Wolverine and the X-Men 1x03
Sep. 7th, 2020 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsWolverine and the X-Men 1x03: Hindsight (Part 3)
As I alluded to in the series intro, when I first watched this show it was nearly as a single chunk; I don't recall over how many days, but I watched a lot of episodes in a row when I did. And while I'm only through the first three episodes, I'm really feeling that that's the better viewing experience. But I'm not sure how much that is a problem with the show and how much is this just not being my favorite medium for single instance viewing.
So before I get to talking about this episode, I'm going to talk about that. As a show meant for younger viewers (I'm not quite calling it a kids show but it's not aimed at an older audience either) and an action show and a half hour (with commercials) show, it's priorities for the story are different from what mine usually are. That's less noticeable when viewing a string of episodes because I do end up still getting enough of the character stuff and and the world building to stay satisfied even if it's punctuated with random action scenes. But when only consuming one episode at a time I can't help but feel that a lot of that time is eaten up by needing to structure the story around actions beats.
All these problems were there when I reviewed the first season of She-Ra and likely would be there for any future animated show I have an itch to review (I'm trying to psych myself up for Clone Wars, I really am). It doesn't exactly apply to all younger aimed animated half hour action shows; while I came to Avatar very late in the game, I watched Korra week-to-week with plenty of time to think about it and even the occasional reaction review, without feeling like the show was wasting time on elements I didn't get as much out of (the love triangle did get old).
After three episodes of this, so far, this show does seem very focused on the action scenes; it rushes through a lot of stuff to get to them, sometimes forces conflict that didn't need to happen, and so far hasn't really used it to change the status quo. So it's action for action's sake and it feels like dangling keys in front of the kids but I'm mostly bored.
That said, this episode was still very much in setup mode, so I'll wait a few more episodes to see if it can calm down and do something more interesting with its structure. These episodes have been weird; they're all serving a similar purpose in setting things up, and yet they don't feel at all like a multi-part story, but three separate episodes introducing different elements. The first the MRD, the second the Brotherhood, the third...well a few different things but I think it was largely building to the reveal of that they're doing Days of Future Past in with the rest of this.
There were a few times this episode where the fact that this is a sequel to something that we don't actually have was an issue because I can't tell what people should and shouldn't know and the scene can be read either way. This was mostly centered around Emma, because how does Logan know her backstory to exposit it, and yet no one else seems to have even heard of her? Except maybe Cyclops, I can't tell what he knows about her. And because even I know that the image of her in popular consciousness is very muddled; sometimes she's a good guy, sometimes a bad guy, sometimes she functions as an agent of chaos when dropped in with the X-Men; plus she has two different incompatible appearances in the movies (though I'm not sure either of those was out at this time, definitely not First Class). With Wolverine and many of the other characters, they seem to have been laid out in such a way that no matter what you knew about them coming into this series they're at least recognizable as the character you knew from somewhere else; but Emma Frost is and was a lot less defined in the popular consciousness but she's sort of treated here as if we have just as much expectation to work with as the others.
I also have to feel suspicious about her appearance here. Magneto said that Charles had only been on Genosha a week when the team came. So if Frost had shown up at the mansion a week earlier what would have happened? Especially since we have to add time in them to get Ceribro finished, so did she basically show up right after Magneto had found Charles? I'm pretty suspicious of that.
I also have to laugh at myself a bit, but it's also worth thinking about, Because in Frost's first scene she isn't wearing gloves (it made me aware that she had them later), and that seemed wrong to me. On a small level, maybe she will be mostly drawn with them in the future, but more likely is what I realized in the scene: it's a a Psi Corps thing. Now, I don't know if it's the simple thing that in my head telepaths wear gloves, or if it's the more broad thing that I often compare the X-Men to the telepaths in the B5 universe. Must be at least mostly the former as I don't have the same reaction to other people not wearing gloves; or Emma just gives off very Psi Corps energy.
Forge is a different odd case. This was my introduction to the character; I think he'd been around in other sources than the movies but I hadn't seen him before watching this. And you know what I remember about him from having watched this show a decade ago? That he existed. This time as he was introduced my reaction was 'oh right, that guy. He...is around.' The story clearly doesn't know how to treat him at this point. His character isn't given any important framing; but his plot function seems important enough for him to be in the team circle at the end. Granted Bobby and Kitty haven't got a lot of character development yet, specific to this series' interpretation of them, but they also aren't treated as a joke. There's something of a fine line between comic relief and joke, but I think it runs between them and Forge.
Now to talk about Logan, and I have...things to say. Because this episode is all about showing that he's not a good choice to be in charge but then he has leadership handed to him in the end. For all I know now, maybe this show did linger in the back of my mind and made me so angry about s5 of AoS; you're clearly writing this person as a bad leader but end up insisting that they should be in charge. Now, of the people there, maybe Logan is the best choice from a limited pool (Kitty and Bobby are still young, Beast and Forge aren't really suited for it, Scott's broken, and they can't really trust Emma. Warren has to keep to the sidelines, Rogue isn't with them, Jean's missing, Storm's MIA), but from Charles' future position why would he decide it should definitely be Logan in charge, especially since so far he knows so little about what made that future? Charles could have told them they have to join forced with Magneto, because they can't be fighting other mutants when there's a grim dark future to prevent. The story doesn't even pretend that making Logan the leader was the choice of anyone, least of all him, so it's practically like Charles is just the mouthpiece for the writers; Wolverine had to be in charge because we made him the singled out character in the show's name mostly as a marketing ploy since you all love Wolverine right (yeah, this must have been before Origins came out and people realized that maybe they didn't love Wolverine as much as they thought they did. Wait...is that maybe part of why the show didn't get a second season?).
I remember being annoyed with this show's treatment of Cyclops back in the day, and so far I still am. I've always had a soft spot for the character, even if the movies always shafted him on development. When I started this show I was probably hoping I'd get a better treatment of the character and so far I'm not.
As I alluded to in the series intro, when I first watched this show it was nearly as a single chunk; I don't recall over how many days, but I watched a lot of episodes in a row when I did. And while I'm only through the first three episodes, I'm really feeling that that's the better viewing experience. But I'm not sure how much that is a problem with the show and how much is this just not being my favorite medium for single instance viewing.
So before I get to talking about this episode, I'm going to talk about that. As a show meant for younger viewers (I'm not quite calling it a kids show but it's not aimed at an older audience either) and an action show and a half hour (with commercials) show, it's priorities for the story are different from what mine usually are. That's less noticeable when viewing a string of episodes because I do end up still getting enough of the character stuff and and the world building to stay satisfied even if it's punctuated with random action scenes. But when only consuming one episode at a time I can't help but feel that a lot of that time is eaten up by needing to structure the story around actions beats.
All these problems were there when I reviewed the first season of She-Ra and likely would be there for any future animated show I have an itch to review (I'm trying to psych myself up for Clone Wars, I really am). It doesn't exactly apply to all younger aimed animated half hour action shows; while I came to Avatar very late in the game, I watched Korra week-to-week with plenty of time to think about it and even the occasional reaction review, without feeling like the show was wasting time on elements I didn't get as much out of (the love triangle did get old).
After three episodes of this, so far, this show does seem very focused on the action scenes; it rushes through a lot of stuff to get to them, sometimes forces conflict that didn't need to happen, and so far hasn't really used it to change the status quo. So it's action for action's sake and it feels like dangling keys in front of the kids but I'm mostly bored.
That said, this episode was still very much in setup mode, so I'll wait a few more episodes to see if it can calm down and do something more interesting with its structure. These episodes have been weird; they're all serving a similar purpose in setting things up, and yet they don't feel at all like a multi-part story, but three separate episodes introducing different elements. The first the MRD, the second the Brotherhood, the third...well a few different things but I think it was largely building to the reveal of that they're doing Days of Future Past in with the rest of this.
There were a few times this episode where the fact that this is a sequel to something that we don't actually have was an issue because I can't tell what people should and shouldn't know and the scene can be read either way. This was mostly centered around Emma, because how does Logan know her backstory to exposit it, and yet no one else seems to have even heard of her? Except maybe Cyclops, I can't tell what he knows about her. And because even I know that the image of her in popular consciousness is very muddled; sometimes she's a good guy, sometimes a bad guy, sometimes she functions as an agent of chaos when dropped in with the X-Men; plus she has two different incompatible appearances in the movies (though I'm not sure either of those was out at this time, definitely not First Class). With Wolverine and many of the other characters, they seem to have been laid out in such a way that no matter what you knew about them coming into this series they're at least recognizable as the character you knew from somewhere else; but Emma Frost is and was a lot less defined in the popular consciousness but she's sort of treated here as if we have just as much expectation to work with as the others.
I also have to feel suspicious about her appearance here. Magneto said that Charles had only been on Genosha a week when the team came. So if Frost had shown up at the mansion a week earlier what would have happened? Especially since we have to add time in them to get Ceribro finished, so did she basically show up right after Magneto had found Charles? I'm pretty suspicious of that.
I also have to laugh at myself a bit, but it's also worth thinking about, Because in Frost's first scene she isn't wearing gloves (it made me aware that she had them later), and that seemed wrong to me. On a small level, maybe she will be mostly drawn with them in the future, but more likely is what I realized in the scene: it's a a Psi Corps thing. Now, I don't know if it's the simple thing that in my head telepaths wear gloves, or if it's the more broad thing that I often compare the X-Men to the telepaths in the B5 universe. Must be at least mostly the former as I don't have the same reaction to other people not wearing gloves; or Emma just gives off very Psi Corps energy.
Forge is a different odd case. This was my introduction to the character; I think he'd been around in other sources than the movies but I hadn't seen him before watching this. And you know what I remember about him from having watched this show a decade ago? That he existed. This time as he was introduced my reaction was 'oh right, that guy. He...is around.' The story clearly doesn't know how to treat him at this point. His character isn't given any important framing; but his plot function seems important enough for him to be in the team circle at the end. Granted Bobby and Kitty haven't got a lot of character development yet, specific to this series' interpretation of them, but they also aren't treated as a joke. There's something of a fine line between comic relief and joke, but I think it runs between them and Forge.
Now to talk about Logan, and I have...things to say. Because this episode is all about showing that he's not a good choice to be in charge but then he has leadership handed to him in the end. For all I know now, maybe this show did linger in the back of my mind and made me so angry about s5 of AoS; you're clearly writing this person as a bad leader but end up insisting that they should be in charge. Now, of the people there, maybe Logan is the best choice from a limited pool (Kitty and Bobby are still young, Beast and Forge aren't really suited for it, Scott's broken, and they can't really trust Emma. Warren has to keep to the sidelines, Rogue isn't with them, Jean's missing, Storm's MIA), but from Charles' future position why would he decide it should definitely be Logan in charge, especially since so far he knows so little about what made that future? Charles could have told them they have to join forced with Magneto, because they can't be fighting other mutants when there's a grim dark future to prevent. The story doesn't even pretend that making Logan the leader was the choice of anyone, least of all him, so it's practically like Charles is just the mouthpiece for the writers; Wolverine had to be in charge because we made him the singled out character in the show's name mostly as a marketing ploy since you all love Wolverine right (yeah, this must have been before Origins came out and people realized that maybe they didn't love Wolverine as much as they thought they did. Wait...is that maybe part of why the show didn't get a second season?).
I remember being annoyed with this show's treatment of Cyclops back in the day, and so far I still am. I've always had a soft spot for the character, even if the movies always shafted him on development. When I started this show I was probably hoping I'd get a better treatment of the character and so far I'm not.
