Monday, October 01, 2007

Episode 2.02: Man from the Edge of Tomorrow (part 2)

Wow, a lot happened in that episode! I'm kind of disappointed that Saturn Girl is out for a while. Rumor has it that she was removed due to focus group testing, but I'll see if I can dig that one up. But I've always loved the huge "everybody fight" scenes - although we didn't see everyone, there were 19 Legionnaires (every single one that we saw last season, plus Chameleon Boy who recently joined, and plus Superman-X) and 11 villains.

Cosmic Boy's not out for good, remember that Wil Wheaton did voices for several episodes, and there's a clip in the opening sequence that's not from either of these two episodes so far.

Here's a quote that Superman said to his clone. Can you tell who he's talking about?

"I know we're supposed to be related, but you remind me more of a friend of mine. Strong-willed, a bit of a loner, and when the time came for him to be part of a team, he resisted, and while he never liked it, he'll tell you he did far more good as a member of that group than he ever could alone. It just took learning how to compromise."

Alexis Luthor escaped, by the way, and wasn't recaptured. She was shown with the other villains leaving their cells.

Lightning Lord wasn't in this episode, I guess he left the Light Speed Vanguard/Legion of Super-Villains. There's a lightning-related episode coming up in two weeks, I expect to see Mekt there (and hopefully Ayla too).

Here's your Legion Wiki link and your regular-def torrent (doesn't look like they're doing the hi-def ones yet).

As for the torrents, they seem to be in different formats this time. One is formatted in .mkv which is a new open-source format, but it needs either new codecs or a new player. You may need a new video player called VLC (which is free). Read about .mkv files here. The other one is when the file is compressed and broken into chunks, you need to combine the chunks before you extract the file. These are in .rar compression. I don't know what decoders other than WinRAR work, but it's fairly easy. Then, once you "un-RAR" them, I don't know what format the file is in. Here's the MiniNova page where you can find all of the torrents for this and last season.

I'm sorry that the torrenting is not as easy as it was last season!

On to some reviews:
  • Legion Abstract:
    I wonder if there's something about the process of writing for television that forces the writers more rigourously to build or portray scenes which should logically happen, in a way that comic books can get away with not doing. Comic books, for instance, never gave us anything like the Brainiac-Superman friendship that exists in this series, despite that many of its ingredients were always there to be used. This episode's example: Matter-Eater Lad chomping into the Emerald Eye like it's a big cocktail onion. Why did that never happen in the comic book? It's perfect!

    One thing I did not like. This whole subplot with Lightning Lad going all Charles Bronson on Esper because she put Saturn Girl in the hospital? Trite. We have seen this a thousand times before. And it always ends the same way. "If you kill her, you'll be as bad as they are!" Except, in this case, Phantom Girl's exact words were, "She wouldn't want you to go down this path." What, are we lost in the woods here? Eesh. I could have done without that whole thing. We need a moratorium on this particular plot element.

  • Adventures in Comic Book Land:
    Legion of Super-Heroes was, as usual, awesome. There was some crazy drama. Triplicate Girl is now Duo Damsel because last week, she lost one of her bodies in the future. She might get it back, she might not; either way it’s good story-telling. It’s been good to see Matter-Eater Lad pulling his weight and chewing on random objects again. That’s what he does and he should be doing it. He chowed down on the Emerald Eye of Ekron and fried his brain, but Matter-Eater Lad was never relied upon for his keen intellectual skills.

    Lightning Lad and 41st Century Superman should start an angst club, they can sit around plotting overtly-violent vengeance that they’ll never truly seek out. I think it would be nice from both of them to have a group like that.

  • Bradygirl12:
    Green-eyed Superman is learning. The poor guy has only known fighting his entire life, though we saw his grief over his robot parents being destroyed in the first episode. While coming back to save the Legion on the prison planet was no doubt inspired by his need of allies against Imperius, I do believe he was also doing the right thing, even if he couldn’t admit it to himself.

    IMO, the Legion was a better episode this week with hope mixed in with all the death and destruction. Looking forward to next week!

  • Also, some discussion over at LegionWorld, ToonZone and Television Without Pity boards.

I'm sure I missed some, please point them out to me if you see any more.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Strong-willed, a bit of a loner, and when the time came for him to be part of a team, he resisted, and while he never liked it, he'll tell you he did far more good as a member of that group than he ever could alone.

I assumed Superman was talking about Batman.

Anonymous said...

My best guess is the loner he was describing was Batman. Jsut a guess though.

Mike A. said...

I thought the "loner" friend was Batman as well, which was a bit ironic since the episode of "The Batman" that immediately followed the Legion was the second part of a story in which it is Superman who must learn "to work with others" and not the other way around.

Also, I LOVED that they did a "Matter-Eater-Lad-in-a-coma" thing, but instead of eating Computo (as he did in the comics) he ate the Emerald Eye. Wonder if we're going to get a "Tenzil goes crazy" subplot in the show as well.

Anonymous said...

Tenzil went crazy in the comics after eating the Miracle Machine to defeat Omega, not Computo.

But I liked it too. :-)

Anonymous said...

I believe Superman was talking about Green Arow from Smallville series. At this time superman is not part of Justice League or even met Batman.