Tag: Netflix

A Jessica Jones Experiment – Take the TMI Test

So Season 2 of Jessica Jones is out. And this time it’s almost perfect.

As a show, Jessica… how do I say this? Her first season was the only series that’s ever made me rethink Buffy The Vampire-Slayer (see my past rave) and remind myself it isn’t fair to anyone to compare Buffy’s seven whopping seasons of frequently-legendary storytelling to one thirteen-episode arc of focused perfection.

It’s also not fair to compare Jessica’s Season 2 to her first, if only because if it were any show but hers you couldn’t compare it to that first storyline without admitting that would be setting an impossible standard. And Season 2 does have pretty much all the things that made the first what it was:

What We’re Jonesing For

Krysten Ritter. Just enough doors ripped off hinges for a PI-slash-superhero story. Trish trying to be the only anchor in Jessica’s life. Krysten Ritter. Bitter monologues, bitter alcohol, and PI dialogue with more bite than the booze our hero swims in. Malcolm the neighbor (now in a new position), sweet and likable with his own issues. Lawyer Jeri being a greater force of self-destruction than Krysten Ritter’s Jessica, and that’s saying plenty. A world aware of superpowers, and with no idea how to deal with a woman who doesn’t wear a mask or want to be a hero. That jazzy, pumped-up theme sequence that any other show would kill for, if it was worthy of it. And always, Krysten Ritter.

And it took courage not to build another season around the Marvel villain who’s better than Loki—

Yes, I said it. Tom Hiddleston only plays the second-greatest villain in Marvel history.

So it isn’t the new villains themselves where I’d say this season made its one slip. With all the above in play, you can bet this is a show with more than just villainous charisma to offer. (Though of course the last season having all that and Kilgrave’s incredible, Jessica-heart-tearing arc gave it more awesomeness than most storytellers would know what to do with.)

This time: Jess investigating her powers’ history? cool. A connection to our so-reluctant heroine? it delivers one as close as Kilgrave’s ever was, once it becomes clear. Different threads tangling in different ways, so you never know which is going to be driving the story next? that structure works for most other Marvel Netflix shows, even though last time letting Kilgrave be at the root of everything worked so well.

There’s Always Something

Still, I think they missed something. With all due respect to Melissa Rosenberg and the rest of the magnificent people who designed this season, I think there’s a place where I expected them to do better. And I think it’s a lesson worth pointing out to all of us who write or care about quality storytelling.

Readers, you can test this yourself, with a little experiment. And yes, the instructions are completely spoiler-safe… in fact they depend on your not knowing too much too soon.

If you haven’t see Season 2 yet—

(And it really ought to be “yet,” if you’re reading this blog but haven’t seen the story already. Or if you’re not on Netflix, consider some math: Eight dollars for one month, divided by two thirteen-episode seasons of Jessica? At the rate most people tear through those eps once they start, you might have weeks left in that month to look at the other five-and-counting Marvel shows and Netflix’s other offerings, before you have to decide whether to drop another $8. No, Netflix isn’t paying me to present those numbers; they’re just something to think about.)

If you haven’t seen Season 2 yet, the “experiment” is:

See the first six episodes. But instead of watching Episode 7 (called “AKA I Want Your Cray Cray”), skip it until you’ve seen the next one or two. Because all but one obvious minute of that ep is all flashbacks, and it’s there solely to give out Too Much Information, too soon, about the characters and motivations of what we’ve just discovered. Instead, go straight to Ep 8 and maybe 9, and just follow how Jessica has to cope with her situation—without you getting that extra perspective on character that our heroine herself has to build on her own. Then go back and look at Ep 7.

Or if you can’t bring yourself to skip the episode (or you’ve already seen it all), imagine how the show would look without that one filling us in too soon.

It’s a basic belief of mine: the heart of a story is what the characters know and what they can do about it in that moment; their choice in each moment is everything. So any other-viewpoint scenes ought to be used to build suspense, not overshare about someone to the point that the viewer/reader is pushed back from that in-the-trenches challenge that the actual hero is slow-w-w-ly learning to cope with.

Great stories (like Season 1) live within those moments and their pacing. Easy flashbacks or other infodumps cheat us.

For those who have seen the season: I will admit this is a more logical storyline to use those flashbacks in than many tales might be. At the point where the flashes start (with that last word of Ep 6) the story’s just unveiled a huge change of our understanding of the characters, so that stopping to fast-explore it all is easier than working through it normally. I’ll also admit that the truth and the conflict they’re setting up are less about layers above anyone’s Deepest Truth than they’re about facing people’s sheer unpredictability, which means giving us an immediate peak at their contradictions still leaves us with the nitro-volatile questions of what they’ll do next.

But I say the storyline would still have been better if that Ep 7 info had been unpacked and laid out a step at a time, so that we took it in alongside Jessica. She’s the one who needs to deal with it, and we don’t want to jump ahead of her.

Try the season that way, or imagine it, by moving through that point flashback-free. See if you agree.

Too Much Information only swamps what the story’s trying to be. Even a story that’s still as stunning as Jess’s new season.

(One more thing: if you’re trying this, don’t tell Jessica. She’s really not a fan of “experiments” these days, and none of us want her ripping down our doors.)

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Action Stories, to Scale – Lessons from Netflix’s Daredevil

Devil may, devil may, devil may care

How many devils does Daredevil dare?

 

I’ve finally started watching the Netflix Daredevil series. For general storytelling fun, and especially for its action, it lives up to the hype.

(Or should that be “up to the hyper-senses?” I would have loved to compare Matt’s senses to Paul’s gift in my own Shadowed, but the show minimizes the fact that its hero has one actual superpower in the mix. But of course that Frank Miller-type grit means fists and courage are more than enough.)

 

Binge-sized Chapters

As a general storytelling lesson, Daredevil is a handy reminder of how many different lengths of tale and chapter a writer can build with.

A single comic book might take ten or fifteen minutes to read, though its storyline might take twice that if it were unpacked into a conventional short story. (All those thousand-word pictures do condense the experience.) Or a network TV adventure is forty-some minutes with your DVR, though it might actually be less than that to read. They’re all valid blocks at holding a fan’s interest and moving a story forward.

And they are about hooking us on the total story. Unlike a movie that sells itself as one complete arc, all those episodic forms are about settling the story enough now to satisfy us but bring us back in just a week or a month for the next installment. Which makes them subtly different from novel chapters, where the next step is always waiting on the next page, but the story’s so big it can explore more on the way and we probably don’t expect to finish it in one rush.

Like Daredevil. As a Netflix show, knowing the whole season is right there (and paid for) seems to give the creators a certain extra freedom to take their time. Every episode has its share of action, but otherwise the first takes the rest of its time making us comfortable with Matt and his law partner (and if you think a best friend named “Foggy” has to be stuck as comic relief, you’re only a little right) and what their first case opens up. More than network shows, more than cable, there’s a certain novel-like depth to each step along the way.

 

Fighting To Scale

When I was gearing up to start the show, my friend Ace Antonio Hall said it had some of the best fight scenes around. Since then, I’ve been thinking:

He didn’t say “action scenes,” let alone “effects,” he said fight scenes. And how many superhero or science-fiction stories are there where we still use that word? Where we don’t just enjoy the spectacle and (hopefully) the storytelling, we appreciate that those might be people squaring off?

I don’t mean that CGI kills visual action (hello, Lord of the Rings!), or that non-super battles are just better. True, it’s the low-powered fight choreography that’s been more likely to be completely right. But any kind of story just needs to get a handle on itself.

Scale matters. A great adventure defines just how tough its hero is at whatever he does, and brings that size of conflict to life to the point that we understand what’s daily suspense and what’s a step up for him. A hacker stealing a few files is not the same as trying to shut down a doomsday device that the whole world is watching. A human hero can’t wade through bullets with his only explanation that “I’m the hero.”

So I realize I’ve been waiting a long time to see a hero like Daredevil onscreen—especially in the thorough treatment a TV show allows. The first comics I really appreciated were Spider-Man and Daredevil, and I think it shows in my (super)world-view. From them I’ve built the sense that:

  • for Superman or the Avengers, walls are only there to punch through
  • for Spider-Man, walls are there to swing from to reach the door (then he rips that off its hinges)
  • for Daredevil, walls still have to lead to a regular door

In fact, I’m still in Season 1 of the show, where Matt doesn’t have any kind of grappling line yet, so he’s got nothing but plain parkour climbing and dropping to set up his battles. (Even Batman, the more famous “non-super super,” has enough gadgets to let him act like a true superhero whenever it’s cooler. For DD, no such luck.)

And it’s been a pleasure to see this kind of action. Matt Murdock in a fight is skilled and believable, but you can see he’s struggling with just one assassin; against two it really is all about knocking one away to deal with other fast. And unlike with Bats, taking on four or five crooks at a time doesn’t come off as something he’s eager for… though I wish those bigger showcase fights did work harder to spell out what a challenge it is for him to juggle that many threats. (Well, call it a nod to his comics history where he does it all the time; at least the show makes it look good.)

On the other hand, watch for the when moment the camera takes a slow pan around an alley from the inside of a car; who’s going to be lurking somewhere? is a body going to drop, and where? When something does trigger, it shows us this is a show where they know their options.

 

So… Know Your Foe

Call it a basic rule for writing action, or any other kind of opposition scene. We writers have to understand just how much the hero can do, and what the challenge can, and how many other complications still matter on that scale… and then use that.

If I take a hero’s enemy up to a new level, and the reader doesn’t know the difference, I’ve failed.

In a way it’s a counterpart to what I wrote about as the Tarzan Test. That idea is qualitative, and says the total story lives in the variety of its challenges, while this principle is about quantifying it. So it’s rarely good writing to fight a lion and then another lion, or to fight a lion with an elephant gun.

Or, we could think of it as simply matching the action and the size of the visual focus, whether it’s a film angle or a style of description. Campy swordfights use “Flynning” (Errol Flynn was a charismatic actor but no fencer), big sweeping movements just to fill the frame, but better action would know what small moves actually are faster and zoom in enough to let us appreciate them. –Or if the story were about Spidey swinging across the block or Superman zooming past a whole continent, pull the “camera” back and show us what that scale means.

Pick a size. Learn it, own it.

I’m glad Daredevil isn’t afraid to do just that.

(Extra: for a look at one aspect of action, some of the ways I learned to use the flying powers in The High Road, here’s a guest post I did this week on Janice Hardy’s Fiction University.)

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