User blog:Hawkeye2701/Review4U: X-Men TAS Episode 1-2

Alright, I've found the compromise in reviewing the X-Men animated series. Rather than try to blitz an entire series, remember it, then try to condense 5 seasons into one review, I will review each episode separately at a rate of at least once a week if I can manage. So here it is, courtesy of FoolishJester, X-Men: The Animated Series episodes one and two, Night of the Sentinels.

Story
We open on a lovely shot of Sabretooth destroying police cars for whatever reason with a news caster talking about mutant hysteria. Turning off the TV, Jubilee's adopted parents discuss the fact that she's a mutant, apparently her terrible habit of trashing technology on touch being the evidence. Whilst generally caring people, her Foster Father foolishly registered her with the Mutant Control Agency (Cause this name screams Outreach Program) Prompting a Sentinel to walk right up to their house and put its hand through their wall. How they didn't notice it coming before it did that, I'll never know, Sentinels aren't exactly known for their stealth.

At the mall, Jubilee is playing at the Arcade and we get a lovely close up of her brown eyes, I repeat, her brown eyes (This will be relevant in about 40 episodes) Anywho, the Sentinel pursues her inside very Terminator 2 like with some fun lines such as a kid begging his mother to buy him it and a woman demanding a police officer to do something only for him to be stumped.

Being run out of the Arcade after revealing her mutant powers, Jubilee runs right into Rogue and Storm of the X-Men. As the Sentinel slams its way through the wall, it thankfully declares that people "Should not be alarmed. I am here to serve and protect." Which is great, cause when giant robots cause thousands in property damage, I like to know it's in the public interest. We clip to Remy being the cheesiest playboy ever and both him and the clerk he's chatting up not noticing the sentinel walk by somehow. The Sentinel locates and attacks Jubilee, wrapping her in a metal tentacle from its wrist (And here I thought the Japanese weren't involved with the X-Men 'til 2010)

The X-Ladies arrive to intervene and the Sentinel replies with the weirdest line ever "Unidentified Mutants, Ignore." If you have Jubilee, who you can track whenever you want, but there are two much stronger, unknowns standing right in front of you... God, this must be a Mk.2, seems stupid enough to fly into the Sun on command.

Still, the fight starts and amongst the one-liners, the theme song starts, making this scene ten bajillion times cooler than anything else ever. Gambit gets involved, but is quickly owned with thee other two, leaving Jubilee to try and defend herself, goes surprisingly well all things considered. It's at this point that the rest of the X-Men arrive, Cyclops decapitating the Sentinel in one shot.

Waking up at Xavier's Jubilee fries a heart monitor and goes walkies, seeing some bizarre things as she goes before running into the Danger Room. Interrupting Wolverine and Gambit in their training, Jubilee is introduced to the X-Men. Looking through the Sentinel's files, they find that using the MCA's files, they were tracking and capturing mutants.

Jubilee heads home to check on her poster parents, somehow missing the 30foot Sentinel standing behind a tree that came up to its knee. Are these things frickin' Invisible? They're bright purple and red for cryin' out loud!!! Anyway, Jubilee is soon captured.

The X-Men plan to invade the MCA to take out the files they use to track mutants. Though instead of sending all infiltration experts, Xavier decides to send Storm (Weather control is not a subtle power) Beast (While agile, is big and blue) Morph (An actual infiltration expert) and Wolverine (Who is frickin' WOLVERINE)

Going on the job, we get a background dump via Rogue, appreciated, but clumsy. Infiltrating the base, the group walk right into a trap pretty much, but thanks to Wolvie's keen senses, Storm blows away the competition. Outside, Cyclops' team deals with incoming reinforcements. Inside, the team starts destroying files.

Clipping to a facility in Detroit (Cause the only place more horrible is New Jersey, and even mutants don't deserve that) Jubilee is strapped to a table and interrogated about the X-Men.

Back with the X-Men, we get more pithy one liners and combat as they get ready to run. Unfortunately, on the way out they are confronted by more Sentinels and in the struggle, Morph is killed. returning victorious, but depressed, Wolverine gut shots Cyclops and the two prepare to beat the hell out of each other when they reveal that Beast was captured, but Morph is no more. Taking out their frustrations in various ways, we get Wolverine's flashback of the mission going to hell with Wolverine's insistence on going back, only to get drained by Rogue.

Switching to Beast, we see him getting locked up by the MCA before the scene once again quickly fades to a declaration by the president (Who is a woman, very progressive of you X-Men) We end up in a bar where Cyclops and Wolverine fight some of the most generically slimy guys around with the best reaction ever when someone tries to take Cyke's glasses. Heading outside, Cyke offers Wolverine the opportunity to take out the Sentinel home base.

Meanwhile, in the Oval Office, the President tells Gyrich to stop his mutant hunting activities, showing a great amount of both intelligence and understanding (I love it when the smart ones are in charge. :D) Meeting with Jubilee's parents, Cyclops leaves on the advice of Jubilee's foster father, who is just after calling Gyrich. I'll comment on the peculiarity of that later. Meeting with Trask, Gyrich tells him to pack up and that the project is being moved overseas.

Jubilee takes the opportunity of a busted Sentinel flying in to escape. Getting surrounded by Sentinels, all hope seems lost until, you guessed it, X-MEN! Theme music and everything. Destroying Sentinels left and right, the X-Men clean house, saving Jubilee and putting the boot to the Sentinel program.

The episode wraps up with Jubilee being enrolled in the Xavier school and Cyclops discussing his leadership decisions with Jean.

The Review
There's a lot of good and a lot of bad in this series. So I think I'll start with the bad this time, so I can round out with what I really love about this series.

Unfortunately, time has not been kind to the X-Men animated series, though I suspect the way Jubilee talks was never truly indicative of any youth culture. Essentially, things like the character's clothing, manner of speech and the technology (VCRs and the like) are all terribly outdated, but even so, the story itself is still pretty poignant. The series is known for doing several things that mark massive change in the way people approached cartoons and even so, few since then have matched it in my opinion.

Some of the other things that weren't great unfortunately include things like exposition dumps. I understand you need to tell the story, but Rogue's explanation of her powers seemed clumsy and out of place, and with her line about Moon burn, I cringe at some of the attempts as regional dialogue in this. It just seems like it could have waited for a later episode to explain her origin, and it did, they seriously went over it in more detail in a later season. As a more nitpicking note, I don't get why Jubilee's dad called Gyrich, then told Scott to go. Considering Gyrich wouldn't have known he was there unless he called him, the need to protect himself and his wife by informing him, then telling Scott to go, doesn't seem to exist.

Other than this, the typical issues are there, every gun is a laser and 30 foot robots are programmed to be as stealthy as Solid Snake.

Now onto the good stuff. the story is still solid after 20 odd years and if anything, is still somewhat ahead of its time, after twenty years, we're still waiting on a female president and I don't know about you, but I could do with a giant robot, just sayin'... While later retconned, it killed Morph in the second episode. To my understanding, up until this point, character death in cartoons was virtually unheard of, so X-Men taking out one of the X-Men in the second episode shook things up something fierce, and even now, it's rare to see a hero character die, I'm honestly struggling to think of a series where this proved to be the case even temporarily. The most major positive aspect I can remark on in terms of the story is that it's not a case of us vs. them. It manages to truly capture the spirit of the X-Men series by showing that while we're backing the mutants, not all humans are bad, especially not all those in power. While Gyrich and Trask and even those morons at the bar are bigoted gits, Jubilee's foster parents and even the President of the United States think the mutants deserve a break. In terms of the style of the show, while the Civilian outfits are rather dated, I think many of the hero costumes have aged comparatively well and in some cases are even the iconic looks for the characters, though admittedly I think its mostly for characters who emerged at this time like Gambit and Jubilee.

The thing I think is the best about this series is that it doesn't treat its audience as children. It presents us with a story about discrimination, hatred and even to a degree, a war of ethnicity, but doesn't dumb it down. While it might've been reversed, in episode 2 we get a casualty of war, throughout we get the meaningless bigotry of people like Gyrich and the bar flies and while yes, this series is dosed to the eyeballs with bad puns and humour, when something bad happens, it happens. Nothing comes along to break the mood, the situation is treated with the weight it deserves. So in conclusion, while maybe still finding its feet on the exposition situation, X-Men the Animated Series is off to a good start.

That, and there has never been a more kickass theme tune in the history of television.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IzSGvXc_PM

This has been Hawkeye2701 on behalf of FoolishJester at the start of a long, long road. Now then, To me my cola bottle.