User blog:Hawkeye2701/Review4U: X-Men TAS Episode 14-15

I'm terrible at scheduling. Let's just air that problem right now, I do not keep well to my set goals. With that out in the open, I shall continue with my next review, opening us up to Season 2 of the X-Men aniated series, on behalf of Xemnas-Spidey, this is 'Til Death Do Us Part.

The Story
We open on Cyclops walking through a misty area only to be assaulted by Wolverine in a tuxedo. The scene promptly shifts to a wedding in which Scott and Jean are getting married. These scenes go back and forth for a bit until Wolverine stabs his Cyke, revealing it to be a machine. Having worked himself through the Danger Room robots whilst being injured, we get back to the wedding in which Scott says goodbye to the priest, who, walking out into the churchyard, transforms into Morph.

We cut to the capital where Senator Kelly is being sworn in as President of the U.S. and someone watching this event on a monitor is suiting up.

Back at the wedding, Beast catches the bouquet and starts quoting Shakespeare. This isn't really relevant, I just wanted to remind people that cartoons can be classy as hell and not just Spongebob crap. Xavier asks about news from Kelly and Beast informs them that as President, Kelly is issuing him a full pardon.

Swapping back to a press release by Kelly, the man we saw suiting up, dressed as some feral mutant, attacks Kelly while a man wearing a 'Friends of Humanity' badge watches.

Back at the mansion, Jean finds Logan, all torn up and expresses her disappointment that he wasn't at the wedding. When he tries to stop her, she tells him that Scott and her have to catch a plane.

With Morph, we see him in pain, seemingly conflicted between hating the X-Men and thinking of them as his friends. Getting flashbacks of the Sentinal battle that supposedly killed him, we see a figure standing over Morph as he lay dying.

Back in the city, we see people wearing Friends of Humanity shirts blatantly attacking mutants.

At the mansion, Xavier gets a message from Magneto, warning of a terrible danger and pleads with Xavier to meet him in Antartica. Seeing the other end of the conversation, we find that Magneto is in fact Morph, luring Xavier into a trap.

At a bar, Gambit, Wolverine and Beast play pool until the Friends of Humanity attack them. Soundly defeating them, the cops start to arrive, prompting the three to flee as well. Heading home, they find a message from Xavier, informing them of his trip when Jubilee runs in, telling them to turn on the news. They soon find a report showing a edited version of the events from before, having been filmed by the Friends of Humanity to incriminate the X-Men. After Wolverine leaves in a temper, Morph infiltrates the base, sewing discontent between the X-Men including convincing Gambit to kiss Rogue, only to be drained of his powers and knocked out, sending Jubilee to a supposed Mutant halfway house which is actually a Friends of Humanity base and locking Beast in a maxed out Danger Room whilst promising Storm (As Beast) that he'd be there to help them.

Unable to find Jubilee, Rogue and Storm are called out to a disturbance where the Friends of Humanity are again causing issues. With some intervention from Morph, Storm is shot by the Police. Watching on a monitor, we get a view of a man in dark clothes with white skin and pointed teeth (OMG IT'S DRACULA!) Anyway, that rounds out part one.

Part two opens on a plane setting down on an island. This proves to be pointless as Jean and Scott are actually approaching by boat.

Meanwhile, Beast escapes the Danger Room. Morph arrives at the gate, stating that it was the Xavier School and that he belonged there once. Why lament on this now as opposed to while he was here an hour ago is beyond me. Our villain from the last episode appears behind him, questioning Morph's resolve.

Meanwhile, on the love boat, Scott and Jean get all romantic, Scott claiming there's not another person for a hundred miles, which quickly proves false when a pink haired guy calls out to them from the shore. Using a Sonic Scream, he capsizes their boat, and the pair quickly finds themselves assailed by a group of mutants, our villain amongst them. Seriously, between him and Morph, I'm beginning to wonder how they get around so fast. After slapping them both with power suppressing collars, Cyclops demands to know who he is and what he wants, the villain introducing himself as Mister Sinister. Which is really the worst name ever for a person to have if they think they're doing a good thing.

Back in the city, Beast and Rogue sneak in to see Storm. The two discuss that Beast had said he'd be there to help, but Beast remembers no such exchange, leading him to think on the matter before a doctor walks in, forcing the pair to flee.

With the Friends of Humanity, their leader, Graydon Creed, gives a speech to his fanatical followers. Marching Jubilee onto stage, they threaten to kill her. Before they can carry out their threats however, an angry Canadian drops through the ceiling. Wolverine quickly dispatches the guards and the two make a run for it.

Getting back to base, Rogue and Beast argue while Gambit comes to. He gets involved in the argument, revealing that he too was lied to earlier, but Rogue denies it. Just then, Xavier enters, claiming they may all be under the effects of a devicecalled a neural disruptor. This facade is soon broken however, as when Wolverine and Jubilee return, the former can tell Xavier is not who he claims to be. With some quick thining, Gambit forces Morph to show himself. Running for it, Beast locks down the building, trapping Morph in with them. Wolverine and Jubilee confront him, but when Morph shapeshits into a duplicate of Wolverine, he tricks Jubilee into blasting the real one before making his escape.

On the island, Sinister reveals his plan to control the world using Scott and Jean's offspring, as he has been watching them their entire lives and now intends to go to work... I've said it before, dude is like the ultimate Creeper. Using a giant lamprey looking thing, he seemingly takes a sample of their genetic material.

In a scene with Jubilee visiting Storm, we get a good closeup of her brown eyes.

Back on the island, Morph lands and goes to meet up with Sinister. Morph reveals himself as the priest at their wedding. Threatening to shoot Scott, Sinister and his men enter the scene, explaining that after saving Morph, he manipulated his mind, exasperating the damage already done for his own ends. The X-Men bust in and Sinister orders them destroyed. The X-Men ultimately overcome Sinister's men, but the man himself proves a little more than they canhandle. Inside, Cyclops talks Morph out of his stupor. Buying some time for them, Cyclops breaks out and proceeds to blast Sinister repeatedly, neaarly killing him. Sinister and his men beat a hasty retreat. Cyclops and Jean lament that they aren't really married while Morph escapes.

In Antartica, Xavier and Magneto meet up, only for an explosion cause an avalanche that rains down on them.

The Review
Okay, as usual I'll start with the bad, and boy oh boy, the bad here is downright sinister... That's the only time I'll use that joke, I promise.

Alright, of the bad, I'm gonna say the one that got me most is the apparent speed with which Sinister and Morph got anywhere. Don't get me wrong, I understand the concept of cutting to another point to save time on exposition and pointless scenes, but when they cut back to other events etc. the time descrepancy appears to be virtually nonexistant. So for example, Morph pretends to be Beast over the comms to Storm and Rogue, who then go into the city to fight the Friends of Humanity. Morph at this point had gotten into the school on foot, and even assuming he had a vehicle parked somewhere off the grounds, would take several minutes to leave the building, get in his vehicle, then proceed to follow Storm and Rogue who are both flying to the scene. He would then have to make it to the city, using roads and allowing for traffic, park, then walk over discreetly to the site where the Friends of Humanity are causing damage. This would take bloody forever compared to Rogue and Storm flying in, yet he arrives on the scene in a matter of minutes after Rogue and Storm themselves arrive. And don't even get me started on Sinister somehow getting from behind Morph to the island in less than an afternoon when this place is supposed to be an uninhabited island somewhere where it's daytime there, but night in New York.

Other than that, the other big annoyance is the actions taken by the Friends of Humanity and the response to it. How is it that the Friends of Humanity manage to riot, cause actual property damage and attack mutants, but not a single person has stopped and said "Yeah, no, you guys are the assholes, we're arresting the lot of you." I mean I get this was made in the era before camera phones, hell, the FOH had to film their bullshit tape on an actual film camera, but it's not like mutants are universally hated, its not like a cop is gonna go "Well, you mutants and twenty other normal citizens witnessed this riot, we have physical evidence of shots fired and serious property damage that can't be caused by the powers of the mutants involved, buuuut, you're all stinking genetic freaks and sympathisers, so rot in hell." And while I understand this sort of thing happened back in the day of lynchings and the hayday of the Klan and such, but we're talking about New York in a world where a mutant sympathiser was elected president, there is no way these guys should be getting away with this crap. Hell, Graydon Creed shoved aside a police officer when the FOH's fake mutant attacked Kelly. Is nobody going to call him out on interfering with the actions of a police officer? Of inciting violence? Nothing at all?

Other than that, it's mostly little things, like the complaints from Cyclops about not really being married, or the fact that Siniser apparently needs a gold spitting Lamprey to get genetic material as opposed to the uch more hygenic and generally proven syringe.

As for the good, well, I've gotta say, I'm impressed by the intelligence of a lot of people in these episodes. While easily seen through by modern standards, an edited video is a clever means to sway public opinion, as is the staged mutant attack, even if some guy in a halloween costume is a stupid idea for a mutant. On the other side of things, Morph was smart enough to stay away from the mansion until Wolverine left, used his transformation power cleverly to have the X-Men more or less engineer their own failures and when discovered, even played to Jubilee's expectations of Wolverine to make his escape. Not to mention when it came to uncovering him, Gambit's use of a not-so-splody card was fantastic. Unfortunately, that's the most I can say for the good.

Now onto the moral of the story. I couldn't exactly find one. Seriously, other than the general X-Men meme of "Don't be a bigoted douche" which was taken to an extreme, these episodes just seem to be a good story despite their issues, just progressing the individual tales of the X-Men.

Over all though, these episodes, whilst they have a solid story at core and good moments of intelligence, they just expect too much from suspension of disbelief and even for the parts that were great, the weak parts were just that much worse dragging it down. A bad start to the new season if you ask me.

So from Xemnas-Spidey, I'm hawkeye2701, in desperate need of a pardon from these episodes.