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Warning: spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again are ahead. 

Daredevil: Born Again has a lot to live up to. The original Daredevil Netflix show built up a loyal fanbase around its strong performances by Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio, its mature storyline, and its impressive fight scenes captured through a roving camera that refuses to cut away from the action. Now, the Disney+ show has promised to be a spiritual 'season 4' for the Netflix series, its creative team reassuring fans that its Disney+ origins will not prevent Born Again from providing the same violent spectacle. 

With the first two episodes of Born Again out now, it's clear that the team behind the show has lived up to their promise. Episode 1, 'Heaven's Half Hour', opens with a bang (literally), when Foggy Nelson is gunned down by Bullseye in front of Karen Page. Filled with righteous fury, Daredevil leaps into action to get Karen to safety before fighting Bullseye himself. What follows is a fight sequence that honors the instantly iconic hallway fight scene from episode 2 of the Netflix show ('Cut Man'), as Bullseye and Daredevil battle it out in a tense one-take shot in Josie's Bar. This all takes place before the show's opening credits even roll.  

The arresting opening of Born Again introduces a question in our minds that the series would be wise to continue unpacking: what do we get out of seeing this no-holds-barred spectacle of violence within Hell's Kitchen? The operative word here is "spectacle," because Born Again's cinematography calls attention to the act of looking. Our view of Daredevil and Bullseye's fight is obscured several times - at one point, Daredevil knocks the lights out, plunging the room into darkness. Then, a group of cowering pub patrons shut a pair of sliding doors directly in front of the camera. Through the frosted glass, we can still see Daredevil and Bullseye's silhouettes before the latter comes crashing through the doors and onto the floor, the sight of hero and villain restored once more. 

Born Again's decision to play with our field of view has a storied cinematic precedent. The sequence offers a subtle nod to Buster Keaton's film, One Week, where a woman in a bathtub drops a bar of soap onto the floor, and looks directly into the camera. As she reaches for the soap bar, a hand from behind the camera swoops in to cover the lens, protecting her modesty. While Born Again's cinematography doesn't have the same cheeky intentions as Keaton's film, it calls attention to the fact that we've all logged onto Disney+ to watch Daredevil hurt people, and for people to get hurt. This is a uniquely Daredevil trait. No one goes to a Guardians of the Galaxy movie saying, 'I can't wait to see what kind of fight scenes we're going to see' (though that Beastie Boys one-take from 2023's Vol. 3 was glorious). So what does that say about us?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we're all morally bankrupt for this. I'm a huge Daredevil fan. The John Wick films are my comfort watches. I just think that Born Again is coming out at a time when we can reexamine what we're all here for. Like Matt Murdock himself, Daredevil's recent success on the small screen exists in a delicate balance between brutal violence and a tame sense of civility. Sure, Matt Murdock beats criminals to a bloody pulp at night, but he also isn't running around the streets of New York littering, cutting the line at the bodega, parking Citi Bikes in bike lanes, or raising other types of mayhem. For a man who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty, Daredevil still has principles. He has to, for us to get behind him. 

When Daredevil first debuted on Netflix, it filled a void that existed and continues to exist, in the pop culture landscape. A lot of violent stuff happens in Marvel movies - a dude gets sucked into an aircraft propeller in Captain America: The Winter Soldier for goodness' sake - but the Daredevil shows aren't afraid to actually show it. Guys like Daredevil and The Punisher aren't that different from you or I, they're just as vulnerable to physical injury as anyone else you'd see on the street. As such, the shows have cultivated a sense of refreshing catharsis around violence. Alongside their stellar, character-driven stories, Daredevil and now Born Again possess a sense of honesty about the genre they're operating in. When Matt gets hit, he's grumbling in pain the next day, providing perfect meme fodder for my buddies whenever we overextend ourselves at the gym. 

Beyond showcasing the violence that's always been implicit to the superhero genre, Daredevil and its successor, Born Again, are successful in couching violence within amenable terms. That is, one-takes like the Netflix show's hallway scene and now Born Again's bar fight scratch a part of our brains that itches for well-executed violence within a controlled environment. One-takes require an immense amount of choreography, for both the performers and the crew who must literally dance around them with their equipment in order to capture the shot. In order to pull off a one-take safely and effectively, you need to rehearse. The amount of work put into Born Again's opening is immediately obvious to us, and that's why it's impressive in the first place. Unlike seeing a couple of drunk dudes brawl at your neighborhood dive bar (or god forbid anything worse than that), the precision of violence as a type of dance in Born Again and its Netflix predecessor is comforting, exhilarating even, instead of upsetting and unwelcome. 

It's fitting then, that Born Again is unpacking what it means to be a man governed by violent urges. It's something that both Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk have admitted to. In their respective positions now, as a high-achieving lawyer and the Mayor of New York City, both Daredevil and Kingpin have crossed over into the territory of pure civility. But considering that this is a Daredevil project after all, we all know that neither character will remain in this zone forever. In the meantime, Born Again is asking us to reexamine our desire to see them return to the men they once were. 

Fear not, we have the essentials when it comes to Marvel's Daredevil - especially with Marvel Studios' Daredevil: Born Again. Check out:

• The key difference between Netflix's Daredevil and Marvel Studios' Daredevil: Born Again, according to the showrunner
• The best Daredevil stories of all time
• What to watch before Daredevil: Born Again 
• Popverse Picks: Our favorite things for Marvel's Man Without Fear including Ann Nocenti comics, the Netflix series, and more
• How Vincent D'Onofrio reinvented Daredevil's Kingpin
• Marvel's Daredevil actors, ranked from Charlie Cox to Ben Affleck and even Rex Smith
• How Frank Miller accidentally killed a Daredevil cartoon (and Marvel killed a book to avoid pissing him off)
• That time we caught Daredevil actor Charlie Cox sneaking into New York Comic Con as Bluey