Stubs - Elektra

Elektra  (2005) starring Jennifer Garner, Goran Višnjić, Will Yun Lee, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Terence Stamp Directed by Rob Bowman Screenplay by Zak Penn, Stuart Zicherman, M. Raven Metzner.  Based on Comic book characters by Frank Miller. Motion picture characters by Mark Steven Johnson. Produced by Arnon Milchan, Gary Foster, Avi Arad. Color Run time: 97 minutes. Superhero USA

If you watched the recent Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) and saw Jennifer Garner dressed up as a superhero and were unfamiliar with the character she’s playing, you might be tempted to watch Elektra (2005), in which she portrayed the titular character. Or, if you watched the much-assailed Daredevil (2003), you might want to see what happened to the Elektra character that was believed dead but apparently wasn’t, in which case you might also be curious about this film, the supposed continuation of her story.

Daredevil (+ Director's Cut)

Note: This review contains spoilers for Daredevil.

In a post-MCU world, it can be difficult to remember a time when Marvel had licensed their properties to other studios in the 2000s, even more so the films that didn’t reach the same notoriety as some of Fox’s thirteen X-Men films or Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy at Sony. One of these films was Daredevil, starring Ben Affleck and released by Fox in 2003. Although it received mixed reviews from critics, it still saw some success at the box office, earning $178 million against a budget of $78 million, and spawned the Elektra spinoff film, itself a box office bomb. Based on the reviews at the time, as well as negative word of mouth and Ben Affleck earning a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor, I went in expecting a cinematic trainwreck on par with other duds like Batman & Robin or Fant4stic. Instead, I saw a film that, while flawed in execution, represented a bold step forward for grounded cinematic takes on comic book superheroes.