VisionQuest review – Marvel’s latest TV show feels like it could have been made by a computer
Paul Bettany stars in a WandaVision spinoff that’s a visually striking, genre-bending package – of fighting and tediously wordy dialogue. What an odd confection Martin Scorsese compared them to theme parks. Nicolas Cage likened them to WWE. The products of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – 38 films, 18 television shows and counting – are not generally well regarded as works of art. This is understandable: they are…
Key points
- VisionQuest is Marvel's latest TV show, a spin-off of 2021's WandaVision.
- The series follows The Vision, a synthezoid, as he reckons with selfhood.
- The review calls it clever and visually striking but mired in lore and plotting.
VisionQuest, Marvel's latest television series, centres on The Vision, a synthezoid reckoning with the concept of selfhood. The show is a spin-off of WandaVision, the 2021 series that the review calls the Marvel Cinematic Universe's most creatively successful offering.
The review describes VisionQuest as visually striking, formally experimental and eclectically genre-bending, but also as a shouty, fighty blockbuster that retains the labyrinthine plotting long blamed for making comic book fare an artistic turn-off.
What the story involves
The Vision, played by Paul Bettany, works in an Edinburgh pub once frequented by him and Wanda, slipping into the walk-in fridge at night to revert to his robot self. Inside his mind is a houseshare with five other AIs in humanoid form, including social secretary Friday and defence expert E.D.I.T.H., plus a wildly bearded James Spader as Ultron, Vision's evil-ish maker.
A bounty hunter pursues The Vision, whose hacker-style assistant is played by Diane Morgan, and tracks down a teenager named Thomas who claims to be possessed by one of Wanda and Vision's magical twins. The review says this is about one quarter of the plot, which goes on to merge WandaVision's fallout with an Ultron deep dive and a separate robot narrative.
the unalgorithmic alacrity with which [humans] wobble
— Ultron
The review's verdict
The review says the AI-on-AI dialogue is tediously wordy, citing Ultron marvelling at "the unalgorithmic alacrity with which [humans] wobble". It calls the show sometimes entertaining and always clever, but says any comment on human nature is drowned out by plot particulars and the need for a big brawl every episode.
What is really missing, the review argues, is actual jeopardy, since it is hard to emotionally invest in lines of code inside an android's head. It concludes that VisionQuest is not dumb, mindless entertainment, but is still closer to the Big Dipper than GoodFellas.
