Better Late Than Never: X-Men '97

 

 

I've written in some of my other pieces that I've never really liked the majority of the comic book movies I've seen in this past century. One of the reasons is simple. I came of age in the 1990s and if you did you grew up in an era where animation after nearly thirty years of trying with middling results finally completely cracked the code on comic book adaptations whether they were DC, Marvel and even a few lesser brands. As a result, adolescents like myself witnessed some of the greatest animated series based on comic books done so brilliantly that even for people like me who knew nothing about the lore of comics, any live-action adaptation could only pale by comparison.

It took until Christopher Nolan came along for any film director to finally master the world that Batman: The Animated Series did practically from its first episode. Three different Spider-Man franchises have never come close to the masterpieces that Spiderman: The Animated Series did when they set up the Insidious Six by the end of its first season – something that still hasn't happened in more than twenty years. And one of the reasons I was never impressed by the MCU was that Spiderman: The Animated Series had for all intents and purposes gotten that far by the end of its third season. And as anyone who's watched the recent cinematic disasters, they completely mastered Michael Morbius, Kraven the Hunter and Madame Web the first time around. (It also only took them one try to master Daredevil and The Punisher, too.)

And it really says something that no matter how many times they try to recreate X-Men, nothing that Bryan Singer or any of his colleagues have done have some anywhere close to how the 1990s animated series managed to completely land everything you needed to know about the entire world in the two part series premiere. I remember when I first saw it at the age of 13. The only thing I knew about X-Men was through  video games and the odd action figure. But it says a lot that at thirteen I knew this was something incredible. The fact that the show was willing to kill off Morph in the series premiere – something live-action TV didn't do to series regulars, let alone children's animation – showed a level of confidence in the writing and a willingness to go as dark as possible. To be fair, Morph did return in the series in a later season (this was, after all, a show based on a comic book) but that the series was willing to do this with more than a few characters during its run showed that this wasn't going to be the Disney Afternoon.

Like Spiderman, X-Men was willing to radicalize the format of the Saturday morning cartoon: they would have storylines that were resolved in a week as well as a serialized story that would take up entire seasons or in some cases multiple weeks. They started with a basic team that we see in the credits and were more than willing to expand it to some of the more prominent figures: we would see Nightcrawler, Dazzler and Bishop eventually make appearance for the good guys and Juggernaut, Mister Sinister and Apocalypse for the villains. The show dealt with the storyline of Jean Grey and Phoenix – and carried it to its original end – as well as Dark Phoenix a season later and in both cases did it far better and with a greater sense of tragedy then either of the attempts to do so in the film franchise. Indeed, looking at the animated series I find it hard to find a cinematic equivalent who was better than their cartoon counterpart. This may seem like heresy to those who love the work of Patrick Stewart as Xavier or Ian McKellen as Magneto but in both cases they were trying to breath life into stale scripts. All the characters had far better dialogue and stories to work with in the animated series. (I won't say the same for Hugh Jackman's work as Wolverine but it took a while for him to surpass what I saw on the Animated Series.)

If the animated series had just been willing to make the story about the war between factions of mutants and other conflicts involving time travel and outer space, it would still have been a great show. But one of the reasons I recognize the world X-Men live in is it does take place in the real world. The first three films never shied away from the darker political implications, the bigotry that all the mutants were facing, the fact that the President wanted to have them register. The '90s cartoon could have backed away from it – most television shows in that period rarely became political. Instead, it leaned into it hard. The show never let us forget that their were, for all intents and purposes, a KKK against mutants and the darker implications as to who they were attacking on the streets, the rallies they held, the purity standards they met. The show acknowledged the sickness of this by having one of the most virulent anti-mutant bigots have both his parents be mutants – and two of the greatest villains in the world: Sabretooth and Mystique. None of this made him hate mutants any less if anything he was more determined to purify his bloodline by killing them. X-Men was created in the 1960s and no one can deny the parallels between Xavier and Magneto as the two sides of civil rights: Xavier preaching cooperation; Magneto preaching violence and the show never let us forget the reasons why Erik had to feel the way he did.

This made X-Men '97, a licensed continuation of the incredible animated series one of the most eagerly anticipated series of the last year. With both Marvel and DC suffering in a decline in quality and box office returns of the majority of the films so far this decade and particularly with all the troubles Disney has had with so many of the franchises it has taken over in that same period, I have little doubt people were sure they would ruin a classic. They absolutely didn't: the first season is currently ranked #95 on imdb.com. It helped that Kevin Feige only had two conditions: bring back the original voice cast and the rights to the theme music for the series.

Finally this past week when FXX began to rerun all of Season 1 (as part of the continued merger of that channel with Disney+) I managed to get caught up with a show that I wanted to see but hadn't the time. Now to be clear, had it just been a recreation of the same thing I might not have been inclined to like it: I've never been a fan of nostalgia for nostalgia's sake and have in countless other reviews degraded reboots for that very purpose. I acknowledge some can be better than others (Twin Peaks, The X-Files) but I don't particularly think we need four seasons of Will & Grace, Dexter: New Blood and I could have lived without The Connors. There had to be a reason for X-Men '97 to exist beyond nostalgia. The first three episodes have given it to me, and I suspect many others.

I'll admit seeing the original theme and introduction did much to assuage my doubts about the show being true to the original in body. The show is a continuation as it takes place one year after the series finale of the original. The series, as those of us who have never forgotten it know, ended with Charles Xavier being assassinated at the UN by Trask, one of the most virulent leaders of the anti-mutant forces. The action takes place one year. Xavier's death has done much to bring sympathy for mutants from the government, including the UN but it has done nothing to end the bigotry and hatred that anti-mutant forces still feel across the world nor has it done anything to stem the most violent mutants of the group. The 'Friends of Humanity' are still in force and still have the will and finances to express their virulent message. We are never allowed to forget that in this world 'X' is the first letter in 'xenophobia'.

All of the X-Men who were regulars in the original series are part of the team, including two recurring faces that might be unfamiliar to those who only have seen the movies. Morph (who in this version is clearly more outwardly homosexual then was implied in the original) and Bishop, the mutant from a distant future who was involved in many major storylines in the original series. There has been some movement towards family: Scott and Jean are still married and Jean is on several months pregnant in the pilot and it looks like Gambit and Rogue have found a kind of happiness. Scott and Jean are actually considering leaving the team to raise their son when the show begins and by the end of the series premiere, things are thrown into chaos when it is revealed that in his last will and testament Xavier left everything to Magneto.

In the original series Magneto was radically different then even animated series characters allowed their lead villain to be: Xavier was always sympathetic to Erik's cause and the two worked together many times over the show. In 97, Erik's backstory as a survivor of the Holocaust is stated directly and explains his motivations in a way the original cartoon wasn't allowed to. (You could imply Nazis on the show but you couldn't show actual ones in a 1990s cartoon.) Considering how much of the original series showed the team fighting against Magneto they are as little inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt as the international justice system is when they move to arrest him at the start of the second episode. We are as shocked as everyone else when he agrees to peacefully surrender.

The second episode is the clearest parallel to modern events as while Magneto is pleading his case, anti-mutant protestors storm the facility with the implicating of killing both him – and the court for daring to give him due process. This leads to the first big shock of the series as while trying to protect him Storm is hit by a blast from a gun – and loses her mutant powers. Erik is enraged and lifts both the justices and his would be assassin several miles about the ground. We're not sure if the series would be willing to go this far in an animated cartoon (this is the 21^st century) but the longtime viewers know enough that this is a realistic possibility. Instead Magneto delivers a stirring monologue in favor of his old friend that isn't that far removed from the original series. He is pardoned and the mutant nation of Genosha is granted status by the UN, something Scott never thought possible. Still Erik knows that the battle is far from won.

The worst implications come in the third episode when another Jean shows up at the mansion. We're given to expect that she's a clone but the reality is far more shocking: this is the real Jean. (This is an old storyline of the original series.) It comes as little shock that Mister Sinister, the mutant Nazi scientist of Marvel Comics, is behind this clone and indeed his intentions are far worse than usual. By now Jean has given birth to their new son and Sinister has every intention of using the possibilities. He uses the clone to invoke havoc on the Mansion in images I know the original series would never try. Eventually Magneto leads a team and they rescue the son – but the worst has already happened. This leads the Summers' to make a decision even more painful then they've ever wanted – and something they may have driven a break between the original love story of the mutants in a way that not even the Phoenix could.

X-Men '97 is brilliant on an animated level as well as a story one and while some online 'friends of humanity' might argue it's more woke, I'd remind them that the X-Men always have been. They were created as much as a reaction to the civil rights movement in comic book form and for all the comic book aspect they've always been the most political of all the comic books either franchise has designed. If you really can't see the metaphor for racism in a show where the world has a problem with characters who often have different color skin then most people then you have a more willful blindness then I associate with most comic book fans. People have been trying to read the idea of the mutants being a metaphor for homosexuality when they've always been a metaphor of  any level of difference in our society. The fact that when Jean is in labor the hospital makes it clear it doesn't treat mutants is leaning into the original metaphor as anything else.

X-Men '97 is yet again another argument why animation is almost always a better format to tell a comic book story and that television is the superior way to tell these stories. Over the last five years we've been blessed with a super group of limited series that have retold comic book sagas in a way that movies have increasingly been failing at. I speak not just of last year's The Penguin and Agatha All Along, but also Wandavision, Watchmen and Loki all of which have received multiple award nominations from critics groups and many of which have either been nominated for Emmys or will be. It didn't shock me that the first comic book films of any kind to win a Best Picture award were the Spider-Verse adaptations of the last few years. It has always been easier to express the grand scope of comic books in long form stories than the most elongated cinematic universe and it is always easier to show the wonder of it in animation then the most brilliant CGI.

It doesn't shock me that comic book films are started to decline in both box office and critical acclaim in recent years though that may turn around this summer, I'm not sure. But series like X-Men '97 demonstrate that this remains the superior method to tell the kind of stories that even the best movies just can't. (And to repeat, I've never really liked on a creative level the majority of the comic book films even by the standards of other well-made blockbusters.)  X-Men '97 is the best example of how to adapt a franchise perfectly: it's one step backwards but also two steps forward. And for once, I actually can't wait for a sequel – or the next season.

My score: 4.75 stars.