Night of the Sentinels - Part 2

The conclusion of Night of the sentinels! Plus, how great is Rogue and her homespun wisdoms, plus what do the X-men eat?

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Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:34:12
Unknown
Hello and welcome to episode two of the X-Men Reexamined. I'm Dan and I'm here, as always with Javier Jarquin? Okay. Hello. Hey, everyone. If you haven't heard the first episode, this is the second episode that you could probably listen to them out of order, but I would recommend an order. Okay, This doesn't matter. Do what you like. I'm not here to judge you.

00:00:34:14 - 00:01:05:11
Unknown
But what it is, is we as adults, reexamine the X-Men Animated series that we remember very fondly from our childhood and ask ourselves, is it still hmm. Does it stand up to that fondness or is it just nostalgia now that we are grown-ups have. It's episode to night of the Sentinels Part two. Yeah, it is. In this episode we pick up on the cliffhanger from episode one, and big things happen in this one Beast is captured.

00:01:05:15 - 00:01:32:02
Unknown
Morph Dies. That's right there. Killed off Morph. Who does that? X-Men. The animated series of the nineties does that big shot kids known forever and we see the X-Men real from that they come back defeated and at the end of the episode we get the big saving of Jubilee and also taken down the Sentinel factory. We just get the X-Men coming in there and ripping Sentinels apart like it's their job and Cyclops Rule Supreme.

00:01:32:04 - 00:02:02:17
Unknown
He takes out so many. Yeah, yeah. CO And so we start off the whole thing starts off. As you say, it's cliffhanger. We're ending from the, the we, we were the end of the previous episode and rogues is something along the lines of you nervous is a long tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Oh what a great line the writers of just I don't know if that's a that's a typical Southern saying.

00:02:02:17 - 00:02:23:05
Unknown
I would like to hope it's not. And this the writers came up and said this is something that Rogue says, yeah, she's full of those lines. Kind of folksy. Kind of Yeah. It's her equivalent of like, Robin's O Holy Hole in a donut Batman. It's like, that's that's her thing. Yeah. Super speed flight absorption powers and just great lines.

00:02:23:07 - 00:02:46:21
Unknown
She's got the homespun wisdom for every situation. So they destroy the files. By the way, I saw Beast will not talk too much about a beast as a real interesting character because he is the most feral, non-human member of the X-Men to look at. Like you look at him like he's the you know, he's the beast. He looks like a monster.

00:02:46:23 - 00:03:12:00
Unknown
He's the most eloquent of the know. So most, most softly spoken and intelligent member of the X-Men, which is great. I've always loved that juxtaposition of the character. There's a bit in the previous episode where he kind of monkey climbs along the pipes on the roof over. Yes. Yeah. And finds this security panel, which sees security on it.

00:03:12:00 - 00:03:39:03
Unknown
And he's got the key and and he unlocks the panel. And as he unlocks it, he goes, But are any of us actually truly secure? Yeah. Yeah. Like his musings. I knew you'd love the musings. Yeah, I do love it. Just before he does that monkey climb as well, he realizes the the laser beams he sees, he starts quoting a poem and he says, A minor poet for a minor obstacle.

00:03:39:05 - 00:04:09:17
Unknown
Yeah, I couldn't help. I can. A quick Google of the. It is from a real poem from a poet called Coventry Pet War and I wonder if his family feels like a minor poet. Mr. Beast? Yeah. How fucking dare you. Uh, Rude Road, but yeah, like, he's got some. He's got some great lines, but they all play. They all play under like because he never it never really delivers as like, as a zinger.

00:04:09:19 - 00:04:31:01
Unknown
It's always like, oh well, lovable bubble of what will but what about this. Yes. These, these kind of eloquent little um I really think that maybe the the character from with with Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel Ray finds character Mr. your Gustav very much reminds you of beast it's like has a little poem or a quote for every situation.

00:04:31:03 - 00:04:55:09
Unknown
Mhm. And whether the like the place is on fire, they've got to get out of there. It is going, as Archimedes said, deliberately like beasts. Shut the fuck up. We've got to get out of here. That's right. Yeah. Because they destroy. He's been left to just everyone else is destroying physical records. But Beast gets roped with like you have to destroy all the the computer based files.

00:04:55:14 - 00:05:23:20
Unknown
And he's sitting there kind of uploading a virus and doing Apollo and then storm just fires electricity at it at the monitor. And she's like, no time for poetry, but one more stanza. Yeah, Yeah. I don't know how how kind of effective Like maybe, I don't know, maybe that computer to a kid like, work. That's the computer. She got it.

00:05:23:22 - 00:05:52:09
Unknown
Yeah. In hindsight. Well, that's the monitor. That has nothing to do with the rest of the computer. Yeah, Yeah. Unless you suck at maybe destroying Apple Mac from the late nineties. Hmm. Yeah, it's. Everything's on. Everything's on there. Everything starts going to hell. It's an ambush. The Sentinels land. And I like how they did this, where everything goes to hell and you see them come back to the mansion before we'd get a flashback of what actually happened.

00:05:52:11 - 00:06:24:00
Unknown
Hmm. Yeah. Really? A really interesting narrative structure here, too, to kind of go. Let's take us through that. Did it. Well. Well, I mean, let's let's see. Let's see the outcome here before we actually find out what the what happened. What's actually important in this moment is not the is not the fight is not the the fighting is not the powers, is not the but it's the emotional outcome.

00:06:24:02 - 00:06:46:03
Unknown
They go this is the important. But by initially just cutting the fight out entirely, we never say it's just like it went bad. Yeah, I do love that little shot where I'm getting off the blackbird and Storm kind of just looks at the empty seat. Yeah, Yeah. And just starts. It starts crying, you know, like, say, that's a really good point, that it's not about the fight, it's about the how the team deals with this loss.

00:06:46:05 - 00:07:07:22
Unknown
Hmm. Does Wolverine take it in a very mature way? Surprisingly, no. No. What? He kind of. He kind of like he's sucker punches. It's like Cyclops and threatens him. Like, next time I'll use it. So he says, I'm going to punch you now. Next time, I will kill you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what I don't get on well, yeah.

00:07:08:00 - 00:07:37:18
Unknown
One of the reasons and it's only. It's not really. It's only. It's seeded very lightly at this moment, but is what stops them. Fighting is the arrival of Jean Gray and who who is kind of, you know, has been psychically connected to the team knows exactly what's happened in this kind of I guess I've felt it emotionally as well.

00:07:37:20 - 00:08:02:01
Unknown
And her kind of turning up and crying. There's this there's just this shot of her crying on Cyclops chest while Wolverine just kind of goes in and looks kind of another tally. Can't We need is like the amount of times that Jean Gray says, Oh, Scott Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of that. Yeah, yeah. Yes. It's funny you say that.

00:08:02:01 - 00:08:21:20
Unknown
Like, this is a very subtle supplanting of the love triangle of Wolverine, Jean Gray, Cyclops, which isn't from the comics, I don't think. I think it was invented for the show. Right. And then especially the movies take on take this and run with the ball with that. I mean, because it's really resonant like, you know, and I think it it fades.

00:08:21:22 - 00:08:49:03
Unknown
You get kind of small men anger of Wolverine as well. You know not that not the every scenarios and surface of their character, but I mean there's there's a reason he's the kind of the breakout character the more things that can kind of happen that make Wolverine angry the the more more narrative fun can be had. Oh, absolutely.

00:08:49:05 - 00:09:10:17
Unknown
Because then he can let go, have a little, you know, 20 on the garage and turn Cyclops come to a convertible, which I like to be honest. I'm in a show that up to this point I've really enjoyed all the jokes I found. I've tuned his car in to tell him I've tuned his car into a convertible. I found that a little pushed.

00:09:10:19 - 00:09:30:10
Unknown
Yeah, I mean, give him a breakdown. They've just lost some members of the team yet. No fair. Fair enough. Fair enough. And he's grieving in his own way. Dan, those are three through four strokes. This is grief. Is property violence and bad puns. So what did go wrong in the mission? I mean, long story short, they get ambushed.

00:09:30:12 - 00:09:50:01
Unknown
They get overwhelmed. And this is really interesting that they morph, dies and a beast is captured. And I think this raises the stakes as a kid when you're watching this. They went out there on their first mission. Not everyone's coming home. And I think you've got to get that As Ichigo moves go of coming back, isn't it like.

00:09:50:01 - 00:10:16:02
Unknown
No, I know, I know. I have that along with myself. You're also a huge fan of the X Comm series of games, and I couldn't help but kind of draw the parallels here as they fly back from a failed mission and they're in their high tech jade having a cry and a sad time about the people they've lost on their mission.

00:10:16:04 - 00:10:52:15
Unknown
Absolutely. Yeah. The Superboy death right here. This is where you started Fox Babies down and captured based on multiple Wolverines. Ahem. Luke Well, Cyclops is doubting himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a cutaway after kind of this. The Wolverine drives off being said and is saying to the President of America on initially speaking on TV and then we think and then we cut to her in the in the Oval Office.

00:10:52:17 - 00:11:20:00
Unknown
She's Yes. So a couple of couple of interesting things here. I mean, first of all, perhaps the classic way to show that it's an alternative reality. The president of America is a woman. What I know in this topsy turvy world, it is a topsy turvy world. And she's really weird. She's got really weird inflection in kind of a funny voice is quite unusual.

00:11:20:02 - 00:11:47:00
Unknown
Yes. But she's visited by the guy that's running Guy Rick. Yes. Yeah. Running the Sentinel program. And basically he gets told by her to stop it. Yeah. Like, yeah, shut it down. Which makes sense because seems to me the Sentinels have just been walking through carparks and standing on this, just standing on cars. Yeah. We're not going to be renewing our Tara robot's subscription this year.

00:11:47:04 - 00:12:14:08
Unknown
Yeah. One interesting thing I noticed there was it's actually the the building, the complex they attacked was actually the Mission Control Agency. Mm. But when she talked about on the television, she calls it the Federal Security Agency, she had already said beforehand what they found out from the X-Men that the Mission Control Agency is a private organization. So that leads me to believe who announcing it is something federal, that maybe it's a bit shady and she doesn't want to you know, this is being sold as something else.

00:12:14:10 - 00:12:36:20
Unknown
And so maybe she's also like, oh, this is going into public. Let's we're going to end this shit now because we're it seems like we're we're kind of coming in and the timeline is that the the we're kind of coming in at a point where the understanding that mutants exist is only just starting to bleed through into the public.

00:12:36:22 - 00:13:05:21
Unknown
Yes. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, like, you know, this is all that. What is a mutant? And like, people are very speculative. Like when Wolverine's in the border. Hey, he's one of those. Mm hmm. Yeah. I don't know if it was a deliberate choice, but it was possibly the grubby depiction of the Oval Office. You know, one of the most famous in particularly in kind of in cinematic and television kind of history.

00:13:05:21 - 00:13:32:21
Unknown
It's so well documented. And the the vision of the show kind of presents to us. It just looks like no one's cleaned it so grubby. This is what happens when you're an adult to go back and watch something because look, look, it's white dirty, isn't it? I don't know if anyone's cleaned it in the one place, though. Why is the most powerful room in the world really need someone to kind of give the walls a better wash?

00:13:32:23 - 00:13:55:12
Unknown
Yeah, and you know what? Madam President, we could put the Stairmaster into the White House gym if you want. The Oval Office is kind of more ceremonial, if anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she's on this, like Stairmaster? Mm. Yeah. They say shut it down. Garriock says no alike answers the phone, His little flip phone. Kyra, here is this.

00:13:55:12 - 00:14:15:16
Unknown
Before you know, before caller ID, so doesn't know who's calling. He just like saying his name. Guy right here. He just does it twice. Notice that? Hmm. So he's, um. He retreats back to his muted factory or no, not muted factory, his central banking factory. And talks of Oliver Trask, who from the comics is the guy in front of in charge of this entire program.

00:14:15:18 - 00:14:40:14
Unknown
And do you notice that the seat doubles? Keep keep changing sighs a bit. Yeah, they do. They they either seem kind of about twice the size of a person or enormous. Yeah. You know, even between shots is that one shot where one bit where Wolverine jumps on his back and what is creeps up on him. It looks like the thing are all just like twice the size of that.

00:14:40:14 - 00:15:00:19
Unknown
He's like, climb back up his back, which implies he's about three stories high. MM By the way, that is the best bit of Wolverine. Also a little another example of why Cyclops is awesome. Wolverine at this point has not taken down a single sentinel. And the first weapon, this is the one Sentinel Wolverine takes out for all his aggression.

00:15:00:21 - 00:15:22:00
Unknown
What do you got mad at Cyclops for? Like pulling them out of the mission When Wolverine need to go attack the Sentinels? A, He had to be saved by Morph because he was about to get shot. And two, after that he immediately gets like lassoed around the legs and thrown off like miles away into the treetops. Yeah. So Cyclops to take out about eight seasonals.

00:15:22:00 - 00:15:50:18
Unknown
I'm just saying that at this point, by the end of the first two episodes, Cyclops has killed about ten sentinels, two Wolverines, one because they come back from the mission. And Wolverine is really angry at Cyclops. But from that moment, we actually realized that Wolverine hasn't been there. At the moment. He's not present in the fight at the moment where they begin to get overwhelmed and uh huh.

00:15:50:20 - 00:16:22:23
Unknown
And Cyclops is like orders kind of the the retreat. So he's actually missed that because he's been I guess he's returning from being hurled will be Wily Coyote. He'd look Yeah. Half a state away. Yeah. Also just on that. How many abilities do the Sentinels have so they can fly? They can fire like a thing that it's. And I'm led to believe that.

00:16:23:04 - 00:16:46:20
Unknown
So lasers in X-Men aren't really lasers. They're kind of concussive beams that. Yes, well, Cyclops is optic blasts are concussive like a lot of people mistake them for being heat, you know, kind of like Superman's vision, not the concussive blast. And I know what you mean. The Sentinel seem to fire similar sort of bolts, you know, at least like the bolts sort of thing.

00:16:46:22 - 00:17:20:15
Unknown
Yeah, One of the little balls. They can. Yeah, they can fires gas balls that kind of. And from the fingers as well. Yeah. And Oh yeah. And of course they can grab through the wall and crush you be just good old fashioned bit beat grip. But yeah, they can also fire out this really this kind of a cable that kind of prehensile that's independent and kind of works like a like a tentacle.

00:17:20:17 - 00:17:41:05
Unknown
Do you think they kind of like think about what kind of loadout they want before they go on a mission, Right. Like, is it is it a capture or is it to destroy? What are you putting in your slot? I'm going for the good old the bolas. Yeah. They do seem to have like to be armed with whatever will be interesting.

00:17:41:07 - 00:18:21:19
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. Just. It's a very low seven, isn't it? Um, the. The way they kind of track this down. Cyclops shoots the arm off one of them and it goes, Oh, I've got to go back to base for repair and the X-Men or go take a follow so closely at the ship. Follow him incredibly closely. There's a real classic example of why the Sentinels are kind of average here, is that even on returning back to base, they come through a skylight and fall onto just crushes this massive piece of machinery.

00:18:21:20 - 00:18:41:14
Unknown
If you've ever tried to come home very quietly drunk one night and just crashed out all over the kitchen, that's how the Sentinel comes through the skylight. Yeah, it's. It's just trying to take its pants off and tripped over and knocked over a cabinet. Even guy seems to trust. He's like, those guys know what where to go in.

00:18:41:16 - 00:19:13:02
Unknown
They know what they do know that they're like our robots aren't that great. But there's something. And he sees, like, right kind of early in the episode, he's like, We need 100 sentinels. Like, Buddy, you don't want 100 sentinels. And then if you do, we need 100 clowns. Yeah, it's like Jim Dynamite's money. They've clearly worked out that they were with the Sentinels.

00:19:13:02 - 00:19:48:06
Unknown
They need to go for quantity over quality. Yeah, I'm like, guys, maybe just like, they seem pretty impressive. Why don't you just try and make them a bit smarter? No, I didn't call you to this meeting for real answers. Just make it ten times. If I need 100 sentinels, then we kind of get to the promise of the episode, which is the whole team kind of turns up at or the whole strike team, I guess turns up at the Sentinel factory and fights all the Sentinels, which is just all you want from me.

00:19:48:08 - 00:20:11:08
Unknown
And it's 8 minutes and it's at its best. Super heroes. Take it down. Mindless robots. Couple of great moments. You mentioned it. First of all, Wolverine's claw climb up the back of the Sentinel. Oh, great. Isn't there? So, so great. Just love how even when he, like, is on the ground, he's still is still clawing away. Yeah, it's.

00:20:11:12 - 00:21:04:15
Unknown
Stop. He's already dead. If so, stop chopping it. And another moment that I loved, which is a real subversion of Saturday morning cartoons. This moment where Sentinel throws Rogue into the ground and throws is so hard that she lay. She leaves it like a wily coyote kind of crack in the ground. But it's cracked. Yeah outline but as play like Bugs Bunny run through the door kind of yes but it's played like so straight and she just kind of she just kind of gets up and like makes a quip about it, you know it says something so need some manners.

00:21:04:16 - 00:21:45:04
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, really lovely kind of moment of kind of cartoon violence. I wonder if they do that on purpose. Just kind of show that, Oh, she's okay. She could take it like a cartoon. Those probably. Probably my fave five moments and in the fight. Also I love that they they kick in the the animated intro music again here and it's not played very slowly underneath it and I think that trains you that like oh here comes an awesome bit it's going to be yeah because they do they do it in the first one as well It's they're the same kind of as the underscore for I guess the the big fight of the

00:21:45:04 - 00:22:04:04
Unknown
episode so far. It's kind of a pull game but like they just keep trying to get his card puns to work And the one point this one point they just give up where I think it's when they're trying to escape the complex and it's shooting at Gambit and he just comes out with his pecker, kind of just goes Jacks high.

00:22:04:06 - 00:22:27:04
Unknown
So like, no, this is five card stud jacks open. And that's not a pun. That's just yeah, that's the same rules of the game yet game. But come on man like for for it to work as a joke has to apply to both realities. The reality of playing game of cards and the reality of throwing explosives at someone is to both of them.

00:22:27:06 - 00:22:50:22
Unknown
Go finish. That only works if you're throwing them at a giant fish. Come on. Oh, I'm sorry. Go puzzle. Yeah, that's explosive. All right, good. We'll just do it. Just put up with this. Good, good. Just go ahead. On to what? WOMAN Sounds good. Yeah, Go, go. But, I mean, to be honest, she was way better than, you know, for a team.

00:22:50:22 - 00:23:05:20
Unknown
I think that's like our very little kind of teamwork. It just kind of seems to be like, at the end of the. This is how Cyclops takes out the Sentinels. This is how Wolverine takes them out. You know, I do love it when they really work as a team. There are some moments in there, but I'm more of that.

00:23:05:20 - 00:23:29:16
Unknown
Please. Yeah, I think in the evacuation we see a couple of things of people, like people who can fly, helping people that can't fly. Yeah, yeah, that sort of thing. But yeah, no. And the might have been in the first episode actually where Beast. Oh he just kills them, throws everyone over the fence. Yeah. Something. Which is. That's how you do it.

00:23:29:18 - 00:23:45:01
Unknown
Yeah. So the X-Men come together, they smash up the Sentinels Jubilee is saved and she says to the foster parents, I'm going to go live at the school. Now. You've been the best foster parents we've had. They if you go back to the episode, they had it for about a year and they're really nice parents. They really like foster parents.

00:23:45:03 - 00:24:12:06
Unknown
They tried their best and that kind of they kind of wraps the the narrative on the the, the kind of opening episode which is the first two. And yeah, it would have been broken into into two to tell a kind of longer form narrative. You know, we've we've met Jubilee and she's joined the X-Men. Um, yeah. What have we learned?

00:24:12:07 - 00:24:43:24
Unknown
We learned that they live in a world of fear, that the X-Men have got tension within the team, that they can lose people at any time. So no one is safe. Any time snakes are that high and that work best as a team and that Cyclops and Wolverine are polar opposites in terms of hanging threads, obviously based is still the still captured beast is still captured, uh, in the same way that the structure of this episode hides information from you for a while.

00:24:43:24 - 00:25:13:23
Unknown
We don't see the fight. Then it's still hiding from us. The moment of morphs death. We never we never actually see. We never see it specifically. We never see his body. We like they they all just talk about it. And, and, and, you know, when Jane is like, I can't feel his presence anymore, you know, but we we've never we never get like, a shot of the body not moving.

00:25:13:23 - 00:25:41:22
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. And not chuckling Yeah yeah yeah. But I hope there's a deleted scenes that we would like add more chuckles chuckles again. Chuckles Slow down chuckles get into chuckles. Stop. Yeah, that's. I'd love to say the, um, the audition reel for Let's try this. Try, let's try that. You know, trying to find the distinctive laugh. Yeah, and just some poor voice.

00:25:41:24 - 00:26:15:13
Unknown
Just. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, no. Give me something else. Yeah, give it. Cause there is a degree of, um. Uh, like, there's a creepy vibe to most. Yes, there is a it's quite a sinister chuckle, isn't it? It is. And and, I mean, his power is deception. It's a power that lends itself to misbehaving behavior, manipulation and all that.

00:26:15:15 - 00:26:38:13
Unknown
But yeah, being, I mean, if you're not hooked on this, the series after the first two episodes, I don't think it's really for you it's it's game to lose at this point for me. Like it's such a strong start. It's great. And we haven't even had the Queen's greatest villain. MM We've had Sentinels, which are great, great fun and show off the extreme skills, but we've not yet met the main antagonist.

00:26:38:15 - 00:27:14:11
Unknown
Mm hmm. That's a that's the next episode. So my question today is a lot of, um, I guess, boarding school fiction, which I think kind of fits into, is huge. Parts of it are based around we're going to have school lunches or we're going to have a big face or we're going to have the shared dinner in the extreme world when the Xavier boarding school, is there a canteen, is there shared dinner, or is everyone responsible for their own lives?

00:27:14:13 - 00:27:40:00
Unknown
Oh, that's really interesting. Oh, there's no there's no mess hall, is there? I've never seen the canteen in there. And I would imply that this is a such a high level, like it's a fucking expensive school to get into. Like the guy. Look at the place they're rocking, you know, high tech jets everywhere. Yes. There's a great dining table somewhere and also, you know, eating is not very, very exciting.

00:27:40:02 - 00:28:05:12
Unknown
I don't know if I need to see a scene about it, but I'm I guess in terms of the worldbuilding, I'm interested to know, like the also athletic available on high protein diets. Navy Navy Professor X got like a bowl for each of them. We don't realize that mutants actually don't sit at tables. They actually eat out of a bowl.

00:28:05:13 - 00:28:23:05
Unknown
Yeah, right. And he could not like a society. You can never know that because it'll make them look like animals that they're trying to portray them as. Yeah, but, you know, they're gifted in one way, but the Lord taketh away. They actually can't use utensils. Yeah, they got to eat out of a bowl. Yeah. Yeah. It's like all right, coated bowls.

00:28:23:07 - 00:28:46:19
Unknown
The trough is filled, they all come and snuffle at it. So that's the end of the episode there. I mean, it leaves the X-Men Animated Series in amazingly different place, other series that were out at the time. We've got a two parter. We've seen the X-Men get in there, do what they do, and still leaves it wide open for, you know, we have a spoiler next week.

00:28:46:19 - 00:29:09:10
Unknown
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00:29:09:12 - 00:29:25:08
Unknown
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00:29:25:14 - 00:29:49:15
Unknown
You can find all the information about that in the notes to the show, lots of clickable links where you can see the other things that we get up to. Many of which you may enjoy. But until next time, tell free and great review. And we'll see you next week four into Magneto See let it team. Thanks. I'll see you next time, buddy.

00:29:49:17 - 00:29:56:16
Unknown
See?