Picoreview: Jessica Jones: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY
I had a concerned rant about Jessica Jones after the first trailer was released, and I am very very glad to say that my concerns were unfounded. The story was not, as it seemed from that trailer, “the girl is a victim but now she’s Fighting Back.” It was considerably more “the girl’s abuser returns and she fucks his shit up,” only vastly more awesome. It also wasn’t a *horror* vibe so much as a noir one (some of the CAMERA WORK, OMG!), which was a huge relief to me because I don’t actually like horror, as I find it, you know. Frightening.
Aesthetically holy crap what a great show. The look was straight out of the Alias comics to a far more dramatic degree than any of the other MCU stuff I’ve seen: the lighting, the makeup, the clothes, everything. Just wonderful.
Emotionally holy crap what an intense show. I can see where it would be very hard for some people to watch, because it deals pretty damn unflinchingly with abuse and recovery, on a whole bunch of different levels, a whole bunch of different characters, and in a whole bunch of different presentations of abuse. It’s *astounding*, in that regard. I’ve literally never seen anything like it.
Girl power holy crap possibly an unprecedented show. As one friend said, “Jessica Jones takes her pants off and I realize: this show has no male gaze.” This is true. There are no lingering loving T&A shots. The only people wandering around mostly naked, despite quite a number of sex scenes, are the men. Some guy on Twitter said words to the effect of “WTF JESSICA JONES ALL THE CHARACTERS ARE WOMEN THE MEN ARE EITHER BAD OR EYE CANDooooh. Oh. Ah. So *that’s* what that feels like…” Jessica Jones is literally a Strong Female Character, but much more importantly she’s also a brittle, fragile, clever, funny, stupid, powerful, frightened, brave, heroic, calm, crazy, gentle female character. She is, in other words, well-rounded and very human. Which is what we’re actually asking for when we say Strong Female Character.
Body count holy crap. At one point our house guest said, “I think this has a higher relative body count than Game of Thrones…” It’s a violent show, sometimes shockingly violent, and sometimes horrifyingly graphic, which I’m not that keen on. OTOH, it apparently never crossed the “I don’t even want to watch this” barrier that Daredevil basically hit with the first episode, though I don’t know if that was the grimdark or the actual violence in Daredevil.
Overall: holy crap! And my favourite line is behind the cut, not that it’s actually spoilery. :)
Kilgrave, petulant: Always having to be careful what I say! I once told a man to go screw himself. Can you imagine?
His delivery was just SO GREAT! Bahahahah!