredevil: Born Again is currently streaming on Disney+.
