Wolverine and the X-Men 1x04
Sep. 11th, 2020 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urth posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tori_reviewsWolverine and the X-Men 1x04: Overflow
While this could still be called a puttin' the band back together episode this is also a much more focused story. It's also the first that feels like we're moving forward instead of reintroducing the show's premise in sections. I actually had a decent amount of memory of watching this ep before; but I also can't give it a very high rating if I was doing that with this series.
This episode has basically no character; it's focused on Storm, but she's a prop in the bigger game going on. There's a little bit of development between Logan and Emma, and accepting her into the team (I guess if Logan's in charge as he goes so does the team), but it doesn't make me trust her any more than I did. I don't remember if that was true the first time around though; I suspect it was but now I can put a name to it that her actions here are giving me serious Ward vibes. Put simply, I think she's playing her own game; for now her interests seem to align with the X-Men (all the more in light of Charles' communiques from the grim dark future), but that doesn't mean I trust her.
Interestingly, by my understanding, that makes her more the Wolverine of this show than Wolverine is. Wolverine historically hung out with the X-Men when it suited him, but you couldn't rely on him to be there when you wanted him to be (Rogue pointed out that characterization in the first episode). And maybe that's something they will get to exploring this season, that Logan is putting the selfish focus aside and he can recognize as Emma does too.
Welcome to Tori Talks Time Travel, a common recurring feature of this blog (my tastes do lend to it). I do like the way this episode works with the future...mostly. I like the idea that Xavier's future wasn't brought on by a single event but a series of bad things happened to create that world. And by stopping this one they've not only saved a lot of lives in the present but moved away from that future.
But, that leaves the question of whether it impacts Charles in the future. Will he remember having this conversation, or from his perspective did the destruction of “Africa” (we're getting to it) not happen so he never needed to warn them? Because if he does remember, then how sure can they be about the next set of instructions he gives them, maybe they only happened because of the destruction of Africa (both as a general political/economic/humanitarian concern and as it had to do with a mutant)? I'm not even addressing the paradox element of that (if it hadn't happened how would he warn them to stop it), I'm perfectly capable of accepting that time isn't a loop in this case, but I'm curious as to their view of hypertime in this story.
Last ep didn't give us enough view for me to judge a few things but now I can. I'm going to take some time to adjust the Xavier's voice in this. It's an uncanny valley Patrick Stewart, and I'm not sure how much extra effect they're using in the cross-time communication, so I'm not overly annoyed yet, but I'm concerned. More importantly, I have some issues with the way he's acting with this time travel, aside from the temporal mechanics. He's supposed to actually be running around in the future, discovering how this world happened and contacting the X-Men in the past to tell them how to stop it from happening. But he and the story so far seem to be treating it as if he's from the 'present' who took a trip to the future to figure out how it went wrong. In some ways, there's a logic to that, he's been in a coma for 20 years so his perception of the 'present' is 20 years out of date...but aside from sending his mind back for these updates, he can't go back in time, that 'future' would is his present.
Damn time travel tenses.
We'll see how that develops as the story continues; for this episode we need to talk about scale and how this show doesn't seem to comprehend it. In the animation, the size of the Blackbird doesn't seem to be a stable model that we should judge other things against. Sometimes it seems too small, getting tossed around by Storm's storm; then it seems too big when they crash into the reservoir. And while we're on the subject, there is something really weird with Scott's costume, he's portions don't seem very human.
But those are small niggles next to the fact I don't think the writers understand how big Africa is when they say Storm destroyed 'Africa.' Between the fact that Storm supposedly destroyed all of 'Africa' and the amount of time it took Emma to find her, I think the writers are depicting 'Africa' as the size of Connecticut, maybe Iceland if we're being generous. Based on my movie knowledge of Cerebro, finding mutants is easier than normals, but are there no other mutants in 'Africa?' Maybe Emma had met Storm, that could account for being able to zero in on her so quickly, but there's no indication that's the case. At the most generous maybe she got an impression of Storm from Logan standing next to her and so that helped, but that's making a fair amount of allowances.
As for Storm being able to destroy the whole continent, my problem with it has more to do with the time it would take than believing she couldn't. Admittedly, even at the start of this I was wondering how her powers actually work, by making it rain in this village is she causing more drought for the next town? Is she only directing atmospheric events that could exist otherwise or does she cause them out of nothing? With lightning and wind effects I can just go with it, that's properly charging or pressurizing the air in specific ways. But water in the atmosphere has more need to come from somewhere. Even without trying to make it more scientific her powers can definitely do a lot of damage and ultimately kill a lot of people and/or render places uninhabitable; and if you make it more interconnected that spreads the effect out exponentially.
But, that would definitely take time; far more than I think it would take for someone to stop her. I'll even give them a conditional out for why the X-Men didn't stop her in Xavier's timeline, because if he hadn't intervened last ep maybe there weren't X-Men to do so, or at least without Emma to deal with the possession (which brings us back to the hypertime effects). But even if we count out the X-Men going in to stop Storm, she doesn't have eyes in the back of her head so the bad guy couldn't necessarily see everywhere threats could come from. Not to mention that at some point I feel Storm herself might have a bit more of her senses back, or at least get too tired to keep this up. And to render the entire continent uninhabitable for decades suggests to me that whatever damage Storm did (probably considerable) was actually heightened a lot by other effects in that timeline. A moot point since they stopped the initial destruction this time; but seriously, it's a big continent for her to wreck that much.
It's also vaguely racist sounding that the characters say they're going to 'Africa.' Couldn't even say 'West Africa' or 'Central Africa,' if you don't want to name a specific country?
While this could still be called a puttin' the band back together episode this is also a much more focused story. It's also the first that feels like we're moving forward instead of reintroducing the show's premise in sections. I actually had a decent amount of memory of watching this ep before; but I also can't give it a very high rating if I was doing that with this series.
This episode has basically no character; it's focused on Storm, but she's a prop in the bigger game going on. There's a little bit of development between Logan and Emma, and accepting her into the team (I guess if Logan's in charge as he goes so does the team), but it doesn't make me trust her any more than I did. I don't remember if that was true the first time around though; I suspect it was but now I can put a name to it that her actions here are giving me serious Ward vibes. Put simply, I think she's playing her own game; for now her interests seem to align with the X-Men (all the more in light of Charles' communiques from the grim dark future), but that doesn't mean I trust her.
Interestingly, by my understanding, that makes her more the Wolverine of this show than Wolverine is. Wolverine historically hung out with the X-Men when it suited him, but you couldn't rely on him to be there when you wanted him to be (Rogue pointed out that characterization in the first episode). And maybe that's something they will get to exploring this season, that Logan is putting the selfish focus aside and he can recognize as Emma does too.
Welcome to Tori Talks Time Travel, a common recurring feature of this blog (my tastes do lend to it). I do like the way this episode works with the future...mostly. I like the idea that Xavier's future wasn't brought on by a single event but a series of bad things happened to create that world. And by stopping this one they've not only saved a lot of lives in the present but moved away from that future.
But, that leaves the question of whether it impacts Charles in the future. Will he remember having this conversation, or from his perspective did the destruction of “Africa” (we're getting to it) not happen so he never needed to warn them? Because if he does remember, then how sure can they be about the next set of instructions he gives them, maybe they only happened because of the destruction of Africa (both as a general political/economic/humanitarian concern and as it had to do with a mutant)? I'm not even addressing the paradox element of that (if it hadn't happened how would he warn them to stop it), I'm perfectly capable of accepting that time isn't a loop in this case, but I'm curious as to their view of hypertime in this story.
Last ep didn't give us enough view for me to judge a few things but now I can. I'm going to take some time to adjust the Xavier's voice in this. It's an uncanny valley Patrick Stewart, and I'm not sure how much extra effect they're using in the cross-time communication, so I'm not overly annoyed yet, but I'm concerned. More importantly, I have some issues with the way he's acting with this time travel, aside from the temporal mechanics. He's supposed to actually be running around in the future, discovering how this world happened and contacting the X-Men in the past to tell them how to stop it from happening. But he and the story so far seem to be treating it as if he's from the 'present' who took a trip to the future to figure out how it went wrong. In some ways, there's a logic to that, he's been in a coma for 20 years so his perception of the 'present' is 20 years out of date...but aside from sending his mind back for these updates, he can't go back in time, that 'future' would is his present.
Damn time travel tenses.
We'll see how that develops as the story continues; for this episode we need to talk about scale and how this show doesn't seem to comprehend it. In the animation, the size of the Blackbird doesn't seem to be a stable model that we should judge other things against. Sometimes it seems too small, getting tossed around by Storm's storm; then it seems too big when they crash into the reservoir. And while we're on the subject, there is something really weird with Scott's costume, he's portions don't seem very human.
But those are small niggles next to the fact I don't think the writers understand how big Africa is when they say Storm destroyed 'Africa.' Between the fact that Storm supposedly destroyed all of 'Africa' and the amount of time it took Emma to find her, I think the writers are depicting 'Africa' as the size of Connecticut, maybe Iceland if we're being generous. Based on my movie knowledge of Cerebro, finding mutants is easier than normals, but are there no other mutants in 'Africa?' Maybe Emma had met Storm, that could account for being able to zero in on her so quickly, but there's no indication that's the case. At the most generous maybe she got an impression of Storm from Logan standing next to her and so that helped, but that's making a fair amount of allowances.
As for Storm being able to destroy the whole continent, my problem with it has more to do with the time it would take than believing she couldn't. Admittedly, even at the start of this I was wondering how her powers actually work, by making it rain in this village is she causing more drought for the next town? Is she only directing atmospheric events that could exist otherwise or does she cause them out of nothing? With lightning and wind effects I can just go with it, that's properly charging or pressurizing the air in specific ways. But water in the atmosphere has more need to come from somewhere. Even without trying to make it more scientific her powers can definitely do a lot of damage and ultimately kill a lot of people and/or render places uninhabitable; and if you make it more interconnected that spreads the effect out exponentially.
But, that would definitely take time; far more than I think it would take for someone to stop her. I'll even give them a conditional out for why the X-Men didn't stop her in Xavier's timeline, because if he hadn't intervened last ep maybe there weren't X-Men to do so, or at least without Emma to deal with the possession (which brings us back to the hypertime effects). But even if we count out the X-Men going in to stop Storm, she doesn't have eyes in the back of her head so the bad guy couldn't necessarily see everywhere threats could come from. Not to mention that at some point I feel Storm herself might have a bit more of her senses back, or at least get too tired to keep this up. And to render the entire continent uninhabitable for decades suggests to me that whatever damage Storm did (probably considerable) was actually heightened a lot by other effects in that timeline. A moot point since they stopped the initial destruction this time; but seriously, it's a big continent for her to wreck that much.
It's also vaguely racist sounding that the characters say they're going to 'Africa.' Couldn't even say 'West Africa' or 'Central Africa,' if you don't want to name a specific country?
