The Marvel Netflix show contained some of the best action choreography found in the superhero genre, even rivaling a majority of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but Daredevil’s best fight scene from season 1 was inspired by the non-Marvel movie The Raid: Redemption. Daredevil was the first Marvel Netflix show, beginning a shared television universe that also included Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, and The Punisher. These shows featuring the street-level heroes are grittier and edgier than much of the MCU, and the action scenes matched this with impressively grounded fight choreography.
One of the sources of inspiration for a key fight scene in Daredevil was the Indonesian crime action film The Raid. Directed by Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans, The Raid nearly single-handedly revived the Indonesian film industry, making star Iko Uwais an international action icon in the process. Netflix has a remake of The Raid in the works, along with producing Uwais’ martial arts series Wu Assassins and the recently released film continuation Fistful of Vengeance. Uwais has been featured in several Hollywood action films and is set to appear as a main villain in The Expendables 4.
The influence of The Raid has been extensive in Hollywood, both in the casting of Uwais and in the choreography of action sequences in film and TV. Daredevil’s season 1 showrunner Steven DeKnight (via SlashFilm) revealed that he wanted the show’s “world to be very grounded,” with the action and fight scenes “more Jason Bourne, The Raid movies and not a lot of flying wire CGI stunts.” The Raid’s impact was especially apparent in the construction of the hallway scene at the end of episode 2.
Daredevil's Hallway Scenes Explained
The violent Daredevil scene features a masked Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) entering a building controlled by the Russian Mafia to retrieve a kidnapped boy, facing multiple villains in a long take sequence set in the hallway. The basic plot of The Raid is centered on an elite squad of police officers infiltrating a high-rise building controlled by a powerful drug lord, leading to a similar hallway showdown between the bad guys and Rama (Iko Uwais), the rookie member of the team. Like the R-rated Indonesian action film, Daredevil’s hallway scene is a realistically gritty battle for survival made up of impressive stunt work and action choreography. Despite the showdown featuring many villains against Murdock’s masked alter ego, the vigilante lawyer’s efforts are grounded in reality, and he grows visibly exhausted over the course of the fight.
Daredevil has been called Marvel’s best show in part due to the attention the series received from this season 1 fight scene, which garnered two and a half million views on YouTube alone. As a result, each following season also included similar hallway action sequences. In the third episode of season 2, Daredevil takes on the members of the Dogs of Hell motorcycle club while making his way through hallways and down a stairwell. Season 3 increased the stakes even further with a seemingly uninterrupted action sequence in the hallways of a prison that is over ten minutes long. The scene from the fourth episode of the season begins when a riot breaks out while Murdock is visiting, recalling a similarly brutal long-take prison riot sequence in The Raid 2. If the show is brought back for additional seasons on Disney+, season 4 of Daredevil should feature one-shot action that increases the scope of the previous season’s hallway scenes.