Jessica Jones (2015)

It took me four days to get through the Netflix-exclusive Daredevil back in April, but this weekend’s release of Jessica Jones only lasted me two days. Not that Marvel has delivered fewer than 13 episodes this time around – same Bat-time, same Bat-channel, true believers. It’s just that I found Jessica Jones more engaging, more accomplished, and more addicting than the already first-rate Daredevil. As wonderful as Marvel’s first Netflix series was, Jessica Jones is the new crown jewel in Marvel’s television stable.

Krysten Ritter stars as the eponymous private investigator, hard-talking and even harder-drinking. Using her remarkable super-strength only when she has to, Jessica picks up the case of a missing athlete (Erin Moriarty), only to discover that the case is linked to an old enemy (David Tennant), whose fixation on Jessica makes him a dangerous foe. Against her instinct to isolate herself, Jessica draws on the help of her old friend Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor) and new flame Luke Cage (Mike Colter), while her lawyer/employer Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss) wrestles with an impending divorce.

I’ll say right off the bat that I think the major reason I rank Jessica Jones more highly than Daredevil is freshness. Not that Daredevil was stale, by any measure – and I should also clarify that my praise of Jessica Jones isn’t at all to denigrate Daredevil; rather, it’s a mark of how much higher Jessica Jones sets the bar, due largely to the character’s novelty. We all had a sense of how Daredevil was going to play out, tracing the simultaneous rise of Hell’s Kitchen’s greatest hero and villain, culminating with... well, you know how these kinds of stories play out.

A few hours into Jessica Jones, I realized that I couldn’t say the same for this show. I know how I wanted it to end, certainly, but I couldn’t guarantee that we’d get the ending we wanted. Indeed, there are a number of twists and turns in the show that I honestly didn’t see coming, which makes for a comparably more enjoyable show in terms of edge-of-the-seat viewing. I don’t want to spoil anything here, but the narrative winds around story beats that are really only possible when a character isn’t caught up in 50 years of iconic stories (because let’s face it, Daredevil has had many long-running arcs to which any adaptation must pay homage).

At the center of it all, you have two extraordinarily dynamic performances from Ritter and Tennant, who get to play off each other much more than Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio, who were kept apart for much of Daredevil. Ritter gives Jessica Jones the hard edge the character needs, distinguishing her from other “strong female protagonists” by emphasizing the brokenness under the surface, a tragedy repressed by alcohol, cynicism, and casual sex. Her character crackles, especially in scenes with Tennant, who plays the sadistic sociopath Kilgrave (known to comics fans as the mind-controlling Purple Man). Tennant is getting cascades of praise for his role as the show’s villain, and rightly so – short of Kingpin and maybe Loki, Kilgrave is Marvel’s new best villain because of how intensely and immediately loathsome he is. And yet – there’s a creepy way that Tennant pitches for the audience’s sympathy, even in light of his casual and frankly terrifying violence; there’s something of Kingpin’s childish tantrums in Kilgrave, but in a way that’s more horrifying for how little he seems to care.

The supporting cast are equally strong, with only Colter’s Luke Cage managing to wrestle the show away from its two leads – in large part, that’s due to Luke being next in line for his own Marvel show, but he also has a unique chemistry with Jessica that makes me think neither standalone show will be getting a second season; rather, I’d put money on a Jones/Cage team-up (following, I’d wager, the comics couple’s quirky courtship). There are winks and nods to elsewhere in the Marvel continuity; the films are kept at arm’s length, but we have allusions to Hellcat, Nuke, Iron Fist, and maybe even Spider-Woman and Gladiator (because, to be fair, how many Melvins are running around Hell’s Kitchen?). But as a piece, Jessica Jones doesn’t feel too tied into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. I think there’s room in the MCU for these standalone stories, which can easily be woven into the larger tapestry later. With Jessica Jones, Ritter is poised to be the next big star of the MCU, and it’s easy to imagine an Avenger turning to her to track down someone, or just to lift a car over her head.

Along with feeling a step away from the MCU proper, there is the matter of tone to consider – by which I mean that Jessica Jones is the uneasiest entry in the ten years of Marvel productions, giving me the feeling of physical revulsion more often than ever. At one point, I literally had to stop and shower, and not just because I’d been in my pajamas for hours at a stretch. This show is much more uncomfortable, more unsettling, and more frank than anything else we’ve seen with a Stan Lee cameo (and yes, he’s in there). Kudos to the showrunners for sticking to a vision and a tone which must have rattled the bottom-line-conscious brass.

Jessica Jones is dark, it’s daring, it’s uncomfortable – and it’s bloody brilliant, television most foul as in the best it is. As the best binges induce, I want more.

Jessica Jones is rated TV-MA. As Marvel productions go, it’s the sexiest; although there’s no nudity, there are some pretty intense sex scenes and frank discussions of rape. Language is fairly salty in the S-words range, but the violence is substantially less graphic than in Daredevil. Psychologically, though, it’s much more troubling.

Monday at the Movies - January 28, 2013

Welcome to this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week, two animated features – both nominated for an Academy Award, no less.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) – One of the best things I can say about Steven Spielberg’s Tintin adaptation (the first in a purported franchise) is that in many ways it’s the “Young Indiana Jones” movie we never actually got to see.  Based on the iconic comic series by Hergé, this film finds Tintin (Jamie Bell) on an adventure to uncover lost treasure amid the mystery of identical model ships.  Tintin recruits the help of the besotted Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) before the sinister Sakharine (Daniel Craig) can unearth the secret of the Unicorn.  Under Spielberg’s direction (and John Williams’s rousing score), the comparison to Indiana Jones is particularly apt because Tintin is littered with action sequences that require only a fedora and a whip to fit into Indy’s canon; though the stakes are often quite low (we know, for instance, that Tintin is untouchable and free from danger), the spectacle Spielberg creates is thrilling and a treat to watch.  The animation style, somewhere near that “uncanny valley” of digital resemblance, may be off-putting to some viewers, but I found the quasi-realistic renderings mostly undistracting, adding to the slightly surreal atmosphere of the movie.  Digitally painting over the actors both approximates Hergé’s style while allowing actors to take on roles beyond their “type” – casting Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, for example, as the identical bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson is visually unlikely but possible (and fantastic) in Tintin.  All told, Tintin was more fun than I was expecting, a welcome relief from Spielberg’s recent “heavier” work and a reminder of the childlike awe his movies can bring.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with “childlike.”)

The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012) – In a post-Depp world, we’ve seen an infusion of piratical adventures featuring swashbucklers of every ilk (even Doctor Who got in on the act with “The Curse of the Black Spot”).  But Band of Misfits is by far the most irreverent, throwing anachronisms to the wind like so much topsail being unfurled.  Rendered in the claymation style popularized by Wallace & Gromit, The Pirates stars Hugh Grant as the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain, whose quest for the coveted Pirate of the Year Award is waylaid when Charles Darwin (David Tennant) discovers that the Pirate Captain’s parrot is actually a presumed-extinct dodo.  Along the way, the pirates run afoul of the pirate vendetta of Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton), as well as the Pirate King dressed suspiciously like Elvis.  If all of this sounds like it doesn’t fit, you’d be right, but that’s the brand of humor served up by director Peter Lord; in typical British fashion, cheekiness is the order of the day, governed by “It just is” logic.  The Pirate Captain is an out-of-type choice for Hugh Grant, who’s usually more at home as the foppish and awkward elite in love, but he lends the requisite confidence and swagger to the Captain.  Historical buffs may quibble – after all, Darwin never trained a monkey to speak using an infinite supply of notecards – but surrender to the ludic whimsy of the film is required.  If one can believe it, The Pirates (recently nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Film) takes itself less seriously than the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and that’s such a good thing.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!