To understand the title, I immediately redirect you to the other two reviews on Marvel's superheroes on Netflix: Daredevil and Jessica Jones. There you will find why Netflix was taking over the business and smashing any competition.
It was thus a big surprise when I finished Marvel's Luke Cage: it is not at the level of the other two. Not even close. I will try to explain why and remain spoiler-free.
Luke Cage was introduced in the Netflix universe during the first season of Jessica Jones. He is a bartender somehow connected to the recent past of Jessica and it turns out he has superpowers: his skin is indestructible and he is superstrong. Here, we find him in Harlem a few months after the events of Jessica Jones, living a quiet anonymous life.
The season is essentially an origin story: the events will make Luke Cage take action against the evil villain, forcing him to face his obscure past and finally move forward. Always. I will say no more to let you discover it by yourself.
The first issue is the most problematic one and is about the hero himself. I have the same issue with Superman: any challenge is futile until kryptonite appears. For Luke Cage is even worse since there is no kryptonite for him. The immediate consequence is that any action scene loses its tension and they are not choreographically good as in other shows. Why dodge a bullet if it bounces on you? I can save a few of them because we can all like a power player from time to time but, in general, they are very underwhelming.
Luke Cage's kryptonite is really only his past and his consciousness. This is well displayed in the show, but I never felt tension when his fate was on the line. If you have an invulnerable character you need to give him some sort of deepness, some moral purpose, something other than the usual call for justice and revenge we are used to seeing. We thus have to look how the character and the story are presented.
Most of these guys wear spandex, who would have thought that a black man in a hoodie would be a hero
The entire story takes place in Harlem, therefore we have glimpses of Harlem's culture and how the characters are participating in such culture, what is their role. When it comes to Luke Cage, we can appreciate an attempt to give him some political weight by making him expressing some opinions on the role of the community. In particular, it comes to my mind a very intense monolog on Crispus Attucks and the use of the N-word. However, such attempts are quickly lost after the first few episodes, leaving the picture incomplete and thus failing in drawing a character that creates tension or emotions. The collateral effect is representing a community through powerful messages and then fall in the most generic silliness. Allow me a very insignificant spoiler: a black kid is beaten up by the police during an interrogation and the community, after like 5 minutes of rage, responds by giving the police better guns. That's generic silliness.
Another big issue is the presence of too many villains in one season. In a superhero show, the villain is 80% of the final result because what makes the story interesting is the struggle, how the superhero overcomes the adverse conditions and defeats the villain. In Luke Cage, there is a potentially great villain that is then wasted, lost and obscured by other breaking into the scene, villains way less interesting and way over the top.
The storyline is then confused because force the viewer to shift the attention to different menaces.
There is this villain!
Forget about that, now there is this one!
What's up, guys? I am another one, watch me!
The result is either a very non-linear narration or a very slow one, needing half of the season to even begin.
One last remark about the crossover technique, which was one of the strong suits of Jessica Jones. If the viewer was able to appreciate everything of the last year's show without knowing the rest of the Marvel universe, this time I feel like you actually lose something. You don't get the reasons why some character acts in a certain way. Therefore I feel one of the revolutionary aspects introduced by Netflix one year ago as lost in favor of a more conventional marketing strategy.
In conclusion, it is a show that brings some fun, the technical execution is at the level of the others, but fails in being innovative as it could be. A not so well characterized superhero, a not convincing narration structure, and the feeling that the only reason of its existence is a set up of what is coming next year on Netflix all make the show a forgettable one and several steps behind the previous two.
Jessica Jones is not a TV Series that will be remembered for too long, but this second Marvel+Netflix product gives us few reasons to spend the next 3 minutes to read about it.
We are in the same universe of Daredevil, taking place in the same city, right after the events of the first season, introducing also a couple of new characters that appear in season 2, as well as opening up the way to new shows that will be released by Netflix in the next months. Therefore, before focusing on this show, I have the chance to point out a good aspect of this new Netflix policy. They started with Daredevil (that is amazing), that has some common characters with Jessica Jones, that introduces few heroes and villains appearing in future shows. This is a smart move by itself to capture the fans and it is also executed in the best possible way. You can easily follow every single one of these shows separately, without losing any information vital to the plot (at worst you don't get some reference, but it really doesn't matter). The other analog that is coming to my mind is The Flash/Arrow/others universe, doing more or less the same thing, but in a bad way. In fact, if you don't see all the shows, you miss something in the plot, you lose some important information. Or also, to leave the superhero madness for a second, in the Chicago Fire+spinoffs production, it just happens that you miss important parts of the plot, understandable to attract viewers to the smaller shows, but sometimes you don't have the time for the smaller shows. You know, sometimes you see people and go places.
This huge amount of superheroes on TV and in the movies will be a reason for a future post as soon as I find something interesting to say about it.
Going on topic, Jessica Jones is a private investigator with superpowers and a huge drinking problem. She was traumatized by some mysterious event and she lives as an outcast, essentially being for some aspects a bad person. The style of the narration is very similar to the Daredevil's one, thus giving us a product of good quality, a nice plot and, most of all, a truly terrifying villain.
One of the aspects that caught my attention is that, probably for the first time in recent years, the authors make us live the drama of the victim of a rape. The traumatizing event, that, besides the origin story, defines the essence of the main character, also involved rape. It is fully acknowledged by the victim, never by the rapist. I found this a very powerful message that was somehow lacking in other shows. For example, the rape of Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones has basically no consequences on the poor Sansa, while we move our attention to the drama that Theon Greyjoy is living for looking at that rape. It makes no sense on a human level. Here we are, as it should be, fully focused on Jessica's problem, on how her life changed for that event, her pain, her rage, her need to escape.
If on one side we have Jessica dealing with the consequences of her actions, on the other we have Kilgrave, the villain that never cared about them. He is very well constructed and presented, improving the show significantly. He is extremely scary for the entire season not only because his power, mind control, is so potentially devastating (and we see the effects on how broken Jessica is) but also because he is clearly a selfish spoiled prick. He is so human to be the perfect incarnation of evil. He acts only for his own interest, stepping on everyone else, killing everyone, ruining their lives. He also tries to justify himself with a horrible childhood, but it turns out it wasn't true that either (and it was brilliant).
So far it seems a show that will be remembered, a great show, so here come the bad aspects of it.
Starting from the end, the entire scene of Kilgrave's murder is absolutely underwhelming, the plot was clear since the very beginning, the scene has no tension at all. Although I appreciated the fact that Kilgrave, after being careful for 12 episodes and calling out Jessica's bluff, lowered his defenses to give up to his obsession (or, to say it better, to the realization of his obsession), they could have played that much better, considering the quality of the rest of the show. Also the fact that Jessica gets away with murder charges in like 3 minutes is way too rushed. In other words, they needed some extra time to make it right and the next point is where they could get it.
Agent Will Simmons is absolutely useless for the plot. He starts by being a random cop, victim of Kilgrave, then it turns out that is some super soldier on drugs, for no reasons at all he kills a detective (yes, there was a reason, but the transition is too damn fast), then he betrays his obscure organization in like 2 minutes and 10 minutes later he gets captured by them. The end. Yes, I know that he will be a villain in the Marvel universe and yes, I know that his drugs are somehow connected to Jessica's superpowers (another thing that is so stretched that not even Jessica cares about it), but I found his appearances a big waste of screen time since when he goes to the hospital.
Some people didn't like that there is no evolution in Jessica, only in who is around her. She is exactly the same person of episode 1. It is not necessarily a problem and probably we can see some change in the next season, but for some people can be unsettling since the evolution of the main character is something that canonically happens in all the superheroes' stories. I actually liked that, it is something different than the usual plot, it is extremely realistic: she killed her enemy, but she still feels miserable, her problems are still there.
To conclude, it is not a great show, but it is for sure enjoyable and made me very curious on how is Netflix going to play the multiple spinoffs coming out in the next few months, especially the one that is supposed to collect all these heroes in a TV version of the Avengers (The Defenders, coming out the next year).
