Our episode begins under the light of the full moon, in a snowy area. We see a guy running through the forest screaming into a walkie-talkie how they need evacuation and the mission is being aborted. We see various quick shots of a white creature and its howls. Then we see one take out one of the group of guys, though it's still too fast to make out. As they see a helicopter fly over, a second guy is pulled off-screen by a creature. The last two run for it.
Knowledgeable viewers would take note that these guys have SHIELD insignias on.
The helicopter lands, but its propellers kick up so much snow that the pilot can't see anything. A third member of the team is taken, but the fourth makes it on with a briefcase. He screams at the pilot to leave, and he promptly does so. But then a large snowball flies up out of the ground and hits the rear propeller, causing them to crash. The last we see as the chopper goes down is... The Hulk flying at them!
Cue the title sequence.
We cut to what appears to be a lightning bolt that strikes a motorcycle. The bike explodes, and then Wolverine drops into view, tied up by electrical cords. That doesn't last long of course. Various MRD personnel arrive, coming out of their vehicles and charging with electrified batons. Yeah, that's going to work. Again, Logan's claws are reserved for weapons.
After some fighting, Logan is surrounded; the MRD leader asks for Logan's surrender. But he throws it back at him, trying to sound badass when he's surrounded by guys with guns. Granted, this is Wolverine and the X-Men; Logan is powered by plot, so he could certainly escape if the plot wanted him to.
Here's the plot now: a helicopter arrives. When it lands, bunch of armed men in different uniforms appear. We then pan up to see a black man with an eye-patch. When the MRD leader asks who they are, the black man, trying desperately to sound like Samuel L. Jackson, tells him to leave.
The MRD leader is honked off, but a one-sided conversation with his comm unit convinces him to leave. He's kind enough to exposit that these new guys are SHIELD and the man is "Director Fury." We get some padding while the MRD guys file into their vehicles and drive away. Logan addresses Nick, who offers coffee. Logan grouses that he should have stayed with the MRD.
Cut to a diner, where armed SHIELD guards watch while Logan and Fury chat. Logan wonders if SHIELD is getting involved with mutants, but Fury says no, this is about something else. The Hulk, who Logan's apparently fought before. We even get a short flashback of the Hulk falling at Logan. Fury tells him that the Hulk destroyed a couple of towns and is on his way to a third. Logan just decides to tell him goodbye and try to leave.
Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
Fury then lists off the names of the X-Men. And Kurt, who's not actually on the team yet. He then rattles off their location, saying that information is SHIELD's business. Then he suggests that this information could fall into the wrong hands, like Senator Kelly's, but doing him a favor might keep it from happening. So Logan sits back down.
Fury lays the deal out in explicit terms, just in case the audience is full of imbeciles: Logan stops the Hulk, and the X-Men stay secret. Logan says that someday, they'll "have words" about things. Yes, Logan impotently growling at the man makes him seem all that much more badass.
Cut to a plane over the mountains. We then cut to a doe eating some grass. The camera ominously pans beside it, but it's only Logan, who pets it on the ass. What a way to cement Logan's badass reputation; petting animals.
Logan picks up a scent that he follows to a destroyed village. He finds some wood with claw marks. We then see one of the creatures run in front of the camera. Logan then hears a monstrous yell, and the Hulk appears as if from nowhere.
So Hulk and Logan square off, somehow having left the village during the commercial. Logan tries to talk the Hulk down, and then bears his claws. This prompts the Hulk to flashback to the previous encounter when Logan had a much worse mask. So the Hulk attacks.
Logan gets beaten down for a while, but then he's tossed near the pack he brought. The Hulk cuts him off before he can get to it, and then begins to bear-hug Logan to death. But Logan's able to adamantium head-butt Hulk, which is enough to make him let go. This gives Logan just enough time to get his pack of goodies, pull out a grenade and shove it into the Hulk's mouth. This seems to not work, but that's just a time-delayed reaction; Hulk collapses and turns back into Bruce Banner.
Cut to a cave, where Banner wakes up. Logan is kind enough to exposit his name for the three people in the audience who don't know the Hulk's alter-ego. Also, Logan is in the lotus position, meditating. Logan apparently decided not to call in Fury yet, because he realizes that the Hulk doesn't seek out towns to destroy them. So he wanted Bruce to explain what was going on, via flashback.
Apparently, Fury's people were chasing the Wendigo, caused by some curse. And he called in Bruce to help deal with the situation. Using his science, Banner was able to cure the Wendigo disease, despite not yet having managed to cure his own Hulkism. However, once he provided the cure, Banner was then tossed out of the plane, to turn into the Hulk and attract the attention of the Wendigo. We then see the SHIELD team from the teaser drop in.
Bruce says that he has to go get the cure, which still exists; this was the briefcase from the teaser. Logan can smell the helicopter crash, so they decide to head out. Bruce can't keep up after a while, then says that he sees flashes of the Hulk's memories of fighting the Wendigo. Which naturally chooses this moment to appear.
After some tension-establishing shots, the Wendigo appears and attacks Logan, who cuts off its claws. Bruce says that he sees more Hulk memories, that something else is going on, but doesn't get to say more when a second Wendigo appears. Then 3 more. Bruce says that it has infected the others sent to fight it. They are surrounded, and then the Wendigo's charge.
Logan throws one into the other two, then tells Bruce to get the cure from the helicopter. The Wendigos ignore Banner and focus on Logan. In order to avoid showing actual violence, we cut to Banner running into the helicopter. It's apparently stuck in a tree; that must be some tree to hold up a multi-ton helicopter. Before he can climb up to it, a Wendigo jumps out at him, but Logan intervenes.
Banner climbs up the tree, but a pair of Wendigo's follow him. He jumps into the chopper just in time to avoid a claw. Naturally, the tree that was able to support the multi-ton helicopter gives way under his added weight. A Wendigo jumps in at him as well, making things more unpleasant as they hit the ground.
Logan tries to reach the fallen chopper, but the other Wendigos stop him. We see them clawing at the fallen Logan for a bit, then hear the Hulk's roar as he lifts the helicopter off of himself, a beaten Wendigo in his other hand. The other Wendigos all go to attack him, while Logan tries to act badass and impotently threaten them.
Then Logan remembers the cure, so he heads into the chopper to find it. We intercut shots of Logan finding the cure and opening the briefcase with shots of the Hulk handling business with the Wendigos. Logan takes a look at the clear syringe needle on the end of one of the vials and wonders if he's supposed to make them drink the cure. Then he sees a rifle on the wall.
While the Hulk is fighting, Logan shoots the big white Wendigo with two shots of the cure, but it doesn't have an immediate effect. He shows the darker ones, and they go down quickly. Then the Hulk gets a look at Logan and decides to start fighting him. Logan is able to shoot the other two non-white Wendigos before the Hulk gets his hands on him.
Before Hulk can end the series by killing Logan, the big white Wendigo attacks Hulk. This gives Logan the chance to stab it some more with the cure. Now it actually seems to work: the darker Wendigos all turn back into SHIELD agents. And who knew that the Wendigo effect absorbed clothing? The white Wendigo closes on Logan, but it too reverts into a guy. And then Logan gets the SHIELD emblem on him, realizing that SHIELD was behind all of it.
Then the Hulk grabs him, saying that he's going to smash the "stupid man" for thinking that he could fight the Hulk. But then... Logan apologizes about the attack. This causes the Hulk to let him go. No really; this is a thing that happens. The Hulk then walks away and turns into Banner.
Cut to Fury landing to pick everyone up. Fury thanks him for saving lives, but Logan then reveals that he knows what happened. That SHIELD was behind the first Wendigo. Banner gets a bit upset over this, but Fury laughs it off, saying he doesn't answer to them. Logan then threatens to reveal this if Fury goes public with the X-Men info. Which is silly, since the deal was that Fury wouldn't reveal the X-Men info if Logan did the job that Logan just did. So basically Logan is threatening Fury to do what Fury already agreed to.
Logan then traumatizes Banner with a left hook; naturally, Banner Hulks out. We then see Wolverine being flung far away. After he hits the ground, Logan says, "Have fun, Fury." Isn't it funny how dozens could be killed as the Hulk destroys everyone and everything around him? Including any random passers by or townspersons he might run into before he calms down?
Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
Remarks
Wow, was that crappy. On the character front, we actually got to see a different facet of Logan's character. Namely that he actually possesses something that could reasonably be called intelligence. He figured out that the untrustworthy guy might not be telling the truth. And he found the secret behind everything. So Logan isn't as stupid as he seems thus far.
But that's about the best that can be said for this episode. Banner doesn't exist long enough to have a character. The storyline has nothing to do with the overall plot of the series. Even Logan's character here is more or less irrelevant. Yes, we get Nick Fury and SHIELD, but they ultimately have nothing to do with anything that the show is actually about.
This episode is called Wolverine vs. The Hulk, but that isn't what the episode is about. They only fight for about a minute or so, and after that they're working together (more or less) to deal with the real enemy. And then there's the horrible resolution, where instead of a big knock-down drag out fight between the two, Logan just talks Hulk down with a simple apology. That was absolutely Godawful, and whoever came up with that idea needs to be fired.
Indeed, most of the action here is subpar. And there's a reason for that: it's Logan, in a cartoon. Once you say that it's a kid's show, you limit what Logan can start cutting on with his claws. When you take away the ability for him to actually fight with his claws, what exactly are you left with? A strong guy with adamantium bones who's basically unkillable? I'm sorry, but that doesn't make for very interesting fight scenes. There are only so many ways that you can have what is a basically normal guy fight super-strong monsters before it gets old.
And this episode uses all of them three-times over.
This is a fundamental problem with sticking Wolverine in a kid's show. Indeed, the moment someone came up with the idea of an X-Men cartoon starring Wolverine, they should have immediately found a solution to it. Whether it's just having a lot of robots to fight or whatever, they should have dealt with this ASAP. An episode like this, where everyone in it is an "uncuttable" just isn't going to work when the only hero character in it is Wolverine. The Wendigos don't even have weapons for Logan to cut, so he seems more neutered than usual.
Notice that X-Men Evolution did precisely the opposite of this series. Knowing that Logan can't really work in a kid's show, they gave him a supporting role. He was a teacher. He would go whole episodes without doing something. Oh, he was there, he did stuff. But because his action abilities were limited, the writers worked within those limits.
Speaking of Wolverine being the star, did you notice something this episode? The X-Men did not even appear. In fact, the X-Men have been rather missing from the last three episodes. They were reduced to cameos in Thieves' Gambit and X-Calibur. And they didn't even get a cameo in this episode.
Gambit never joins the team, and he gets a one-shot appearance later. Nightcrawler eventually does, but not for ten episodes; that's past the half-way point of the series.
What we have is a Wolverine&Gambit episode, followed by a Nightcrawler episode, followed by a Wolverine&Hulk episode. This show would more accurately be called "Wolverine and Some Mutant," because that's how a lot of episodes in this show play out: Logan pairs off with someone and does stuff. It may be an actual X-Men team member or it may not. But a lot of the time, that character's primary purpose is just to be someone that Logan can talk to or exposit with. More often than not, it's just about Logan.
Comments
