Legion, Season 1, by Noah Hawley and chums (FX) | review by Stephen Theaker

It’s astonishing that after creating season two of Fargo, probably my favourite programme of that year, Noah Hawley went straight on to creating this remarkable show, bringing Jean Smart and Rachel Keller with him. Some viewers took strongly against the slight science fiction elements of Fargo, but no complaints here since this is set in the X-Men universe. When exactly it is set has been a talking point, since of the X-Men films its design looks most like X-Men: First Class, set during the Cuban missile crisis, and the technology seems quite retro. Eventually an adult character, Ptonomy Wallace (Jeremie Harris), mentions hearing 99 Red Balloons on the radio when he was five years old. So my guess is that this is taking place in the present day, or slightly in the future when the wheels of retro fashion have rotated once again.

There is another possibility, that we can’t trust anything on screen, that this is how our protagonist sees the world. As in the comic which clearly inspired the show, X-Men: Legacy (reviewed in TQF59), our protagonist is David Haller (Dan Stevens, so good in The Guest), son of a powerful mutant, with a head full of powers. In the comic, the powers are his, each of his separate personalities having a different ability (like Crazy Jane of the Doom Patrol), and the powers activate either when he gets control of the split personality, or when the split personality gets control of his body. Things aren’t so straightforward (if that’s the word) in the programme. David is seen wielding immense power in moments of great stress, but whether the powers are his to control is unclear. He’s been brought up to think that he is mentally ill, and he has been institutionalized ever since a particularly low point in his life. But at the institution he meets Syd Barrett, played by Keller, and their tentative, sweet romance will lead him out of the institution and into the middle of a war between mutants led by Dr Melanie Bird (Smart) and a mysterious, militaristic governmental department, while trying to cope with his burgeoning powers and mental health problems – if that indeed is what they are. Not everyone thinks so.

In the world of superhero adaptations, this programme stands apart. Much as I enjoy The Flash and Supergirl, no one would consider them a work of art, and that’s what Legion is. Visually it is astounding, as stylish as the work of Mike Allred or Jack Kirby. It is probably the most self-indulgent programme I’ve seen this side of Hannibal, but I think it is exactly the programme it wants to be, and it trusts the viewer to go along for the ride – or perhaps trip would be a better word.

It is absolutely terrifying in places (what’s that at the edge of David’s memories?), but funny in others, and the experienced cast handle every turn of mood with aplomb. It reminded me at times of Patrick (H) Willem’s short film, What if Wes Anderson Directed X-Men?, and I loved that about it. The words “best television ever” were uttered in our living room during the penultimate episode. Between this, Dirk Gently and Preacher it really does feel like they are making television programmes specifically for me these days. I hope other people are enjoying them too so I get plenty more of the same. *****

Deadpool 2 | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Masked chatterbox returns with frenetic blend of violence, vulgarity, and pop culture references perfect for distracted contemporary audience

I’m getting a little tired of superhero movies. Aren’t you? They’re starting to blend together, and they’re taking themselves too seriously. Thankfully, Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) has returned to commiserate with us in Deadpool 2, directed by David Leitch. This time, the even more reckless antihero strives to prevent abused fourteen-year-old mutant Russell/Firefists from harming humans. The quick-witted, potty-mouthed and in some ways self-absorbed Deadpool delivers a barrage of pop culture quips and ultra-violent dispatches of scumbags.

If one were to make a drinking game based on Deadpool’s pop culture references, one would quickly be inebriated. References to films alone range from eighties action flicks and rom-coms to extreme horror to Avengers: Infinity War, released less than two weeks before Deadpool 2. Add to that drinking game decapitations, severed limbs, bullet holes and stabbings, and the player would be unconscious within the first fifteen minutes of the film.

Deadpool is the kick in the pants that the superhero subgenre brought on itself. Early in the film, he wears an eighties-style, high-cut yellow jersey emblazoned with an “X” as he accompanies a few X-Men to calm down an enraged mutant. Not only does he make jabs at other superheroes – he even signs “Ryan Reynolds” on a kid’s cereal box depicting Hugh Jackman as Wolverine – but he also mocks genre conventions by pointing out what’s going to happen. Before a massacre accompanied by a Dolly Parton song, he says, “Hit it, Dolly.” He also points out a “huge, steaming ball of foreshadowing” and a “big CGI fight comin’ up”.

Deadpool’s chief nemesis is Cable (Josh Brolin), a “grumpy old fucker with a Winter Soldier arm” (referencing the second Captain America film). With his gruff demeanour and clipped dialogue, the time-travelling ruffian makes a stark contrast to Deadpool. The latter claims that he once had a fanny pack like Cable’s (carrying case) in “nineteen ninety-never” and repeatedly (and unjustifiably) calls the cyborg a racist. However, the two characters also have something in common.

The film achieves its humour in large part via foiled plans, gory injuries, and the insertion of a ridiculous element into an otherwise commonplace scene. For instance, Deadpool assembles a ragtag group of superheroes with odd powers and gives them the uninventive name “X-Force”. What happens during their first mission arguably takes the crown for the film’s funniest sequence.

Whether he’s commenting on people’s lips, sustaining a gruesome injury, or planning a mission on a map that looks like it’s been drawn by a child, Deadpool is the perfect entertainer for a restless, information-overloaded society. The only concern is that the film’s abundance of contemporary references poses the risk of giving it a short shelf life. Regardless, Deadpool’s greatest accomplishment is his ability to appeal to the nerds who live and breathe comics, and to the general public.

When interviewing potential X-Force members, Deadpool encounters one gentleman, Peter, who confesses he has no superpower, but rather “just saw the ad”. The response that Deadpool gives speaks not just to Peter, but to all theatregoers: “You’re in.”
 – Douglas J. Ogurek *****

Read Douglas’s review of Deadpool.

X-Men: Legacy by Simon Spurrier, Tan Eng Huat and chums (Marvel) | review by Stephen Theaker

This twenty-four issue series, which ran from 2012 to 2014 and is available in its entirety to subscribers on Marvel Unlimited, as well as in four collections, tells the story of David Haller, the son of Professor Charles Xavier and an Israeli diplomat. He is known to the world at large as Legion, and though he isn’t keen on that name (he’d be really annoyed that it’s the title of the new television show based on the comic), it accurately reflects his powers: like Crazy Jane of the Doom Patrol, he has many split personalities, each of them with its own powers.

When he’s in control, he can use those powers. When they’re in control, the results can be disastrous. This series begins at the point in Avengers vs X-Men when something terrible happens to Professor Xavier at the hands of one of his friends, and that totally shatters David’s control, as well as giving rise to a malignant and powerful new personality that resembles his father. Over the course of the comic David will try to re-establish control of his own mind, take a pre-emptive approach to mutant hate crimes, start astral dating Blindfold of the X-Men, and try to prevent an apocalyptic prophecy of his future from coming true.

It’s interesting to see Marvel trying something like this. It is a bit like the original Vertigo comics – Shade the Changing Man, say – both in tone, and style, and in that a lot of the stories stem from David’s own problems in keeping his powers in check; if he’s not the big bad in each story, there’s always the danger that he might be. The television programme will probably need to be less all about him, but it worked well for the comic. ***

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This review originally appeared in Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #59, which also included stories by Rafe McGregor, Michael Wyndham Thomas, Jessy Randall, Charles Wilkinson, David Penn, Elaine Graham-Leigh and Chris Roper.

Logan | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Decapitations and lamentations: Jackman and Stewart swan songs reveal human side of superheroes in violent, yet touching Wolverine threequel

It’s been 17 years since Hugh Jackman’s rough and laconic Wolverine clawed his way into pop culture. Yes, Wolverine is strong, and he’s great to watch. But can we truly connect with a guy who quickly heals from gunshots or stab wounds? In Logan, the final installment of the Wolverine trilogy (and Jackman’s final appearance as the character), we can connect. As its title suggests, the film offers a more intense exploration of the human and therefore, more vulnerable, side of the protagonist. It’s not the all-powerful Wolverine, but rather the ageing Logan, a hard-drinking and world-weary has-been just hoping to retreat. Both he and Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), former head of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters (i.e. mutants), are deteriorating, and the feelings the film evokes captures this sense of loss.

But don’t put on your bonnet just yet. Logan, directed by James Mangold, delivers all the skin-piercing, bone-breaking, head-lopping, full-throttle maniacal violence for which Wolverine is known. It even has the classic Wolverine roar.

The year is 2029, and the world is bereft of the original mutants, with the exception of Logan, nonagenarian Charles, and Caliban, a tracker with a severe aversion to the sun. They’re shacked up in a remote Mexican outpost. Logan regularly takes his limo over the border into Texas to scrounge up enough money to medicate Charles with pharmaceuticals and himself with alcohol. He hopes to save enough to buy a boat and live out the rest of his days at sea with Charles (and away from humanity). Then Laura, a girl with a familiar mutation, enters the picture.

Logan’s initial response to Laura’s guardian’s pleas for help isn’t the most heroic. He must overcome his demons to help Laura get to a place called Eden, where she can meet up with her fellow lab-manufactured escaped super-children. But there’s a catch: Eden might not be real. Thus the unlikely trio of Logan, Laura, and Charles embarks on an adventurous road trip filled with pain, discovery, and hope.

In the meantime, the lab has sent out bounty hunter Donald Pierce with his mechanical hand (never explained or used impressively) and his goons to retrieve Laura and the other child mutants. Moreover, the lab is cooking up something that’s stronger than all these kids and that will, of course, be another of Logan’s obstacles.

Hurt and Help
One character tells Logan that in her nightmares, people are hurting her. He says that in his, he’s hurting others. He’s not talking about the enemies he ploughs through, but rather those to whom Logan gets close. Pain is a constant companion to Logan. He has repeatedly dealt with physical agony, but the emotional turmoil has inflicted more damage. And what a remarkable job Jackman does, whether he’s limping or grieving, in conveying both.

One of the most poignant aspects of this film is the relationship between Logan and Charles. Logan, worn down by loss, has no interest in helping others. And yet, in his own gruff way, he serves as Charles’s caregiver. Sometime before the start of this story, Charles has, in his early dementia, used his mind powers to do something terrible on the East Coast. However, even in his intermittent mental fog, Charles encourages Logan to help the mutant cause, while always showing respect to the human race. Stewart, shedding his professorial demeanour and even dropping some f-bombs, offers a moving performance.

An Improbable Spokesman
If you look at the posters of the first three films in the X-Men canon, you will likely see in the forefront the same character: Wolverine. Of all the mutants, he remains a favourite among the masses. Perhaps it’s because he rolls his eyes at the whole superhero thing; he’s not interested in capes and masks. With his outbursts and his pain, Logan reminds us of ourselves... minus the use of metal claws to hack off limbs, the indestructible adamantium skeleton, and the ability to withstand bullets, knives, explosions, fire and flesh-stripping winds.

Logan delivers everything that a superhero movie should have. You will feel exultation in the action scenes, and sadness in the dramatic scenes. Thanks to Hugh Jackman for giving the world a superhero with the ferocity of a wolverine, the grace of a swan, and the complexity of a human being. – Douglas J. Ogurek *****

X-Men: Apocalypse, by Simon Kinberg | review by Stephen Theaker

The events of X-Men: Days of Future Past have changed the timeline, and everyone now knows about mutants. Mystique is a hero to her kind, a civil rights leader who runs an underground railroad to help the less fortunate among them, such as Nightcrawler, forced to fight in a cage match against a very angry Angel. Back in Westchester, Professor Xavier has got his school for the gifted up and running, and when Magneto resurfaces, recruited by Apocalypse during a vulnerable moment, Mystique goes to Xavier for help. Cyclops and Jean Gray are already there, learning to control their powers, and Quicksilver is on his way – he also wants to find Magneto, albeit for different reasons. It’ll take the lot of them to cope with Apocalypse, an ancient body-swapping, power-collecting mutant who has just escaped from his underground prison of thousands of years. He’s a tough cookie and he can be very persuasive. It is time for the X-Men to go into action for the very first time all over again, and that is part of this film’s joy, to see a team very close to that of the Claremont/Byrne years of the comic in action: Cyclops, Jean Gray, Beast, Nightcrawler, Professor Xavier and even Storm, though she’s on the wrong side for much of the film, Apocalypse having found her in this timeline in Cairo before Xavier got around to it. It’s great to see them together, and that contributes to this feeling like the most X-Meny of the X-Men films yet. X2: X-Men United may have been a better film overall, but it felt like a science fiction film based on the idea of the X-Men whereas this feels like the X-Men. The melodrama, the humour, the flips from one side to the other, the bravery and tragedy: it’s all here. Once again Quicksilver comes close to stealing the film. Psylocke is introduced, but her complicated backstory is perhaps wisely left to one side, so there’s no sign of her brother Captain Britain, sadly. Another much-loved character makes an extremely violent five-minute cameo that may leave parents wondering whether it was wise to bring children to the film, as well as wondering how it ties up with the conclusion of the previous film – but continuity has never really been a concern of these films. See how badly the end of The Wolverine lines up with the beginning of Days of Future Past, or the constant recasting of any character not played by Hugh Jackman. By this ninth film in the series, including all spin-offs, that discontinuity must be taken as read. Let’s just assume there are changes to the timeline going on constantly in this movie universe, not just those we see on screen. It’s not perfect by any means – the tears over the lost cast of X-Men: First Class seem insincere given the film-maker’s decision to give them the boot. The post-credits scene is a colossal letdown, leaving the cinema audience audibly deflated (ironic for a film that credits its inflatable audience wranglers). But overall it was probably my favourite X-Men film yet. It rounds off this prequel trilogy nicely, James McAvoy being especially fantastic as Professor Xavier, while setting things up very well for what could be a new set of films featuring the classic line-up in their youth. I’m looking forward to the next film much more than I was looking forward to this one. ***