Marvel's LEGION TV show by FX

[JKtheMac]

The pilot started off with The Who's Happy Jack, and I thought that was a great sequence.

This series was just so strong at knowing how to play to the strengths of the media it was using.

Incidentally, I see Hawley has said next season won't adapt any pre-existing material. Not that this one stuck close to anything other than the character of Farouk and David being Xavier's powerful but troubled son.

There were a number of points of similarly with the New Mutants story we discussed previously in this thread. They basically relabelled Jemail Karam as Farouk and added some of the Farouk backstory. The overall plot and inspiration for some of the characters were straight from that story.

[JKtheMac]

Come to think of it, you can't really go wrong with T-Rex.

I think there was a general lesson that you can't go wrong with British songs.

[Panic]

There were a number of points of similarly with the New Mutants story we discussed previously in this thread. They basically relabelled Jemail Karam as Farouk and added some of the Farouk backstory. The overall plot and inspiration for some of the characters were straight from that story.

Points of similarity? Yes. Things Hawley took inspiration from? Yes.

It would be a huge stretch imo to say Hawley stuck in any way close to adapting the material. The season only followed the plot of those New Mutant arcs in the loosest of senses - David has problems requiring a team of mutants to go into his mind to sort them out, Amahl Farouk has infested a good-guy's mind and needs ousting. That's pretty much it.

The basic theme of the TV series is "what is real/how can you tell what is real when your baseline for reality proves to be false"; the comic didn't play with any of that - you always knew you were in David's mind.

Hawley pretty much inverted many aspects of the original story:

In the original Legion story David did have a genuine mental illness: multiple personality disorder. In the TV series David's voices were actually external, caused by him not understanding he was telepathic (plus the Farouk infestation), he was only told he was mentally ill.

The mystery of David's parentage has been totally turned around for the series - David is shocked to discover Prof X is his father, whilst in the comic Charles Xavier is the one clueless as to his link to David until the reveal.

In the comics, Farouk's astral self is muscular and powerful, whilst his real-world host quickly shows the signs of Farouk's weakness - greed and self-indulgence; the series flips this, showing Farouk's true astral form as the grotesquely fat DYE, no longer a symbol of weakness but of a monstrous abnormality and lack of balance.

In the comic the major twist was that the 'alien' personality was the good-guy, whilst David's self-generated "Jack Wayne" personality was the hidden villain. The twist in the series is that David's problems are largely caused by an external force: Farouk.

Hawley has been clever in flipping things around to subvert expectations and to give the story a new twist, and I like it - but it is in no way a close adaptation.

As for Jemail Karam being merely relabelled as Farouk, I don't agree. There is a point of similarity: they are both personalities within David that once were living beings. I think that's where it ends, though. Farouk is a parasite feeding off his host to its detriment; Jemail's relationship with David is symbiotic, altruistic rather than exploitative. Farouk deliberately entered David in the series, Jemail was killed by David in the comics, and his personality copied and added to David's personality entourage without Jemail's volition. Jemail was arguably a bad-guy in life (depending on where you stand on terrorism I guess) whose death and rebirth gave him a new perspective and the chance to change into a better man, Farouk was a **** in life, and an even bigger one in 'death'. They are no means the same, imo.


Anyway, my point is that we're unlikely to get any recognisable adaptation of New Mutant's storylines next season. And I find I'm more than okay with that. I've loved what Hawley has brought to the table, and he's not ****** any of my favourite characters or plotlines to do it.

[JKtheMac]

I don't disagree with your points but I think we mean different things when we talk about story. For example an inverted premise doesn't mean it is a different story. Sometimes when you are writing, an inversion makes everything you were trying to write about come into focus. The story remains the same but the way you are presenting it is very different, including the plot. I would say there was more similarity in the structure of the Karam story than there was with Farouk. Karam was a very grey area character. It was even brought out in the text that he saw himself as being a positive influence while others totally disagreed and saw him as self serving and potentially harmful. He was somewhat secondary to the main reveal of that story which was Charles finding out he had a son and that he had problems.


From a structural perspective, all of the subjective reality was mostly stylistic colour and a layer of mystery. It was both a strength and a weakness in the presentation, and for me went too far. But I was sceptical when we first saw the trailer and expressed here that I was worried it was yet another trendy subjective reality show. I enjoyed it but I was concerned it would put people off. Friends that watched it were very divided.

Plot specifics are less of a concern to me than dramatic premise, what is the story trying to say about the world. That is actually a little clouded so far, there is a muddied commentary on mental health and diagnoses that isn't fully explored, the mutant metaphor was heavily dumped in at the end, and the relationship angle was possibly the strongest and that is being played out over a longer arc than one season. The key plot points from my perspective were the Father angle, introducing David as well as the notion of an astral plane, and the relationship angle. The parasite thing was mostly there as an antagonist and the actual personality of Farouk was somewhat downplayed in favour of an original interpretation.

I am willing to bet we will see multiple personality issues next series, now that David is actually able to realise they are present. We saw hints of multiple people crowding around and constant whispers throughout.

[darewithpeace]

that pink floyd part was trully one of its kind, and wtf the post credit scene, lol

[Panic]

Plot specifics are less of a concern to me than dramatic premise, what is the story trying to say about the world.

This is why we are constantly at loggerheads - I hate the feeling of the reality of the story being secondary to a theme or laboured metaphor. I find it pretentious and unnecessary. Construct characters properly and you will naturally end up commentating on humanity. When an author makes me feel the characters are less important than the author showing off how smart he thinks he is, I stop caring about the characters.

I am willing to bet we will see multiple personality issues next series, now that David is actually able to realise they are present. We saw hints of multiple people crowding around and constant whispers throughout.

We already saw them utilise Dan Stevens' British accent for David's 'rational mind', I sure we'll get more of that sort of thing. Hawley seems to be playing to the strengths of his people, and I think Dan has demonstrated that he's a versatile actor and not just a good-looking lead, so yeah, I expect Hawley to get mileage out of that. Whether we get more actors brought in to play different facets of David's mind will probably depend on whether someone catches his eye or not. He's got a good eye, though.

Legion is my favourite of all the comic-book tv shows so far. I have loved this show since the pilot, and though I had a few worries around episodes 2 and 3 it has delivered for me. I've re-watched every episode and tend to enjoy them as much if not more on second viewing which is important to me. I don't think it should be used as a template for future comic-book adaptations because I admit that by choosing a relatively obscure and non-standard hero character, Hawley has managed to sidestep a lot of the challenges that creative teams face when attempting to bring a super-hero property to the screen - the costumes, the action, the emphasis on action over everything else; yeah, he ducked all that. If he was adapting more traditional fare, say Spider-Man, he'd be faced with blowing his budget on action set-ups and costuming, or minimising those things and thus risking alienating fans. Completely different battle, imo.

[JKtheMac]

This is why we are constantly at loggerheads - I hate the feeling of the reality of the story being secondary to a theme or laboured metaphor. I find it pretentious and unnecessary. Construct characters properly and you will naturally end up commentating on humanity. When an author makes me feel the characters are less important than the author showing off how smart he thinks he is, I stop caring about the characters.

It is only pretentious if you view it from a perspective of distrust. This has often been a problem with criticisms of comic creators and more recently TV show runners. At heart they are writers. They will have studied that craft and learnt the tools. They don't view story in the same way as the average fan and that creates an artificial divide between them. A distrust of their statements. When they talk about continuity or plot or characterisation they are not on the same page as their readers, so they get misunderstood and accused of attitudes they are not espousing. The most important thing is the overall artefact and that sometimes gets interpreted through an odd perspective.

I don't consider myself at loggerheads with you. I agree with your points I am just trying to explain another perspective that is underrepresented. We are living in an age when everyone thinks they understand stories but very few of them actually write them, so they only understand them from a single perspective.

For example, I agree writing good character is clearly a very solid way to approach story. It is also the way I approach it, but that is actually more involved and structured than it might appear. It often involves creating a whole host of secondary characters or situations to allow that character to come into focus. Also in a story like this, that contains a mostly internal conflict about struggling with a diagnosis and issues of identity the external conflict is often built as metaphor. So, many character interactions are actually representative of internal struggle.

If that sounds pretentious, then I can only say it isn't meant as such. It is just considering the sausage from the perspective of the sausage maker and not the restaurant critic who is mostly focused on comparing sausages and recommending where to eat them.

[Panic]

Well, before we drag this thread completely off-track...

The Shadow King used telekinesis while in Kerry's body in the finale, something that totally threw me. Did he manage to learn a new trick or two whilst in David's mind? Is he as powerful as David now? Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[JKtheMac]

Well, before we drag this thread completely off-track...

The Shadow King used telekinesis while in Kerry's body in the finale, something that totally threw me. Did he manage to learn a new trick or two whilst in David's mind? Is he as powerful as David now? Anyone have any thoughts on this?

I think we are supposed to realise that the Shadow King is actually more dangerous than he appears. We are made to think he is more interested in using David's powers, but at the same time we get speculation that he is pretty powerful to have fought David's father. We are also told us he can only live for a long while in a powerful mutant and that he would burn up a lesser one, and we get hints he may be looking for his body which has been hidden from him. Nothing really told us what his powers actually were, but now we see a few hints that he is able to shut people down at range, is clearly telepathic, and now apparently telekinetic. They are probably building him up to be a challenge to David at a later date.

[numberthirty]

Well, before we drag this thread completely off-track...

The Shadow King used telekinesis while in Kerry's body in the finale, something that totally threw me. Did he manage to learn a new trick or two whilst in David's mind? Is he as powerful as David now? Anyone have any thoughts on this?

I do, but actually posting those thoughts would mean laying out potential spoilers.

[Panic]

Unless you're connected with the show I don't see how you can spoil us. Hawley has said he's not adapting anything from the comics for next season, so I'm guessing comic book lore is irrelevant (though obviously I could be wrong).

[numberthirty]

Unless you're connected with the show I don't see how you can spoil us. Hawley has said he's not adapting anything from the comics for next season, so I'm guessing comic book lore is irrelevant (though obviously I could be wrong).

While it's not a storyline, it is an aspect of the comics. It's not that I think Hawley is lying. I think he is just choosing to leave something out.

That being the case, I'm gonna stay mum. If you really want to see it, I might have "Spoiler" tagged something about it a couple of pages back.

[Kirby101]

This is why we are constantly at loggerheads - I hate the feeling of the reality of the story being secondary to a theme or laboured metaphor. I find it pretentious and unnecessary. Construct characters properly and you will naturally end up commentating on humanity. When an author makes me feel the characters are less important than the author showing off how smart he thinks he is, I stop caring about the characters.

Exactly. You get past that and probably like the show a bit more than me. But if you laid out the plot of the 8 episodes you would have little story. Most of the revelations we guessed by ep 3. And we always new David wasn't crazy. It is like those comics that eschew story for page after page of pretty pictures.

[Panic]

Well, I think you're not entirely wrong, it's just that I really liked the journey. There were so many scenes that I liked it didn't matter to me that there wasn't huge amounts of story. I never felt we were twiddling thumbs waiting for a revelation that was long overdue, but that's because I really enjoyed the characters and the actors and the way the story was told; Westworld, on the other hand, while I enjoyed working out who was an android and the whole timeline thing, by the end when the revelations came I realised that without that guessing game I didn't really have much interest in the characters, despite how well done the acting was (and I'll need to binge-watch the whole thing again to see how I feel about it now). It just kind of depends on what works for you.

I'm wondering how many of us will adapt to the next season, bearing in mind it presumably won't have so much "what is real" and will be a more straightforward conflict. It's going to be different.

[JKtheMac]

Well, I think you're not entirely wrong, it's just that I really liked the journey. There were so many scenes that I liked it didn't matter to me that there wasn't huge amounts of story. I never felt we were twiddling thumbs waiting for a revelation that was long overdue, but that's because I really enjoyed the characters and the actors and the way the story was told; Westworld, on the other hand, while I enjoyed working out who was an android and the whole timeline thing, by the end when the revelations came I realised that without that guessing game I didn't really have much interest in the characters, despite how well done the acting was (and I'll need to binge-watch the whole thing again to see how I feel about it now). It just kind of depends on what works for you.

I'm wondering how many of us will adapt to the next season, bearing in mind it presumably won't have so much "what is real" and will be a more straightforward conflict. It's going to be different.

Entirely agree about Westworld.

I suspect we will get similar themes in the next series. The 'what is real' idea is easy to bring back in a new context. We haven't even explored the full ramifications of David's comic book powers which pretty much treat reality as a plaything. Look at the final run, he yet again totally rewites reality just as he did many years ago.