Featured TV on DVD Review: Wolverine and X-Men: Fate of the Future
March 17, 2010
Wolverine & X-Men: Fate of the Future - Buy from Amazon
Good news and bad news for fans of Marvel Comic cartoons. The latest DVD release for Wolverine & X-Men came out recently. A reason to celebrate. On the other hand, Fate of the Future is yet another single-disc DVD. I, like many others, vastly prefer full-season sets. That said, compared to the previous releases, how well does this one hold up?
There are five episodes on this DVD, starting with...
As for the extras, there are audio commentary tracks on all five episodes with Craig Kyle, Greg Johnson, and Chris Yost. All three men are obviously having a great time, so much so that there's talk of killing mikes. At one point, one of them asks, "Is it your goal to get us sued in every commentary?" (This was in response to one of them bringing up Batman, which is of course property of a different comic book company.) There's a lot of information passed along, but never in a dry, academic fashion. (I'm glad that at least one of them recognized the clown nose on the Wolverine Sentinels). On a side note, the commentary tracks are found in the Episode Selections menu and not in a separate special features menu.
Wolverine & X-Men: Fate of the Future is absolutely worth owning. Yes, it is a single-disc release, but it only costs $9 on Amazon.com. That's five episodes, plus audio commentary tracks on all five. A pretty good bang for your buck. However, odds are the "Season Two" release will be an even better deal. If you can't wait that long to check out the audio commentary tracks, give this one a rental.
Overall, we have two episodes that move the story along (Badlands and Backlash), two episodes that are callbacks to previous episodes (Stolen Lives and Hunting Grounds), and one episode that is more or less a stand-alone episode (Code of Conduct). To be fair, all the episodes (even the stand-alone episode) help the overall story arc move forward. For instance, the events in Code of Conduct help repair the relationship between Rogue and Wolverine. Since the overall story arc is so intriguing, I obviously enjoy the episodes that move it forward the most. However, all episodes on this DVD have strong replay value.
Wolverine receives a mysterious call saying Kristie is in danger. Who is Kristie? She's the daughter of Maverick, both of whom were introduced in Past Discretions. When Wolverine goes to investigate, he finds Mystique already there. Turns out she was the one who called him and while her warning was legit, she has ulterior motives for getting him there.
While Nightcrawler is in prison in Genosha, he and the Scarlet Witch are kidnapped by Spiral at the behest of Mojo, who wants to feature the two on his TV show. Additionally, Mojo has kidnapped another member of the X-men to really boost the ratings.
In parallel stories, Wolverine, Forge, and Shadowcat sneak into the Master Mold HQ to check it out. In the future, Professor X and the X-men remnants battle a new breed of Sentinel that bears resemblance to Wolverine (well... a cross between Wolverine and a clown).
A nemesis from Wolverine's past has some unfinished business. In order to compel Wolverine into a confrontation, he sends his elite squad of ninjas to kidnap all the X-men except Rogue. They really need to work on the security at the mansion.
As we learned in a previous episode, Senator Kelly and Magneto had a secret deal where there would flame the hostilities between humans and mutants in order to boost both men's power. However, more recently that alliance has broken down. In this episode, we get to see part of the result. It's a strong ending for the DVD that not only brings together a lot of threads from the past, but also sets up what will have to happen in future episodes. The Verdict
- Submitted by: C.S.Strowbridge
Filed under: Video Review