setsuled

Last night's new X-Men'97 wasn't exactly bad but felt like fragments and was altogether unsatisfying after what felt like a full meal last week.

"Motendo/Lifedeath - Part 1" is two stories, a short one about Jubilee and Roberto getting sucked into a video game followed by the first part of an adaptation of Storm's relationship with Forge from the late '80s comics.

The video game story just seemed like a mess. I'm not sure if it contains many references to actual video games. I could sort of see Marvel vs. Capcom in there, minus, of course, the Capcom and other Marvel characters. If Disney had actually made a deal with Capcom to have their characters appear--as they did for Wreck-It Ralph!--the episode might have been really interesting. Maybe that was the original intention but for whatever reason the deal didn't happen and they decided to cobble together what they had for half an episode. It's never clear what the stakes are or the mechanics of how things function in the game world, if Jubilee has to do anything different to what she usually does in order to survive, so it all kind of turns into noise.



Storm remains one of my favourite Marvel characters though mainly for the comics from the late '70s and early '80s. I tend to hate stories about superheroes losing their powers and Storm getting to rock and roll is a rare enough event without this. The episode cuts off at an awkward point and really feels like the story should've been given a whole episode to breathe. It always seems like Storm's getting table scraps to me.

X-Men'97 is available on Disney+.

X Sonnet #1831

Not ev'ry dame behind a flame's Brunhild.
The cards so hard to stack aren't worth a bean.
For grass to pass for rain's a roof to build.
The souls we sold were waxing pale and lean.
Accounts of rain recall diluted suns.
Exploding trees were hid behind her eyes.
But who, you ask, would have sufficient funds?
The girl, I say, who baked the silver pies.
Container paint was worse than prison bars.
Revulsion told on luckless babes abroad.
A lot of coffee changed the bikes to cars.
The garden's czar returned the seeds to sod.
The final book would look a fright on shelves.
In darkling woods the hoods concealed the elves.

I didn't even like the old X-Men animated series so I was surprised to find I really enjoyed the first two episodes of its revival, X-Men'97. I'm hardly the first to hand it accolades, it has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, the first Marvel production to get that kind of love in a long time.

The show picks up where the old series ended in 1997--it started in 1992, when I was in junior high school. I remember Saturday mornings when it would come on I would sometimes suffer through it to get to something I liked, like the latest Ghostbusters series, Ninja Turtles, or Darkwing Duck. Duckwing Duck was an afternoon show, wasn't it? Ah, it was also on Saturday mornings, I see from this helpful schedule. Looks like Ghostbusters stopped airing before X-Men premiered. It's funny, I could've sworn there was a Ghostbusters series when I was in high school.

Anyway, looks like, early on, I'd have had to have chosen between X-Men, Back to the Future, and Land of the Lost while waiting for Darkwing Duck to come on, and X-Men was certainly the best choice of those three, even though I hated the awkward animation and the corny dialogue. And I was an X-Men fan before that! Storm was one of my favourite comic characters growing up. I read the comics from the late '80s and I gleaned a lot from other kids who'd read more of the comics than I had. Also, there was an X-Men game at the local arcade I played a lot, so I knew a lot of lore and backstory. It formed an impression of X-Men that told me it was a story that deserved better than the lousy animated series. But it must have been my first exposure to a lot of the classic plotlines I didn't read the original comic versions of until years later.



The first two episodes of the revival have fixed a lot of the problems with the old series. The animation, now courtesy of computers, is much smoother, and the opening sequence no longer repeats the same pull-out from close-ups over and over. The dialogue is still incredibly corny but probably self-consciously so. The most important thing is, when I was watching, I got caught up in the story. I wanted to know what Magneto (who now looks oddly like Richard Lynch) is up to. I want to see if Rogue is going to get her heart broken. I want to know if Jean is really pregnant. So screenwriter Beau DeMayo did his job. Too bad he's apparently been cancelled to oblivion. No-one even knows what he did but he wasn't just fired, his social media accounts were deleted. The guy doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry, despite having worked on both Moon Knight and Witcher. It's like he went into witness protection. I read one article that floated a rumour that it's because he was difficult to work with. Hardly seems sufficient explanation for his social media being deleted.

Anyway, we have two full seasons of his work to enjoy, whatever purgatory he may now be consigned to.

X-Men '97 is available on Disney+.

X Sonnet #1827

A rusty oven swells with soggy toast.
A summer dream oppressed the coming spring.
Piano wire cut the dancing ghost.
The acid ant disrupts the bitter ring.
Repeated ripples scar the simple pool.
A peaceful place became a broken hull.
Another coat was made from golden wool.
A secret song was sung by someone's skull.
A data leak was traced to rabbit ears.
Concoctions ranked revealed a banger gin.
A time dispersed before the woman's tears.
To travel back would mean she'd not begin.
Nostalgic Martian strings return the heart.
Ideas were blank before the dream of art.

I finally got around to watching 2017's Logan a few days ago. I'm glad I did--I have my complaints but in the main I think it's the first X-Men film to live up to the potential of the first two Bryan Singer films--mind you, I haven't seen the Brett Ratner movie or the first two solo Wolverine movies but I feel relatively comfortable making that claim. It's pretty common now for films and television series to draw inspiration from classic Westerns but Logan nails the Western feel better than most.



The film's middle portion, where Logan (Hugh Jackman), Charles (Patrick Stewart), and Laura (Dafne Keen) briefly stay with a family of farmers is the best part of the film. It brings in a surprising sense of credibility with the corporate corn farm muscling in on the family--I really liked how the trouble starts because there's no water to clean the dinner dishes. But it's also very Spaghetti western--it's not unlike the McBanes getting slaughtered at the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West after Logan and patriarch of the farm, Will (Eriq La Salle), are met by a gang when they try to repair the sabotaged water pipes.



This is nicely paralleled by and tied to Richard E. Grant's character trying to turn mutants into a profit industry.

I only wish James Mangold had made the film a bit slower. My main complaint is that shots tend not to linger nearly as long as they should, nothing feels like it has time to settle in. But the film does work in spite of this.



Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart are both really good and the relationship between the two characters feels like a real evolution from the two as we saw in the Singer films. Where once Professor X was gently encouraging a cynical and world weary Wolverine to accept the hope promised by the mutant school we now see a world that's become much more like one that matches Logan's worldview. This is made so much more effectively painful by Stewart's performance as his Charles insists on treating young Laura and Logan with patience and gentleness even as his manner clearly shows he knows just how hopeless things have become. And he bears the weight of his own horrible mistakes.



The climax is good and it's great seeing Wolverine finally able to use his claws in a rated R film. Still, I don't blame Hugh Jackman for deciding to retire from the role after this, I can't imagine a better note to go out on.

Twitter Sonnet #1068

The trees absconded with the golden stars.
Atop the growing ornament was light.
Abeam the racing hooves a row of bars.
And all the walking fish were bade g'night.
The passing hand revealed a waiting ghost.
The hours hemmed in red and gold repair.
Mechanic routes ordained the normal toast.
The river webs announced the strange affair.
We saw the sun behind the skinny tree.
Reminders posted paint a shadow face.
The watch is running past the cup of tea.
A tablecloth askew, the only trace.
At lunch a cart ascends a thorny hill.
The garden turns for time's lethargic bill.