[6.1/10] About halfway through this episode, Rogue says, “I had my fill of Savage Land the first time.” And girl, same.
But here we are, back again, fighting dinosaurs with dudes who wear loincloths for some reason. Why two creative teams thought it’d be a good fit for the X-Men to temporarily relocate to a Tarzan-like land for a while is beyond me, but here we are anyway.
The twist this time is that Sauron, the pterodactyl-looking dude who antagonized xavier and Magneto before, is, in fact, some kind of wer-edinosaur who can revert to his human form when he goes without “mutant energy” for long enough. Or something? Even in human form, he still craves mutant energy, so he’s also kind of a vampire. WHatever. He’s not very interesting. The show tries to do a “good man trapped in a curse” thing, but the performance is so over-the-top, and the storytelling is so shallow that nothing really comes of it.
There’s a little more intrigue in the idea of Storm constantly having to hold her back, but this experience unleashing her full power. They kind of already did this with Jean recently, but it’s an interesting idea for one of the more centered members of the team, and the one I’m most interested to see followed-up on in part 2.
Otherwise, this is largely just a bunch of indifferent clashes. It’s neat to see our heroes confront Sauron in central park. (Though I had a laugh from Beat throwing a coat over ROgue’s head and riding her like a rocket into the paddle boats.) The subsequent battle on Pterodactyls in the skies above the Savage Land isn’t much better than the usual skirmishes despite involving flying lizards.
Plus, we get a tease for some new enemy. All of the people are suddenly worshiping a big tribal head that used to be considered a myth, but has recently been generating adherents. hHat includes some sorceress type who seems to be using Sauron and Storm for her (read: Gorak’s) purposes. It’ mostly just plot machinery, and watching some vaguely-tribal witch type go back and forth with Olmec of Legend of the Hidden Temple doesn’t do much for me.
Overall, I wasn’t looking forward to this duology when I saw the title, and the execution here, while largely inoffensive, has done little to dissuade me from that concern in part one.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2023-05-16T00:37:47Z
[6.1/10] About halfway through this episode, Rogue says, “I had my fill of Savage Land the first time.” And girl, same.
But here we are, back again, fighting dinosaurs with dudes who wear loincloths for some reason. Why two creative teams thought it’d be a good fit for the X-Men to temporarily relocate to a Tarzan-like land for a while is beyond me, but here we are anyway.
The twist this time is that Sauron, the pterodactyl-looking dude who antagonized xavier and Magneto before, is, in fact, some kind of wer-edinosaur who can revert to his human form when he goes without “mutant energy” for long enough. Or something? Even in human form, he still craves mutant energy, so he’s also kind of a vampire. WHatever. He’s not very interesting. The show tries to do a “good man trapped in a curse” thing, but the performance is so over-the-top, and the storytelling is so shallow that nothing really comes of it.
There’s a little more intrigue in the idea of Storm constantly having to hold her back, but this experience unleashing her full power. They kind of already did this with Jean recently, but it’s an interesting idea for one of the more centered members of the team, and the one I’m most interested to see followed-up on in part 2.
Otherwise, this is largely just a bunch of indifferent clashes. It’s neat to see our heroes confront Sauron in central park. (Though I had a laugh from Beat throwing a coat over ROgue’s head and riding her like a rocket into the paddle boats.) The subsequent battle on Pterodactyls in the skies above the Savage Land isn’t much better than the usual skirmishes despite involving flying lizards.
Plus, we get a tease for some new enemy. All of the people are suddenly worshiping a big tribal head that used to be considered a myth, but has recently been generating adherents. hHat includes some sorceress type who seems to be using Sauron and Storm for her (read: Gorak’s) purposes. It’ mostly just plot machinery, and watching some vaguely-tribal witch type go back and forth with Olmec of Legend of the Hidden Temple doesn’t do much for me.
Overall, I wasn’t looking forward to this duology when I saw the title, and the execution here, while largely inoffensive, has done little to dissuade me from that concern in part one.