Dead On Arrival
If you had any interest in Elektra after Daredevil, it may very well diminish like the rest of this dull and uninspired spin-off flick, very loosely based off of the titular spin-off anti-heroine.
The Premise
When the precognitive assassin Elektra (Jennifer Garner) is ordered to dispatch a father and daughter, she takes it upon herself to protect them from the evil forces who wouldn't hesitate to get the job done. Along the way she encounters Kirigi (Will Yun Lee) - an adversary from her dark past, and is forced to become a champion in an ancient war against the Hand.
The Good
Here's the difficult part. To be honest, and unbiased, while also pushing aside the urge to rip this movie a new one. I don't want to give the film-makers something they don't deserve just for the sake of having "one redeemable aspect" to vaguely look forward to. One might say the effort alone to bring this to a wide audience grants this some merit and recognition, but that effort alone is also what has singlehandedly sunk Marvel's (and DC's) interest in feature films starring a superheroine or anti-heroine. So for me, the only "good" thing that can be said about it is that it is mostly consistent with the backstory that the 2003 Daredevil film set up... but even that has a flip-side.
The Bad
As I mentioned before, this was the effort that Zak Penn, Mark Steven Johnson, Avi Arad, and Rob Bowman rushed to put forth without considering the ramifications it would have on the film industry. There's a plethora of interesting superheroines and anti-heroines who are just as capable and workable as Spider-man or Iron Man.... and of all the ones to pick to test the waters, the film-makers chose Elektra - a character who is literally and figuratively dead on arrival. Here, we're not sure what Jennifer Garner is trying to do, but the cold and apathetic Elektra from the comics is not in the least bit noticeable on screen, and I'm not just talking about her hair color. The story kills her. Why is Elektra of all assassins, chosen to eliminate a father and daughter? How could the writers assume she was THAT much into role-playing? Answer: they really don't understand the character.
And judging by the rest of the cast, they clearly don't believe in research. Kirigi, an Elektra villain for only a small handful of Daredevil issues, goes from an ancient warrior from Feudal Japan (whose only real "power" is that he is able to recover from most life-threatening wounds very quickly) to being the son of the leader of the Hand whose powers are an amalgam of Quicksilver and Iron Fist... and the manner of which he is defeated clearly shows that his regenerative abilities are non-existent. It doesn't nearly stop there. Stone (Bob Sapp) is a character who is capable of rendering his body impervious to any harm he can SEE (he was introduced in a Daredevil comic, after all), and not only was he fighting with the Chaste against the Hand, but he (with Stick) sacrifices himself to save Elektra. Here he is an assassin working for the Hand, who is able to make himself bulletproof to a shotgun blast (that he DIDN'T see coming) but completely open to a falling tree. There's something seriously wrong there. And don't get me started on Typhoid Mary (Natassia Malthe), a character who has absolutely NOTHING to do with her comic book counterpart, as well as Elektra.
Apart from the story that was predestined to fail, apart from the complete disregard for the characters involved, what really kills this movie is how uninteresting it is. If we weren't already expecting "Elektra" after the ending in "Daredevil", one could imagine that the entire cast and crew got together and agreed to make this completely lackluster action flick without any intention of selling it, similar to Roger Corman's Fantastic Four. Then the studio says: "no seriously, we're actually going to put this out to the teenage crowd, and it's actually going to be in theaters, so make it presentable." Then the effects team added a number of pointless cg enhancements to try to pass it off as a full-blown superhero action movie... and we get this.
Overall, "Elektra" is an unfaithful drag dressed up unconvincingly as an adaptation of a spin-off character, and will only leave you bored.
1/5
