Which is Better? AKA Jessica Jones and Alias

Wait, AKA Jessica Jones was based off this comic book? Did the script writers read the comic book, toss it to the side and thought, 'no, we can do better?' Or they thought, 'hey, let's take the most uninteresting things about the comic book, toss the rest aside that makes it great, and put other characters in because, well, we're sooo creative and naturally, what we come up with is far more riveting than Alias?' Because that's what the show felt like.

AKA Jessica Jones has been critically acclaimed and raved about, but honestly? I thought it was just OK. Not the worst thing I've ever watched (I'm looking at you Chappie. You abomination.) Now that I've read the beginning of Alias, I've realized that the tone and the mood doesn't transfer over into the show. There are also quite a few terrible things they added, like Ruben and... what was her name? Rylie? Rudder? Rumplestiltskin? and Malcolm, who, let's be honest, had the most thankless character arc ever. Not to mention they rewrote the entire story to where it's almost unrecognizable. There are bits and pieces of the show that I appreciated, and recognised what they were trying to accomplish, but it fell flat. Especially standing next to the comic book.

Even Jessica Jones' hair is different! Which, ok, it's not a big deal. I mean, hair is hair, but did they keep the black hair because it's Krysten Ritter? It would have been interesting to see her have a hair change, but maybe she's butt ugly with red hair... who knows? But it felt to me that black hair was to on the nose with how "dark" the show was.

What I also noticed most about the show was how... cheap it looked. Now, I don't mind low budget movies, and honestly, sometimes creativity can be a wonderful thing that actually adds to it. However, when you notice that even the makeup looks awful in certain lighting (really... there was a defining line between her makeup and her neck, not to mention her skin looked yellow), and your husband points out that the high profile lawyer's office is incredibly bare, and not in a minimalist way, but in a oh-shit-we-have-no-money way, it's a problem. I don't set out to watch a movie to look for makeup flaws and bare settings but it smacked us in the face. It was so low budget that it couldn't even be covered up.

Now, Josh and I have different theories on why it looked so low budget and I think it's a mixture of both of them. I think some of it was intentional, or tried to be. In the comic book, at least in the first volume, she's mostly on the streets, investigating. She's just in tee-shirts and jeans, and only twice does she demonstrate her super powers. It seems like they tried to carry that over to the show. I also think they spent a lot of their money getting Carey Ann Moss, David Tennant, Krysten Ritter and Mike Colter on the show. Josh thinks that most of the budget for the Marvel TV shows were blown with Daredevil, which had a lot of really remarkable shots and stunts and they none left over to shoot Jessica Jones. Man, I hope they are able to film the Luke Cage one (which btw, was one of the best parts about the show).

So, verdict? I haven't read all the comics, so I would have to update as I read them. However, it's a shame that AKA Jessica Jones didn't use much of the story line with Alias, because it would have been neat to see, even if it was just the Rick Jones, sidekick stuff. So far? Read Alias... and I guess see the show if you want to know what everyone else is talking about and you want in on the convo...  but you didn't miss much.