written by Beau De Mayo
There was a time, from around 2016 to 2019, when Marvel Studios could do no wrong. This was Phase 3, in which all of the narrative seeds that had been planted since 2008's Iron Man were finally starting to bear fruit. It all culminated, of course, with Avengers: Endgame.
Unfortunately, since then, Marvel Studios has arguably lost its way. Sure, there have been a few hits since then, including the monumental success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, but by and large, and especially with the introduction of the Disney Plus line of shows, Marvel has seen the quality of its brand diluted severely. The haters have already started dancing on Marvel's grave, while the faithful have mourned a brand they once loved.
With the recent ten-episode revival series X-Men 97, however, Marvel has given fans reason to celebrate once more.
A continuation of the popular animated series X-Men that ran from 1992 to 1997, X-Men 97 achieves the extraordinary by not only living up to the mythos established by the original series but by virtually all account surpassing it.
The series picks up where it left off, the mutants assembled by the telepathic philantrophist and teacher Charles Xavier strive to protect a world that hates and fears them. Led by Cyclops and his now pregnant wife Jean Grey, the X-men, whose member roster includes Storm, Bishop, Gambit, Morph, Jubilee, Beast and Wolverine, now have to grapple with Xavier's apparent death, and worse, with the dictates of his last will and testament, which bequeaths complete control of his estate and School for Gifted Youngsters to none other than their sworn enemy, Magneto. That's not the only problem they're facing of course; anti-mutant sentiment is still quite high, and there are forces waiting in the shadows to exploit that bigotry to bring about the X-men's ultimate extinction, including a foe they have never faced before.
As a matter of disclosure, I never watched more than a few episodes of the original series, and there's a specific reason why: while I genuinely enjoyed things like the writing and voice acting, I found the animation uniformly terrible. Back in the 1990s, the gold standard for animated series based on comic books was Batman: the Animated Series, and while the adventures of Marvel's merry mutants actually managed to hold its own on the writing and voice acting front despite the considerable challenge of telling a team based story rather than that of a solo superhero like Batman, Paul Dini's clean, crisp designs brought to life by a crack team of animators from all around the world was simply too much to match for the X-Men's considerably less talented bunch.
For this series, however, no expense has been spared, and Disney has hired some of the very best hands in the business to bring these characters back to life.
Not only that, but Beau deMayo's writing is, dare I say, the best I've ever seen outside of the comic books, better than anything that has been featured in any of the movies that have featured these characters. He gets what made Chris Claremont's run, with its mix of social commentary and soap opera, so memorable, and even infuses it with other memorable influences like Grant Morrison's "E for Extinction" storyline.
This really is just topnotch entertainment, and fortunately, Disney knows they have a good thing going and have renewed it for another season.
10/10
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