Daredevil Matt Murdock's Radar Sense

[SlamAdams]

I think it can imply to some people that it's what Daredevil is literally seeing, which is obviously not the case. And I think it's counter productive to use images to convey how a blind person navigates the world. You're not really getting a feel for his POV if you're doing it with images.

I don't think there is much damage done if people think that is what he is literally seeing as I have always taken the images of the comics to be that. "Seeing" being a loose term for him using other sense to paint a picture in his mind. It is probably counter productive to how real blind people navigate, but DD's not a run-of-the-mill blind person.

If you have to do something visually, I think the imagination-scape is a better call than the comics standard.

Is that not what the comics do? Like I said in the other paragraph, it's always been portrayed as the image his mind paints based on the stimulation of his other senses.

 

[Lilbaz]

I don't think money is an issue

Really? Not an issue at all? No such thing as a budget?

 

[The Question]

I don't think there is much damage done if people think that is what he is literally seeing as I have always taken the images of the comics to be that. "Seeing" being a loose term for him using other sense to paint a picture in his mind. It is probably counter productive to how real blind people navigate, but DD's not a run-of-the-mill blind person.

But if there isn't some connection to actual real world blindness, even if it is exaggerated, I think it's kind of mussing the point.

Is that not what the comics do? Like I said in the other paragraph, it's always been portrayed as the image his mind paints based on the stimulation of his other senses.

No, I mean actually showing what he imagines his surroundings to look like. A formerly sighted person isn't going to imagine vague color-less outlines, they're going to imagine things based on their memory of sight. I think that's a better way to approach it, because it'll be much more clear that it's what he's imagining, and it comes from a place of character and has some pathos to it.

 

[Maestro_DMC]

I seem to remember that in the comics, many, or even most of DD's foes, or even friends (who didn't know he was Murdock) assumed he was sighted. His other senses were THAT good, that no one knew he was blind.

Now I am a fan from way back, I was buying the original run of Miller as they were coming out, and I haven't read much since he left. So the portrayal may have changed since then, I wouldn't know.

I am definitely looking forward to this show. I'd like to see the radar sense portrayed in some form. Maybe like a topographical map, shown from Murdock's POV, this could reveal contours of shapes as the "topo" lines trace around the objects. Should be easy enough to do in CGI.

I also love the idea of the dreamscape though, good stuff.

I hope they come up with something better than any of these ideas and surprise us with it.

 

[Maestro_DMC]

We need a scene that gives visual expository that DD is aware of everything around him and that no one can sneak up on him.

I'm thinking of the scene from the comics when there were Ninja laying in wait in his house and he knew how many and where they were based on their heartbeats.

 

[Orba]

I remember thinking back when Marvel got the rights back that if they did a film a cool way to show the radar vision would have it shown like one of those Autostereogram images so that on first appearance the screen would be pretty blank but then when you looked closer depth and shapes appear in it. Or if not an Autostereogram then create a similar effect using the 3D glasses so that the glasses would let you see shapes in screen that appears pretty blank without the glasses.

 

[metaphysician]

I remember thinking back when Marvel got the rights back that if they did a film a cool way to show the radar vision would have it shown like one of those Autostereogram images so that on first appearance the screen would be pretty blank but then when you looked closer depth and shapes appear in it. Or if not an Autostereogram then create a similar effect using the 3D glasses so that the glasses would let you see shapes in screen that appears pretty blank without the glasses.

Maybe as a gimmick, but there is no way Marvel would make a movie that cannot be viewed on a normal movie or TV screen.

 

[Orba]

Oh I agree, it would just have been something interesting for the 3D version of the film, the 2D version would have to have a different representation. But I just thought it would be a cool effect, having it where the screen appeared pretty blank but then to have it that the 3D glasses would suddenly show the world around the character. An effect that would give shape and depth but no colour or detail, much like how the radar sense would work.

 

[Keyser Soze]

No, I mean actually showing what he imagines his surroundings to look like. A formerly sighted person isn't going to imagine vague color-less outlines, they're going to imagine things based on their memory of sight. I think that's a better way to approach it, because it'll be much more clear that it's what he's imagining, and it comes from a place of character and has some pathos to it.

But if visualising a radar sense is cheating by giving us access to "sight" that Matt doesn't have, I feel like giving Matt access to a visual dreamscape is also a cheat, because by letting him readily enter a world of rich, saturated color and vivid imagery you're underselling what he's lost as someone who's been blinded.

I think viewers would grasp that any visualisation of the radar sense is a creative short hand rather than a literal depiction of Matt's POV, like readers of the comics can do. That said, in that podcast I posted in the other thread, it was proposed that blind people who use echolocation CAN "see," that recent research shows the visual cortex - long thought dead in blind people - working overtime to create depth and texture, even if it no longer has access to colour or brightness.

 

[lujho]

There was an episode of Samurai jack where he went temporarily blind, and they represented his heightened hearing by having everything be darkness, but whenever something made a noise (like a drop of water or something) it would appear on screen in the darkness with the sound amplified. Something like that could work.

In fact it looks like they might be doing something like that, except instead of everything being dark, it's blurry, except the thing he's listening to is in focus.