| Elektra | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Rob Bowman |
| Written by |
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| Based on | |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Bill Roe |
| Edited by | Kevin Stitt |
| Music by | Christophe Beck |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date |
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Running time | 97 minutes[1] |
| Countries |
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| Language | English |
| Budget | $43–65 million[2][3] |
| Box office | $57 million[2] |
Elektra is a 2005superhero film based on theMarvel Comics characterElektra Natchios and directed byRob Bowman. It is aspin-off from the filmDaredevil (2003), withJennifer Garner reprising her role as the titular character. The story follows Elektra, an assassin who must protect a man and his prodigy daughter from another assassin who was hired bythe Hand.Goran Višnjić,Will Yun Lee,Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, andTerence Stamp also star.
For the screenplay,Zak Penn, Stuart Zicherman, andM. Raven Metzner received "written by" credit.Mark Steven Johnson received credit for "motion picture characters" andFrank Miller for "comic book characters". Filming started May 2004 inVancouver.[4]
The film was released on January 14, 2005. Upon its release,Elektra was a commercial and critical failure, grossing $57 million against a production budget of $43–65 million. It received negative reviews from critics, who found the script and storyline lacking, but many praised Garner's performance.[5] Garner reprised her role as Elektra in the 2024 filmDeadpool & Wolverine.
After being killed,[a]Elektra Natchios is revived by blindmartial arts masterStick. He teaches her the ancient art of Kimagure, which provides its practitioners withprecognition as well as the ability to resurrect the dead.
Elektra is expelled from the training compound because of her inability to let go of her rage and fear of seeing her mother's killer as a child. She leaves and uses her training to become a contract killer.
Years later, Elektra's agent McCabe receives an unusually large offer from an anonymous client wishing to hire Elektra. The only stipulation: she must spend a few days in a rented home on the island where the assassination is to be performed before the names of the targets are revealed.
During the wait, Elektra catches a girl named Abby trying to steal her mother's necklace. She sends her away, and later meets and befriends her father, Mark Miller. Abby invites Elektra to Christmas dinner on Mark's behalf.
Elektra develops a romantic interest in Mark but learns that he and Abby are the targets she has been hired to kill. She spares them and leaves, but returns in time to protect them from assassins sent byThe Hand, a crime syndicate ofninja mercenaries.
Roshi, master of The Hand, learns of the failed attempt and permits his sonKirigi to lead a new team of assassins to kill Elektra and return with Abby, referred to as "The Treasure". Elektra tries to leave Abby and Mark with Stick, but he scolds her and tells her to protect them herself.
Elektra takes Mark and Abby to McCabe's country house, but is followed by Kirigi,Typhoid,Stone, Kinkou, andTattoo. She flees with the pair through a secret underground exit to a forest, while McCabe sacrifices himself to buy them time.
Kirigi and the assassins hunt down the trio in the forest. Elektra kills Stone, while Abby and Mark kill Kinkou with one of his own daggers. As Elektra is distracted by the revelation that Abby has martial arts skills, Typhoid gives Elektra the "Kiss of Death".
Abby is captured by Kirigi. Stick and hisChaste ninjas arrive, forcing Kirigi, Typhoid, and Tattoo to retreat. Stick saves Elektra from death and takes them under his protection.
Stick confirms that Abby is the "Treasure", a martial arts prodigy, whom the Hand seeks to use. Elektra learns that she was a Treasure herself, resulting in her mother becoming a casualty of the fight between The Chaste and The Hand. She guesses that Stick set up the hit on Mark and Abby in order to test Elektra's propensity for compassion.
Elektraastrally projects herself to a meeting with Kirigi and challenges him to a fight, the winner claiming Abby for their own purpose. She returns to her childhood home to face him and realizes that the horned demon who killed her mother was actually Kirigi.
Elektra is defeated by Kirigi. Abby arrives and engages him long enough for Elektra to recover. The two escape and hide in ahedge maze, but Abby is captured by snakes dispatched by Tattoo. Elektra finds Tattoo and snaps his neck, releasing Abby.
Elektra engages Kirigi a second time and kills him. Typhoid poisons and kills Abby, before Elektra can kill her with hersai. Elektra desperately tries to wake Abby, calms herself, lets go all of her rage, and successfully resurrects her using Kimagure.
Elektra prepares to leave, and shares one final kiss with Mark. She tells Abby to live a normal life as they each have their lives back. Elektra leaves, hoping that Abby will not grow up to be like her. Stick appears and points out that Elektra did not turn out so bad. Elektra bows to Stick to thank him, then he bows back and disappears.
Ben Affleck reprised his role asMatt Murdock / Daredevil fromDaredevil in adeletedcameo appearance, where he appeared to Natchios in adream sequence.[6]
In 1987, after the success ofFrank Miller's "Elektra: Assassin", Marvel tried to adapt the graphic novel into a live-action movie. After selling the rights of Elektra toNew Line Cinema, Frank Miller was hired to pen a screenplay based on the graphic novel of the same name. Later on, screenwritersJim McBride andL.M. Kit Carson were hired to write a second script. DirectorOliver Stone later signed on to direct and wanted volleyball player, model, and actressGabrielle Reece to star as Elektra. The project was cancelled after the rights to Elektra were sold to20th Century Fox.[citation needed]
Garner reportedly did not want to do the film and only did it because she was legally required due to contractual obligations fromDaredevil.[7] The film was made during Garner's hiatus from the television showAlias, and production was limited by that timeframe.[8]Ben Affleck reprised his role asMatt Murdock / Daredevil in a cameo appearance, but it was cut from the final film. The scene was included on the DVD as a deleted scene.[9]
DirectorRob Bowman knew going into the project that the production time was going to be short and they would be limited in what they could achieve, but thought that critics would appreciate what he was able to do with the relatively small $43 million budget. Bowman saw it not as an all action spectacle but as "a story about a character learning about compassion". He said shooting and preparation made for very long days, and as little as four hours sleep a night, and that he used "every trick in the book I had to pull that movie off in that short amount of time."[10]
Bowman stated that the film was "literally 12 frames of film from an R-rating" due to MPAA objections to several death scenes.[8]
| Elektra: The Album | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Soundtrack album by Various artists | ||||
| Released | January 11, 2005 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Label | Wind-up | |||
| Producer | Various producers | |||
| Marvel Comics film series soundtrack chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [11] |
Elektra: The Album was released in 2005 byWind-up Records. As with many Wind-up soundtracks, almost none of the songs featured on the album were actually used in the film except for "Sooner or Later", "Wonder", "Photograph", and "Thousand Mile Wish (Elektra Mix)" with the latter three being featured during the end credits. An Ali Dee remix ofSubmersed's "Hollow" also appeared in the film, but the song's original version appears on the soundtrack; The Ali Dee remix remains unreleased. The album contained several songs by artists on the Wind-Up roster that originally appeared in their respective previous albums, but aside from "Never There (She Stabs)", "Hey Kids", "Sooner or Later", "Breathe No More", "Photograph", & the original version of "Hollow", all other songs featured were either created specifically for it, or debuted here before being included in the artists' later albums. A score album was released byVarèse Sarabande containing selections ofChristophe Beck's original music from the film.[12][13]
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Producer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Never There (She Stabs)" (Strata) |
| Strata | 3:44 |
| 2. | "Hey Kids" (Jet) | Dave Sardy | 2:58 | |
| 3. | "Everyone is Wrong" (The Donnas) | Butch Walker | 3:28 | |
| 4. | "Sooner or Later" (Switchfoot) | Jonathan Foreman | 4:09 | |
| 5. | "Thousand Mile Wish (Elektra Mix)" (Finger Eleven) |
| Johnny K | 4:00 |
| 6. | "Wonder" (Megan McCauley) |
|
| 3:53 |
| 7. | "Your Own Disaster" (Taking Back Sunday) | Taking Back Sunday | Lou Giordano | 5:42 |
| 8. | "Breathe No More" (Evanescence) | Amy Lee | Dave Fortman | 3:48 |
| 9. | "Photograph" (12 Stones) |
| Dave Fortman | 3:58 |
| 10. | "Save Me" (Alter Bridge) | Mark Tremonti | Ben Grosse | 3:27 |
| 11. | "Beautiful" (The Dreaming) |
| Jay Baumgardner | 3:03 |
| 12. | "Hollow" (Submersed) |
| Don Gilmore | 4:04 |
| 13. | "Angels With Even Filthier Souls" (Hawthorne Heights) | Hawthorne Heights | Hawthorne Heights | 2:55 |
| 14. | "5 Years" (The Twenty Twos) |
| Bryce Goggin | 3:52 |
| 15. | "In the Light" (Full Blown Rose) |
|
| 4:13 |
TheDVD ofElektra was released on April 5, 2005. It featured severaldeleted scenes, including one featuringBen Affleck reprising his role fromElektra's predecessor,Daredevil (2003). It was released on VHS in May 2005.[citation needed]
An extended and slightly refined two-disc unrateddirector's cut DVD was released in October 2005, featuring a cut detailed for home video release.[14] Unlike theDaredevil director's cut which added about thirty minutes of material not in the original theatrical release, this version only changed about seven minutes of footage, extending the total runtime by just three minutes.[15] It was also criticized for poor video transfer.[9]
ABlu-ray ofElektra was released on October 19, 2009, for release in the United Kingdom and France. The US version was released on May 4, 2010. It contains only the unrated director's cut of the film.[16]
Elektra opened on January 14, 2005, in the United States in 3,204 theatres. In its opening weekend, it ranked fifth, taking $12,804,793.[2] In its second weekend, it took $3,964,598, a drop of 69%.[17] Domestically the total gross was $24,409,722, at the time the lowest for a film featuring a Marvel Comics character sinceHoward the Duck.[18][19] The film had a worldwide total of $56,681,566.[2]
The film received largely negative reviews from film critics. OnRotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 11%, based on 164 reviews with an average rating of 3.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Jennifer Garner inhabits her role with earnest gusto, butElektra's tone-deaf script is too self-serious and bereft of intelligent dialogue to provide engaging thrills."[20] OnMetacritic, the film has a score of 34 out of 100 based on 35 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.[21] Audiences surveyed byCinemaScore gave the film a grade "B" on scale of A to F.[22]
Roger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times gave the film 1.5 out of 4, and wrote: "Plays like a collision between leftover bits and pieces of Marvel superhero stories. It can't decide what tone to strike."[23] Helen O'Hara atEmpire magazine gave the film 2 out of 5 stars, and says "Despite oozing star quality, Garner struggles to rise above the limitations of the script."[24] Brian Lowry ofVariety writes: "Elektra proves no more than fitfully satisfying, a character-driven superhero yarn whose flurry of last-minute rewriting shows in a disjointed plot."[25] Claudia Puig ofUSA Today writes "[Garner's] grace and mystical abilities make for a lonely burden, and we are supposed to feel her pain. Instead, we feel our own for having to sit through this silly movie." Puig concluded that Garner "is far more appealing when she's playing charming and adorable, as she did so winningly in13 Going on 30.[26] Paul Byrnes ofThe Sydney Morning Herald explained that "if the film isn't as bad as some others in the comics-to-cinema genre (Halle Berry'sCatwoman has rather lowered the bar), that's not to say it's good."[27] Jonathan Rosenbaum of theChicago Reader writes: "This doesn't exactly set the world on fire, but I was charmed by its old-fashioned storytelling, which is refreshingly free of archness, self-consciousness, orKill Bill-style wisecracks."[28]
Director Rob Bowman was somewhat surprised by the negative reviews. He accepted the difficulty of making something with mass market appeal. "Everybody likes ice cream, but not everybody likes chocolate ice cream". He acknowledged the film's shortcomings and said "if you can't handle people not liking what you do, you shouldn't be in the business".[10]
Jennifer Garner and Natassia Malthe were nominated for Best Kiss at the2005 MTV Movie Awards.[29][30] Garner was nominated in the category Choice Movie Actress: Action Adventure/Thriller at the2005 Teen Choice Awards.[31]
Film critic Scott Mendelson blamed the film for ruining Jennifer Garner's career, and said it killed off the notion of a female lead superhero movie for a decade.[32] In March 2005, producer Avi Arad told investors that Marvel had made a mistake rushingElektra into release. "We will never do that again," he said.[33] In an email released because of theSony Pictures hack, Marvel Entertainment CEOIke Perlmutter citedElektra as an example of an unprofitable female led superhero film. He wrote: "Very bad idea and the end result was very, very bad."[34][35]
In 2016, Katharine Trendacosta atio9 reviewed the film and called it "somehow so much worse than you remember" and said that the version of Elektra inNetflix'sDaredevil could only be an improvement.[36] Elektra appears in theMarvel's Netflix television seriesDaredevil andThe Defenders, portrayed byÉlodie Yung.[37]
Jennifer Garner's Elektra appears in theMarvel Cinematic Universe filmDeadpool & Wolverine (2024).[38]
Elektra was supposed to have avideo game based on the movie with support from the comics. The game was never released, aspublishers felt it would not be popular enough. A game based on the film was released formobile.[39][40]
That marks the weakest debut for a Marvel Comics adaptation during the franchise's recent movie renaissance
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