Netflix’s new original series Jessica Jones is a dark superhero series set in the Marvel Universe. As with many such stories, it was once a comic book. And as with many such stories, especially those set in the Marvel Universe, I didn’t care for it.
First, let me be clear: I don’t care if something was once a comic book; if you make it a movie or a TV show then it has to stand alone in that medium. So while I am judging this without having read or been a fan of the original comics, I feel entitled to do so.
Jessica is a boring character. She has super strength but this came up so infrequently during the show that I managed to forget more than once. She’s dark, brooding, and a drunk — a modern cliche. She’s low on intelligence and high on self-pity. She did possess some compassion, which would have been a redeeming characteristic if she hadn’t been such an idiot about it.
Basically, Jessica had about a thousand chances to kill Killgrave. She chose not to because she wanted to prove a girl innocent of murder on the grounds that Killgrave (mental compulsion) made her do it. Meanwhile, Killgrave kept killing more and more and more and mroe and more people.
Killgrave was the reason I started watching the show; I knew David Tennant played the role and I’m a fan of his. Indeed, Tennant is a marvelous actor who brought life and depth to a character who otherwise had very little. Yet even Tennant’s skills couldn’t keep me afraid of Killgrave for long. As I said, there were just too many times he could have died.
I think that this series should have been a movie. There just wasn’t enough content to merit 13 episodes.