By Quinn Newland
With the recent and rapid expansion of the Marvel universe, the cinema just doesn’t have enough space to put all the material Marvel needs to to keep its universe coherent. Enter the addition of television programs which started with Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which is a relatively good, albeit very cliche, show that airs on ABC. With the failure of the quest to create a new movie, Marvel’s Daredevil moved to Netflix as an episodic TV show, and with amazing success at that. Then came Marvel’s Jessica Jones, another dark and gritty superhero TV show. The question that requires answering is “was Daredevil a one-off success?” The answer is a resounding hell no.
Daredevil, the story of a blind lawyer-by-day, vigilante-by-night, was a new type of superhero material from Marvel. It was dark and gritty, violent and pulpy, disturbing and hard to stomach, but that’s just the type of change-up that was needed. Bones protrude from arms and guts spill out, gangsters swear frequently and with much fervor, and the cast is really built around a series of newcomers, no Robert Downey Jr. or Paul Rudd to save the day here. Marvel and Netflix both had faith that their product had both the crowd draw and appeal to keep people coming back. Boy were they right. The actors are phenomenal in an immediately gripping and fast-paced narrative that doesn’t set you down for one second. Several comedic lines and moments aside, Daredevil is an almost disturbingly dark and unrelentingly grim TV show and it is not afraid to pull any punches, or more often than not, knives. Other than a somewhat, but not completely, disappointing main villain, there is no single part of Daredevil that is disappointing. It added a much needed shot of adrenaline to the superhero genre as a whole, and proved maybe a TV show based around that wasn’t as bad of an idea after all.
The question still remains about if it was just a one-time fluke, just pure luck. With the recent release of Marvel’s second TV show on Netflix, Jessica Jones, this can finally be answered. Jessica Jones is a dark, well-paced, beautifully told superhero story, and not in a way that the audience will be used to either. It tells the story of superhero Jessica Jones, but not at the beginning. It starts off in the middle sometime after some truly horrific events have left her deeply damaged and disturbed, so bad that she spends most of her days drinking and trying to forget the past. This is a more slow-paced and character based show; there are still several fight scenes but they are few and far between. Thankfully rising actress Krysten Ritter does an amazing job as the main character, portraying such a challenging and damaged role absolutely perfectly. The shows other real strength is the villain. Unlike Daredevil, which had a villain that should have been terrifying and wasn’t, Jessica Jones villain is one that maybe shouldn’t be just quite as terrifying as he actually is. Played by David Tennant, Kilgrave is a truly creepy and disturbing villain, one with a penchant for taking mind-control to a new level of evil. Along with wonderful writing, and a dark grimy color palette, Jessica Jones is one of the best female superhero portrayals to date.
If there’s two shows you binge over break, make it these two. Both have only one season, with 13 episodes each, and are well worth the many hours it will take to complete them. Daredevil is a dark and action-packed thrill ride of a story, full of intense performances and perfectly staged action scenes. Jessica Jones is an extremely deep and personal story, one that’s not afraid to show you the darkness of humanity, that is impeccably well written and extremely addicting and interesting. Both show that Marvel is nowhere near reaching a peak in what they can create, and that Netflix is still at the forefront of television shows, and should continue to be for a long time.
