Disney+ X-Men ‘97 Review

The pinnacle of mutant story telling on the silver screen

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WARNING: THIS ARTICLE MAY CONTAIN DISCUSSIONS involving SPOILERS FROM THE Disney+ show as well as the 1992 Animated Series. CONSIDER WHEN AND WHERE IT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE TO READ THIS PIECE. 

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Back With A Vengeance

The X-Men have been a dormant television franchise for more than a decade. It’s crazy to think that Wolverine and the X-Men came out in 2009 and we have not had a new animated mutant-centric television show in 15 years. Unlike some other superhero IP’s, the X-Men have never missed when it came to quality TV. From the fabled X-Men: The Animated Series, to the 2000’s millennial-ness of X-Men: Evolution, and even the weird pairing of Marvel Anime, mutant stories have always been amazing to watch on the small screen. That makes what I’m going to say next even more mind boggling. X-Men ‘97 is the best X-Men comic book cartoon ever made. It’s not even close.

I remember when Disney first announced they were reviving the X-Men for a new series on Disney+ in what was essentially season 6 of The Animated Series. I honestly thought it was a terrible idea and that what was in the past should be left in the past. Like many X-Men fanboys, I was craving any type of mutant programming on television again and I wanted new content. I loved how Wolverine and the X-Men were incorporating popular comic story lines from Joss Wheldon’s Astonishing X-Men comic run during that period of time. I wanted to see a new television show with stories based on the comics from the last 15 years to catch up what we’ve been void of on the silver screen. I genuinely thought that X-Men ‘97 was a straight up nostalgia merchandise grab and that the new series would be terrible. 

I was dead wrong.

No this isn’t a screen from 1992

While the first episode is a bit of a nostalgia trip to remind viewers that these characters and their costumes were what you were into 30 years ago, the show completely changes course immediately after and never looks back. I mean come on, who doesn’t get goosebumps hearing the guitar riff of the iconic Ron Wasserman theme song now slightly revised to pump you up even more. Haim Saban shows may not have been the highest quality back in the day, but the man sure knew how to produce banger theme songs.

X-Men ‘97 is really only a continuation of The Animated Series in name. While the characters start off with the same iconic 90’s costumes, the tone, the dialogue, and the pacing are vastly different. I grew up watching The Animated Series on Fox Kids every Saturday morning. It was a ritual for many 80’s and 90’s children. I would rewind my VHS tape with “Night of the Sentinels Part 1 and 2” over and over again. Those black VHS tape boxes with gold and silver text on it will forever be engraved into my head. What I’m trying to imply is that I’ve watched episodes of The Animated Series so many times that I don’t think I can forget about the show even if I tried.

The revival of the show is fascinating as once the second episode was released, I instantly recognized a seismic shift with the identity of the show. While Fox Kids will forever be praised for pushing children’s cartoon programming forward with their multi-part episode narrative format, X-Men ‘97 molds this to a modern level. The entire first season of the revival is just constant chaos one episode after another. The original show was episodic in nature, but what made it so unique for the time period was that storylines continue the following weeks and months after an event happens. We see the repercussions of what happened previously on the missions of the X-Men. For example, immediately in the first handful of episodes back in 1992, the team has to cope with the reality of losing Morph. 

Well the same thing sort of happens here, but it's surprisingly more fleshed out. The X-Men face perilous events in rapid succession to start X-Men ‘97 as their beloved founder Charles Xavier, who is residing in space after the events of the original finale, passes leadership of his school to his former rival Magneto. From then on, the show weaves viewers through classic comic book inspired storylines that I don’t think I’ve ever seen adapted to any other media before. When I say that the show does this in rapid succession, I mean it. Each episode essentially compacts an entire multi-issue comic book arc into a 24 minute showing. X-Men ‘97 moves at a break neck pace and it surprisingly works. Releasing new episodes weekly as the original show did in the 1990’s was a nostalgic and effective benefit for this show.

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Welcome Back To the 90’s

In fact, I absolutely love how this revival passed the spotlight to some characters that traditionally have not been represented in other forms of media. Disney had me hooked immediately at the end of “Mutant Liberation Begins” when a second Jean Grey barged through the front doors of the mansion.         

I can’t tell you how much I geeked out over the reveal of Madelyne Pryor the Goblin Queen. This was a character birthed in the 80’s and 90’s where American comics were all about huge muscles, guns, clones, mullets, and sex appeal. For a crazy clone story that was just as absurd back in 1989 as it is now to be featured in a widely released show like this, I can’t deny that the producers of the show know their stuff.       

The team looks better than ever

The respect for the source material doesn’t end there either. This wasn’t a one-and-done easter egg as the show threw other famous 80’s and 90’s X-Men stories at the viewer in rapid succession in the following episodes. Storm gets de-powered taking a bullet for Magneto and has to fight her own inner demons to re-discover her identity as a human with the help of the mutant Forge. This is the story arc that legendary X-Men writer Chris Claremont paved out for the Weather Goddess in 1984’s “LifeDeath” arc in Uncanny X-Men. 

While the circumstances and perpetrators leading to the mutant haven of Genosha to perish were not exactly the same as their comic counterparts, there were plenty of nuances that glued the story together with Gambit sacrificing his life to be the pivotal centerpiece of the narrative. I don't think anyone was expecting that to happen.

Disney also commissioned the rising Korean-based animation company Studio Mir, to lead the charge in bringing the X-Men back to the 1990’s. You either love or hate the studio’s anime-inspired style, but I genuinely feel that they’ve mastered adapting comic book properties into a refined art form. Many of the action sequences merge the simplicity of manga/anime lines with flow of a full splash comic page. This was very evident during sequences that focus a lot on Rogue’s dashing attacks featured in this season. The same goes for Cyclops’ optical blasts. Studio Mir has mainly handled DC properties, but I think they’ve done a fine job taking in the reigns of Marvel’s mutant team.

Retconning your childhood

I’m raving about how much I loved the inclusion of comic book accurate lore adapted into the show, but doing it at this rate also led to some controversial retconning of the characters we remember from the 90’s show. The biggest shift in character alignment is the revelation that Rogue and Magneto were lovers prior to the events of the original series and that they just pretended not to know each other. That’s a huge retcon that holds up even less when you rewatch the early episodes of The Animated Series.  

Savage Rogue and Magneto was an interesting pairing in 1991 and often revisited in the comics throughout various X-Men publications. Maybe it’s the white hair that makes them work together, but I personally like the two together in limited runs. However, when they first hooked up in the comics, it was as a result of current events that had already involved the X-Men as both of them were former members of the team. This felt like the writers of X-Men ‘97 trying to cram in lore that didn’t fit with the adaptation they were working with.   

And therein lies my only real major point of contention with the show. The characters and the way they behave don’t really match up to what we witnessed in 1992. It’s refreshing to watch a brand new show and not have smartphones everywhere, but aside from minor period accuracies, I would say that the roster of X-Men in the show are that of a completely different universe that just so happened to have the same current lineup as the original show on Fox. That’s how I look at it. Aside from Professor Xavier and at times Magento, a lot of the characters make decisions and interact in ways that would contradict what we know the 1992 cast would do. When Beast identifies that the Jean Grey who started X-Men ’97 and gave birth to Cyclops’ son wasn’t the real Jean, the entire team just cast her out and looked the other way. 

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They went there

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You would think that one of the X-Men (any of them, but especially Morph) would come to her side to support her. Regardless of whether she was the original Jean or not, she was the woman who they spent all that time with and risked their lives for. It makes absolutely no sense that Wolverine couldn’t smell the difference when he lived with Madelyne for so long. He was so over protective in the original series when it comes to Jean Grey that I would be led to believe that he could identify her instantly with his heightened sense of smell. Even if theoretically Madelyne and Jean had the same biological DNA thus meaning their scents were the same, you’re telling me that there’s absolutely no other differentiator between the two? That’s not what Marvel told us about Ben Reilly, or Hydro Mary Jane Watson.

Some story plots are a bit out of character

Speaking of Spider-Man, it sure was fun seeing the Marvel Action Hour crew make cameos throughout this first season. There was none bigger than Peter Parker in the season finale standing to none other than Mary Jane Watson. Is X-Men ‘97 taking place in 1997 or are we closer to the year 2000? The finale of Spider-Man: The Animated Series should have occurred in 1998, meaning that Peter had left this universe to search for the real Mary Jane. Does this mean he found her? Or does the season finale of X-Men ‘97 take place prior to the series finale of Spider-Man: The Animated Series? That would mean the Mary Jane in this cameo was the clone. The Director of X-Men ‘97 confirmed that he did indeed bring MJ back to this universe, but that’s easy to say without showing. There’s so many tidbits in the show that could be potentially damaging to continuity and where it falls into place with what was started 30 years ago.

It was also odd how quickly the defectors reconciled with the main team on Asteroid M after the schism the episode prior. Rogue and Sunspot were in many ways an indirect influence to Wolverine’s tragic fate. For them to not even speak about the events that transpired and to slot back with the main team like nothing had happened at all seemed strange to me. This is especially more obvious when you rewatch the last few episodes leading up to the season finale where the story was clearly setting up discourse between Rogue and the other members of the team. I understand that extreme situations force extreme measures and they probably wouldn’t have time to have a heart to heart with a dinosaur-killing sized rock about to crash on Earth, but it did bother me from a story telling perspective.

My point is that for every reason a character in the show uses to justify their actions, I can point out a flaw in logic that doesn’t match what we know of the characters from 1992. That’s not to say that growth doesn’t happen. In fact, X-Men ‘97 does a great job of continuing to evolve the cast so that they don’t remain stagnant. Just as the original show featured Rogue’s personal trials and tribulation with absorbing Ms. Marvel’s identity, as well as featuring the Phoenix Saga for the first time in media outside of comics, I loved what Disney+ has pushed forward with this revival. The costume upgrades didn’t feel forced on the viewers and served a purpose when they were introduced (except Storm). If you’re a long time comic fan of the X-Men, there’s no way you’re not freaking out at what’s happening on your screen at the end of the season. I was already pumped up after seeing “The Trial of Magneto” costume in earlier episodes.  

Fun Fact

The animation studio that animated X-Men '97 is the korean based Studio Mir. The studio is Known for their work on The LEgend of Korra and more recently My Adventures with Superman.

What’s next?

Jubilee doesn’t get much story substance in this new season, but new addition Roberto, aka Sunspot does. They’re clearly using him as a fresh face to continue the prejudice attacks against mutants as we’ve already experienced first hand how the other X-Men have coped with being a shunned minority.

Storm gets a new (kinda) costume

Storm, Jean, Rogue, Magneto, and the big secret baddie Bastion are the big benefactors of the revived first season. I’m actually really proud that they went away from a Wolverine and Cyclops focus for once. I’m sure there's a lot more shocking comic stories coming in Season 2 for ‘ole Logan after what happens to him in the season finale and I’m actually really excited for it.     

While the episodes flew at you fast and furious, I almost felt as if I was reading my favorite comic books all over again. The filmmaker in me wants to dislike the fact that the Goblin Queen reveal and resolution all happened within one episode. Could things have been more fleshed out? Sure. But there’s something to be said about Disney’s day-time soap opera type of presentation with this show. It’s a little campy, but that totally fits with the ‘80s and 90’s stories they want to tell. Things don’t linger on one point too long and it’s fast paced.

X-Men ‘97 just works.

Obviously there is no X-Men as we know it today without the iconic stories from writer Chris Claremont. To many people, he means more to the X-Men than even creator Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. There’s a reason why I felt so drawn to the 10 episodes that Disney+ presented to the world and its because the show paid tremendous homage to the Claremont years. Where will the future of this show go? Well it literally seems like the future and the past. It wouldn’t be the X-Men without some time travelling shenanigans, but will the main theme of the show still stick around with the ‘80s and ‘90s, or will it evolve once again into its own original identity? Whatever direction the show decides to go towards, one thing is for sure: X-Men ‘97 has earned its keep to see where it goes from here. 

Isn’t this just glorious to look at

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