Daredevil’s Forgotten First Movie Was a Mind-Blowing Marvel Milestone

With Daredevil: Born Again currently streaming on Disney+, this is the perfect time to look back at the Man Without Fear‘s first live-action outing. No, not Ben Affleck’s Daredevil, even farther back than that. We’re talking about none other than 1989’s The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, a made-for-TV movie featuring the very first live-action depiction of Matt Murdock and his vigilante alter ego.

The Trial of the Incredible Hulk was both an attempt to restart the Incredible Hulk television series that ran from 1978-1982 and a backdoor pilot for a potential Daredevil spinoff. The movie failed on both accounts, but not for the reasons you think.The Trial of the Incredible Hulk may not hold up next to, say, a modern MCU film, but in terms of late ’80s live-action superhero fare, it’s really not bad at all.



Sandwiched in between Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) and Batman (1989), which would come out a month later, TTotIH came at a time when live-action superheroes were far from the proven commodity that they are today. Even so, Daredevil’s debut was a surprise ratings hit — not a big enough hit to jumpstart the character’s ongoing adventures, but a respectful first outing, nonetheless.The movie starts with David Banner (played by Bill Bixby) relocating to the big city in hopes of finding anonymity among the hustle and bustle.

Banner is provoked into becoming the Hulk when a pair of goons working for Wilson Fisk (a slumming John Rhys-Davies) attempt to assault a woman on the subway.Marvel/NBCThe Hulk easily defeats the two thugs but gets arrested upon turning back into Banner. While awaiting trial, Banner is visited by none other than Matt Murdock (Rex Smith), a blind attorney and part-time vigilante.

The two eventually find out about each other’s alter egos and agree to team up and put an end to Fisk — AKA the Kingpin’s — criminal empire.Despite the Hulk’s name in the title, this is very much Daredevil’s movie, with the hero getting substantially more screen time than the Jade Giant. The fight scenes are .

.. well, they’re ’80s TV-movie budget fight scenes.

The action is a far cry from the infamous hallway fight from season 1 of the Netflix Daredevil series, but not bad for what it is. Daredevil’s abilities are well-represented, and he has his signature billy club.What is missing is the hero’s red suit.

Throughout The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, Matt Murdock wears a simple black costume reminiscent of what he wore in Daredevil season 1 and Frank Miller’s 1993 Daredevil: Man Without Fear mini-series. It’s unknown whether Murdock would’ve gotten a comic-accurate suit, if a Daredevil spinoff series had been produced – or if he would have remained in the black getup as an attempt to be less “comicbooky.”You might be wondering why, if it got good ratings, Trial of the Incredible Hulk didn’t lead to a Daredevil solo show.

The biggest reason is that, at the time, live-action Marvel just wasn’t a very popular concept ...

Pre-MCU Marvel Was Hit and Miss (Mostly Miss)Before the first Spider-Man movie in 2002, Marvel didn’t have much luck with live-action. Their television offerings, like Doctor Strange and Captain America, were lackluster, and their sole theatrical effort, Howard the Duck, was a notorious bomb that no doubt contributed to the lack of Marvel films for the next decade-plus. The Incredible Hulk series, starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno, was pretty much Marvel’s only flesh-and-blood hit, which is why the company tried to revive it multiple times.

The year before Marvel attempted to turn Daredevil into its next big TV hit, the studio tried to do the same thing with Thor. The Incredible Hulk Returns brought a barely recognizable version of Thor to the small screen for the first time ever, and though people tuned in, it wasn’t enough to justify giving the Norse god his own series or even giving the Hulk a second chance.The Incredible Hulk Returns was successful enough, however, to warrant another one-off television movie, which is how we got The Trial of the Incredible Hulk.

There would be one more attempt to revive The Incredible Hulk the following year with The Death of the Incredible Hulk, but Marvel jinxed itself with the title, and the movie was, in fact, the death of the Incredible Hulk, or at least the TV version.Even though the idea of an early ’90s live-action Daredevil series sounds cool, it’s probably for the best that the idea never manifested. For one thing, it’s doubtful that a major TV network would allow the series to be as dark as the comic books.

At the time, HBO would have been the only place a comic-accurate Daredevil would work. Prime time network TV was still a little too tame for The Man Without Fear’s exploits.The other reason we’re glad the ’90s Daredevil show never got off the ground: who knows if we would have still gotten the same MCU we have now? An early ’90s live-action Marvel show seems like it would have little bearing on a cinematic universe 20 years later, but in reality, any slight change could have had a ripple effect that led to a different MCU or even an alternate future with no MCU at all.

Plus, we may never have gotten those Netflix Daredevil hallway fights.The post Daredevil’s Forgotten First Movie Was a Mind-Blowing Marvel Milestone appeared first on ComicBook.com.

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