‘X-Men ’97’ Review – As Good As It Can Be Under The Circumstances
(Deep breath) so…how about we talk X-Men ’97?
There is no easy way to broach the topic, but this discussion has been beckoning for a little while, and there is a lot of ground to cover.
Admittedly, it is daunting as the sequel series is wrapped up in the current milieu much like every Disney and Marvel production. Everything from our youth is being changed and reappropriated for resale to a modern audience that isn’t there.
We’ve seen what’s become of the MCU as a result and how many fans are left jaded and cynical about new content, and ratings demonstrate that they dismiss X-Men ’97 as nothing special.
They took one look at Morph, say, and wrote the entire thing off as more woke garbage, but now that I’ve seen it, I don’t believe that to be the case this time.
Don’t get me wrong, the series isn’t perfect, and we all know by now it came with a fair share of behind-the-scenes drama involving showrunner Beau DeMayo. However, it feels like he tried his best to make the show good and appeal to a wider audience than Doctor Who does presently.
You know the plot synopsis by now: Magneto takes over the X-Men and tries to lead them into a new age without Professor Xavier. The trouble is Magnus’s worst fears come true, thereby driving him to a point of no return, and dragging Charles back to Earth to lead his Children of the Atom.
The real spark that sets everything off is the rise of Bastion who, with his control over an army of Sentinels, carries out Operation: Zero Tolerance and wages an all-out bloody war on mutant-kind.
It’s your usual boilerplate X-Men story with extra fixings of genocide and costlier battles that give you a better idea of what a group of superpowered outcasts sacrifices on a palpably human level.
The original series was intense and heartfelt quite often but tame compared to where DeMayo took things since he had the liberty of dealing with streaming and premium channel standards, plus a mature target audience.
In the 90s, the ceiling for Saturday morning cartoons was TV-Y7. Like PG and later PG-13 movies, it left some room for networks and shows to work with as long as they stayed within boundaries – but they had to be clever.
X-Men ‘97, on the other hand, turns the knob to 11 and adds a fair amount of blood, death, murder, and childbirth with sprinkles of suggestive situations. It also has a bare minimum of casual swearing, mostly from Wolverine.
The content is nowhere near the levels of HBO’s R-rated Spawn series or some DCAU features, but there is a stark enough contrast between the updated ’97 and its predecessor that will remind you how much can change in 30 years.
There are woke bits and some additional diversity boxes checked, like Morph, but none of it detracts from the overall storyline or any subplots. Morph’s infatuation with Wolverine doesn’t go anywhere.
As far as ‘shipping’ goes, as the kids say, more time is devoted to a budding romance between Storm and Forge and a rekindled fling between Magneto and Rogue. The latter works well as the season progresses and Rogue’s loyalties are tested with the team on the brink.
The show gets a lot of things right including its fearsomely top-notch villains. Other than Magneto, who is more of an anti-hero, Sinister is creeping around again and played by the same actor as before (Christopher Britton).
The evil geneticist is back in boss mode as if no time has passed at all. He is almost a red herring and is positioned at different points as the main villain. That’s not the case, though he continued to be a nefarious puppeteer in the lives of Jean Grey, Cyclops, and Cable.
No, the final boss and man Sinister ultimately serves is Bastion. Voiced by Theo James (Divergent), he is one of the best villains Marvel has introduced to TV and film in the last five years.
I rate him as high as Thanos when it comes to the level of threat and interest in the character. DeMayo, who goes as far as tying Bastion in with Xavier’s search for students to become X-Men and Cable’s mission to save the future, clearly does as well.
However, like I said, the series isn’t perfect and there are a few things that bugged me. At times, for one thing, X-Men ’97 felt less like a continuation and more like a reimagining in its treatment of certain characters and plot threads.
Forge, played this time by Gil Birmingham, is introduced as if he is a new addition with a clean slate whom Storm doesn’t recognize. Though he spent most of his time with Bishop in the future, he made enough appearances in the present to fight alongside everyone else for this to be impossible.
Then there’s Professor X who is presumed dead because he was “shot” by Gyrick. Anyone who saw the original series finale – which is on Disney Plus for the record – knows that’s not true. He had a mental overload, but there was no gun.
They also do some things just because they can whether it’s Wolverine losing his adamantium, Gambit making the ultimate sacrifice, Adversary popping in, or a certain ‘apocalyptic’ foe cameoing for a season two setup.
But these gripes were minor when X-Men ’97 had me enthralled from start to finish with its action and various callbacks that made the series a step up from What If…? and everything else Marvel has produced lately.
NEXT: ‘I Stand Alone: The Sully Erna Story’ Review – A Rockumentary That Knows Its Audience
X-Men '97
PROS
- Animation style.
- Top-flight voice cast.
- Modernized in a way that gets more right than wrong.
CONS
- A few moments are pure nostalgia bait that wouldn't change anything if left out.
- They really push the "Magneto was right" motif hard.
- Professor X is pretty useless all things considered.
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