X-men 97' review

 
    X-MEN 97' is an interesting test study in just how much you can appeal to an older audience as opposed to a newer one. Pretty much everyone who watched X-men 92' is going to be in their late thirties and early forties as I just turned 44 while being sixteen when this series was originally out. However, it occurs to me that I played Batman: Arkham Asylum with the same appeal directly being made to my childhood with Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill right up until this age. 

    Just because something is nostalgia bait doesn't mean it doesn't work as bait and the fact that it is the X-men at their best, even more than the movies, is something that I am hardly going to complain about. DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE thrived on the X-men movies that weren't that different in the audience they were trying to appeal to.

    The premise for X-men 97' is that is a sequel taking place after the original animated series ended. Charles Xavier was seemingly assassinated by Henry Peter Gyrich (but moved to the Shi'ar Empire). As a result, there has been some small progress toward mutant-human coexistence. Jean Grey is also pregnant with Scott Summer's baby and they are thinking of leaving the X-men. However, there's something wicked afoot as the Friends of Humanity (a Far Right militia that feels a lot more relevant today than in 96') has found itself in possession of a large amount of Sentinel tech as well as other advanced weapons. The X-men manage to triumph over Master Mold in an early victory but are stunned to return to their home and find that Magneto has been left in charge of the X-men by Professor Xavier's will.

    I could spend a lot of time reciting the various plotlines of the first season, but I don't want to get into spoilers. Suffice to say, they're a mixture of a lot of X-men classics, which was the best decision the original series made in its run. There's a massive number of great stories adapted here from Inferno to Genosha's massacre to Operation: Zero Tolerance. There are some more questionable story beats like Rogue and Magneto's romance from the Age of Apocalypse but, overall, it does the correct thing in mining the comics' continuity for stuff worthy of adapting. Really, Disney should have done the same thing with the Star Wars Legends books.

    The returning cast has noticeably aged and Lenore Zann as Rogue is particularly noticeable since she's now 65. Alison Court has also been replaced as Jubilee for various reasons. Still, I really enjoyed the acting and there's a lot of great scenes carried by the stellar voice work. Everyone is also in character with the rare exception that Magneto occasionally comes off like a massive creeper to Rogue. Seriously, that romance is just all kinds of no even if he can touch her when no one else can.

    The plot is significantly more adult and if the original cartoon was a PG show, which was already pretty adult for its time, this is definitely PG-13. There are themes of genocide, references to the Holocaust, deaths of major characters, and a few political notations that have only gotten a small number of complaints about online. Mostly because Morph is now gender fluid, happily switching between sexes, and queer. Still, this is the X-men and if there was ever a franchise that proudly flew its progressive politics, it was this one.

    Overall, I really liked it, even if I wasn't a big fan of the ending. My favorite episode was the adaptation of Inferno that gives a lot more sympathy to Madelyne Pryor than the original comic. Also, her outfit rocks even if it's toned down from its original sexiness. My wife was equally pleased by the return of Gambit after decades of absence.

9/10