Thursday, July 18, 2019

A.K.A. The Ending




I know the Marvel post I should be releasing now is about Spider-Man: Far From Home.  However, I’m not over the massive emotional strain from the magnificent Toy Story 4 to be able to deal with the follow up to Endgame yet. 

More importantly, I needed to see Godzilla:King of the Monsters on a big screen for the third time.

Jessica Jones Season Three was the final appearance of the “Defenders” (really the Marvel Knights) series of serieses on Netflix. 

Will they come back on HULU, or in a movie?  Maybe after they figure out if the drop in ratings was due to the announced cancellations, or the other way around.

Whatever happens, Jessica Jones has consistently been one of the most well done and compelling shows of the group all along, and it provided a strong finish.

This remains impressive, as I mentioned for the second season, since many of the characters tend to be unlikable.   However, even the most unlikable characters are understandable and often relate-able. 

The third season improved over the second by bringing Jessica and Malcolm more towards “the light.” Introducing Erik as a jerk, but a charming jerk, whose heart is in the right place, helped as well.  Costa and Gillian were both also fun as likability rudders for Jessica as “normal” folks having to put up with the insanity of the superhero world that pulled her more to the good side.

The final season went back to use a villain as reprehensible and evil as Kilgrave was in the first.  The twist was where defeating Kilgrave involved working around his near unstoppable powers. Salinger had no powers, but had over the top skills and intelligence.   Some superheroing was needed for his defeat, but most of it revolved around Jessica’s Private Investigator abilities.

Besides straight out villains there are antagonists.   The show presented some complex views.  Hogarth remained a completely selfish and amoral individual.  Her medical condition was horrible, but didn’t make her less selfish or amoral.  Portraying her hardships in a sympathetic light, without making her sympathetic was impressively handled.

On the other hand, Dorothy was given more dimensions.  She’s still selfish and domineering, but also skilled in her calling in a way that helps not only the main characters, but, it turned out many others.  Like most of the show, and contrary to standard super hero fare, there are a lot of shades of grey.

Outside of Salinger that is. Sure he’s a complex individual, but a serial killer is flat out evil, which the show reminds us.

As for Trish- her arc may be an even better demonstration than Watchmen that those who would follow the standard comic book costumed vigilante arc are probably almost as unbalanced as those they fight. Additionally, that those actions probably wouldn’t work in the real world for moral, legal and practical reasons.

Overall, I'm sorry to see Jessica and Daredevil go the most, but the other three shows added a level of depth to the world they created showing the rays of hope down on the seedy underside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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