DUCK TALES

Congratulations, you're going to be humming this to yourself for the next week.

I'm probably not going to watch, both because it's a bit outside of my age bracket and because I don't get Disney XD, but that voice cast looks fantastic enough to at least track down the first episode.  Honestly, I'd do it for David Tennant's Scottish accent alone - Broadchurch excepted, it's something of a rare sighting, and I look forward to Scrooge McDuck being near-incomprehensible.  My only complaint is that this video calls this the "Original" theme - implying there might be some kind of new version, which is simply unacceptable.  You can change a lot of things, Disney, but wouldn't dare replace a piece of music this catchy.

The Cruel Whimsy & Whimsical Cruelty

So this is absolutely amazing. I've honestly never read the books - they came just a tad after my time in terms of elementary school reading lists, and were ultimately overshadowed by Harry Potter. But frankly, this trailer makes me want to go check them out. It really is a flawlessly executed little piece, immediately setting the tone for the series as a whole as mysterious and fantastical, with its tongue planted firmly in cheek.  Above all else, including Patrick Warburton's astonishingly perfect turn as Lemony Snicket, the setting is really what makes it.  Maybe I'm just a sucker for Old Hollywood-style studio lots and the meta-narratives they imply, but count me in for this one.  Hell, maybe they'll even have Jim Carrey stop by and do a cameo.  That'd be cute.

Don't Play The Hero

A few months back, Marvel released its first Netflix series, Daredevil, which proved to be an absolutely terrifying success.  Not only did it earn an astonishing number of views, but it was an absolute critical darling.  Its fight scenes were universally praised for breaking the mold on the traditional superhero show, but moreover the grim and somber attitude it took to the traditionally colorful world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a breath of fresh air, a shot in the arm of a bloated franchise that, frankly, was beginning to lean under its own colossal weight.  It seems radically simple, but Matt Murdoch gets the absolutely crap beaten out of him early in the season, and he spends the next five episode LOOKING LIKE A GUY WHO GOT THE ABSOLUTE CRAP BEATEN OUT OF HIM.  You couple that with a plot that directly references damage done to the city of New York during Avengers, and the fallout from a massive alien invasion, and you've got something sorely missing from the likes of Iron Man, Captain America, or The Avengers: consequences.

With that in mind, the trailer for Jessica Jones terrifies me, in the absolute best way.  The original comic book, a masterpiece in its own right, is fundamentally about the idea that the past has a way of catching up with you, and that inhuman power can sometimes lead to inhuman acts.  It is a world, in short, of consequences.  And on Netflix, it seems like it will fit in just fine.