Elektra: The Daredevil Spin-Off Time Forgot

Last Updated on February 15, 2023

2003’s Daredevil, starring Ben Affleck, was controversial among Marvel fans. Many didn’t care for the film, but the director’s cut won some people over, and the film itself made a decent amount of money. For the most part, fans seemed to enjoy Jennifer Garner’s performance as Elektra Natchios, so the decision was made to spin the character off into a solo film of her own. The result was a disaster that, at the time, was the lowest-grossing movie featuring a Marvel character since Howard the Duck. Even now, it remains perhaps the most financially disappointing Marvel movie ever, and one the studio would likely wish you’d forget. What went wrong? Plenty!

For one thing, in 2005, studios clearly had no idea how to really do a Marvel movie. The studio that produced it, 20th Century Fox, was fast becoming infamous for how cheaply they were doing their superhero movies. Elektra, like the Fantastic Four movies, would be a threadbare production. It didn’t help that the star, Jennifer Garner, was apparently reluctant to continue playing the role, although who could blame her? Shot during a break from Alias, the film’s action is inferior to anything she was doing on TV at the time, and the film lacks any memorable sequences. The premise is also rehashed and a big disappointment to fans of Frank Miller’s Elektra Assassin, although some enjoyed Terrence Stamp playing the fan favorite, Stick. So how did Elektra end up happening? Where does it rank in the pantheon of Marvel movies? Is it as bad as some of the most infamously terrible ones? We’ll tell you all about it in this week’s Marvel Revisited, which is written, edited and narrated by Kier Gomes.

Is Elektra all that bad? Let us know in the comments!