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It wasn't Killgrave, it was the doctor who performed the surgery.
Jessica Jones
- Thread starter Jace911
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Jace911
Spider-Dork
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I haven't finished the series yet (Got up to episode 8 last night and had to stop, sweet Christmas) but I loved the bit where
Jess flipped her shit and tore into the vigilante couple about their fucking idiotic revenge-logic, because I'm also forcing myself to watch Heroes Reborn out of nostalgia and I was able to mentally substitute the vigilante couple from that show into this one and it was pretty much what I wanted to scream at them every time they were onscreen.
Hotdog Vendor
Author of 'Sisters of Rail'
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Watched the first ep the day before yesterday. Took me a bit to figure out what was going on since the onky thing I knew about Jessica Jones was that she's a Marvel character named Jessica Jones. (And thanks to an annoying poster in the Worm thread, that she had a relationship with someone named Luke.)
Watched the rest of the eps yesterday. Can't really add much to what's already been said. It's certainly well made and well structured.
I didn't pay much attention to the opening credits until ep 13 (I watched them in the first ep but didn't really read many of the names, then skipped them until the final ep cos they're over a minute long). And then my brain went: "Oh, Carrie-Anne Moss! I knew I knew that lawyer from somewhere, she's Trinity, duh!"
lol
Watched the rest of the eps yesterday. Can't really add much to what's already been said. It's certainly well made and well structured.
I didn't pay much attention to the opening credits until ep 13 (I watched them in the first ep but didn't really read many of the names, then skipped them until the final ep cos they're over a minute long). And then my brain went: "Oh, Carrie-Anne Moss! I knew I knew that lawyer from somewhere, she's Trinity, duh!"
lol
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
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Bargain Bin Cap.
Athene
Rise for the Shadow Queen
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So I'm not going to do a full write up yet since we're not done yet but:
I like how Kilgrave faked lip reading using the information from Jessicas phone and also the fact that Hogarth is such a lawyer that Kilgrave had to repeat a command because she chose to interpret it as being rhetorical.
I really liked the first episode, because it was really confrontational with its themes of vulnerability and control. It sold the horror of being controlled but kept this grounded in the reality that this (and worse) happens to women every single day, everywhere. The show felt like it took a big step back from this as the focus shifted to sex-with-underpants-on and wasn't able to sustain the jeopardy. In broad strokes some of the story beats are excellent
but the actual execution didn't deliver on the promise of the first episode.
After Daredevil's fight choreography, the fights in JJ were terrible. On a personal level, I find the comicbook rationales for 'heroes' not killing people because its 'wrong' quite childish.
(the Doctor taking away Jessica's only emotional anchor after her coercion and rape by buying her old house and symbolically placing himself in her safe place)
After Daredevil's fight choreography, the fights in JJ were terrible. On a personal level, I find the comicbook rationales for 'heroes' not killing people because its 'wrong' quite childish.
tankdrop24
Tread First into Hell
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To be fair, a good portion of the people JJ fought in this were mind controlled but otherwise innocent, so killing them would be kind of messed up.
That works some of the time, but when critical objects or people are in jeopardy, she loses because she's 'holding back'. This is really common in comicbooks, and I guess viewers are supposed to accept it, but I don't. I don't think it fits Jessica's character, her anger, or her desire for revenge. It could have been addressed in the narrative, though, if the writers were aware of it - abuse victims often struggle to find the ability to really fight back, resist, or leave and this would have tied right back into the strengths of the story.
It isn't anything to do with her being 'untrained': they lack the impact, the physicality of DD's fights and certainly lack their consequences. 'Stuntman flies backward and knocks over pile of pallets' isn't about 'training', its about how the fights look. I think JJ's fights look cheap in a way that DDs fights were extremely polished and well shot.
Athene
Rise for the Shadow Queen
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Luckily that's the entire arc of the season!
Yeah well I thought it was going to be the confrontational and excellent exploration of women in abusive relationships and how feeling empowered works and how super strength useless in personal struggles and stuff.
So I set myself up for disappointment after the first episode. It was even shot really well, used purple cues really well, all kinds of stuff.
Athene
Rise for the Shadow Queen
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That's the theme of the show: a lot of the episodes hit me hard and were excellent.
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Was able to use Thanksgiving to finally push through and finish this.
Overall I really liked this. I'm a Krysten Ritter stan and if we as a world are not worthy of more Chloe I will gladly take Jessica Jones. Hopefully now that Killgrave is out of the picture the show will actually let her utilize her full snark range, and the creative team has shown they have a supreme command of the tone they want. I also really loved that "Superpowered woman who solves crime while eschewing using her superpowers" is an inverse to the "Gifted man solves procedural crime using quirk/powers" that makes up 85% of television.
I have to agree about the fight sequence being underwhelming. It's not a matter of not matching Daredevil (not everything has to be single take beatdowns) but rather that the show seemed to be bored by them. I also might be alone in this, but by the end of the series I had no idea just how 'super' strong Jessica was supposed to be; Cage and Simpson always appeared to be a match for her. Thankfully, as Killgrave became more prominent it doubled down on it's strongest aspect, the increasingly unsettling mind controlled mise en scene.
Killgrave himself was an interesting experience. Before I started watching I had read a bunch of reviews that pegged him as a sociopathic supervillain, and I was initially nonplussed because I was expecting something akin to Mads!Hannibal but Tennant was playing him much more hammy/petulant. Around the time that the survivor's group is being interviewed and the women share stories of being forced to smile it clicked that he wasn't a pure evil supervillain, but rather a MRA/Gamergator with the ability to enforce his worldview, which I guess might be even worse since it's actually only a few heartbeats away from reality. I especially liked how offended he got when he was accused of being a rapist.
However, I don't think he had enough story meat to justify 13 episodes by himself. I haven't read the Alias comic, but from what I've gathered that started with more run of the mill "days in the life of Jessica Jones" until he eventually took over the focus, which I think could have been used here. As is, the show peaked around episode 8-9 and then had to stall until the end confrontation (the support group overtaking Jessica right when she had Killgrave bound and gagged was especially glaring).
The supporting characters here were a lot more enjoyable than Daredevil, with the exception of Simpson. I guess he's another comics adoptee, but the whiplash from "Aggressive thrall to supporter to overeager killer to The Guest-lite" was too Heel Turny by half and could probably have been either left alone or at least shunted to the next season (although my dislike of him could also be because my girlfriend pointed out that his mouth was too small for his face and that was the only thing I could focus on when he was on screen). Looking forward to the Luke Cage show now, which I wasn't even thinking about before this.
I have to agree about the fight sequence being underwhelming. It's not a matter of not matching Daredevil (not everything has to be single take beatdowns) but rather that the show seemed to be bored by them. I also might be alone in this, but by the end of the series I had no idea just how 'super' strong Jessica was supposed to be; Cage and Simpson always appeared to be a match for her. Thankfully, as Killgrave became more prominent it doubled down on it's strongest aspect, the increasingly unsettling mind controlled mise en scene.
Killgrave himself was an interesting experience. Before I started watching I had read a bunch of reviews that pegged him as a sociopathic supervillain, and I was initially nonplussed because I was expecting something akin to Mads!Hannibal but Tennant was playing him much more hammy/petulant. Around the time that the survivor's group is being interviewed and the women share stories of being forced to smile it clicked that he wasn't a pure evil supervillain, but rather a MRA/Gamergator with the ability to enforce his worldview, which I guess might be even worse since it's actually only a few heartbeats away from reality. I especially liked how offended he got when he was accused of being a rapist.
However, I don't think he had enough story meat to justify 13 episodes by himself. I haven't read the Alias comic, but from what I've gathered that started with more run of the mill "days in the life of Jessica Jones" until he eventually took over the focus, which I think could have been used here. As is, the show peaked around episode 8-9 and then had to stall until the end confrontation (the support group overtaking Jessica right when she had Killgrave bound and gagged was especially glaring).
The supporting characters here were a lot more enjoyable than Daredevil, with the exception of Simpson. I guess he's another comics adoptee, but the whiplash from "Aggressive thrall to supporter to overeager killer to The Guest-lite" was too Heel Turny by half and could probably have been either left alone or at least shunted to the next season (although my dislike of him could also be because my girlfriend pointed out that his mouth was too small for his face and that was the only thing I could focus on when he was on screen). Looking forward to the Luke Cage show now, which I wasn't even thinking about before this.
ZerbanDaGreat
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I really wish someone in the editing room had realised that the slow motion really isn't as cool as the director thought.
Jessica ignoring Kilgrave's control should have been a big, impactful moment. Instead it was ruined by WOOOSH FLASHBACK TO WHAT YOU LITERALLY JUST SAW and "Llllllllleeeeeeeeeettttttttt gggggggggooooooooo oooooooofffffffffff mmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeee Jjjjjjeeeeeeeessssssssssssiiiiiiiiiiiiccccccccccccaaaaaaaaaaaa". Not to mention Jessica looking unreasonably pleased with herself when Kilgrave has literally just run off to go mindrape and kill more people. A really disappointing and somewhat insulting to my intelligence as a viewer capper to an otherwise great episode.
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I can't defend the slo-mo, but I will say that describing her as "unreasonably pleased" is sort of underselling the moment. Not for nothing, but I think that's her first(/only?) unforced smile in the series, and it totally makes sense that it comes from her realization that she's finally free.
ZerbanDaGreat
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Yeah and Kilgrave literally just got away scott-free for the third time after having made his mother kill herself, nearly made Trish kill herself, and absconded with their police witness.
I just think the scene would've been much better if they'd cut the slowmo flashbacks and just ended it on Jessica looking down at her hand. Less uncharacteristically disrespectful to the audience's intelligence, basically.
Edit:
I think they cast Tennant solely to troll Tumblr. He embodies their every probhurklematic trigger yet he's David Tennant, and his natural charisma manifests in unsettlingly familiar shades of the Tenth Doctor. The doublethink required by most of his fan girls will overheat their brains like porridge until it oozes out their ears.
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There's one more.
It's right at the end, and you're meant to think it's a forced one if not for the fact that it is totally unlike any other smile that Jessica makes
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Ehhh, like eight episodes earlier she was willing to hop on a plane and intentionally leave Hope to be raped/murdered because the thought of getting Killgraved again freaked her out so much. She's allowed to smile at the discovery that she's now free of her greatest fear.
ZerbanDaGreat
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mmmmm
Alright, so, first of all. "It's just like the GooberGrapers!" is going full Polygon. Never go full Polygon. Second of all it's just disingenuous and wholly disrespectful to the script's and Tennant's skilled efforts to give Kilgrave dimensions and depth. "He's like them there internet misogynists I heard about on Twitter" is incorrect. Kilgrave doesn't hate women. The only group he feels any kind of special antipathy for is children,
probably out of a sort of subconscious self-loathing. Kilgrave is himself a child, someone who has never heard the word 'no' in his life and never had to develop emotionally from 10 when his powers came in. The idea of someone else's feelings mattering, the concept of "sitting around hoping people will do what you want them to do", is entirely foreign. His fixation with Jessica is solely because she was the only person in however many years who ever refused him, and that's a shiny new interesting thing he desperately wants to play with.
Moving into Jessica's house, replacing everything exactly as it was based on obsessively studying realtor photos, is obviously creepy to Jessica and anyone watching. But he genuinely doesn't see it that way. He thinks he's being romantic. He thinks this is what Jessica will like. He pitched a full-blown tantrum in the police station when someone 'ruined' the mood while he was trying to "profess eternal love". He thinks paying the staff handsomely then holding them hostage on threat of death is totally different from using his powers on Jessica, suffers their mere presence at the dinner table solely because Jessica asked him. Saw absolutely nothing wrong with making the crazy father blow his own head off, and all he took from the 'heroism' thing was the ego-stroking rush of the mother thanking him. Remember, he murdered the shit out of Reuben because he dared profess love for Purest Waifu and therefore he just had to go. He didn't even have to say anything. The sheer "you gon' git it now" in his face before the scene-change said volumes.
Kilgrave is a warped, emotionally-stunted narcissist. He's offended when Jessica says he raped her because, well, there was no roofies or back-alley struggles. He takes his 'girlfriends' out and shows them a good time, fine dining and nice things. He had fun so they, obviously, had fun too. Then he moves on, and never has to confront the fact that other people have lives that are ruined by what he did. Hell, in a way he gives women preferential treatment. At least he never said "leave your son on the kerb and drive off" or "beat your head on this post!" to any of his girlfriends. Of course Jessica's accusation would completely nonplus him. Especially since he 'fixed' his behaviour so obviously she has nothing to complain about any more, right?. His behaviour really has more in common with the 'billionaire playboy who lives by his own rules' archetype than a fat neckbeard sitting in a dark basement rubbing his hands and disdainfully muttering "women".
And even though his version of his backstory turns out to be warped too, I don't think it was all an act. David Tennant seems to play it like Kilgrave believes it. His anguish at seeing his parents again is entirely real. It would suck to grow up with those kinds of powers, powers you have absolutely no control over but for exactingly careful word-choice. His vocal stumbles when buying Jessica's old house may be comedic but the fact that he faced that his entire life doesn't make it hard to understand why he eventually just gave up trying to avoid it. And in the end his parents did abandon him rather than try to help their son, blamed him for it all and ran.
Plus Jessica does, like, actively torture him. Even if he is a monster, what she did to him was kind of fucked up. Especially because she got less than no results.
But hey maybe I'm wrong and sometime in episodes 10-13 Kilgrave will suddenly blurt out "IT'S ACTUALLY ABOUT ETHICS IN MARVEL COMICS, GO HOME GAMERGIRL" and yell at Female Thor for being a feminazi while posting mean things on Twitter and ordering Dead Or Alive Xreme 3 on Play Asia while Trish dramatically says "he levelled up"
Moving into Jessica's house, replacing everything exactly as it was based on obsessively studying realtor photos, is obviously creepy to Jessica and anyone watching. But he genuinely doesn't see it that way. He thinks he's being romantic. He thinks this is what Jessica will like. He pitched a full-blown tantrum in the police station when someone 'ruined' the mood while he was trying to "profess eternal love". He thinks paying the staff handsomely then holding them hostage on threat of death is totally different from using his powers on Jessica, suffers their mere presence at the dinner table solely because Jessica asked him. Saw absolutely nothing wrong with making the crazy father blow his own head off, and all he took from the 'heroism' thing was the ego-stroking rush of the mother thanking him. Remember, he murdered the shit out of Reuben because he dared profess love for Purest Waifu and therefore he just had to go. He didn't even have to say anything. The sheer "you gon' git it now" in his face before the scene-change said volumes.
Kilgrave is a warped, emotionally-stunted narcissist. He's offended when Jessica says he raped her because, well, there was no roofies or back-alley struggles. He takes his 'girlfriends' out and shows them a good time, fine dining and nice things. He had fun so they, obviously, had fun too. Then he moves on, and never has to confront the fact that other people have lives that are ruined by what he did. Hell, in a way he gives women preferential treatment. At least he never said "leave your son on the kerb and drive off" or "beat your head on this post!" to any of his girlfriends. Of course Jessica's accusation would completely nonplus him. Especially since he 'fixed' his behaviour so obviously she has nothing to complain about any more, right?. His behaviour really has more in common with the 'billionaire playboy who lives by his own rules' archetype than a fat neckbeard sitting in a dark basement rubbing his hands and disdainfully muttering "women".
And even though his version of his backstory turns out to be warped too, I don't think it was all an act. David Tennant seems to play it like Kilgrave believes it. His anguish at seeing his parents again is entirely real. It would suck to grow up with those kinds of powers, powers you have absolutely no control over but for exactingly careful word-choice. His vocal stumbles when buying Jessica's old house may be comedic but the fact that he faced that his entire life doesn't make it hard to understand why he eventually just gave up trying to avoid it. And in the end his parents did abandon him rather than try to help their son, blamed him for it all and ran.
Plus Jessica does, like, actively torture him. Even if he is a monster, what she did to him was kind of fucked up. Especially because she got less than no results.
But hey maybe I'm wrong and sometime in episodes 10-13 Kilgrave will suddenly blurt out "IT'S ACTUALLY ABOUT ETHICS IN MARVEL COMICS, GO HOME GAMERGIRL" and yell at Female Thor for being a feminazi while posting mean things on Twitter and ordering Dead Or Alive Xreme 3 on Play Asia while Trish dramatically says "he levelled up"
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You missed the key part of the post, which was "ability to enforce their worldview". MRAs don't hate women because they're women. They hate them because they bought into the idea that women to act like slot machines where you insert nice deeds or
ZerbanDaGreat
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Please stop reducing a well-written character to the latest internet buzzword.
Athene
Rise for the Shadow Queen
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He's a well written character in a very feminist show. They may be grasping clumsily at it with what langauge but he's a wide swath of common misogynist behaviors/attitudes, abuser behaviors and has the literal power of removing other people's agency.
Yes he's well written, yes he has other aspects of his but that doesn't mean it isn't there. I mean, it's kind of really obviously there in sixty foot tall letters sometimes.
ZerbanDaGreat
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"JJ is a feminist drama and Kilgrave represents soggy knees everywhere" smacks as a distinctly surface-level analysis to me. Granted I have some episodes to go, but I'm the majority of the way through so there's really just plot left to wrap up, not theme.
The theme I see is that while Jessica's abuse (and later Hope's abuse in episode one) - 'guy uses up woman and throws her away' - is how we're introduced to Kilgrave it's not all there is. It's a familiar drama that introduces the audience to the world, but the view through that lens quickly expands. Kilgrave's female victims almost fall to the wayside about a third or half of the way in. It's a very diverse bunch that he encounters, a completely indiscriminate "trail of broken people" he leaves behind, and the men he abuses are treated just as solemnly as the women. The audience might assume Will Simpson just another throwaway Kilgrave-Pawn, for example (he certainly smacks of 'disposable goon'), but then he survives and his character opens up. His pain and shame over what he did to Trish isn't shied away from (though I think it's kind of stupid they got over it and shacked up in one episode). He's even more GOTTA KILL-GRAVE FAST AND SUFENTANIL TOO SLOW than Jessica, to the point that he's on-track for DRUG-POWER on the level of "Cocaine is my God" Snowflame.
Basically what I'm saying is that the show has more going on than "Isn't it terrible when men rape women tho?" "Yeah, well, no shit, dummy". It's about the idea of consent and agency as a whole. The constant paranoia and fear from Kilgrave's victims that maybe it's their fault that they did what he wanted. The universal feeling of powerlessness, that everything you have can be snatched away in an instant. The idea that control can be taken away from you, right back to Kilgrave as its first victim. He never asked for his powers, but he got them anyway, and after a lifetime of using them as a crutch in place of emotional maturity he's been left a completely irreparable mental hunchback. The same way that Simpson's abuse re-triggered some kind of serious War Shit he had otherwise under wraps to transform him fully into Evil Steve. The same way Malcolm got his life fucked up with drugs. The same way the paramedic at the scene of the bush crash had his life turned into a torturous hell from which he can never escape. The same way Jessica being made to murder Reva shattered whatever she and Luke might have had. To be honest, murdering Reva seems to weigh on Jessica's conscience so much more than anything else she ever suffered under Kilgrave's control that her outburst about him raping her seemed completely out of nowhere. Especially since Kilgrave never did rape Jessica in the comics. So chalk that one up as a bizarre change.
And in the end (in relative terms at least), Jessica discovers that sometimes the fear really is just the fear. She confronts Kilgrave and realizes he simply doesn't have any power over her any more. It's a triumph of personal agency just as real as Malcolm's will to flush his drugs rather than get his next hit. Or even going back to Trish having the courage to let Simpson into her apartment rather than keep him shut out where it was safer. It's a show about personal agency and the power for people, all kinds of people, to make the best of their situations and take control. That's why Kilgrave, the man who always has control and always takes control, is the villain. Not because he posts on /v/.
Basically what I'm saying is that the show has more going on than "Isn't it terrible when men rape women tho?" "Yeah, well, no shit, dummy". It's about the idea of consent and agency as a whole. The constant paranoia and fear from Kilgrave's victims that maybe it's their fault that they did what he wanted. The universal feeling of powerlessness, that everything you have can be snatched away in an instant. The idea that control can be taken away from you, right back to Kilgrave as its first victim. He never asked for his powers, but he got them anyway, and after a lifetime of using them as a crutch in place of emotional maturity he's been left a completely irreparable mental hunchback. The same way that Simpson's abuse re-triggered some kind of serious War Shit he had otherwise under wraps to transform him fully into Evil Steve. The same way Malcolm got his life fucked up with drugs. The same way the paramedic at the scene of the bush crash had his life turned into a torturous hell from which he can never escape. The same way Jessica being made to murder Reva shattered whatever she and Luke might have had. To be honest, murdering Reva seems to weigh on Jessica's conscience so much more than anything else she ever suffered under Kilgrave's control that her outburst about him raping her seemed completely out of nowhere. Especially since Kilgrave never did rape Jessica in the comics. So chalk that one up as a bizarre change.
And in the end (in relative terms at least), Jessica discovers that sometimes the fear really is just the fear. She confronts Kilgrave and realizes he simply doesn't have any power over her any more. It's a triumph of personal agency just as real as Malcolm's will to flush his drugs rather than get his next hit. Or even going back to Trish having the courage to let Simpson into her apartment rather than keep him shut out where it was safer. It's a show about personal agency and the power for people, all kinds of people, to make the best of their situations and take control. That's why Kilgrave, the man who always has control and always takes control, is the villain. Not because he posts on /v/.
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Athene
Rise for the Shadow Queen
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I had to look up that this was some Gamergate thing but it's kind of really obvious there's a lot of feminism in the writing. I mean, they're laid it on pretty thick in parts.
It would be a bit sad if you think that's mutually exclusive with good characterization and writing or thematic resonance.