{"id":630273,"date":"2026-10-14T10:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T10:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/630273\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T10:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T10:30:10","slug":"visionquest-review-marvels-latest-tv-show-feels-like-it-could-have-been-made-by-a-computer-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/630273\/","title":{"rendered":"VisionQuest review \u2013 Marvel\u2019s latest TV show feels like it could have been made by a computer | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

Martin Scorsese compared them to theme parks. Nicolas Cage likened them to WWE. The products of the Marvel<\/a> Cinematic Universe \u2013 38 films, 18 television shows and counting \u2013 are not generally well regarded as works of art. This is understandable: they are derivative, corporate and also somewhat mechanical \u2013 not just in their CGI-heavy production or phased rollouts, but in their preoccupations, with robotics, technological combat, complex webs of association. This is not the cinema, per Scorsese, \u201cof human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.\u201d<\/p>\n

The MCU doesn\u2019t just gravitate towards cliche in this area, it barely features actual humans at all. And yet \u2013 like a superhero searching for a special stone \u2013 you get the sense that Marvel will not rest until such profundity is within its grasp. Unlike rollercoasters or wrestling, the MCU can be quite intellectually demanding: why shouldn\u2019t it be capable of illuminating truths about the human condition as well?<\/p>\n

VisionQuest, Marvel\u2019s latest TV offering, seems to harbour such ambitions. It sees The Vision, a synthezoid, reckoning with the concept of selfhood: what does it mean to be humanesque? It\u2019s a timely question, and VisionQuest is a visually striking, formally experimental and eclectically genre-bending package for it. Yet it is also a shouty, fighty blockbuster that retains everything \u2013 particularly the labyrinthine plotting \u2013 that has long made comic book fare such an artistic turn-off.<\/p>\n

Spader (left) as \u2018evil-ish\u2019 Ultron and Bettany as \u2018nicely beta\u2019 Vision. Photograph: Marvel<\/p>\n

For a start, it is mired in lore. Scrolling through Disney+ a couple of weeks ago, I was warned that I needed to watch seven different films and TV shows to prepare for VisionQuest\u2019s release. It\u2019s a lot of homework (the dog ate mine), but there really is no point tuning in without having seen its direct prequel, WandaVision<\/a>. That\u2019s OK because the 2021 series \u2013 the MCU\u2019s most creatively successful offering \u2013 is a bit of a masterpiece; a beautiful and thrilling psychological portrait of the Scarlet Witch, whose grief for her vanquished paramour Vision leads her to magically resurrect him via a chronologically evolving pastiche of American sitcoms.<\/p>\n

Inevitably, even WandaVision had to descend into standard superhero drivel at some point. VisionQuest is a spin-off with roots in such drivel, which involved Wanda\u2019s Vision battling a reassembled version of his original body called The Vision (great name for a slick-fringed 1980s synthpop band). But then they made friends, and magical Vision planted his memories into his replacement, who duly fled.<\/p>\n

To, we discover, an Edinburgh pub, which Vision once frequented with Wanda. Desperate to connect with his forebear who he sees as more human, The Vision (Paul Bettany, doing a nicely beta English gent thing) now works at said boozer in his visually mortal form. But instead of going home at night, he slips into the walk-in fridge and reverts to his real robot self. And then we go inside his mind.<\/p>\n

Or whatever the AI equivalent of a mind is. Here it\u2019s a houseshare with five other AIs, each given humanoid form and each with a specialism that helps The Vision, including social secretary Friday and defence expert E.D.I.T.H. We also have a wildly bearded James Spader as Ultron, Vision\u2019s evil-ish maker who previously attempted to wipe out humanity.<\/p>\n

This is the basic setup. Now for the story. A bounty hunter is after The Vision (in a laughably unlikely twist, his hacker-style assistant is played by Diane Morgan) and, in order to lure him into his clutches, tracks down a teenager called Thomas who claims to be possessed by the spirit of one of Wanda and Vision\u2019s magical twins. The Vision and Thomas meet and flee together, meaningful father-son bond still pending.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s about one quarter of the plot. VisionQuest goes on to merge the fallout from WandaVision with an Ultron deep dive and an entirely different narrative about another robot. A huge amount of exposition is involved, and the AI-on-AI dialogue is tediously wordy (Ultron could get permanent residency in Pseuds Corner; at one point he marvels at \u201cthe unalgorithmic alacrity with which [humans] wobble\u201d). Technically, that\u2019s to the script\u2019s credit \u2013 this is essentially a show about computer systems in conversation \u2013 but it still feels off-puttingly uncanny, like something AI really could manifest in the near future. The fusion of indie road trip movie, Matrix-like thriller, murder mystery and irreverent superhero dramedy, meanwhile, also feels like a computer\u2019s idea of interesting art.<\/p>\n

VisionQuest is sometimes entertaining and always clever, yet if it does have anything to say about human nature, it is drowned out by dizzying plot particulars and the need for a big brawl every episode. Yet what\u2019s really missing is actual jeopardy: it turns out to be quite difficult to emotionally invest in lines of code that exist in the \u201chead\u201d of an android. This isn\u2019t dumb, mindless entertainment, but VisionQuest is still closer to the Big Dipper than GoodFellas.<\/p>\n

VisionQuest is on Disney+ now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Martin Scorsese compared them to theme parks. Nicolas Cage likened them to WWE. The products of the Marvel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-630273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}