(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing clips from Wolverine and the X-Men)
Doug (vo): It's funny. If you show me the outlines for these two shows, X-Men: Evolution and Wolverine and the X-Men, and ask me which one do you think I like better, I would clearly say Wolverine and the X-Men. Why? 'Cause I love Wolverine, and...well, compare these two, it looks like this is closer to what X-Men in the comics was. But X-Men: Evolution, despite it being different, did offer something fresh and new, because we did have that amazing animated series that, to me, is always kind of definitive X-Men. You got the comics and then you have the cartoon, like, that's it. That's what they're all about. X-Men: Evolution took it in a new direction and really was still faithful to what it was. Wolverine and the X-Men has a lot of the same people, so you would think they could maybe do it again, but bizarrely, that's kind of the problem. I think they maybe might have needed a new team, because it's either too similar to what the previous one did, or not similar enough to what I expect from X-Men. Okay, don't get me wrong. It's hard for me to say this is a bad show, because you can see the effort, you can see the dedication, you can see these people do understand X-Men. Again, some of them came from X-Men: Evolution. But I get the feeling with the direction the movies were going and what probably studios said they wanted them to focus more on, something got lost in translation, giving us something that isn't an awful X-Men show, it's just...another X-Men show, like, not many things stand out about it. The series actually begins almost like a predecessor to X-Men: Evolution. Yeah, this is kind of like Ang Lee's Hulk and The Incredible Hulk, like, they're not direct sequels, but you kind of can see them that way. There's some things that don't match up, but if you want to see this as a follow-up, it's not that big a stretch.
Premise[]
Doug (vo): The X-Men are a titan team all established at Xavier's School for the Gifted, when suddenly, an explosion happens. Nobody knows what caused it, but suddenly, Xavier and Jean are completely gone, out of the picture, they're presumed dead. Heartbroken by this, the team just splits up and decides to go their separate ways. All that changes, though, when Wolverine starts to get visions from Xavier, and naturally, he asks, "Where is he? What happened? What's going on?" Well, it turns out this is Xavier from the future. Yeah, stay with me. He says, "Everything is terrible! It's apocalyptic, the Sentinels have taken over!"...yeah, tell me if you've heard that before...and only Wolverine and the X-Men can stop it. Wolverine tries to get the begrudging team together, but a lot of them are very resistant. Some, yeah, okay, do jump onboard pretty fast, but others just don't want to relive that pain anymore, it's just too traumatic and...yeah, get used to that kind of talking. Everyone's pretty melodramatic in this, which, again, is kind of X-Men, but, you know, they told a few jokes here and there. On top of the concern that Senator Kelly is in fact starting a Sentinel program, we also got Magneto to worry about...or...do we? Magneto has apparently set up a haven for mutants on Genosha, a private island sanctioned by the government where mutants can go and just be themselves. With both sides claiming they want peace, but very clearly planning something else, it's up to Wolverine to step up as leader, get the X-Men together, and stop this apocalypse from happening before the apocalypse happens, which, spoiler, it doesn't. They never get a season 2.
Review[]
Doug (vo): So I do give props to this creative team for trying to do something that's a little different, but also go back to the roots of what X-Men is, getting dressed up in costumes and stopping Sentinels and apocalyptic futures, and a lot of them are a lot more grown up now, and...yeah, I-I see what they're trying to do. But again, it's hard not to feel the influence of the movies on this show. Wolverine really exploded as a character. I mean, yeah, he was already popular, but in the movies, he was basically the main character. In a comic or a show, you can spread it out a little bit, and they did that. It was called X-Men, not Wolverine and the X-Men. You know this is something that the studio said we have to do because of his popularity, he has to be in the title. sS the idea of making him a leader is...odd. Granted, they do acknowledge that, like, he doesn't want to be a leader, he doesn't think he's qualified, he has too much of a temper and sort of rages on everything, he's too impulsive.
(Footage focusing on Cyclops, Beast, Magneto and Xavier is shown)
Doug (vo): But I guess they make Cyclops even more impulsive and angsty and just really, really feeling down that Jean is gone. Oh, God, I am so sick of this character being defined by what he thinks of Jean. Like, this didn't really work that great in the third X-Men movie, and it's not working here either. And, yeah, while we're at it, Beast seems a lot more like Kelsey Grammer, and, man, I remember I said Magneto was really like in the movies in X-Men: Evolution, but he is just so much more like him here. Like, you just swear they are drawing him and getting voice actors that sound just like Ian McKellen. The idea of having Xavier talk to Wolverine and give him missions, again, I could see working for maybe something else. This has a little bit of a Power Rangers feel to it, you know, like the big, bald guy who you can see through is just a floating head giving you missions and bad guys to stop. But the stories in X-Men were more interesting in that. It works well enough in Power Rangers because, again, that is meant for more younger kids that just want a formula. X-Men didn't really have a formula, except that there were people who hated mutants and you kind of just go off with that, that was enough. The idea that Wolverine always has to check in with somebody to see what the next big baddie to fight is just didn't scream possibilities to me.
(Footage focusing on Rogue is shown)
Doug (vo): The X-Men also take themselves way too seriously. Okay, we had an angsty Rogue in X-Men: Evolution, and, sure, that is part of her character, she does have this angsty dramatic past, and I thought they handled it very well in that show. But now, here she is. She's in the green and yellow outfit and the coat and everything, man, here we go. Is she going to fly or punch stuff and have that great Southern optimism instead? No, she's just switching sides again and being mopey and down on herself, and, again, they try to set up like her and Wolverine have this connection, and it's not much. Like, where is this coming from? Oh, yeah, they did it in the movie, so I guess they have to do it here.
(Footage from X-Men: Evolution is shown before cutting back to clips from Wolverine and the X-Men)
Doug (vo): The angsty moments in Evolution worked because we got to know these characters and really like them. They were just kind of knuckleheads and would crack one-liners and not always get along, but not always get along in a fun way, a way you could relate to and say, "Hey, I remember when I was that age and did something like that?" But nobody's just mopey all the time, and these characters are. Only once in a while do you get a character that might be a little bit more upbeat, but they don't use them for long. Even the new mutants they do introduce, they really don't utilize.
(Footage focusing on Gambit, Psylocke and Emma Frost is shown)
Doug (vo): Gambit is back in the story, and Psylocke, and I was so excited to see more of them, but they're kicked out pretty fast. The one addition I really do love is Emma Frost. This is a character I always enjoyed from the comics, and she gets a lot of screentime here, and they use her the right way. She's a character you don't know if she's good or bad, and you could see either side working. She joins the team and wants to help them out, but Wolverine doesn't trust her, and to be fair, she gives a lot of reasons not to trust her, and sometimes, she does good, but sometimes, she breaks the rules, and sometimes, it's for the benefit of the team, but sometimes, it's for the benefit of herself, and you're constantly asking what is she up to. This is great. I really like kind of giving her this semi-leadership role. Like, that was a really good add-on, and it was new. I haven't really seen something like that in the shows yet.
(Footage focusing on Forge is shown)
Doug (vo): Forge...okay, I'm not going to act like he was my favorite character or anything, but if, for some reason, he was your favorite character, you're going to be pissed at what they did to him. They just kind of make him this scrawny, naive comic relief that always looks annoyed to do a job, and, man, that's not that character at all. Like I said, it didn't bother me too much 'cause I never got too into this character, but, yeah, if you're a fan of Forge, you're really not going to like what happens here.
(Footage from the episode "Future X" is shown)
Doug (vo): There are some story threads that I feel really work. There's one that takes place in the future where this mutant actually befriends a broken Sentinel. All he can do is say, "Destroy", but it's kind of like "I am Groot", he says it in a different way that you can tell it means something else. And there's something really interesting about a machine that's like a friend to a mutant, but all he can say is "Destroy". That's actually kind of fascinating and it's a good friendship. I actually really like them, it's like a demented Iron Giant setup.
(Footage focusing on Jean is shown)
Doug (vo): Jean, when she comes back into the picture...yeah, spoilers, but I think you knew that was going to happen...is also handled pretty well. When they work in the Phoenix stuff, which, I know, almost sounds like a contradiction, 'cause anytime they tried to do the Phoenix stuff after the original animated series, it usually hasn't been good and they rely too much on it. But they get pretty inventive and weird with it here, and I really dug it. I like not always knowing where it was going to go, and it has some twists and turns and surprises. I liked it, and I liked her reaction to everything, too. I feel like I got an idea of what this character was about pretty quickly when she was reintroduced into the show.
(Footage focusing on Wolverine is shown)
Doug (vo): Steve Blum plays Wolverine, and he's about as perfect casting as I could imagine for the character. Like, it's eerie how many times he actually sounds like Cal Dodd whenever he roars. My one nitpick is I could have used him having a little bit more of a scratchy voice, not because it sounds more like Cal Dodd or a different interpretation or anything, but Steve Blum's voice is just too smooth. I feel like for this character, it has to be somebody that's outdoors a lot and, like, his voice has roared a lot and maybe would get scratched up, so I want a little bit of that. But still, again, his voice is pretty much just audio chocolate. You really can't go wrong with him.
(Footage focusing on the animation is shown)
Doug (vo): All the other acting is good, and the animation's good. I mean, man, just look at this intro. I mean, they put so much time and effort into this. I mean, compared to X-Men: Evolution, who did have good animation, some episodes even spectacular, but, man, this was just grade-A animation every episode. But with that said, don't you kind of get tired of looking at this color scheme after a while? Everything, and I mean everything, is dark and gloomy and not shot in a way where it looks like it's an entertaining kind of dark and gloomy. Like, you know me, I like all sorts of weird, distorted, dark stuff, but it's done in a way where it leaps off the screen and grabs you, it leaves an impact. This kind of dark imagery is just kind of bland, and X-Men shouldn't really be bland when it comes to the designs. It should be bright, it should be colorful, so that when you do get to the creepy villains and the weird, distorted, dark backgrounds, they stand out even more. But this one's just trying to go all dark, like, again, probably the X-Men movies, and I didn't really like the way those movies looked.
Final thought[]
Doug (vo): It's funny, because once again, I feel like X-Men: Evolution probably got inspiration from the movies as well. Hell, theirs was probably even thrusted upon them. But they utilized it in much more of a clever way. Having them in high school was really smart and did draw back from a lot of the original X-Men comics, and it was bright and colorful and imaginative and went in different directions, but still felt like this is X-Men. And this...yeah, I guess feels like X-Men enough, but it's missing the excitement and the investment. And I think a big part of that is, it's trying to be too overly serious. I like the characters in X-Men: Evolution because they were fun, and they did have some good one-liners, and you can relate to them. I can't relate to anyone in this. It's like if Batman: The Animated Series only has Ra's al Ghul as the villain. Like, he's a fine villain, but if you just got that all the time, you'd be bored. And instead of Batman and Robin and Batgirl, it's just Batman and...another Batman. So, yeah, you probably get the impression I really, really didn't like this show, and I can't say that. Like I said, I did always feel the effort, I could hear the effort with the acting, the animation was very, very good. But it just didn't have the excitement or heart that a lot of X-Men properties have. It's a shame, because I do think there was potential for this show, and who knows? Maybe if season 2 got off the ground, they could have made some changes. There's plenty of shows that have kind of underwhelming season ones, but turn into something great. Maybe this could have been one of them. But despite all the effort and hard work, this X-Men sadly comes across as X...meh.
(A scene of the X-Men standing together is shown)