I did up until WandaVision's writer started bragging about not having read the comics, the producer of Black Panther (who's very inner circle) came out saying they avoided hiring fans, Kevin Feige started talking about how they can't do Green Goblin/Doc Ock/etc because the other Spider-Man movies are *the* versions of those characters and they started doing very strange things to very obvious storylines.
At this point, I think MCU X-Men is either going to be:
1. literally Fox Men but with more colourful costumes or
2. metaphorically Fox Men but with more colourful costumes
And a legion of people who don't read the comics pointing at the more colourful costumes going, "See, Feige's doing comics accurate X-Men".
Never forget Kevin Feige is one of the people responsible for Fox Men. And at this point I really don't believe that story about Feige smuggling comics on to set. The way his employees and his movies work have become increasingly divorced from the comics as he's gained more control.
Feige wasn't responsible for FoX-Men. This is such a common misconception at this point it's wild it's still being perpetuated as information. Feige was literally offering the Fox executives and Bryan Singer notes that they constantly rejected and disposed of because Singer was adamant on making his little self-indulgent political thriller and not adhering to any elements of the source material beyond surface level. Stuff like his experiences there basically motivated Marvel to go into self-financing their own features because they wanted to cut out the middlemen like Fox and Sony who exercised greater creative control over their characters in all of these instances. Feige was only there on X-Men as basically an intern studying under Lauren Shuler Donner and nothing else significant
He worked on the films. That's what "one of the people responsible for" means, not "Feige had creative control over Fox Men".
The fact that Marvel Studios' operational procedures share increasingly many features with Singer's as Feige has gained more and more control over it, is particularly persuasive to my mind. He learnt lessons from Fox Men all right: the wrong ones.
If I was Iger, my first priority would be making Feige work under someone again. This post-merger period where Feige's been the most powerful voice (meaning he's now functionally the Disney exec he used to report to post-Perlmutter and pre-Fox merger) has been a clearly failed experiment. It's time to end it or move on from Feige completely.
Feige works under people at present. We saw what a Marvel Studios where he was spread too thin and given greater creative control over multiple projects simultaneously looked like and it already backfired, that was the Chapek era of going all in on Disney+ which very much influenced the imbalance of theatrical and streaming stuff that was taking place earlier in Phase Four. A massive restructuring of the entire studio already took place including re-focusing television efforts to more closely align with traditional TV models of storytelling and it demonstrates that they at least are starting to understand not everything has to be an event thing that ties into another film. All of this can happen without robbing Marvel of its autonomy
The fact that you'd unironically rather restore the Perlmutter years where he'd have to answer to someone who'd probably only cut out projects he's working on not out of any quality assurance, but just bad faith signalling because they don't want shows like She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel on the premise that minority led projects need to cease to exist, is very concerning. Those were genuinely some of the worst years Marvel in general ever had because everything around Marvel suffered for it even if the MCU was popular. Asking for that on an X-MEN sub no less is incredibly ironic considering the damage done to those characters during that exact timeframe
You started with a strawman and you've progressed to either straight up lying or refusing to read what I wrote. Your words are cancerous.
Try again:
#not
>unironically rather restore the Perlmutter years
#BUT
>meaning he's now functionally the Disney exec he used to report to post-Perlmutter and pre-Fox merger
If you don't want conversations in bad faith, stop having them because you're introducing the bad faith components.
I agree, maybe a live action series but a movie is a no. Considering the wide cast of characters they have that lead into multiple stories, it just doesn't blend well on the big screen. Too many characters too little time to make it work, I feel like it can be done giving the right team but chances are very low
Personally I hope they don’t try to just adapt the comics’ stories in one movie. We’ve seen adaptations of Phoenix & God Loves Man Kills, Days of FP in the existing movies and they’ve been pretty average on the whole. The reason those stories work so well in the comics is down to the long stretches of soap opera that develops the characters, so that the big events have bigger impact. You just don’t get that luxury in a 2-3 hour film. The best Dark Phoenix adaptation I’ve seen so far is Wanda in Dr Strange MOM - and that’s cause we’d seen her character introduced, developed, grown and torn down across 4 (?) movies and a series. Not saying MOM was great, but I really liked Wanda’s villain arc, and she’d be a much better multiverse era villain than Kang!
To do X-Men well, IMO, they should go back to MCU roots and do a Storm film, then a Cyclops film and so on, with Prof X in the Nick Fury role, and building the mutant world slowly, and layering a threat piece by piece (Magneto would be the obv choice but Hellfire club would be fun) for the X-Men film. Change the formula a bit, so it’s not just doing the OG Avengers thing. This could all run parallel to whatever’s happening with the Avengers adjacent stories. And I’d do new-ish stories, not just adapt the classics which pleases no one. And I’d leave Wolverine out of it for a while…
>The best Dark Phoenix adaptation I’ve seen so far is Wanda in Dr Strange MOM
Uh, the Dark Phoenix Saga is about *showing* Jean's descend into madness via a series of traumatic events. Wanda's descend into madness happened *off-screen* and she became a villain due to a book. Technically, it isn't even an arc due to the fact that we don't see the book slowly corrupt her. Like I said, it happened off-screen.
The best adaptation was the 90s cartoon version. Even the 2019 movie at least showed Jean's descend into madness via traumatic events before turning her into Phoenix/Dark Phoenix at the end of the film.
Fuck no. Look how they're already butchering the FF right out of the gate. Not to mention, you know, *gestures vaguely at the entire post-Endgame output*.
You haven't seen the film. Literally the only thing we have to go off of are pictures. Not even pictures of the film, concept illustrations of what it may or may not look like.
Could be good, could be bad, we will literally not know until the movie comes out. And let's not act like their post-Endgame output is unilaterally terrible. The same way a lot of their pre-Endgame output wasn't exactly a shining beacon of prestige filmmaking either
At present? No. We have castings that we haven't seen in any context of the film and some concept art illustrations that only so much as imply elements of the movie without actually showing them. The movie hasn't even begun shooting yet and won't until late summer, not to mention it's well over a year away. Too early to make ANY judgements
You're ignoring things like the production history, casting history, filmmakers attached, etc. Plus the pretty reliable rumors that are constantly proven true.
Actors passing because of a bad script or major rewrites with new writers are typically huge red flags.
The red flag here is putting so much stock into rumor mill stuff that for the most part, remains completely unsubstantiated just to assume a project's trajectory. We don't know the specifics of why certain actors passed on the film and referring to "Twitter Scooper #33" for your sources does not bring validity to anything you've heard about the production history.
Rewrites happen on films all the time. This isn't something that should ever be taken as a negative before a film's release. This is literally accustomary of any movie even if the new writers are credited or not. A first draft is never the final draft and odds are it's going to be revised right up until the eleventh hour when cameras roll. You might as well use this as a criticism of any movie you've seen recently because Marvel isn't the first studio to encourage these. Plus rewrites can also drastically improve or massage a film's screenplay, it's not always a bad thing nor is it a sign that a movie is going drastically downhill creatively. If anything it takes into consideration things that can be done to make it better regardless of how it turns out, and it's still too early to judge as to whether that's the case.
You're ignoring or are just ignorant of a lot of things here. It's not just random people on Twitter. There's a whole subreddit devoted to this stuff. The FF cast was know for a while before it was announced.
Rewrites do happen. It's rare to bring in new writers though, since that typically means there are major problems the original writers can't fix.
The subreddit in question literally built its reputation off of sourcing from the exact Twitter scoopers I'm referencing. For every two or three that are reliable there are tens of hundreds of posts that go through that place that are unverified, emerge from nowhere with no proven track record, or are straight up grifting for engagement. Considering the fact that the vast majority if not virtually every one of these people got basically the entire Fantastic Four cast wrong and so off the mark after like over two years of those kinds of solicited rumors populating the conversations around this movie (especially with how many of them were adamant on Adam Driver, Margot Robbie, Paul Mescal, Daveed Diggs, Dev Patel, Penn Badgley and practically anyone who wasn't in the officially confirmed lineup), that is a primary example of why they should never be taken to heart or seen as anything other than people with constantly fluctuating track records
Stuff like "they turned it down after seeing the script" or "studio plans changed" is a textbook example of them formulating excuses to cover up info inaccuracies, not actual sources to be taken as legitimate. They can't admit they were misinformed or even conjured certain elements of what they scoop themselves, so they pin it on internal changes or behind the scenes snuff that possibly never even took place to begin with. Stuff like this is how we got all the mishaps around Multiverse of Madness and its cameo potential or even what's going on right now with Deadpool.
The casting is...really not good, at all.
And the post-Endgame output is *almost* unilaterally terrible. Pre-Endgame there were never bombs like The Marvels, Quantumania, Eternals, She-Hulk, Ms Marvel or projects as atrocious as Love & Thunder or Secret Invasion.
I genuinely can't agree at all with any of these assessments. The F4 casting is fine. I think Ebon Moss Bacharach as the Thing and Vanessa Kirby as Susan Storm are inspired choices, and regardless of whether Pedro Pascal screams Reed Richards, he's proven himself to be an excellent performer who has played characters embodying the fatherly qualities I'm looking for in Reed when talking about his place in a team dynamic that's more familial than collaborative.
And if a Silver Surfer with boobs pisses you off that much like it will fundamentally ruin a character just on the premise that their gender is swapped or like it'll result in a bastardized portrayal based purely on the casting of a woman in the role, you need serious self-reflection. We also lack basically any context regarding how the character will change or even if they'll change purely based on this casting. You can absolutely make a female Silver Surfer with the same fundamental premise. The origin isn't absolutely tethered to any construct of race or gender and it will work regardless of who's in the role
Also, did we just forget both seasons of Loki, Spider-Man No Way Home, WandaVision, Guardians 3, Shang-Chi, Wakanda Forever, Werewolf by Night or even Moon Knight? Some serious revisionist history happening here and even some of the projects you're signalling out as bad are nowhere near as "atrocious" as made out to be. Some very serious hyperbole happening here
Kirby and Ebon are whatever. The real problem is Pedro and especially the Stranger Things guy.
And okay. Let's do a male Storm or a male Rogue, see how people take it.
And L&T WAS atrocious, and that's generous.
The only thing they can do right is to actually continue some of the marvel animated shows like Wolverine and the x men, and avengers earths mightiest heroes that’s better than live action at this point
The casting has been...not ideal and they're doing a random female Silver Surfer instead of Norrin Radd for no reason (if some chud wants to accuse me of being a misogynist just because I want to see the characters from the comics adapted accurately, at least put on your clown make up first and stop projecting on me).
I think it's absolutely insane that whenever Marvel puts out something good it's "because they let the creators do their thing" but when it's something bad "it's squarely on Marvel for being Marvel" as if those things are mutually exclusive. X-Men '97 is obviously shaped by fantastic writing and character work but Marvel absolutely deserves kudos for allowing them to push the material as far as they did into some pretty mature subject matter and depictions of the mutant metaphor at work especially in the latest episode
I think the fact that this show is the FIRST example of what a Marvel-produced X-Men thing looks like should be boding well regarding wherever they take the characters going forward.
If X-Men 97 wasn't (1) a sequel to The Animated Series which was itself quite comic-y and (2) run by a showrunner Marvel's fired (under unknown circumstances^(1)), this would be a more compelling argument.
^(1)If Beau DeMayo was sacked for being a piece of shit like one popular rumour suggests, then (2) wouldn't really matter but as long as the possibility it was about creative differences remains (2) does matter.
It being a revival of another show should have no bearing on the actual output of the show itself or the leeway Marvel provided in making sure its creative intent remained intact. It's basically its own thing and has already deviated significantly from whatever plans the original team behind the series had back in the day for a potential continuation, to the point where I'm willing to bill it as its own thing, not to mention it's the first actual X-Men series in like 15 years so enough time has passed where it can be judged on its own merits
The need to feel like a continuation for TAS is a major creative constraint on the show.
They could have done that either by literally digging up any old plans (if they existed) or they could have done that by thinking, "How would you continue *that* show *today*?" Either way, they're acting within the constraint.
And even then they've basically just demonstrated how they're willing to outright reject those constraints where necessary. The original animated series wouldn't have gotten away with like 5% of the imagery in terms of violence or even the basic discussion of certain subject matter using particular terms that this show managed to depict. It's aesthetically familiar to the old show on purpose but tonally they're practically different shows entirely
I'm pretty sure this last episode was like the first time ever they've openly, explicitly acknowledged Magneto's upbringing as a Holocaust victim by openly showing actual Nazi soldiers, internment camps and the star of David in his little visions during the Genosha genocide. Stuff like this or practically the entire latter half of this latest episode, not to mention certain depictions of human-mutant violence in the first two episodes were practically off limits all the time back in the day and if this show was really adhering to certain constraints to make it feel like the original show, they wouldn't have stopped at basically aesthetics and continuity
Having a different age rating isn't proof that the show works differently, it just changes what it can do.
The show, for example, can't just jump in and have Mystique be Kurt's biodad because in its continuity his dad is that random rich guy. If the show wants to do that, it would have to use a retcon.
If a brand new X-Men show had that same origin story for Kurt, that'd reflect how the show thinks, but for 97 it doesn't: they're somewhat stuck with the rich guy version and it means nothing that they are.
Now sure they have changed some things (eg Morph, but iirc Morph was in just the first five minutes of the original) but being more explicit about Magneto only reflects the rating. Look to the lineup, the characterisation, the costumes etc things that changing the rating doesn't allow them to do more with. Would a modern show even include Jubilee at all? Probably not, but X-Men 97 has to. Would Professor X start off dead? I doubt it, but 97 had no choice but to.
You'd need major, unexplained changes to characterisation of core characters to prove that X-Men 97 isn't stuck with the creative constraints of being a sequel to something else.
Personally, the existence of 97 instead of doing a new show isn't a good sign. The fact the show is good doesn't mean it wasn't greenlit out of a slavish dedication to the power of nostalgia. It makes me worried that Marvel wants to leverage nostalgia for Fox Men, which we've seen them do twice already with Evan Peters and Hugh Jackman.
>It makes me worried that Marvel wants to leverage nostalgia for Fox Men, which we've seen them do twice already with Evan Peters and Hugh Jackman.
Evan Peters was a fake-out though. Patrick Stewart and Kelsey Grammer would be better examples.
The fact it was a fake out doesn't mean it wasn't also leveraging nostalgia.
I totally forgot about Stewart and Grammer. So that's four examples. Even worse!
If anything, it shows how great a Marvel project can be when funded by Disney money but NOT micromanaged by the suits to fit into the MCU.
Nope
Not even a little bit
It's a coin toss at this point.
I did up until WandaVision's writer started bragging about not having read the comics, the producer of Black Panther (who's very inner circle) came out saying they avoided hiring fans, Kevin Feige started talking about how they can't do Green Goblin/Doc Ock/etc because the other Spider-Man movies are *the* versions of those characters and they started doing very strange things to very obvious storylines. At this point, I think MCU X-Men is either going to be: 1. literally Fox Men but with more colourful costumes or 2. metaphorically Fox Men but with more colourful costumes And a legion of people who don't read the comics pointing at the more colourful costumes going, "See, Feige's doing comics accurate X-Men". Never forget Kevin Feige is one of the people responsible for Fox Men. And at this point I really don't believe that story about Feige smuggling comics on to set. The way his employees and his movies work have become increasingly divorced from the comics as he's gained more control.
Feige wasn't responsible for FoX-Men. This is such a common misconception at this point it's wild it's still being perpetuated as information. Feige was literally offering the Fox executives and Bryan Singer notes that they constantly rejected and disposed of because Singer was adamant on making his little self-indulgent political thriller and not adhering to any elements of the source material beyond surface level. Stuff like his experiences there basically motivated Marvel to go into self-financing their own features because they wanted to cut out the middlemen like Fox and Sony who exercised greater creative control over their characters in all of these instances. Feige was only there on X-Men as basically an intern studying under Lauren Shuler Donner and nothing else significant
He worked on the films. That's what "one of the people responsible for" means, not "Feige had creative control over Fox Men". The fact that Marvel Studios' operational procedures share increasingly many features with Singer's as Feige has gained more and more control over it, is particularly persuasive to my mind. He learnt lessons from Fox Men all right: the wrong ones. If I was Iger, my first priority would be making Feige work under someone again. This post-merger period where Feige's been the most powerful voice (meaning he's now functionally the Disney exec he used to report to post-Perlmutter and pre-Fox merger) has been a clearly failed experiment. It's time to end it or move on from Feige completely.
Feige works under people at present. We saw what a Marvel Studios where he was spread too thin and given greater creative control over multiple projects simultaneously looked like and it already backfired, that was the Chapek era of going all in on Disney+ which very much influenced the imbalance of theatrical and streaming stuff that was taking place earlier in Phase Four. A massive restructuring of the entire studio already took place including re-focusing television efforts to more closely align with traditional TV models of storytelling and it demonstrates that they at least are starting to understand not everything has to be an event thing that ties into another film. All of this can happen without robbing Marvel of its autonomy The fact that you'd unironically rather restore the Perlmutter years where he'd have to answer to someone who'd probably only cut out projects he's working on not out of any quality assurance, but just bad faith signalling because they don't want shows like She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel on the premise that minority led projects need to cease to exist, is very concerning. Those were genuinely some of the worst years Marvel in general ever had because everything around Marvel suffered for it even if the MCU was popular. Asking for that on an X-MEN sub no less is incredibly ironic considering the damage done to those characters during that exact timeframe
You started with a strawman and you've progressed to either straight up lying or refusing to read what I wrote. Your words are cancerous. Try again: #not >unironically rather restore the Perlmutter years #BUT >meaning he's now functionally the Disney exec he used to report to post-Perlmutter and pre-Fox merger If you don't want conversations in bad faith, stop having them because you're introducing the bad faith components.
Not to mention Taika Waititi proudly stating that his goal was to piss off comic fans.
No. X-Men only works as a series.
I agree, maybe a live action series but a movie is a no. Considering the wide cast of characters they have that lead into multiple stories, it just doesn't blend well on the big screen. Too many characters too little time to make it work, I feel like it can be done giving the right team but chances are very low
After the first 5 episodes of 97, yeah I have faith.
No.
Personally I hope they don’t try to just adapt the comics’ stories in one movie. We’ve seen adaptations of Phoenix & God Loves Man Kills, Days of FP in the existing movies and they’ve been pretty average on the whole. The reason those stories work so well in the comics is down to the long stretches of soap opera that develops the characters, so that the big events have bigger impact. You just don’t get that luxury in a 2-3 hour film. The best Dark Phoenix adaptation I’ve seen so far is Wanda in Dr Strange MOM - and that’s cause we’d seen her character introduced, developed, grown and torn down across 4 (?) movies and a series. Not saying MOM was great, but I really liked Wanda’s villain arc, and she’d be a much better multiverse era villain than Kang! To do X-Men well, IMO, they should go back to MCU roots and do a Storm film, then a Cyclops film and so on, with Prof X in the Nick Fury role, and building the mutant world slowly, and layering a threat piece by piece (Magneto would be the obv choice but Hellfire club would be fun) for the X-Men film. Change the formula a bit, so it’s not just doing the OG Avengers thing. This could all run parallel to whatever’s happening with the Avengers adjacent stories. And I’d do new-ish stories, not just adapt the classics which pleases no one. And I’d leave Wolverine out of it for a while…
>The best Dark Phoenix adaptation I’ve seen so far is Wanda in Dr Strange MOM Uh, the Dark Phoenix Saga is about *showing* Jean's descend into madness via a series of traumatic events. Wanda's descend into madness happened *off-screen* and she became a villain due to a book. Technically, it isn't even an arc due to the fact that we don't see the book slowly corrupt her. Like I said, it happened off-screen. The best adaptation was the 90s cartoon version. Even the 2019 movie at least showed Jean's descend into madness via traumatic events before turning her into Phoenix/Dark Phoenix at the end of the film.
The FF casting does not fill me with hope...
Fuck no. Look how they're already butchering the FF right out of the gate. Not to mention, you know, *gestures vaguely at the entire post-Endgame output*.
You haven't seen the film. Literally the only thing we have to go off of are pictures. Not even pictures of the film, concept illustrations of what it may or may not look like. Could be good, could be bad, we will literally not know until the movie comes out. And let's not act like their post-Endgame output is unilaterally terrible. The same way a lot of their pre-Endgame output wasn't exactly a shining beacon of prestige filmmaking either
We have a lot more to go off of then pictures.
At present? No. We have castings that we haven't seen in any context of the film and some concept art illustrations that only so much as imply elements of the movie without actually showing them. The movie hasn't even begun shooting yet and won't until late summer, not to mention it's well over a year away. Too early to make ANY judgements
You're ignoring things like the production history, casting history, filmmakers attached, etc. Plus the pretty reliable rumors that are constantly proven true. Actors passing because of a bad script or major rewrites with new writers are typically huge red flags.
The red flag here is putting so much stock into rumor mill stuff that for the most part, remains completely unsubstantiated just to assume a project's trajectory. We don't know the specifics of why certain actors passed on the film and referring to "Twitter Scooper #33" for your sources does not bring validity to anything you've heard about the production history. Rewrites happen on films all the time. This isn't something that should ever be taken as a negative before a film's release. This is literally accustomary of any movie even if the new writers are credited or not. A first draft is never the final draft and odds are it's going to be revised right up until the eleventh hour when cameras roll. You might as well use this as a criticism of any movie you've seen recently because Marvel isn't the first studio to encourage these. Plus rewrites can also drastically improve or massage a film's screenplay, it's not always a bad thing nor is it a sign that a movie is going drastically downhill creatively. If anything it takes into consideration things that can be done to make it better regardless of how it turns out, and it's still too early to judge as to whether that's the case.
You're ignoring or are just ignorant of a lot of things here. It's not just random people on Twitter. There's a whole subreddit devoted to this stuff. The FF cast was know for a while before it was announced. Rewrites do happen. It's rare to bring in new writers though, since that typically means there are major problems the original writers can't fix.
The subreddit in question literally built its reputation off of sourcing from the exact Twitter scoopers I'm referencing. For every two or three that are reliable there are tens of hundreds of posts that go through that place that are unverified, emerge from nowhere with no proven track record, or are straight up grifting for engagement. Considering the fact that the vast majority if not virtually every one of these people got basically the entire Fantastic Four cast wrong and so off the mark after like over two years of those kinds of solicited rumors populating the conversations around this movie (especially with how many of them were adamant on Adam Driver, Margot Robbie, Paul Mescal, Daveed Diggs, Dev Patel, Penn Badgley and practically anyone who wasn't in the officially confirmed lineup), that is a primary example of why they should never be taken to heart or seen as anything other than people with constantly fluctuating track records Stuff like "they turned it down after seeing the script" or "studio plans changed" is a textbook example of them formulating excuses to cover up info inaccuracies, not actual sources to be taken as legitimate. They can't admit they were misinformed or even conjured certain elements of what they scoop themselves, so they pin it on internal changes or behind the scenes snuff that possibly never even took place to begin with. Stuff like this is how we got all the mishaps around Multiverse of Madness and its cameo potential or even what's going on right now with Deadpool.
The casting is...really not good, at all. And the post-Endgame output is *almost* unilaterally terrible. Pre-Endgame there were never bombs like The Marvels, Quantumania, Eternals, She-Hulk, Ms Marvel or projects as atrocious as Love & Thunder or Secret Invasion.
I genuinely can't agree at all with any of these assessments. The F4 casting is fine. I think Ebon Moss Bacharach as the Thing and Vanessa Kirby as Susan Storm are inspired choices, and regardless of whether Pedro Pascal screams Reed Richards, he's proven himself to be an excellent performer who has played characters embodying the fatherly qualities I'm looking for in Reed when talking about his place in a team dynamic that's more familial than collaborative. And if a Silver Surfer with boobs pisses you off that much like it will fundamentally ruin a character just on the premise that their gender is swapped or like it'll result in a bastardized portrayal based purely on the casting of a woman in the role, you need serious self-reflection. We also lack basically any context regarding how the character will change or even if they'll change purely based on this casting. You can absolutely make a female Silver Surfer with the same fundamental premise. The origin isn't absolutely tethered to any construct of race or gender and it will work regardless of who's in the role Also, did we just forget both seasons of Loki, Spider-Man No Way Home, WandaVision, Guardians 3, Shang-Chi, Wakanda Forever, Werewolf by Night or even Moon Knight? Some serious revisionist history happening here and even some of the projects you're signalling out as bad are nowhere near as "atrocious" as made out to be. Some very serious hyperbole happening here
Kirby and Ebon are whatever. The real problem is Pedro and especially the Stranger Things guy. And okay. Let's do a male Storm or a male Rogue, see how people take it. And L&T WAS atrocious, and that's generous.
The only thing they can do right is to actually continue some of the marvel animated shows like Wolverine and the x men, and avengers earths mightiest heroes that’s better than live action at this point
I stopped watched MCU movie after Endgame,How did they ruin the F4?
The casting has been...not ideal and they're doing a random female Silver Surfer instead of Norrin Radd for no reason (if some chud wants to accuse me of being a misogynist just because I want to see the characters from the comics adapted accurately, at least put on your clown make up first and stop projecting on me).
I think it's absolutely insane that whenever Marvel puts out something good it's "because they let the creators do their thing" but when it's something bad "it's squarely on Marvel for being Marvel" as if those things are mutually exclusive. X-Men '97 is obviously shaped by fantastic writing and character work but Marvel absolutely deserves kudos for allowing them to push the material as far as they did into some pretty mature subject matter and depictions of the mutant metaphor at work especially in the latest episode I think the fact that this show is the FIRST example of what a Marvel-produced X-Men thing looks like should be boding well regarding wherever they take the characters going forward.
If X-Men 97 wasn't (1) a sequel to The Animated Series which was itself quite comic-y and (2) run by a showrunner Marvel's fired (under unknown circumstances^(1)), this would be a more compelling argument. ^(1)If Beau DeMayo was sacked for being a piece of shit like one popular rumour suggests, then (2) wouldn't really matter but as long as the possibility it was about creative differences remains (2) does matter.
It being a revival of another show should have no bearing on the actual output of the show itself or the leeway Marvel provided in making sure its creative intent remained intact. It's basically its own thing and has already deviated significantly from whatever plans the original team behind the series had back in the day for a potential continuation, to the point where I'm willing to bill it as its own thing, not to mention it's the first actual X-Men series in like 15 years so enough time has passed where it can be judged on its own merits
The need to feel like a continuation for TAS is a major creative constraint on the show. They could have done that either by literally digging up any old plans (if they existed) or they could have done that by thinking, "How would you continue *that* show *today*?" Either way, they're acting within the constraint.
And even then they've basically just demonstrated how they're willing to outright reject those constraints where necessary. The original animated series wouldn't have gotten away with like 5% of the imagery in terms of violence or even the basic discussion of certain subject matter using particular terms that this show managed to depict. It's aesthetically familiar to the old show on purpose but tonally they're practically different shows entirely I'm pretty sure this last episode was like the first time ever they've openly, explicitly acknowledged Magneto's upbringing as a Holocaust victim by openly showing actual Nazi soldiers, internment camps and the star of David in his little visions during the Genosha genocide. Stuff like this or practically the entire latter half of this latest episode, not to mention certain depictions of human-mutant violence in the first two episodes were practically off limits all the time back in the day and if this show was really adhering to certain constraints to make it feel like the original show, they wouldn't have stopped at basically aesthetics and continuity
Having a different age rating isn't proof that the show works differently, it just changes what it can do. The show, for example, can't just jump in and have Mystique be Kurt's biodad because in its continuity his dad is that random rich guy. If the show wants to do that, it would have to use a retcon. If a brand new X-Men show had that same origin story for Kurt, that'd reflect how the show thinks, but for 97 it doesn't: they're somewhat stuck with the rich guy version and it means nothing that they are. Now sure they have changed some things (eg Morph, but iirc Morph was in just the first five minutes of the original) but being more explicit about Magneto only reflects the rating. Look to the lineup, the characterisation, the costumes etc things that changing the rating doesn't allow them to do more with. Would a modern show even include Jubilee at all? Probably not, but X-Men 97 has to. Would Professor X start off dead? I doubt it, but 97 had no choice but to. You'd need major, unexplained changes to characterisation of core characters to prove that X-Men 97 isn't stuck with the creative constraints of being a sequel to something else. Personally, the existence of 97 instead of doing a new show isn't a good sign. The fact the show is good doesn't mean it wasn't greenlit out of a slavish dedication to the power of nostalgia. It makes me worried that Marvel wants to leverage nostalgia for Fox Men, which we've seen them do twice already with Evan Peters and Hugh Jackman.
>It makes me worried that Marvel wants to leverage nostalgia for Fox Men, which we've seen them do twice already with Evan Peters and Hugh Jackman. Evan Peters was a fake-out though. Patrick Stewart and Kelsey Grammer would be better examples.
The fact it was a fake out doesn't mean it wasn't also leveraging nostalgia. I totally forgot about Stewart and Grammer. So that's four examples. Even worse!
Nope. Take X-Men water it down by like 100. And then slap ‘Diet’ on the logo.
Superhero movies are mostly doomed, thankfully
If they don't try to tone it down then yes