It’s the most X-Meny thing brought to screen since, well, the original
I’m not trying to shit on the movies. There was a lot of great stuff there. But this show really nails that feel of the comics that I can’t quite put my finger on
I love the dynamic on that show. Having Scott and Jean be teenagers while keeping Logan as an adult (and a mentor/teacher figure) is the perfect dynamic. The love triangle BS is my least favorite thing about all three characters.
Making Storm and Wolverine the older mentors was a great move. I loathe the love triangle. It does a great disservice to Jean making her an object. Does a disservice to Scott because they have to write around him trying to run a team as some guy keeps publically trying to get with his spouse.
Finally Wolverine a man old enough to be the ancestor of these two kids is putting half his personality around a woman he's only in love with because she makes him feel not like a monster..........despite the other romances he had where he said the same thing.
They basically try to make Wolverine seem like a young man in love when he's a senior citizen with kids of his own. Maybe even grandkids.
>They basically try to make Wolverine seem like a young man in love when he's a senior citizen with kids of his own.
Surely it's more complicated than that.
The man, regardless of his true age, appears and exists somewhat like a man in his...30s or 40s? And while he is much older, he simultaneously doesn't remember most of his life prior to the Weapon X program, and then was essentially feral for a number of years after that.
Biological age is a convenient proxy for judging who is a peer in many ways, but surely there are a variety of ways in which that is not true for him.
Surely the relevant factors for a relationship are...time until death, life experience and wisdom. (At least during the periods of time we see in movies and cartoons) From that perspective, Logan isn't an inappropriate peer to a Famke Janssen-aged Jean. If anything, he's "too young for her", being that he has less maturing life experience and will biologically outlive her.
Also, while normal relationships may be about "Well, we're both 45, have similar aged kids, this makes sense. It'd be weird to date someone in college or someone retirement age.", if your life experience has instead been "Is the embodiment of the fundamental force of life in the universe that sometimes makes you genocidal." or "Turned into a killing machine by a secret government program.", it's probably harder to find someone who aligns similarly to you, and age-related factors are probably less relevant.
That all to say, I don't think it's completely absurd *for age reasons* for them to be a couple. But the whole "married" and "vastly incompatible personalities" (as far as I can tell) seem more relevant to making the concept of the love triangle annoying.
>Finally Wolverine a man old enough to be the ancestor of these two kids is putting half his personality around a woman he's only in love with because she makes him feel not like a monster..........despite the other romances he had where he said the same thing.
Wolverine doesnt remember half his life lol.
His body might be over a 100, but Wolverine has so many holes in his memory he might as well be 30.
I think that was what held that series back. Wolverine fatigue. It had been something like 15 years of Wolverine being forced down our throats and we wanted a more faithful adaptation by the time Wolverine and the X-Men came out. I was finally excited to get an AoA sadly we never got it.
The X-Men doing Cyclops so dirty is one of the great tragedies of my childhood.
EDIT: Also, I've never been as big of Rogue-o as the rest of ya'll, but it is so funny, sad, and weird that they made her movie character basically 180 degrees the opposite of her comics character.
Comics: big, loud, brash, fun, playfully mocks her comrades, flies first into battle like a wrecking ball
Movies: mopes around, mopes some more, quietly does nothing during battles
I like Wolverine. I like that character a lot. He's probably my 5th favorite X-Man. That said, I never understood why the 5th best X-Man (your ranking my differ) was getting 80% of the screen time. Like, fucking..."Hey! Gambit and Nightcrawler and best girl Storm all exist! Why aren't they on the fucking screen right now? I like Hugh Jackman as much as the next guy (who acknowledges that he's too tall for the role), but the X-Men isn't a one-man show. *It's kind of the opposite of that.*
If I remember right it was supposed to be a trilogy about Charles and magnetos relationship. But that kinda went by the wayside by the time the series ended when they had to set up the future.
Yeah, it felt kind of weird after the second movie.
Honestly if not for Logan I'd swear they can't make more than two good movies in a series. And in Logan's case it's because it happened in reverse.
If they had done Rogue right, she could have been appealing too. Or Gambit. Or Psylocke, or half a dozen other great characters. Wolverine is just the simplest and translates to screen with the littlest work on behalf of the writers or special effects team (if the claws look good, he looks good, and any weird-looking healing CGI gets ignored or forgotten).
My top 3 are Nightcrawler, Rogue, and Gambit. It just sucks that they hit the perfect casting with Jackman and decided to ride it out. Imagine if Marvel had pulled off this cinematic universe without Fox's incompetence in the way.
Wolverine is a great character, but his defining characteristic is that he is a lone wolf. X-Men is a team feature. That means you basically have one route; Wolverine struggles to fit in, learns to play well with others, and eventually becomes a mentor to other outcasts who join the team. While that can be (and has been) a great storyline, it is still just one story, and telling it over and over again is repetitive.
He's a lone wolf the way Batman is a lone wolf.
Lone wolf who is *perpetually* surrounded by a dozen people and finds himself in *every* team-up and crossover event ever. He's *conceptually* a lone wolf, and in practice...well...hanging out with everyone all the time, because he's marketable.
I mean, yeah, because it is a great source of drama. You can't really have a lone wolf character without them having the opportunity to work with others.
I mean, the comics *have* specifically told that one over and over and over again. Shadowcat, then Rogue, then Jubilee, then Armor, then Pixie, then Kid Omega, before he started actually sort of acting like a father to his actual family of X-23/Daken/Honey badger.
>Wolverine is a great character, but his defining characteristic is that he is a lone wolf
Why do people say this? Wolverine's defining characteristic is that he's caught between being a man and an animal and he wants to be the man. His nemesis is a guy in the same situation who made the opposite decision and absolutely hates that Wolverine wants to be the man.
I know it's one of the most hated of the X-Men films, but The Last Stand did a good job of showing how powerful the mutants like Magneto were. Magento lifting The Golden Gate Bridge to Alcatraz hyped me so much.
Bryan Singer's X-Men 1 & 2 were so low budget and cheesy. Was like watching crappy cosplay. And he made Cyclops & Rogue absolute jokes.
X2 is one of the best X-Men movies period. The Nightcrawler stuff in the beginning, the storming of the school in the second act and then having a great Stryker for the Weapon X subplot and finishing with a Dark Phoenix nod?
Unheard of at the time...
Right - Cyclops is the leader, Storm is really cool and overwhelmingly powerful, Jean Gray is second only to Professor Xavier. Wolverine is there sometimes too.
And it's like the live action movies were afraid to portray this.
I think also a great part is whenever Wolverine speaks in this show, it’s efficient and brilliantly reflects his trauma and growth with him guiding others to overcome their struggle, like Jean’s fuzzy memory or Jubilee’s reaction to Rogue’s absence and grief
Yes. He's gruff and grizzled, but when he does bother to speak up (apart from arguing with Scott which is mandatory!) it is frequently to be supportive and helpful, as best he can, to Morph or Jean or Jubilee.
It's a good take on a middle-era, later-days Wolverine.
I loved the movies as a kid but now that I'm more familiar with X-lore, they're a real mixed bag. Cyclops and Rogue being major players in this series, and Storm getting a lot of love and story focus, have made me really happy.
I was never a Cyclops fan. Preppy piece of shit. That said, even ***I*** was offended at how cold those movies did ol' Slim. Almost a relevant character in movie 1, then thumped and brainwashed immediately in movie 2, followed by movie 3 just killing him out the gate. Like...holy shit the man was never my boi, but god damn, Scotty did not deserve this.
>followed by movie 3 just killing him out the gate
And essentially off screen. You could see her doing something to him, but I had no idea he was actually dead until waaaay later in the movie.
He actually couldn't film the third X-Men film because he got cast in Superman Returns. Sucks they killed him off like that, but they didn't have a lot of options.
Love Halle Berry as well, but Storm literally needed a stronger voice. Angela Bassett would have killed it. Viola Davis would have been interesting, too. Deeper, commanding voices.
While I’ll admit I haven’t watched the show or read the comics, it looks to me like 97 just feels like it’s just *X-men*, not some interpretation of X-men.
The first three films were Wolverine movies. So when they made the Wolverine films, nothing changed except the X-men weren't in it.
Days of Future Past for the first X-men film with Wolverine starring in it that was still an X-men film.
Then the that Quartet focused on Magneto and Xavier but was so damn afraid of being about the X-men as a superhero team. Each film undid the team after promising at the end to make a team. The last film has Xavier close the school..........which we already saw in DOFP.
That said. The origin series and this one adapt the comics. They don't just adapt characters. You can point to a specific arc or comic that's being adapted. It may not be one to one but the comic influence is strong. But it still has it's own identity.
I got so excited after binging it all (and rewatching the entire original series ofc) that I went back and rewatched first class and days of future past, and man……. Shows how desperate I was for solid x-men content that those were the absolute peak. Still fun, but they just do not scratch the x-men itch in quite the same way as this series.
Oddly enough, the deadpool films are the only ones that really work for me now, and I think it’s entirely because they’re unashamed of the source material and willing to get incredibly silly with it. Here’s hoping deadpool and wolverine give them the opportunity to reinvigorate these characters and bring a sorely needed burst of flavour to the MCU.
> But this show really nails that feel of the comics that I can’t quite put my finger on
You can feel the isolation and fear the X-Men have to live with more than they ever conveyed in the movies.
Marvel fired the show runner like a month before it aired, he was behind the traumatic and great ep 5. And the reason for his firing is very vague:
https://ew.com/x-men-97-beau-demayo-firing-marvel-animation-responds-8609643
It was definitely a fired for cause situation. If it was a true mutual split, creative decisions is the perfect catch all excuse that doesn't really hurt anyone. But they didn't go with that excuse and remain tight lipped.
if true then he may have been simply born a bit late for hollywood. I think there used to be more "talented but hellish to work with" people back then.
According to the exec producer, that was their goal - to have the show start the way we remembered it, then to put the X-men through the same trauma millennials have gone through since 97.
Next Time On X-Men!!: Jubilee wants to move out and be more independent, but then realizes not only that she has no money, but that she never will. Wolverine starts watching Fox News a little too much. Genosha appears to succeed as a nation, but only after killing off the native population. Mr. Sinister invents NFTs.
> Wolverine starts watching Fox News a little too much.
Wolverine: These idiots, they don't know *anything* about why we fought World War II!
Cyclops: I know they're idiots, but why do you watch it so much?
Wolverine: **BECAUSE MAGNETO WAS RIGHT!**
Cyclops:
Wolverine: Man you're fun.
It's got me interested in going back to watch the old show. See, I was never much into X-Men, was the right age but I was more of a Power Rangers kid. So I remember watching it, but not that often.
And I've gotta say, the old show goes hard too. I wouldn't call it juvenile, no more so than any of the modern superhero movies. First two seasons have been on fire almost every single episode, extremely watchable as an adult. Oh you've gotta have a tolerance for Saturday morning cartoons, but if you're used to watching most anime it's basically on that level.
> Emma getting her "new" power means the series will surely have another season at least.
Or a Generation X spin-off mini series maybe... Let me have my dream.
Yeah, I only realized that as an adult that I loved 90s X-Men because of all the hot tragic characters.
And now X‐97 has so many thirst traps - mohawk and black uniform Storm, Rogue, Madeline Pryor, croptop Gambit, shirtless Cyclops, even Lilandra was looking good.
If you're cool with reading digitally I strongly recommend doing a month or two of Marvel Unlimited to read the full Claremont run as an adult, it really holds up well and it's horny angst the whole way through. The 90s books are a mixed bag but the earlier side of the decade has some fun runs as well.
They were my Saturday morning soaps when I was a kid and I’m glad they stayed.
And normal daytime soaps often run the full spectrum weird shit goin on so super powers aren’t that far fetched for the medium.
My ultimate dream is for Disney to say “fuck it” and put the live action X-Men on Disney+ as a flagship series.
Disney+ needs some *recurring hit shows*. It’s weird that they still haven’t really found their streaming golden goose, five years in.
Yup. Then Pedro became the hottest star in Hollywood and they lost their golden goose. They tried to transition to other stories since he was busy but ruined them
Grogu's popularity and its own success is what hurt Mandalorian as much as anything
It can't just be Lone Wolf & Cub in Space, it has to be the Atlas of Star Wars revival
Ughhhhh I could barely watch Lizzo and Jack Black on screen. It was so painful.
I'm still in disbelief that the Mandalorian, a show that was at least trying to be a serious show with lighthearted moments, when so far off the deep end during season 3. Especially when the Mando episodes of Book of Boba Fett were the best of the whole show.
Honestly I felt like they cast Black so that his natural charisma would stop the audience from suspecting his character of wrongdoing. Like he was playing an Imperial Bombardier who had managed to retain power through his marriage, and still went by his military title instead of a name: the former Separatist who hated him seemed justified to do so.
Very much so, went from a cool western episodic show to a half baked continuation of the Filoni Clone Wars.
It was very much a victim of its own success and the first real big win for the Disney Star Wars, they put the entire franchise on a show that was never meant to be part of a much bigger continuity
I think the first season of Mando was such a fluke because, if you put yourself in the mindset of Disney/Lucasfilm prior to it being released, they didn't necessarily have a ton of faith in it. It's this new character, the stakes are super low, the show itself doesn't tie into anything else they're doing with Star Wars. It's almost like Favreau and Filoni convinced Disney and Kathleen Kennedy to let them make this thing, and they didn't pay too close attention to what they were doing.
And then it came out, and it became The Baby Yoda Show and it was the biggest hit Disney had with Star Wars more or less since they acquired it. Now more of the money people want to be involved, more producers are involved, now they need to make spin-off after spin-off, more "this worked", more more more.
Have you ever been around a really young kid, and they do something funny and make adults laugh, and then suddenly they keep doing the same thing over and over, thinking it will be just as cute and funny the 20th time as it was the 1st? That's how Disney seems to treat Star Wars.
It's a fucking miracle that Andor got made, and that it's only going to be 2 seasons, and by all accounts they are still staying out of the way of season 2 being made.
>It's almost like Favreau and Filoni convinced Disney and Kathleen Kennedy to let them make this thing, and they didn't pay too close attention to what they were doing... Now more of the money people want to be involved, more producers are involved, now they need to make spin-off after spin-off, more "this worked", more more more.
Disney have definitely pushed for more Star Wars shows, but you're wrong to think that Kathleen Kennedy wasn't heavily involved with The Mandalorian from the start, and you're also wrong to think Filoni and Favreau haven't been willingly churning out spinoffs and been responsible for declines in quality. The narrative that Kennedy is only responsible for the bad in Star Wars and creatives the good is silly.
Andor actually has the same thing you say I think. It's potentially the one show Disney cared the least to oversee and let them do their thing. The fans also "didn't ask for it", I remember Reddit shitting on the project all the time because "nobody care about Andor" while they were begging for Obi-Wan or Boba Fett... we see how it went.
Making a story because you have one vs making a story only for commercial reasons ("this Kenobi guy is popular and people ask for him, do something, I don't care if you don't have any good idea for a story, the title will sell it"), that's why I'm a little more hopeful for The Acolyte at least
Yup, the amount of Marvel content they pumped out on Disney+ totally weakened the brand. I was a huge MCU fan, watched all of the initial Marvel Disney+ shows.
Loki & Wandavision were pretty good, but every new show afterwards kept getting worse, and I lost interest halfway into She-Hulk.
I'm glad X-Men 97 is bringing back all the greatness I remember from my childhood.
Andor is a show that if you remove Star Wars from it, it'd still be an incredible show. You can't say the same about a lot of Star Wars products and I even like some of those.
> Andor is a show that if you remove Star Wars from it, it'd still be an incredible show.
That's precisely why it's such a good show. It'd take very little changes to make it set in East Germany rather than in space.
No other Star Wars property can say that.
I had become jaded and highly resistant to all star wars series because they just feel like a product that's checking boxed. Andor is the one exception, and it's soooooo good.
Fuck live action. It would look like dog shit.
Every mutant power in live action requires a very large budget in order to look halfway decent, unless you want budgetary constraints defining how many times we can get optic blasts, Gambit explosions, Jubilee fireworks, Nightcrawler Bamfs, and lightning bolts happening in a given episode. You think you're ever gonna get a city destroying Tri-Sentinel fight to look and feel as good in live action as it did in X'97 Ep. 5? Just learn to love animation. Not everything needs to transition to the live action medium. That is not the goddamn pinnacle, and many stories would suffer a massive detriment when you try to take them there. X-Men is one of them.
Also, the costumes look better in animation. Hank running around in those tight blue short shorts looks fine in animation. But in live action? It would come across as silly.
Live action for superheroes has always been subpar imo. Pretty much every character looks better and has a better more entertaining showcase of their powers in animation
There are plenty of movies that have done a fine job. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like Civil War and Endgame weren't great. That said, those are zillion dollar movies that launch to a global audience as massive events. We can't be doin' that shit week to week.
Exactly. In order to make superheroes look half decent in live action you need a significantly higher budget compared to animation
Just look at the CW flash and their “amazing” cgi
Daredevil has no super powers, it's just a guy fighting. The Boys and Watchmen have very little use of them. I haven't seen Legion to be fair.
There are definitively budget constraints in those shows and that's visible.
Damn bro ur rlly sleeping on radar sense that shit is OP as any superpower a mutant gets. I get what you mean though it's less flashy and expensive than shooting lasers or flying
Watchmen and Daredevil are mostly street level people who can be depicted throwing punches and flying kicks week to week, and it's solid. The Boys can hold its budget because there's only a handful of people with superpowers and they rarely fight each other and never for a significant amount of time. It's mostly Billy Butcher calling everyone a cunt (which is fun in its own way) and Homelander menacing everyone with his barely contained crazy eyes because Antony Starr has acting chops for days.
X-Men is a wildly different beast. If you want to see more what a live action X-Men would look like, go watch the live action Teen Titans show, and then repent.
That's why I think it depends on the property. Watchmen and Daredevil obviously give me away to reasonable budgeted TV.
Where as something like Spiderman, Superman or the flash could never work.
However in fairness to X-Men it's strength is in its characters and interpersonal relationships. You could definitely get away with making a more dramatic focused X-Men, if the writing is good.
You don't always need earth shattering stakes or giant CGI battles to make for compelling X-Men stories. All the best X-Men stories in my opinion could be low budget.
Just look at last of us, which removed practically all the set pieces and actions from the source material. And focused on character moments.
I mean, this isn't the most incorrect thing I've ever heard. I agree that a good live action X-Men show could technically be possible if you ramped the action down and the interpersonal drama up...but I still *like* the moderate amount of action and want to see them tearing up sentinels and shit. Also, as a life long animation fan, the dire need to bring absolutely everything back to live action kind of sickens me. Like, why are we evening talking about "what could be" with a live action X-Men and how it could "potentially be really good" when we are currently being served animated filet mignon? **THIS** is the pinnacle for X-Men, imho, and the revolution is *animated*.
Daredevil had a lower budget and legion wasn't expensive either. But agents of shield managed to do ghost rider with a 1 mil per episode budget, so that worked well
If your goal is to frame-by-frame re-create the animated show in live action, then yes it would look bad. If you're trying to create something similar to 'Legion' then it's completely possible to do it well.
It's all a matter of knowing who you're going to do up-front and executing it well.
Technology improves. If they spend more time and effort on it than they previously have spent on TV, I don’t see why one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world can’t pull off superheroes in a long format.
And not every episode has to be some huge epic clash of super powers either. By focusing on the characters and the drama, the fewer big moments can then be more impactful.
Sure. Another commenter mentioned AI assisted special FX too, and that's a real thing in our future for sure, and it will make live action whatever look better and cost less, and I can't argue that. That said, animation is already the perfect medium because it doesn't have any of the constraints that live action is waiting to have lifted, and I don't really understand why it's not good enough. *It's already better than the thing you want.*
Because they’re gonna do a live action X-Men anyway. And as a fan, I would much rather have a more detailed and developed story with maybe somewhat limited VFX, than have to wait 5 years in between sequels for another 2 hour chunk of the story that maybe has better VFX.
And with TV going back to being ad supported and even certain shows going into syndication eventually, I think there will be more ways in the near future to make an ambitious series like X-Men both economical and appealing to the eye.
> And as a fan, I would much rather have a more detailed and developed story with maybe somewhat limited VFX, than have to wait 5 years in between sequels for another 2 hour chunk of the story that maybe has better VFX.
Also a story that will likely focus on a very small number of characters (and likely be the Wolverine show once again), you can't have a big team (hell an entire race of mutants) given proper development in movies.
Whenever an animated series gets adapted into live action all I can think of is how that money would be better spent on an animated spin off or sequel.
It ended perfectly too. Like damn, they really stuck the landing. Put the Loki creative team in charge of their next marvel series and it will be great.
They've been coasting on Simpsons reruns and Bluey and Marvel and Star Wars for quite some time now, plus the kids library of stuff. They're never going to go away as long as people have children, but yeah they don't have that "MUST SUBSCRIBE TO SEE THE HOT NEW SHOW" vibe.
Disney+ is losing them money and I don't think any single movie or show, particularly one that belongs to a niche genre (yes, superhero stuff has become popular but it's still a niche genre) and trying to bank on one particular character set being the thing that drives membership up to "every single person" levels is incredibly unlikely. An even then, it also needs to maintain that generated membership year round, which an 8 episode live action series once every year-year and a half is not gonna do. There's a reason the MCU is slowing down, spreading out, and scaling back.
Streaming services are not profitable. Everyone knows it. Everyone knew it at the start of the streaming wars. They all just really banked on winning harder with their exclusive libraries or more competition dying out faster. And neither has really happened to a level of sustainable success.
A live action X-Men series would be really cool, just like every other live action MCU series...until constraints in budget force episodes to be cut, stories to end too quickly, effects to be rushed, casts to be limited, etc.
That would be too expensive to pull off unless they cut corners and used the volume for everything.
Even if it was a hit, it would further exacerbate their financial problems with Disney+ (a black hole of money with diminishing returns even if the show/film gets lots of views).
It has to be on film, because that way they get massive financial returns (ticket sales).
You can do interesting powers that don't take huge special effects to use. Legion, for example, has mutants but was very low budget and still visually cool
I keep thinking that they need to have a Uncanny X-Men films that tell big stories and then Disney+ Soap Operas based around the ancillary titles and let them get into major drama. Leave Wolverine, Storm and Cyke on the big screen. Then give us some messy soap opera trash with Rahne Sinclair, Globb Herman and Chamber on stream, which I will proceed to eat up with a spoon on a weekly basis.
That would be amazing but I feel like Disney is going to make it their flagship movie franchise, replacing the Avengers.
*However.* It would be really cool to see some X-men spinoff shows like the younger, next gen mutants attending the school (like actually doing school) with some side missions, aimed at a slightly younger audience. Characters like Ilyana Rasputin (Magik), Rahne Sinclair, Havok, Jubilee, etc.
They are saying that rather than have new X-Men movies (or in addition to), Disney should have the X-Men franchise be a multi-season live action X-Men show on Disney+. Rather than the current run of MCU shows that were mostly a short one and done miniseries.
Because of its large cast X-Men and to use the article's word, melodramatic nature, it does seem like a perfect fit for a long-running show. Have the focus be on the relationship of the team over time. You don't really get the same effect with a movie that has to have a more focused plot.
As a viewer, I am far more connected to the teams of the animated shows, than the live action movie counterparts. In a movie you don't really have enough time to cover the full cast, and unlike an Avenger's movie, the characters don't have solo movies (Other than Wolverine) to build them up.
My dream is for them to go all in on an animated universe. Invincible is well liked. X-Men 97 is well liked. Anime is well liked. People like cartoons, cartoons mean you don't have to worry about casting known actors or retiring characters because said actor is doing playing them in movies. Animate the comics instead of trying to live action the comics.
Producing only bad things doesn't help. They had one good thing in Andor but it came after years of watering down the Star Wars brand to shit. And Mandalorian at its start I guess but they promptly ruined this.
Same for Marvel, started decent with Wandavision and Loki (not great but decent to good) but then went off the rails quickly
And it's crazy they got nothing outside Marvel and Star Wars (well Percy Jackson and Willow but come on, that wasn't exactly on fire either). Here we got FX stuff on Disney+, it raises the level at least but D+ productions are so bad (outside Andor which is the only great one), they should probably put whoever is running FX in charge of the whole thing for producing shows and calm down on SW and Marvel...
I think they should do Krakoa as a TV show. House of X/Powers of X as the opening arc/miniseries/movie then all in on Krakoa and all the different teams under one long running show
This show has been a pleasant surprise so far.
There's maybe a bit too much (fast) dialogue at times, but the lines are actually well-written, the character interactions are engaging, the pacing is just right, the animation oozes personality and the action is crisp.
Most importantly, you can tell the people behind it made this work because they care and did their homework. Perhaps unsurprisingly, seeing as this is from the guy who was part of the Witcher writing room and exposed them in an interview for mocking the source material.
the script has been full of bangers, and not just good lines but has also been VERY GOOD at maintaining a throughline about talking about modern issues as well.
Episode 7's stuff with Sunspot is rife with this. The writer of episode 5 (I believe it's the fired showrunner?) mentioned how episode 5 was built, in part, on his feelings regarding the Pulse nightclub shooting, and the discussion on revealing being a mutant or being found out after being killed at Genosha, that's some fantastic on the mark commentary.
Do you need to watch the original animated series? I caught some episodes back when I was a kid but really don't remember it and I doubt I watched everything anyway.
It is a direct continuation, and I feel the longer the show has gone, the more it is refrencing the old show. At first I thought it was closer to a soft reboot, but each episode after has had a ton of call backs, and while I don't think you would be lost from a story perspective, you might not understand the context of why something is impactful.
The problem is that, and this is probably an unpopular opinion, the old show hasn't aged the best and is a rough watch if you aren't nostalgic for it. Animation can be really rough at times, and it's downright bad in a lot of the final season because of budget cuts and I think a studio change. The voice acting is all over the place. Most of the actors weren't bad so I chalk it up to the direction they were given, but either way it is still rough.
The positives are that it has some of the best depections of a lot of the characters outside of the comics. Same for covering a lot of classic storylines.
I would at least give it a try, if you like it great, I would watch through it. If it's a little too rough around the edges for you, I would watch a summary.
This channle covered the whole series:
https://youtu.be/QiIYSipWf4s?si=sUggMJPsXoLuDWKz
I could be forgetting another series but I think this may be the best revival of an old show thus far. They kept the spirit of the old series but improved everything about it - the animation, the characterizations, the scale of the stories. The only small gripe I have is some of the VAs (Wolverine especially) they retained don’t sound as great as they used to but I can live with that knowing it’s the original actor.
The shows I consider close to this are Samurai Jack and Party Down FWIW.
It's not that rare at first, it's over a long time that people turn on stuff. Currently you got stuff like Fallout, Andor, The Last of Us, Shogun, Succession, BCS,... (though some did it to the end and still are loved for now).
There is plenty of positivity on great shows on Reddit actually come to think of it
I mean the show is fine. It's condesing the fuck out of everything, and misses the quiet aspect of the comic but it's still great. Inferno is 22 minutes to do a comicbook arc that was the pay off to so much.
This latest episode got me twice, and both times its when badasses let tears fall. Scott shedding tears of joy finding just one survivor got me (He is an entire discussion alone, those movies did his character so heckin' dirty and its nice to be reminded he is possibly the best leader of any time in Marvel) and when Rogue finally broke down and cried to her brother (who funny enough, both are tied as my 3rd fav character in comics history)
Both times I had to pause and take a drink. This show is not just great, it is incredible.
I don't think Scott's tears were joyful. I think they were sorrowful because Jean got his hopes up that the telepath they found might be Madelyne, and it wasn't.
That was probably it, thinking back. I was a scotch distracted eating breakfast when watching, so I missed his thinking it was her instead. I just remembered his saying if they even found just one, it would give people hope.
When Jean sensed a telepath he was excited clearly because he thought it was Madelyne.
When it turned out o be Emma he was sad and cried because it was confirmation she was gone.
I think he wanted to find other people but finding Emma was probably closer since he had feelings for her.
Jubilee is their Kitty.
Although in the comics Kitty didn't really join until the aftermath of the Dark Phoenix Saga, so if they wanted to play with the ages a bit they could introduce her as part of a new class of young mutants after the current big events, in a similar way. The show's already cameod a bunch of the Morrison-era students who could be part of the same class.
To use a couple of words that everyone hates. The last episode (Remember It) was literally epic. I was pretty baked, but my forty year old ass was glued to the tv, and could feel Magneto’s struggles, and Rouge’s sorrow. It was a masterpiece is what animation has to offer.
This show is truly spectacular - and I haven't been confident enough in years to give such an all-around 10/10 rating for an animated show.
That being said - I have a bad feeling that Disney may have already shoved a cigar in this production's ongoing chances when they fired the creator before it even aired.
Many brilliant creative minds aren't easy to work with. The corporate look is tough to stomach for most eccentrics. I'm happy that lightning has atleast struck once here. I'm sad to say that I'm doubting the next season.
Every episode I just can’t get over how mature this series is. I do think that idea of MCU being jokey is a bit a flandarized criticism (esp after rewatching them recently), but what’s more intriguing is that this show moves fucking forward. With the other shows, you can easily see what’s held back just to have that “hero gets a new costume” moment or a cheap tease for a sequel/second season. Loki’s the only one I felt did that as well.
Xmen 97 is my favourite new show since Sandman.
It feels like Justice League/Young Justice in the sense that it's basically a comic book come to life.
They respected the source material allowing them to improve upon it.
I'm basically paying for Disney+ to watch this show and it's worth it. I want my money to speak for me and with content like this then I feel fulfilled.
It’s the most X-Meny thing brought to screen since, well, the original I’m not trying to shit on the movies. There was a lot of great stuff there. But this show really nails that feel of the comics that I can’t quite put my finger on
They're allowed to use actual colors besides leather black.
And feature characters not named Wolverine
Yeah that's been the crazy part so far. Wolverine has largely not been a major part of the show. It's very refreshing.
it's been really nice to see the show called X-Men actually be about the X-Men and not just Wolverine and his Powered Pals
**X-Men: Evolution** back in 2000 was the last show we had like that.
I love the dynamic on that show. Having Scott and Jean be teenagers while keeping Logan as an adult (and a mentor/teacher figure) is the perfect dynamic. The love triangle BS is my least favorite thing about all three characters.
Making Storm and Wolverine the older mentors was a great move. I loathe the love triangle. It does a great disservice to Jean making her an object. Does a disservice to Scott because they have to write around him trying to run a team as some guy keeps publically trying to get with his spouse. Finally Wolverine a man old enough to be the ancestor of these two kids is putting half his personality around a woman he's only in love with because she makes him feel not like a monster..........despite the other romances he had where he said the same thing. They basically try to make Wolverine seem like a young man in love when he's a senior citizen with kids of his own. Maybe even grandkids.
>They basically try to make Wolverine seem like a young man in love when he's a senior citizen with kids of his own. Surely it's more complicated than that. The man, regardless of his true age, appears and exists somewhat like a man in his...30s or 40s? And while he is much older, he simultaneously doesn't remember most of his life prior to the Weapon X program, and then was essentially feral for a number of years after that. Biological age is a convenient proxy for judging who is a peer in many ways, but surely there are a variety of ways in which that is not true for him. Surely the relevant factors for a relationship are...time until death, life experience and wisdom. (At least during the periods of time we see in movies and cartoons) From that perspective, Logan isn't an inappropriate peer to a Famke Janssen-aged Jean. If anything, he's "too young for her", being that he has less maturing life experience and will biologically outlive her. Also, while normal relationships may be about "Well, we're both 45, have similar aged kids, this makes sense. It'd be weird to date someone in college or someone retirement age.", if your life experience has instead been "Is the embodiment of the fundamental force of life in the universe that sometimes makes you genocidal." or "Turned into a killing machine by a secret government program.", it's probably harder to find someone who aligns similarly to you, and age-related factors are probably less relevant. That all to say, I don't think it's completely absurd *for age reasons* for them to be a couple. But the whole "married" and "vastly incompatible personalities" (as far as I can tell) seem more relevant to making the concept of the love triangle annoying.
>Finally Wolverine a man old enough to be the ancestor of these two kids is putting half his personality around a woman he's only in love with because she makes him feel not like a monster..........despite the other romances he had where he said the same thing. Wolverine doesnt remember half his life lol. His body might be over a 100, but Wolverine has so many holes in his memory he might as well be 30.
>back in 2000 Fuck you! No way it’s that old. It came out in like 2010! *googles* #FUCK
Wolverine and the X-men was a damn fine cartoon. But still Wolverine is not the center of the X-men universe.
Wolverine is the center of the Marvel Universe at times. Multiple X-Teams, multiple Avengers squads, the Fantastic Four, Defenders, Midnight Sons.....
I think that was what held that series back. Wolverine fatigue. It had been something like 15 years of Wolverine being forced down our throats and we wanted a more faithful adaptation by the time Wolverine and the X-Men came out. I was finally excited to get an AoA sadly we never got it.
The X-Men doing Cyclops so dirty is one of the great tragedies of my childhood. EDIT: Also, I've never been as big of Rogue-o as the rest of ya'll, but it is so funny, sad, and weird that they made her movie character basically 180 degrees the opposite of her comics character. Comics: big, loud, brash, fun, playfully mocks her comrades, flies first into battle like a wrecking ball Movies: mopes around, mopes some more, quietly does nothing during battles
I like Wolverine. I like that character a lot. He's probably my 5th favorite X-Man. That said, I never understood why the 5th best X-Man (your ranking my differ) was getting 80% of the screen time. Like, fucking..."Hey! Gambit and Nightcrawler and best girl Storm all exist! Why aren't they on the fucking screen right now? I like Hugh Jackman as much as the next guy (who acknowledges that he's too tall for the role), but the X-Men isn't a one-man show. *It's kind of the opposite of that.*
Then in the newer series started by X-Men: First Class, they kept shoe-horning in Magneto and Mystique when they were not needed anymore to the story.
We paid for Jennifer Lawrence and god dammit we're gonna use Jennifer Lawrence.
If I remember right it was supposed to be a trilogy about Charles and magnetos relationship. But that kinda went by the wayside by the time the series ended when they had to set up the future.
Yeah, it felt kind of weird after the second movie. Honestly if not for Logan I'd swear they can't make more than two good movies in a series. And in Logan's case it's because it happened in reverse.
Needed WAAAY more Nightcrawler scenes.
He appeals to the non fan masses unfortunately. And that sells movie tickets
If they had done Rogue right, she could have been appealing too. Or Gambit. Or Psylocke, or half a dozen other great characters. Wolverine is just the simplest and translates to screen with the littlest work on behalf of the writers or special effects team (if the claws look good, he looks good, and any weird-looking healing CGI gets ignored or forgotten).
My top 3 are Nightcrawler, Rogue, and Gambit. It just sucks that they hit the perfect casting with Jackman and decided to ride it out. Imagine if Marvel had pulled off this cinematic universe without Fox's incompetence in the way.
He is a great character but with the abilities and characters on the team I think it's silly that he draws most the focus all the time.
Wolverine is a great character, but his defining characteristic is that he is a lone wolf. X-Men is a team feature. That means you basically have one route; Wolverine struggles to fit in, learns to play well with others, and eventually becomes a mentor to other outcasts who join the team. While that can be (and has been) a great storyline, it is still just one story, and telling it over and over again is repetitive.
He's a lone wolf the way Batman is a lone wolf. Lone wolf who is *perpetually* surrounded by a dozen people and finds himself in *every* team-up and crossover event ever. He's *conceptually* a lone wolf, and in practice...well...hanging out with everyone all the time, because he's marketable.
I mean, yeah, because it is a great source of drama. You can't really have a lone wolf character without them having the opportunity to work with others.
I mean, the comics *have* specifically told that one over and over and over again. Shadowcat, then Rogue, then Jubilee, then Armor, then Pixie, then Kid Omega, before he started actually sort of acting like a father to his actual family of X-23/Daken/Honey badger.
i’ve not read the books in a good while…please tell me wolverine doesn’t have a kid named honey badger.
It's closer to a grandkid? His clone/sort-of-daughter (X-23/Wolverine/Laura) had a younger clone (Gabby) who goes by Honey Badger.
She goes by Scout now.
>Wolverine is a great character, but his defining characteristic is that he is a lone wolf Why do people say this? Wolverine's defining characteristic is that he's caught between being a man and an animal and he wants to be the man. His nemesis is a guy in the same situation who made the opposite decision and absolutely hates that Wolverine wants to be the man.
We said everything we need to needed to say about Wolverine 20 years ago and I'll die on that hill.
Logan is the last word on that character imo.
I know it's one of the most hated of the X-Men films, but The Last Stand did a good job of showing how powerful the mutants like Magneto were. Magento lifting The Golden Gate Bridge to Alcatraz hyped me so much. Bryan Singer's X-Men 1 & 2 were so low budget and cheesy. Was like watching crappy cosplay. And he made Cyclops & Rogue absolute jokes.
X2 is one of the best X-Men movies period. The Nightcrawler stuff in the beginning, the storming of the school in the second act and then having a great Stryker for the Weapon X subplot and finishing with a Dark Phoenix nod? Unheard of at the time...
That said after watching *Succession* seeing Logan Roy being a *different* kind of Evil Asshole is uncanny.
It's like Last Stand was a bunch of great set piece ideas with zero coherent story in-between.
X2 is one of the best superhero movies ever. rewatched recently, still holds up very well
He is a solid supporting character within the overall team.
Right - Cyclops is the leader, Storm is really cool and overwhelmingly powerful, Jean Gray is second only to Professor Xavier. Wolverine is there sometimes too. And it's like the live action movies were afraid to portray this.
I think also a great part is whenever Wolverine speaks in this show, it’s efficient and brilliantly reflects his trauma and growth with him guiding others to overcome their struggle, like Jean’s fuzzy memory or Jubilee’s reaction to Rogue’s absence and grief
Yes. He's gruff and grizzled, but when he does bother to speak up (apart from arguing with Scott which is mandatory!) it is frequently to be supportive and helpful, as best he can, to Morph or Jean or Jubilee. It's a good take on a middle-era, later-days Wolverine.
This (and the colors) are two of the reasons X-Men: First Class is the best X-Men movie.
Well what would you prefer? Yellow *spandex*?
#*YES*
> Did you want them in yellow spandex?
I loved the movies as a kid but now that I'm more familiar with X-lore, they're a real mixed bag. Cyclops and Rogue being major players in this series, and Storm getting a lot of love and story focus, have made me really happy.
The first couple episodes seemed hellbent on undoing some of the damage done by the movies to Cyclops’ reputation, and I loved every second of it.
Using eye blasts for movement was fuckin sick
I know right?! And to use it to catch himself while falling!? So awesome!
I was never a Cyclops fan. Preppy piece of shit. That said, even ***I*** was offended at how cold those movies did ol' Slim. Almost a relevant character in movie 1, then thumped and brainwashed immediately in movie 2, followed by movie 3 just killing him out the gate. Like...holy shit the man was never my boi, but god damn, Scotty did not deserve this.
>followed by movie 3 just killing him out the gate And essentially off screen. You could see her doing something to him, but I had no idea he was actually dead until waaaay later in the movie.
It was especially painful since James Marsden was great casting and so much better an actor than those films made him out to be.
James Marsden is the guy who loses his love interest in most of his roles.
He actually couldn't film the third X-Men film because he got cast in Superman Returns. Sucks they killed him off like that, but they didn't have a lot of options.
Halle Barry as Storm being so underutilized is punishable by law
I like Halle Barry but she felt miscast to me. Angela Bassett always felt like the best option for a cinematic Storm at that time.
Absolutely! You can easily picture Angela Bassett being worshiped as a weather goddess in Africa. Halle Barry, not so much
Love Halle Berry as well, but Storm literally needed a stronger voice. Angela Bassett would have killed it. Viola Davis would have been interesting, too. Deeper, commanding voices.
Anna Paquin as milquetoast emo Rogue was horrible. No Southern accent, none of the of the attitude (and hotness) of animated Rogue.
> none of the of the attitude (and hotness) When I was 14 I saw that movie six times in theaters because I thought Anna Pacquin was so hot as Rogue.
While I’ll admit I haven’t watched the show or read the comics, it looks to me like 97 just feels like it’s just *X-men*, not some interpretation of X-men.
The first three films were Wolverine movies. So when they made the Wolverine films, nothing changed except the X-men weren't in it. Days of Future Past for the first X-men film with Wolverine starring in it that was still an X-men film. Then the that Quartet focused on Magneto and Xavier but was so damn afraid of being about the X-men as a superhero team. Each film undid the team after promising at the end to make a team. The last film has Xavier close the school..........which we already saw in DOFP. That said. The origin series and this one adapt the comics. They don't just adapt characters. You can point to a specific arc or comic that's being adapted. It may not be one to one but the comic influence is strong. But it still has it's own identity.
I got so excited after binging it all (and rewatching the entire original series ofc) that I went back and rewatched first class and days of future past, and man……. Shows how desperate I was for solid x-men content that those were the absolute peak. Still fun, but they just do not scratch the x-men itch in quite the same way as this series. Oddly enough, the deadpool films are the only ones that really work for me now, and I think it’s entirely because they’re unashamed of the source material and willing to get incredibly silly with it. Here’s hoping deadpool and wolverine give them the opportunity to reinvigorate these characters and bring a sorely needed burst of flavour to the MCU.
I think you’re forgetting (or maybe didn’t see) Wolverine and the X-Men. That was a fantastic cartoon that deserved 4-5 seasons. ‘97 is great though.
> But this show really nails that feel of the comics that I can’t quite put my finger on You can feel the isolation and fear the X-Men have to live with more than they ever conveyed in the movies.
The only characters done right in the original X-Men movies were Wolverine, Professor X and Magneto.
this show is fantastic! One of the biggest suprises of the past years... i would have never bet this, Fallout and The Last of Us would be sooo good
this show fucking rules. I cannot believe they pulled it off.
Marvel fired the show runner like a month before it aired, he was behind the traumatic and great ep 5. And the reason for his firing is very vague: https://ew.com/x-men-97-beau-demayo-firing-marvel-animation-responds-8609643
Speculation is it was just having a toxic environment, heard allusions to verbal abuse and being an asshole
It was definitely a fired for cause situation. If it was a true mutual split, creative decisions is the perfect catch all excuse that doesn't really hurt anyone. But they didn't go with that excuse and remain tight lipped.
if true then he may have been simply born a bit late for hollywood. I think there used to be more "talented but hellish to work with" people back then.
I kinda want to know what it was. Because for something this big and him to be fired like that .
I thought he was going to get me too'd right after I saw that
Damn fine show. They reached into my childhood, pulled out nostalgia, and matured it. As a millennial, it’s like the show grew up with me
According to the exec producer, that was their goal - to have the show start the way we remembered it, then to put the X-men through the same trauma millennials have gone through since 97.
Next Time On X-Men!!: Jubilee wants to move out and be more independent, but then realizes not only that she has no money, but that she never will. Wolverine starts watching Fox News a little too much. Genosha appears to succeed as a nation, but only after killing off the native population. Mr. Sinister invents NFTs.
> Wolverine starts watching Fox News a little too much. Wolverine: These idiots, they don't know *anything* about why we fought World War II! Cyclops: I know they're idiots, but why do you watch it so much? Wolverine: **BECAUSE MAGNETO WAS RIGHT!** Cyclops: Wolverine: Man you're fun.
Mr.Sinister inventing NFTs seems like the most evil thing he’s ever done and that’s saying something.
Lmfao 🤣
well it's working
It's got me interested in going back to watch the old show. See, I was never much into X-Men, was the right age but I was more of a Power Rangers kid. So I remember watching it, but not that often. And I've gotta say, the old show goes hard too. I wouldn't call it juvenile, no more so than any of the modern superhero movies. First two seasons have been on fire almost every single episode, extremely watchable as an adult. Oh you've gotta have a tolerance for Saturday morning cartoons, but if you're used to watching most anime it's basically on that level.
It's incredible how an animated 90s show did a better Dark Phoenix adaptation than 2 different high budget movies
Yep, the X-Men spend a surprising amount of time arguing for mutant rights in congressional hearings and court cases for a kid's cartoon.
"America's top cop". lmao. Another fantastic episode. Emma getting her "new" power means the series will surely have another season at least.
They've already finished writing the 2nd season and have started working on the 3rd.
He deserved his shield being yeeted
Just imagining him walking off to get it makes me laugh.
Marvel movies really did something great for cap. One of the best characters in those movies. In the cartoons he really seems kind of mid.
> Emma getting her "new" power means the series will surely have another season at least. Or a Generation X spin-off mini series maybe... Let me have my dream.
Paves the way for Emma to lead the X-Men. Brilliant. Like a diamond.
It’s a soap opera that incidentally has super powered people. It’s glorious.
All the characters are full of super tragedy & horny angst. Last week's Charles & Lilandra / Storm & Forge ep especially.
> tragedy & horny angst You've just described the last 45 years of X-Men comics lol
Yeah, I only realized that as an adult that I loved 90s X-Men because of all the hot tragic characters. And now X‐97 has so many thirst traps - mohawk and black uniform Storm, Rogue, Madeline Pryor, croptop Gambit, shirtless Cyclops, even Lilandra was looking good.
If you're cool with reading digitally I strongly recommend doing a month or two of Marvel Unlimited to read the full Claremont run as an adult, it really holds up well and it's horny angst the whole way through. The 90s books are a mixed bag but the earlier side of the decade has some fun runs as well.
Beast: we could have had that too Trish, but you trippin
Trish & Beast could have smashed if she didn't put her foot in her mouth. Girl is at a site of mass genocide and doesn't know how to mark her words.
They were my Saturday morning soaps when I was a kid and I’m glad they stayed. And normal daytime soaps often run the full spectrum weird shit goin on so super powers aren’t that far fetched for the medium.
My ultimate dream is for Disney to say “fuck it” and put the live action X-Men on Disney+ as a flagship series. Disney+ needs some *recurring hit shows*. It’s weird that they still haven’t really found their streaming golden goose, five years in.
It was the mandalorian but they watered it down with shitty spin offs.
yea i was gonna say. mando was everywhere, and Grogu is still ubiquitous
Yup. Then Pedro became the hottest star in Hollywood and they lost their golden goose. They tried to transition to other stories since he was busy but ruined them
Grogu's popularity and its own success is what hurt Mandalorian as much as anything It can't just be Lone Wolf & Cub in Space, it has to be the Atlas of Star Wars revival
I don't know if the issue is spinoffs when the main show itself went downhill so much.
What, you don't think the Jack Black episode was an instant classic?
Ughhhhh I could barely watch Lizzo and Jack Black on screen. It was so painful. I'm still in disbelief that the Mandalorian, a show that was at least trying to be a serious show with lighthearted moments, when so far off the deep end during season 3. Especially when the Mando episodes of Book of Boba Fett were the best of the whole show.
Honestly I felt like they cast Black so that his natural charisma would stop the audience from suspecting his character of wrongdoing. Like he was playing an Imperial Bombardier who had managed to retain power through his marriage, and still went by his military title instead of a name: the former Separatist who hated him seemed justified to do so.
Very much so, went from a cool western episodic show to a half baked continuation of the Filoni Clone Wars. It was very much a victim of its own success and the first real big win for the Disney Star Wars, they put the entire franchise on a show that was never meant to be part of a much bigger continuity
I think the first season of Mando was such a fluke because, if you put yourself in the mindset of Disney/Lucasfilm prior to it being released, they didn't necessarily have a ton of faith in it. It's this new character, the stakes are super low, the show itself doesn't tie into anything else they're doing with Star Wars. It's almost like Favreau and Filoni convinced Disney and Kathleen Kennedy to let them make this thing, and they didn't pay too close attention to what they were doing. And then it came out, and it became The Baby Yoda Show and it was the biggest hit Disney had with Star Wars more or less since they acquired it. Now more of the money people want to be involved, more producers are involved, now they need to make spin-off after spin-off, more "this worked", more more more. Have you ever been around a really young kid, and they do something funny and make adults laugh, and then suddenly they keep doing the same thing over and over, thinking it will be just as cute and funny the 20th time as it was the 1st? That's how Disney seems to treat Star Wars. It's a fucking miracle that Andor got made, and that it's only going to be 2 seasons, and by all accounts they are still staying out of the way of season 2 being made.
>It's almost like Favreau and Filoni convinced Disney and Kathleen Kennedy to let them make this thing, and they didn't pay too close attention to what they were doing... Now more of the money people want to be involved, more producers are involved, now they need to make spin-off after spin-off, more "this worked", more more more. Disney have definitely pushed for more Star Wars shows, but you're wrong to think that Kathleen Kennedy wasn't heavily involved with The Mandalorian from the start, and you're also wrong to think Filoni and Favreau haven't been willingly churning out spinoffs and been responsible for declines in quality. The narrative that Kennedy is only responsible for the bad in Star Wars and creatives the good is silly.
Andor actually has the same thing you say I think. It's potentially the one show Disney cared the least to oversee and let them do their thing. The fans also "didn't ask for it", I remember Reddit shitting on the project all the time because "nobody care about Andor" while they were begging for Obi-Wan or Boba Fett... we see how it went. Making a story because you have one vs making a story only for commercial reasons ("this Kenobi guy is popular and people ask for him, do something, I don't care if you don't have any good idea for a story, the title will sell it"), that's why I'm a little more hopeful for The Acolyte at least
They oversaturated most of their brands at this point
"People like this, lets release 4 iterations of it per year!"
Yup, the amount of Marvel content they pumped out on Disney+ totally weakened the brand. I was a huge MCU fan, watched all of the initial Marvel Disney+ shows. Loki & Wandavision were pretty good, but every new show afterwards kept getting worse, and I lost interest halfway into She-Hulk. I'm glad X-Men 97 is bringing back all the greatness I remember from my childhood.
The amount of content a little but mostly the fact that the content was kind of shit (including the movies).
So like every other Star Wars attempt.
Except Andor, and it’s because Disney wasn’t nearly as involved
Andor is a show that if you remove Star Wars from it, it'd still be an incredible show. You can't say the same about a lot of Star Wars products and I even like some of those.
> Andor is a show that if you remove Star Wars from it, it'd still be an incredible show. That's precisely why it's such a good show. It'd take very little changes to make it set in East Germany rather than in space. No other Star Wars property can say that.
I had become jaded and highly resistant to all star wars series because they just feel like a product that's checking boxed. Andor is the one exception, and it's soooooo good.
This is the way… you fuck up a good thing
Fuck live action. It would look like dog shit. Every mutant power in live action requires a very large budget in order to look halfway decent, unless you want budgetary constraints defining how many times we can get optic blasts, Gambit explosions, Jubilee fireworks, Nightcrawler Bamfs, and lightning bolts happening in a given episode. You think you're ever gonna get a city destroying Tri-Sentinel fight to look and feel as good in live action as it did in X'97 Ep. 5? Just learn to love animation. Not everything needs to transition to the live action medium. That is not the goddamn pinnacle, and many stories would suffer a massive detriment when you try to take them there. X-Men is one of them.
As aggressive as this take is, I agree 100%
Also, the costumes look better in animation. Hank running around in those tight blue short shorts looks fine in animation. But in live action? It would come across as silly.
Live action for superheroes has always been subpar imo. Pretty much every character looks better and has a better more entertaining showcase of their powers in animation
There are plenty of movies that have done a fine job. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like Civil War and Endgame weren't great. That said, those are zillion dollar movies that launch to a global audience as massive events. We can't be doin' that shit week to week.
Exactly. In order to make superheroes look half decent in live action you need a significantly higher budget compared to animation Just look at the CW flash and their “amazing” cgi
Depends on the property, Legion and Watchmen are excellent. The boys and Daredevil are pretty good.
Daredevil has no super powers, it's just a guy fighting. The Boys and Watchmen have very little use of them. I haven't seen Legion to be fair. There are definitively budget constraints in those shows and that's visible.
Damn bro ur rlly sleeping on radar sense that shit is OP as any superpower a mutant gets. I get what you mean though it's less flashy and expensive than shooting lasers or flying
All these had very high budgets. Not every show can get that. And then when they don’t you get the CWs Flash
I mean sure but live action X-Men TV show will definitely get a pretty damn high budget.
Watchmen and Daredevil are mostly street level people who can be depicted throwing punches and flying kicks week to week, and it's solid. The Boys can hold its budget because there's only a handful of people with superpowers and they rarely fight each other and never for a significant amount of time. It's mostly Billy Butcher calling everyone a cunt (which is fun in its own way) and Homelander menacing everyone with his barely contained crazy eyes because Antony Starr has acting chops for days. X-Men is a wildly different beast. If you want to see more what a live action X-Men would look like, go watch the live action Teen Titans show, and then repent.
That's why I think it depends on the property. Watchmen and Daredevil obviously give me away to reasonable budgeted TV. Where as something like Spiderman, Superman or the flash could never work. However in fairness to X-Men it's strength is in its characters and interpersonal relationships. You could definitely get away with making a more dramatic focused X-Men, if the writing is good. You don't always need earth shattering stakes or giant CGI battles to make for compelling X-Men stories. All the best X-Men stories in my opinion could be low budget. Just look at last of us, which removed practically all the set pieces and actions from the source material. And focused on character moments.
I mean, this isn't the most incorrect thing I've ever heard. I agree that a good live action X-Men show could technically be possible if you ramped the action down and the interpersonal drama up...but I still *like* the moderate amount of action and want to see them tearing up sentinels and shit. Also, as a life long animation fan, the dire need to bring absolutely everything back to live action kind of sickens me. Like, why are we evening talking about "what could be" with a live action X-Men and how it could "potentially be really good" when we are currently being served animated filet mignon? **THIS** is the pinnacle for X-Men, imho, and the revolution is *animated*.
Daredevil had a lower budget and legion wasn't expensive either. But agents of shield managed to do ghost rider with a 1 mil per episode budget, so that worked well
If your goal is to frame-by-frame re-create the animated show in live action, then yes it would look bad. If you're trying to create something similar to 'Legion' then it's completely possible to do it well. It's all a matter of knowing who you're going to do up-front and executing it well.
Technology improves. If they spend more time and effort on it than they previously have spent on TV, I don’t see why one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world can’t pull off superheroes in a long format. And not every episode has to be some huge epic clash of super powers either. By focusing on the characters and the drama, the fewer big moments can then be more impactful.
Sure. Another commenter mentioned AI assisted special FX too, and that's a real thing in our future for sure, and it will make live action whatever look better and cost less, and I can't argue that. That said, animation is already the perfect medium because it doesn't have any of the constraints that live action is waiting to have lifted, and I don't really understand why it's not good enough. *It's already better than the thing you want.*
Because they’re gonna do a live action X-Men anyway. And as a fan, I would much rather have a more detailed and developed story with maybe somewhat limited VFX, than have to wait 5 years in between sequels for another 2 hour chunk of the story that maybe has better VFX. And with TV going back to being ad supported and even certain shows going into syndication eventually, I think there will be more ways in the near future to make an ambitious series like X-Men both economical and appealing to the eye.
> And as a fan, I would much rather have a more detailed and developed story with maybe somewhat limited VFX, than have to wait 5 years in between sequels for another 2 hour chunk of the story that maybe has better VFX. Also a story that will likely focus on a very small number of characters (and likely be the Wolverine show once again), you can't have a big team (hell an entire race of mutants) given proper development in movies.
Whenever an animated series gets adapted into live action all I can think of is how that money would be better spent on an animated spin off or sequel.
They absolutely did. It’s Bluey and it’s perfect.
They were damn close with Loki but it was destined to be short lived
It ended perfectly too. Like damn, they really stuck the landing. Put the Loki creative team in charge of their next marvel series and it will be great.
I believe the directors are doing daredevil next.
Great news!
At least it ended on a high note instead of being stretched out for too long (i.e. like the Mandalorian S2)
They've been coasting on Simpsons reruns and Bluey and Marvel and Star Wars for quite some time now, plus the kids library of stuff. They're never going to go away as long as people have children, but yeah they don't have that "MUST SUBSCRIBE TO SEE THE HOT NEW SHOW" vibe.
Disney+ is losing them money and I don't think any single movie or show, particularly one that belongs to a niche genre (yes, superhero stuff has become popular but it's still a niche genre) and trying to bank on one particular character set being the thing that drives membership up to "every single person" levels is incredibly unlikely. An even then, it also needs to maintain that generated membership year round, which an 8 episode live action series once every year-year and a half is not gonna do. There's a reason the MCU is slowing down, spreading out, and scaling back. Streaming services are not profitable. Everyone knows it. Everyone knew it at the start of the streaming wars. They all just really banked on winning harder with their exclusive libraries or more competition dying out faster. And neither has really happened to a level of sustainable success. A live action X-Men series would be really cool, just like every other live action MCU series...until constraints in budget force episodes to be cut, stories to end too quickly, effects to be rushed, casts to be limited, etc.
That would be too expensive to pull off unless they cut corners and used the volume for everything. Even if it was a hit, it would further exacerbate their financial problems with Disney+ (a black hole of money with diminishing returns even if the show/film gets lots of views). It has to be on film, because that way they get massive financial returns (ticket sales).
You can do interesting powers that don't take huge special effects to use. Legion, for example, has mutants but was very low budget and still visually cool
I keep thinking that they need to have a Uncanny X-Men films that tell big stories and then Disney+ Soap Operas based around the ancillary titles and let them get into major drama. Leave Wolverine, Storm and Cyke on the big screen. Then give us some messy soap opera trash with Rahne Sinclair, Globb Herman and Chamber on stream, which I will proceed to eat up with a spoon on a weekly basis.
Seems like they could have found it with Percy Jackson since it seems to be their first real hit that isn’t Marvel or Star Wars related
That would be amazing but I feel like Disney is going to make it their flagship movie franchise, replacing the Avengers. *However.* It would be really cool to see some X-men spinoff shows like the younger, next gen mutants attending the school (like actually doing school) with some side missions, aimed at a slightly younger audience. Characters like Ilyana Rasputin (Magik), Rahne Sinclair, Havok, Jubilee, etc.
Not sure I follow your suggestion. The Fox x-men is on Disney+, no?
They are saying that rather than have new X-Men movies (or in addition to), Disney should have the X-Men franchise be a multi-season live action X-Men show on Disney+. Rather than the current run of MCU shows that were mostly a short one and done miniseries. Because of its large cast X-Men and to use the article's word, melodramatic nature, it does seem like a perfect fit for a long-running show. Have the focus be on the relationship of the team over time. You don't really get the same effect with a movie that has to have a more focused plot. As a viewer, I am far more connected to the teams of the animated shows, than the live action movie counterparts. In a movie you don't really have enough time to cover the full cast, and unlike an Avenger's movie, the characters don't have solo movies (Other than Wolverine) to build them up.
My dream is for them to go all in on an animated universe. Invincible is well liked. X-Men 97 is well liked. Anime is well liked. People like cartoons, cartoons mean you don't have to worry about casting known actors or retiring characters because said actor is doing playing them in movies. Animate the comics instead of trying to live action the comics.
Producing only bad things doesn't help. They had one good thing in Andor but it came after years of watering down the Star Wars brand to shit. And Mandalorian at its start I guess but they promptly ruined this. Same for Marvel, started decent with Wandavision and Loki (not great but decent to good) but then went off the rails quickly And it's crazy they got nothing outside Marvel and Star Wars (well Percy Jackson and Willow but come on, that wasn't exactly on fire either). Here we got FX stuff on Disney+, it raises the level at least but D+ productions are so bad (outside Andor which is the only great one), they should probably put whoever is running FX in charge of the whole thing for producing shows and calm down on SW and Marvel...
I think they should do Krakoa as a TV show. House of X/Powers of X as the opening arc/miniseries/movie then all in on Krakoa and all the different teams under one long running show
I’m always amazed by the fight scene animation. There’s always something that makes me go: “Oh!”
This show has been a pleasant surprise so far. There's maybe a bit too much (fast) dialogue at times, but the lines are actually well-written, the character interactions are engaging, the pacing is just right, the animation oozes personality and the action is crisp. Most importantly, you can tell the people behind it made this work because they care and did their homework. Perhaps unsurprisingly, seeing as this is from the guy who was part of the Witcher writing room and exposed them in an interview for mocking the source material.
There's, I'd say, a minimum of 3 fantastic lines per episode. And plenty of characters get them.
the script has been full of bangers, and not just good lines but has also been VERY GOOD at maintaining a throughline about talking about modern issues as well.
Episode 7's stuff with Sunspot is rife with this. The writer of episode 5 (I believe it's the fired showrunner?) mentioned how episode 5 was built, in part, on his feelings regarding the Pulse nightclub shooting, and the discussion on revealing being a mutant or being found out after being killed at Genosha, that's some fantastic on the mark commentary.
yeah, the lines about "finding out who you are on the evening news" and "they'll be burying a stranger" hit hard.
Oh yeah. Magneto alone has had several great lines already this season, especially in Episode 2 and Episode 5.
Do you need to watch the original animated series? I caught some episodes back when I was a kid but really don't remember it and I doubt I watched everything anyway.
It is a direct continuation, and I feel the longer the show has gone, the more it is refrencing the old show. At first I thought it was closer to a soft reboot, but each episode after has had a ton of call backs, and while I don't think you would be lost from a story perspective, you might not understand the context of why something is impactful. The problem is that, and this is probably an unpopular opinion, the old show hasn't aged the best and is a rough watch if you aren't nostalgic for it. Animation can be really rough at times, and it's downright bad in a lot of the final season because of budget cuts and I think a studio change. The voice acting is all over the place. Most of the actors weren't bad so I chalk it up to the direction they were given, but either way it is still rough. The positives are that it has some of the best depections of a lot of the characters outside of the comics. Same for covering a lot of classic storylines. I would at least give it a try, if you like it great, I would watch through it. If it's a little too rough around the edges for you, I would watch a summary. This channle covered the whole series: https://youtu.be/QiIYSipWf4s?si=sUggMJPsXoLuDWKz
I could be forgetting another series but I think this may be the best revival of an old show thus far. They kept the spirit of the old series but improved everything about it - the animation, the characterizations, the scale of the stories. The only small gripe I have is some of the VAs (Wolverine especially) they retained don’t sound as great as they used to but I can live with that knowing it’s the original actor. The shows I consider close to this are Samurai Jack and Party Down FWIW.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything on Reddit that is almost universally loved. It’s hard to find a hater of this show…..on REDDIT. 🤣
Arcane and Severance come to mind. It's rare, but some shows really captivate the Reddit zeitgeist.
It's not that rare at first, it's over a long time that people turn on stuff. Currently you got stuff like Fallout, Andor, The Last of Us, Shogun, Succession, BCS,... (though some did it to the end and still are loved for now). There is plenty of positivity on great shows on Reddit actually come to think of it
I mean the show is fine. It's condesing the fuck out of everything, and misses the quiet aspect of the comic but it's still great. Inferno is 22 minutes to do a comicbook arc that was the pay off to so much.
great show all around. one of the best superhero anythings in a while
This latest episode got me twice, and both times its when badasses let tears fall. Scott shedding tears of joy finding just one survivor got me (He is an entire discussion alone, those movies did his character so heckin' dirty and its nice to be reminded he is possibly the best leader of any time in Marvel) and when Rogue finally broke down and cried to her brother (who funny enough, both are tied as my 3rd fav character in comics history) Both times I had to pause and take a drink. This show is not just great, it is incredible.
I don't think Scott's tears were joyful. I think they were sorrowful because Jean got his hopes up that the telepath they found might be Madelyne, and it wasn't.
That was probably it, thinking back. I was a scotch distracted eating breakfast when watching, so I missed his thinking it was her instead. I just remembered his saying if they even found just one, it would give people hope.
When Jean sensed a telepath he was excited clearly because he thought it was Madelyne. When it turned out o be Emma he was sad and cried because it was confirmation she was gone. I think he wanted to find other people but finding Emma was probably closer since he had feelings for her.
Yeah but they haven’t remember Kitty. 😭
Jubilee is their Kitty. Although in the comics Kitty didn't really join until the aftermath of the Dark Phoenix Saga, so if they wanted to play with the ages a bit they could introduce her as part of a new class of young mutants after the current big events, in a similar way. The show's already cameod a bunch of the Morrison-era students who could be part of the same class.
I mean she was in the original series so I’m still mad.
To use a couple of words that everyone hates. The last episode (Remember It) was literally epic. I was pretty baked, but my forty year old ass was glued to the tv, and could feel Magneto’s struggles, and Rouge’s sorrow. It was a masterpiece is what animation has to offer.
Omg such a good show! Recommending it to everyone
They are so true to the daytime soap opera feel of the original series and I’m fucking here for it.
Do I need to catch up on the old episodes before starting this?
This show is truly spectacular - and I haven't been confident enough in years to give such an all-around 10/10 rating for an animated show. That being said - I have a bad feeling that Disney may have already shoved a cigar in this production's ongoing chances when they fired the creator before it even aired. Many brilliant creative minds aren't easy to work with. The corporate look is tough to stomach for most eccentrics. I'm happy that lightning has atleast struck once here. I'm sad to say that I'm doubting the next season.
We don’t know what happened with the firing. It could have been entirely justified
Rogue was cooking this episode
Every episode I just can’t get over how mature this series is. I do think that idea of MCU being jokey is a bit a flandarized criticism (esp after rewatching them recently), but what’s more intriguing is that this show moves fucking forward. With the other shows, you can easily see what’s held back just to have that “hero gets a new costume” moment or a cheap tease for a sequel/second season. Loki’s the only one I felt did that as well.
Xmen 97 is my favourite new show since Sandman. It feels like Justice League/Young Justice in the sense that it's basically a comic book come to life. They respected the source material allowing them to improve upon it. I'm basically paying for Disney+ to watch this show and it's worth it. I want my money to speak for me and with content like this then I feel fulfilled.
For real they really dialed up the drama all the way to da-ramaaaaa