I thought Reemul was going a whole other direction, like the story got a little too horrifying and dark or something. Weak and annoying? Did not see that coming.
My Thoughts Expanded
I just did not enjoy the whole bought your old house thing with him, the lawyer stuff, the twin stuff, it felt disjointed and contrived, put in to prolong the story line. The whole torture stuff and freeing my friends as well, we must save them, when there must have been 1000’s of people used and discarded by him, like saving one is worth it when you kill him and stop all the stuff that followed. Also the contrivance with Luke Cage as well.
Kilgrave was portrayed more as a love struck loony than someone with this power that could be incredibly powerful and evil yet he did things like making an old fart throw a cup of coffee in his own face. Really you would just say fuck off over there and forget about the asshole as you are totally in control if you wish to be. It felt like a small man with small man syndrome when really he could have ruled the world, well more than a cop shop or a few birds to do his bidding, sure he wanted to expand on his power at the end but for the first 10 episodes he felt so insignificant to me.
Saying that I really enjoyed the first 6 episodes, it set the scene nicely and I enjoyed the characterization just not the last half of the storyline.
I somewhat agree Reemul. But that’s been a complaint of mine about every comic book hero ever, so it didn’t bother to me see the whole “We can’t just kill villain X because heroic reasons!” logic again here. It’s patently obvious that a bullet to the brain (or laser eye beams, or a super powered punch) at the earliest opportunity is the correct and logical response to a supervillain that can’t be adequately contained or controlled by the law enforcement or prison systems of a mundane society. But since that makes for boring stories it never happens.
As to Killgrave’s character, I agree that it was weird but I think it worked for him given his backstory. Someone like that never learns to function in society as a normal person because they never get to learn to interact with others in a normal fashion. I think the show did a great job of laying out his backstory, making us understand where he was coming from, and then showing that the explanations aren’t excuses and he’s still a monster.
Yeah they are good points, I just found 6 episodes of it from episodes 8-13 a tad too many.
Er, wouldn’t those be ovaries-to-the-wall ?
I calls 'em like I sees 'em.
I think we’re getting a general consensus that while these Netflix things are great, there’s a bit of a problem with the makers trying to stretch things out to fill up 12/13 episodes. JJ particularly suffers from this, but DD was pretty stretched-out in places too.
They need to sort this out, either have 10 episodes, or just make the “filler” and main-story-stretching better.
I think they could fill it with quests, what I mean is the focus doesn’t have to be only on the main baddie, lets have some more side quests. I would have happily seen JJ doing a secondary PI job alongside the main one showing how she manages day to day as a PI
Yeah, I think that, while “villain of the day” stuff can get a bit boring if it’s overused, it would probably be good to have more of that sort of thing in these series - but artfully composed. I suppose budget constraints loom in that case (more CGI, e.g.)
Maybe part of the problem with the JJ filler stuff was that they tried too hard to weave it into the narrative of the main story. They can relax on that - it’s ok to have just a few random cat-in-tree-saving moments here and there. For example, we could have expanded the whole story of JJ’s early superheroing adventures a bit more, her saving the wee girl was delightful and we could have done with a few more of those.
Re. the Simpson thing - I wonder if it was annoying because the actor just wasn’t suitable for the role somehow (not that he’s a bad actor necessarily, but just that somehow he wasn’t quite gelling in the role - although mind you, it’s quite a difficult, schizophrenic role to play).
Wife and I just finished this series and we thought it was really great. I didn’t notice any slowness to the series but I did roll my eyes at the 3rd or 4th coincidental Kilgrave escape, that guy had nine-lives luck going on.
I felt Kilgrave was a particularly evil villain, I guess it was just the 'real’ness of his destruction of lives. Super powered evil aliens with gems of power just seems so far away from casually-forcing some poor guy to leave his 1 year old on the side of a busy road, maybe that is just the parent in me talking. Or the coffee example, every interaction with Kilgrave was disproportional: Kilgrave says a couple words and never thinks on it again, the recipient has months or years or a life-time of damage. The casualness and callousness of Kilgrave was hideous.
Agreed. The small, deeply personal scale of the damage and harm wrought in this series was part of what made it so utterly captivating for me . . . also rubs some people the wrong way, I think. A close friend is essentially unable to watch or think about the series without reliving some very terrible and private events in her earlier life, to the point where she’s asked people not even bring it up around her. Sad, of course, but also–to me–reflects the accuracy with which they depicted that sort of damage.
You can see uteruses? Not the best mutant power I’ve ever heard of, but hey, take what you can get.
That would be really disconcerting.
I just finished the series and largely agree with what was said earlier in the thread by Reemul and others, although I maybe like the early stuff more, don’t mind the house-sitting segue – but then I think it goes quite a bit off the rails around episode 9 or 10. I’ll put my thoughts in spoiler tags for people coming to this thread later:
things start to fall apart
[spoiler]Things really fall apart, I think, after Killgrave is captured. The plot gets exceptionally contrived - if Simpson had gotten blown up by the bomb at the house I would have been fine with his contribution, although I thought the actor was weak. But his turn as a villain just seemed silly and so contrived - cop Killgrave just happened to send to kill Trish just happened to be a former special ops guy…um, o.k., although “beat cop” is not a normal segue from that job…but then he also was in the super soldier program? I didn’t realize that he was the Marvel villain “Nuke” until after the show, and I don’t think that adds anything. Him killing the cop seemed silly, him trying to kill Jessica seemed silly, the lurking supersoldiers all seemed really out of place.
But even worse than that was the resolution of the other threads that were, up to that point, reasonably well developed. Carrie Ann Moss’s wife being killed by her lover, Carrie Ann going off the deep end and causing the death of the mother, Hope just deciding to kill herself to “free” Jessica, everything that happened with the neighbor and twin after Reuben’s death was discovered - it just suddenly because an unsatisfying bloodbath, and yet dragged on. Other contrivances like Killgrave’s parents being in the neighborhood. Killgrave trying to increase his power with an aborted fetus, wtf - just a lot of gross and unsatisfying filler. Was actually pissed off at Hope’s death - and doctor wife - just seemed like such a betrayal of all the effort put into those subplots before that, both by the characters and the audience, in a Newt/Hicks Alien 3 way.
I also think they went way over the top during that period with Jessica’s drinking, even showing her to be a real lush prior to Killgrave, which wasn’t in the comics and was a weird addition. Obviously hard-drinking PI is a cliche that I’m fine with them adopting, but the show started with that and just started to get silly, as if the show was written by someone who either doesn’t drink or really understand drinking and conflates it with alcoholic behavior that nobody could survive for 6 months. When someone upthread was complaining about the boozing I didn’t understand the issue, because early on in the show it was just more standard “hard nights” of Phillip Marlowe or Decker in Blade Runner stuff. Anyway, that’s a relatively minor point compared to the others, but it was just another sign that the show got a bit frayed.
It was also weird to devote most of the last episode to the Night Nurse who we hadn’t seen in this series before. I did like almost everything with Jessica and Luke though, and actually wish that if they wanted to space the show out for 13 issues they had been much slower with the Killgrave storyline and just had her doing more PI work on different matters at the beginning – rather than getting stuck in the pattern of chasing Killgrave and him getting away again and again. Tenant was just perfect in the role though – and I was somewhat surprised and impressed that the show actually had Jessica kill him. [/spoiler]
Overall, I loved the first 7 or 8 episodes and thought it was generally of higher quality than Daredevil, except for the fight choreography, but the rest was a bit of a mess, redeemed by a good lead and a great villain performance. I still really enjoyed the series and am really happy with what Netflix is doing with these Marvel properties - not sure how Iron Fist will work out though - think they’re better off going with a hard-R Punisher series and leaving Danny Rand as a supporting character. It just felt like they didn’t have the time needed to polish that last few episodes and they poorly resolved a lot of the subplots they’d been building and made some poor choices to add content to fill out the 13 episodes.
I just finished last night and I have to agree. The show did a phenomenal job building up to a climax only to realize they had to stretch it out by another 3 or 4 episodes. The Simpson subplot especially felt like it drags the show into the weeds. But still high quality overall. Looking forward to more.
I reached Episode 9 last night, and for the first time, the show did something truly interesting. To others I would still recommend the show. It’s not often you see such a slow, laborious eight and half hour setup for one great sequence, but I found myself not regretting those first eight hours now that I’ve seen the end of Episode 9.
I wonder if Dare Devil is like this too? It felt like such a waste of time (aside from the fight choreography) after 4 episodes. But maybe there’s an episode further in that makes it all worth it.
Whoa, you only stuck with DD for 4 episodes? jeez. It gets pretty nuts around episode 6.
— Alan
Kingpin totally makes DD worth it (among mostly everything else IMO).
Yep, i struggled at times with DD but both Kingpin and Kilgrave were really well acted.