X-Men '97 Picking up where they left off

February 15, 2024 7:06 AM

TheTrailer for the Disney+ Exclusive X-Men '97 Animated series is out. Airing between 1992 and 1997 the X-Men animated series was a pivotal piece of X-Men Media.

The first (non comic) adaptation of the Phoenix Saga, THAT theme tune and the grounding of who the X-Men are and specifics of individual characters, all came from the '97 animation.

Picking up right where the previous series left off - X-Men '97 is scheduled to premiere on March 20, 2024, and will consist of ten episodes. A second season is in development.

Lots of the original voice cast are returning, although some character designs have been .. updated.

Enjoy.

posted by Faintdreams (36 comments total)

My eyebrows shot up ta the ceiling at the end of that trailer lemme tells ya.
posted by Faintdreams at 7:06 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

1. I know this is not an original observation, but the chills I still get at that theme music. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
2. I know budgets never stop being a consideration but I'm pretty confident with zero evidence that "no, let's keep the frame rate low to make it feel kinda old and cheap like a proper 90s cartoon" was an intentional move to lean into the '97 feel rather than a (pure) money-driven cost-saver.
posted by Tomorrowful at 7:11 AM on February 15 [12 favorites]

Is it Nostalgia or and audio form of sense memory?
posted by Faintdreams at 7:17 AM on February 15

buh nuh nuh nuh NUH nuh nuh
posted by dismas at 7:19 AM on February 15 [19 favorites]

I doubt I'll end up watching this, but ever since I heard it was happening I was wondering how they were going to deal with the voice casting. Here's the answer I was looking for: "Catherine Disher, Chris Potter, Adrian Hough, and Alyson Court all return from the original series, voicing new roles."
posted by sardonyx at 7:37 AM on February 15 [3 favorites]

Looks like I picked the wrong month to cancel Disney+, bub.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:41 AM on February 15 [11 favorites]

glad they brought back the extremely canadian voice cast
posted by dismas at 7:48 AM on February 15 [4 favorites]

I was wondering why the name "Chris Potter" rang a bell, and then I found out he played Peter Caine on Kung Fu: The Legend Continues and suddenly aaaaallllllllllllll my 90s syndicated TV memories came flooding back.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:58 AM on February 15 [3 favorites]

Speaking as a dyed-in-wool Batman:TAS partisan who always kind of disliked the cheaper-looking/less-elegant animation of '90s X-Men (even if I thought the characters were pretty cool), I'll be darned if seeing them return to that clunky, poorly-shaded style doesn't bring back some fond memories.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:05 AM on February 15 [4 favorites]

I always was a sucker for "Magneto runs Xavier's school" stories, so just give me a Scarlet Witch who is both a mutant and his daughter and I am ready to call this great.
posted by seraphine at 8:23 AM on February 15 [4 favorites]

Memories.

Playing an X-Men arcade game during a long Saturday speech & debate tournament with other high schoolers.

Travelling the week of the Dark Phoenix saga and arranging to watch the show in some distant relative's living room.

The endless well of excitement that theme tune and intro sequence could summon in me.

All the other stuff I got jazzed about in weekday afternoon/Saturday morning TV in the US in the 1990s: Bill Nye The Science Guy, both the animated and live-action versions of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? (speaking of absolutely perfect theme tunes), Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns, Batman: The Animated Series, Square One TV, Animaniacs, Freakazoid!...
posted by brainwane at 8:37 AM on February 15 [6 favorites]

Cautiously optimistic. I watched the entirety of the series when it came out on Disney+, and of course when I was 10+. They did a weird job of curating it and keeping it in order.

The animation on this looks...not great. In a way where it looks like they're testing out a few mocap and generation tools. I didn't hate the Whatif cartoons, but the animation on that was also...not what you'd hope for when the most famous animation house in history owns and has a vested interest in the IP. I could be a little jaded. But I feel like Disney has just used a lot of its legacy projects over the past few years to tryout tech with VERY little concern for how it actually works *cough*lion king*cough.* This looks a little clunky. Hope I'm wrong.

The stuff they've done with LED backgrounds in Jon Favreau's Star Wars shows lead us out of green screen and into Poor Things (of all things), so I'm not saying this type of R&D approach doesn't move film forward. I'm just not sure how excited to be.
posted by es_de_bah at 8:40 AM on February 15

Why does it look like it's animated at around 4FPS?
posted by alex_skazat at 8:47 AM on February 15

Is there some technical reason to not use the same art style as the original?
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:54 AM on February 15

Although I was the proper age at the proper time and in the target audience, I somehow never really got into the old animated X-Men show. But it's easy to imagine a version of myself that did, and it's easy to imagine that version of me being giddy about this. What I'm saying is that the multiverse is real.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 8:54 AM on February 15 [2 favorites]

CRY FOR THE MOON!

The actual video file is here. The linked page uses ActiveX to display it which is no longer a thing.
posted by Servo5678 at 8:59 AM on February 15 [2 favorites]

Is that Jean or Maddie in the shot implying pregnancy?

I never watched the old series, so did Jean die and/or leave the show at the end of the Pheonix saga?
posted by ursus_comiter at 9:02 AM on February 15

Now do 90s Spider-Man and then I'll be impressed.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:14 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

It's a bit blink-and-you'll-miss-it, but the newspaper that blows in front of the camera near the beginning of the trailer is The Daily Bugle, including a headline of "Is Spider-Man a Mutant?" and a story with photos by Peter Parker, so the door is open for a cameo at least.
posted by jedicus at 9:29 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

I'll give the show a try. Nostalgia's a hard thing to nail, so this could be challenging to pull off.

"CRY FOR THE MOON!"

Thanks, Servo5678! That's a banger intro and I've found the tune on YouTube and Spotify. The song is entitled "RISING" and was performed by the band "Ambience". Here are links that may be US only.

YouTube Spotify

I don't know anything about the band, beyond that it appears to have been formed in 1993 by Junichi Kurata.
posted by bacalao_y_betun at 9:40 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

God, that theme song alone. It smells and tastes like Captain Crunch, the release of five days’ worth of social anxiety, and the comfort of knowing you have a full day without church OR school. Actually hits harder than the Batman TAS theme’s daily signaling “the torture is finished … for today.”
posted by Ryvar at 9:55 AM on February 15 [11 favorites]

I had the theme song as a .midi file as my ringtone on my Nokia 3310 for years. I'm sitting here wearing a X-Men t-shirt. Hook this nostalgia up to my veins.
posted by fight or flight at 10:17 AM on February 15 [5 favorites]

Yup, Chris Potter was on the Kung Fu remake. Now he's on Heartland. Catherine Disher was the female lead in Forever Knight. A lot of her recent work was as part of the Good Witch ensemble. So between the two of them, they represent a lot of 1990s CanCon.
posted by sardonyx at 10:22 AM on February 15

Garfield and Friends opening synchronized with The X-Men Theme
posted by McBearclaw at 10:43 AM on February 15 [3 favorites]

Garfield and Friends had a pretty good homage to the X-Men cartoon back in the day.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:22 AM on February 15 [3 favorites]

"Hey, we are getting the band back together to re-record the X-Men theme song"
"Cool, let me get the gong out of storage"

Has anyone watched the original recently. The stories are great but the animation was always bad and today's wide aspect ratio hires screens really shows the limitations of the style. On old TVs, directors could get away with making scenes more dynamic by panning (very cheap). With a wider view there is little reason to pan so the static-ness of the shots really stands out.

Speaking of direction, one thing that the original X-Men cartoon really did well was the group fight scenes. Some of them lasted for minutes and were choreographed like wrestling matches. They really put effort into making sure the viewer could tell where everyone was and who was blasting who with mind-beams or whatever. I don't know if there is an Emmy for Best Violence in Children's Programming, but if not there should be.
posted by AndrewStephens at 1:37 PM on February 15 [8 favorites]

The limiting factor in making it look like the original is one of cost. It was hand drawn in the 90s and even mediocre syndicated cartoon hand drawn animation is expensive.

So it looks like they've gone for modern animation techniques with inconsistent adherence to the reference sheets and lowers frame rates for verisimilitude.
posted by thecjm at 3:01 PM on February 15 [1 favorite]

In looking up the "is it the original voice cast?" answer, I discovered that Jubilation Lee was/is voiced by the woman who was Loonette on "The Big Comfy Couch" and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

(She's also the original voice of Claire Redfield, from RE2 to Raccoon City)
posted by hanov3r at 4:01 PM on February 15

"They put Wolverine in a children's cartoon? How did that work?"

"They fought a lot of robots."
posted by straight at 4:49 PM on February 15 [7 favorites]

Yeah, looking up VAs can be a bit mind-blowing. For example, the late René Auberjonois, best known as Constable Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space 9, was a regular on 80s Hanna-Barbera series. (In fact, Star Trek actors have a surprising long history of going into voice acting.) The English dub of Macross Plus had hotshot pilot Isamu Dyson voiced by a then relatively unknown Bryan Cranston. And you can blow people's minds with the factoid that the late James Avery - Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air - was the voice of The Shredder on the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:54 PM on February 15 [3 favorites]

I like Rogue carrying Beast via wedgie.
posted by RobotHero at 6:00 PM on February 15 [1 favorite]

I am super happy for the people who are excited for this, just as I'm super happy for people who the original animated series introduced them to the X-Men and made them love comics. I am not trying to take anything away from any of those people.

And let's be clear, I watched this show because when you were a comics fan in the '90s or earlier, you just took what you could get and you liked it! Well, I mean, you didn't like it but you took it.

Even as a young person, I knew this original show was terrible. I still watched it every single week, though.

I did write-up the "Christmas" episode on my blog a couple of years ago and Wolverine gives Leech a blood transfusion and that's like the least weird thing that happens in that episode.

I mean, I'll still probably watch the new ones. I am planning an entire season of terrible superhero adaptations so why not?
posted by edencosmic at 6:05 PM on February 15 [3 favorites]

With the current X-line of comics as... not great as it is, I'll take any good X-thing I can get.
posted by signal at 7:23 PM on February 15

The endless well of excitement that theme tune and intro sequence could summon in me.

Same here, I'm simply not capable of feeling the same excitement about anything in my life as this theme song inspired in eight-year-old me.

"Hey, we are getting the band back together to re-record the X-Men theme song"
"Cool, let me get the gong out of storage"

Since reading Chris Sims' X-Men Episode Guide at ComicsAlliance back (11 years ago, that can't be right?) when I had a job with a lot of downtime, I've always thought of that as the "ominous church bell".

I hope they keep Storm's bombast for even the most prosaic actions.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 3:19 AM on February 16 [3 favorites]

signal: With the current X-line of comics as... not great as it is, I'll take any good X-thing I can get.

I don't believe Disney can tell an X-Men (X-They-Them ??) story without harming "international markets" so I'm glad there's something new, even if I'm wildly disgusted by my own nostalgia.
posted by k3ninho at 12:42 PM on February 16 [1 favorite]

This also reminds me of when X-Men: First Class was about to come out, and since it was set around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, some enterprising person decided to do a whole title sequence as though it had been released in the early 60s, complete with a Saul Bass inspired title sequence and a morose cello take on the cartoon theme.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:50 PM on February 16 [2 favorites]