Mark Steven Johnson, who would go on to another underwhelming Marvel adaptation with “Ghostrider,” decided to base much of his film on Frank Miller’s run on the “Daredevil” comics. That mainly involved using the writer’s go-to lineup of Elektra, Kingpin, and Daredevil as the main characters. Unfortunately, that meant Jennifer Garner’s Elektra would suffer a violent death at the hands of Colin Farell’s Bullseye, who slices her throat with a playing card before stabbing her with her own sai, in a shot lifted straight from Miller’s “Last Hand” comic book storyline.
According to Johnson, the scene was originally a lot gorier than the version in the theatrical cut. Speaking to Yahoo on the film’s 20th anniversary, the director said, “That’s a scene I’m particularly proud of […] [Fox] were like, ‘It’s pretty gruesome!’ I do remember getting some blowback on that, because her death was quite graphic.”
While the scene was trimmed for the theatrical cut, the edits were put back in for the home video release of “Daredevil,” which constituted a director’s cut of the film that added more than half an hour of extra footage. Producer Gary Foster revealed in a making-of featurette that, “there was a cut of this film at a reasonable length that included the director’s cut material and it was something that we seriously considered as a theatrical cut of the film.” Ultimately though, quickening the pace and shooting for a PG-13 rating over an R rating took precedence, but Johnson always preferred his cut. As he told Yahoo, “It’s definitely a more complete version […] when you’re told to cut a half-hour out and make it more of a love story, things start to feel rushed and not quite right.”