The X-Men ’97 trailer is finally here, and it’s won plenty of well-deserved praise for faithfully recreating the look and feel of classic mid-90s cartoon X-Men: The Animated Series. Yet the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that X-Men ’97 doesn’t reflect X-Men: The Animated Series as it actually was, but rather the way we remember it.
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Fans Have Ruby Quartz-Colored Glasses for X-Men: The Animated Series
That’s not a knock against X-Men: The Animated Series. I loved that show as a kid, and I still appreciate a lot of what it did (or tried to do) now. Handed a laundry list of laughably strict guidelines by the censors, series creators Eric Lewald, Sidney Iwanter, and Mark Edens still delivered an X-Men show that reflected the original Marvel comic books’ themes of discrimination and prejudice. What’s more, Lewald, Iwanter, Edens, and their wider creative team served up multi-episode adaptations of iconic X-Men storylines and did a bang-up job emulating the aesthetic of the comics at the time, as well. Oh, and composer Ron Wasserman’s theme tune straight-up slaps.
So, is it any wonder that fans (again, including me) have a soft spot for X-Men: The Animated Series? On paper, it’s basically the perfect Marvel-inspired TV show. But in practice? Not so much. Indeed, stripped of its nostalgia value, X-Men: The Animated Series has two quite glaring shortcomings. For starters, there’s the storytelling, which – unsurprisingly, given its target audience was pre-teen kids – comes across as painfully diluted. Indeed, X-Men: The Animated Series is a show that quite literally doesn’t have the vocabulary to properly express its core ideas. After all, it’s kinda hard to unpack societal ills when you can’t even use words like “kill” or “die,” y’know?
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Then there’s X-Men: The Animated Series‘ wildly uneven animation quality. Recreating the detailed costumes and dynamic shading of 90s superhero comics via traditional animation isn’t easy even under the best of circumstances. But when you’re saddled with a Saturday morning cartoon’s meager budget, it’s virtually impossible. Queue up any X-Men: The Animated Series episode at random and watch how the visuals continually oscillate between serviceable and downright ugly. The less comics-accurate, “Dark Deco” style of another 90s superhero cartoon, Batman: The Animated Series, has aged far more gracefully by comparison.
It’s not just me saying it, either. X-Men: The Animated Series was and still is notorious for its animation errors. Two-part series premiere “Night of the Sentinels” contained so many mistakes that it initially aired unfinished! Admittedly, X-Men: The Animated Series‘ animation improved over the course of its five-season run, but it was always shonky – especially when a mid-bankruptcy Marvel and Saban Entertainment slashed Season 5’s budget with Wolverine-like ferocity. You can tell the show was written and storyboarded with genuine craft, however, the crew simply didn’t have the resources to execute their vision.
X-Men ’97 Fixes X-Men: The Animated Series’ Two Biggest Problems
But to a six-year-old back in 1992, it sure felt like they did. Those of us old enough to have watched X-Men: The Animated Series during its original run can attest to just how popular it was with its target demographic. We didn’t see the show’s shortcomings; why would we? We were kids. But what we did see was a cartoon that tried its best not to talk down to us, populated by some of the coolest heroes and villains pop culture has ever produced. And that’s the impression of X-Men: The Animated Series that’s stayed with many of us, all these years later.
Unsurprisingly, this same impression is exactly what X-Men ’97 is doing its best to home in on, at least if its trailer is anything go by. Everything we clap eyes on in the trailer is in line with X-Men: The Animated Series‘ overall vibe, only more sophisticated. Notably, the character models and overarching aesthetic of both shows more or less match up, except that X-Men ’97‘s visuals boast the kind of consistency that computer animation achieves with ease. Now, characters don’t noticeably change appearance from scene to scene, no matter how many pouches they’re wearing or how dramatically they’re lit. Everyone in the X-Men: The Animated Series‘ universe finally looks as awesome as they do in our memories.
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X-Men ’97 is also poised to nudge Cyclops, Wolverine, and their fellow mutant superheroes in a slightly more mature direction – but only slightly. The trailer makes it clear that showrunner Beau DeMayo is shooting for a similar all-ages tone to X-Men: The Animated Series (and rightly so). Yet the Disney+ listing accompanying the trailer confirms the revival has a TV-14 rating, suggesting that DeMayo and his team have far greater latitude to tackle the X-franchise’s weighty themes head-on than their predecessors did. Heck, someone might even say the word “kill.” Again, it’s a case of X-Men ’97 dishing up something we thought we were getting the first time around.
Of course, it’s impossible to say for now whether any of this will equate to a better viewing experience overall. It seems likely that it will, however, we won’t know for sure until X-Men ’97 drops its first episode in March. That said, if you still remember X-Men: The Animated Series fondly, chances are you won’t be disappointed when X-Men ’97 finally rolls around.
X-Men ’97 arrives on Disney+ on March 20, 2024, and will run for 10 episodes.
