X-Men ’97 Episodes 1 and 2 Reviews: Old Style, New Stories

It’s September 20, 1997, for 5 years young kids everywhere have been sitting in their lounge rooms watching X-Men: The Animated Series. Little did we know that things were about to end in a very traumatic way. Charles Xavier, the leader and creator of the X-Men team, is dead, leaving not only the X-Men themselves, but millions around the world shocked. As the episode ends, we have no idea what will happen as this is the last episode of the series… Until now…

Title: X-Men’97
Production Company: Marvel Studios Animation & Studio Mir
Distributed by: Disney+
Directed by: Jake Castorena
Produced by: Danielle Costa & Sean Gantka
Written by: Beau DeMayo
Starring: Ray Chase, Jennifer Hale, Alison Sealy-Smith, Cal Dodd, J. P. Karliak, Lenore Zann, George Buza, A. J. LoCascio, Holly Chou, Isaac Robinson-Smith, Matthew Waterson, & Adrian Hough
Based on: X-Men by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby
Release dates: March 21, 2024
Running time: 28 minutes per episode
Episodes: 10

A Solid Starting Point (Story)

Story Summary – SPOILERS

Story Review – Some Vague Spoilers

X-Men ’97 takes things up directly after where the series ended in 1997. From the get-go, you will notice that the tone of the show has drained dramatically, with a thick air of uncertainty hanging over every character as they have either moved on from Xavier’s death or in the case of Jean Grey, gotten pregnant and looking to get out of the mutant revolution business. Cyclops is dealing with the death of his mentor, an uncertain future with his wife, and trying to keep the School/Group together.

Adding to all of the above is the plot of the first episode, revolving around Roberto da Costa (aka the future Sunspot) getting kidnapped, leading to a two-story system where the first is centered around Sentinel technology, and the second being Roberto accepting his mutant abilities. While the Sentinel story takes the central stage in the episode, giving the episode a reflection of the 1992 series, it fails to capture the gravitas of the episodic storytelling the original series was known for.

With the Roberto story, we see that there are still not that many mutants willing to accept themselves for who they are, which I’m sure will be the “I told you so” analogy specific groups will be plastering all over social media in the weeks to come. This isn’t held to be true as Roberto still won’t accept his abilities by the end of the episode, only teasing that he might return to flirt with Jubilee.

It’s the second episode where things start to return to form. The revelation of Magneto taking possession of the X-Men team, the school, and Xavier’s fortune was a nice twist, but not one that would be too unfamiliar to comic book readers as this exact thing has happened before. What was also not too surprising, but a welcome story was the fallout of this decision: That being that Magneto is arrested and stands trial before the United Nations for the past crimes he has committed against humanity.

The reason this episode stands out more than the first is that we get to see the consequence of Magneto’s past coming back to haunt him, all at a time when he is reluctantly trying to change his ways to fulfill the last wishes of his friend Charles Xavier. This shows the great writing that people remember in X-Men: The Animated Series. We get to see Magneto struggling to atone while pushing himself to change his mindset to something that would make his friend proud, ultimately using humanity’s laws against the U.N. to his advantage, all thanks to an anti-mutant protest getting out of control.

It’s a slow start to the series, one that cannot be afforded any more extra time as taking two episodes to get to the proper great writing of the past shows is too long when you only have a total of ten episodes to work with.

Your X-Men ’97 Toy Checklist (Characters)

Two things hit me when looking through the very well-cast (or recast) voice actors for this series:

1. A lot of the original cast are in their late 60s-early 70s
2. We had a few Resident Evil game casts involved in the X-Men animated series

Returning Cast

• Alison Sealy-Smith as Ororo Munroe/Storm
• Cal Dodd as Logan / Wolverine
• J. P. Karliak as Morph
• Lenore Zann as Rogue
• George Buza as Henry McCoy / Beast

The returning cast was a good idea, with a lot of the iconic roles such as Storm, Wolverine, and Rogue having such unique styles of speaking and tone of voice that I doubt there would be anyone able to copy what they brought to the table. That being said though, Cal Dodd can’t pull off the deep gruff tones of Wolverine like he used to, but you get used to his vocal change quickly as he doesn’t get too many lines over the first two episodes. The same can be said for George Buza as Beast, he just sounds slightly off, which I hope is corrected in the remaining episodes as Beast is a key part of the best writing that this series can produce.

Replacement Cast

• Ray Chase as Scott Summers / Cyclops (Replacing the deceased Norm Spencer)
• Jennifer Hale as Jean Grey (Replacing Catherine Disher)
• A. J. LoCascio as Remy LeBeau / Gambit (Replacing Tony Daniels)
• Holly Chou as Jubilation Lee / Jubilee (Replacing Alyson Court)
• Isaac Robinson-Smith as Bishop (Replacing Philip Akin)
• Matthew Waterson as Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto (Replacing David Hemblen)
• Ross Marquand as Professor Charles Xavier (Replacing Cedric Smith)
• Eric Bauza as the Sentinels and Master Mold (Replacing the deceased David Fox)
• Gavin Hammon as Bolivar Trask (Replacing Brett Halsey)

As for the rest of the cast, they have been cast with a lot of care and they do their best to sound as much as they can to the original actors as possible. However, outside of people who are deceased like Norm Spencer, Chris Potter (though Chris was replaced as Gambit by Tony Daniels in the final season of the 1992 show, and David Fox, I’m shocked that some people either are no longer able to do the role through retirement or didn’t come back for the role. But that’s their decision, and as I said, the replacements are good at what they are replicating.

New Cast

• Gui Agustini as Roberto da Costa / Sunspot
• Catherine Disher as Valerie Cooper

I’m not going to speak too much about Roberto as I have a feeling like he is going to be a one-time character. X-Men animated did the same thing where there were a lot of one-time characters who never returned. Plus I don’t think shoving a slow-build relationship between him and Jubilee is something that should be done in such a limited time frame.

Valerie Cooper, on the other hand, is the X-Men’s link to the United Nations and has already shown up in two straight episodes, showing that she is needed in the overall world of the new season. As a character, there is something off about Cooper, like she is hiding something from the X-Men on behalf of the Government she serves, giving some mystery that can be done as a slow burn over the next 8 remaining episodes.

A Thrilling New Beginning (What Worked)

X-Men ’97 gives us exactly what was promised (so far), a new series of stories set in a familiar world with characters we grew up watching. It gives you that feeling where you want to wait till it is Saturday morning and you want to watch this show in the lounge room while eating a bowl of very unhealthy, sugar-filled cereal. Because that is exactly what X-Men ’97 is… unhealthy, sugar-filled cereal.

You get all the things that people have wanted in another season for this show: The characters we loved, with most of the voice actors returning, and a continuation of the series as if it never ended in 1997. For writers who have been given the task of continuing something that is so revered and beloved by fans all over the world, this was not an easy task, but they have managed to capture some of the magic that made this series an iconic piece of animation history.

While some narrative choices do not mesh with what came before it, those choices have come about during a time when the core audience is at the same point in their lives. The audience who were kids and teenagers during the original run are now adults, heading into the more adult phase of their lives like having children and having to deal with the death of mentors and family. Having the X-Men deal with such things makes sense and gives a deeper connection to the stories they are looking to tell.

It is good to tell new stories with a new outlook on things, there is still a lot of great writing on hand to enjoy as well. X-Men has always been a series about acceptance, and having to fight to make the change you desire, but all this is done in balance, using the current laws to bring about change as well. This is reflected best in “Mutant Liberation Begins”, which reminds me a lot of the episode “Enter Magneto”, where Magneto tried to break Beast out of prison and Beast told the then-evil mutant leader that he would wait in prison for his day on trial, something that Magneto agrees to when his time comes.

The Other Shoe is Dropping (What didn’t work)

A lot of what I weirded out about watching X-Men ’97 has a lot to do with the animation itself. While the show does try to capture the look and feel of the original series, there is something to be said about computer-produced animation versus hand-drawn cell animation.

The original series was made in the old style, with people working by hand to paint on animation cells that were then captured through photography to create the animation. This style conveys passion and warmth to the animation which worked hand in hand with the show’s writing and pacing. With X-Men ’97, you can see that this was done in an almost “flash” style of computer-produced animation that just lacks the same soul. While a computer tablet can capture the same thick basic line work of the original animation, it just comes off as too clean at the end, leading to a lot of issues in capturing little details in character and movement.

For example, there is one scene of the X-Men tracking down Roberto in a club, with Jubilee finding him, and the two dance together. I swear this must be an animation glitch because Jubilee moves at about half the framerate compared to everyone around her. The same can be seen in a scene with Storm walking through a desert while lightning clashes and turns parts of the ground to glass. It’s an amazing scene, but the use of computer animation limited Strom’s moving smoothly while it rendered the glass effects around her. With hand-drawn animation, you could have both look amazing with no sacrifice to the framerate or animation quality.

The other thing I wasn’t on board with was some of the writing. X-Men: The Animated Series was a great mix of action, politics, and characterization. With this new series, you get either of those but not more than one at a time. So we’re left with the writing favoring action, politics, or characterization. This is shown best in episode two, where Magneto’s character writing is extremely good, with the weight of Magneto’s change in morality conflicting with his past actions, all the while there is an anti-mutant protest that comes off much like the January 6 protest/invasion but gets stopped very quickly after only one thing happening (It’s shocking, so I won’t spoil it here), and never referenced after the fact.

This lack of ability to focus on more than one thing at a time has me waiting for the other shoe to drop, meaning I’m waiting for the usual “modern audience” bullshit to be added into X-Men just to bring it in line with modern political and social issues, completely missing the point that this is meant to be set in 1997, not 2024, and 1997 was a very different time with very different social issues and social mentalities. If the writers of X-Men ’97 forget what timeframe they are writing about/in, then this show is going to have a black mark against a very protective fandom that makes Star Wars look like a bunch of mindless zombies.

2 Down, 8 to Go (Closing)

With two episodes in the bank and eight more to go, this new season of X-Men can go in both a good and a bad direction. The good direction would be like episode two, where we see episodes mixed with action, drama, and well-written stories. The bad direction would be to go too far into the political side of these stories and make them relatable to “modern audiences” with character changes out of nowhere, and stories based around modern issues that did not exist in 1997.

From what I know about upcoming episodes, such as one based around Jubilee getting sucked into a video game, I’m thinking that X-Men ’97 is going to go down the good path with its characters and stories, giving us a great 6th season of the beloved animation that we grew up with as kids… But then again, this is 2024 Disney, which has a reputation for screwing up every major franchise it’s bought… So we shall see where this show goes.

Also, if X-Men ’97 is successful, then I’ll be joining the growing number of voices who want another season of the 1994 Spider-Man animated series, even if they have to call it Spider-Man ’98 to do so.