X-Men '97 - season finale

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about X-Men ’97 season finale. It… is not much of an improvement, unfortunately.

What has become one of X-Men ’97 traits? A lack of personal stakes for the main cast: here, for example, Rogue, Roberto (Sunspot) and Magneto seceded from the X-Men, and several of the latter went to rope them in. It was a mixed success, until professor X interfered personally and… healed Magneto, making him a ‘white hat’ once more, with Rogue and Roberto following suit. Seriously, drama does sell, but it has to be convincing, and the stakes covered by it have to matter. Otherwise, it just chews up the scenery and time. (The lack of chemistry between Roberto and Jubilee most of the time is not even worth mentioning anymore).

As for the other villains… Bastion came up only in the last few episodes of the season, and so we never formed an attachment to him, had an investment with him. He died – and good riddance. Mr. Sinister has been ‘only’ depowered, so he’ll be back once more in the future seasons, (if there are any)… Oh, and JG briefly pokevolved into the Phoenix.

Right, here is the thing. In the canon, including the original X-Men cartoon, the Phoenix was an external force, a semi-incorporeal, albeit a very powerful entity, that needed a corporeal host to manifest itself to the max. Jean Grey is the best-known example, of course, but there were, and are, others who also were, or are, the Phoenix. In the original cartoon, the Phoenix in JG was defeated, eventually, so how JG was able to tap into it is unknown. Maybe we will learn in the future seasons, (if there are any); the question as to why JG want to bring back the Phoenix, (their relationship was ambiguous, to say the least) is a different matter… Anything else?

Ah, yes, the season ends with the X-Men being scattered through time, and we get to see some of the future seasons’ villains, including some sort of a version of Apocalypse. Given how in the ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ story arc of the original series Apocalypse was banished outside time and space, guess who’s coming back, eh?

Otherwise, the X-Men ’97 11^th season was good enough; better than ZS’s ‘Rebel Moon’ movies, for example. The new/old/rebooted X-Men do not shine, but neither do they dim; they deliver; delivered; will deliver some good old-fashioned entertainment, and that is good enough for their viewers. Oh, and Senator Kelly is now president of the U.S. Of course he is.

…However, for now, this is it. See you all soon.

X-Men '97 - Extinction II

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. The RPG 2^nd Edition Pathfinder, in particular, seems to have gone marasmatic: they try to come across fast and lose, yet at the same time they try to micromanage everything. Look at the latest adventure path, one that is set in the Mosswood (or whatever it is called, it does not matter here). In the player’s guide to the path, the Pathfinder team is bombasting the readers’/players’ with oodles of suggestions and references yet all the while telling them it does not matter; they can be whomever they like. Fair enough, but… in this case either the readers/players really can be whomever they like, in which case all of the information in the guide is superficial and unnecessary, or this information is mandatory, in which case the players have to choose out of the options presented by the guide, and their personal desires are irrelevant. Pause.

Aside from the fact that both options are equally bad and annoying, there’s also the fact that team Pathfinder and the DMs don’t really have ways to enforce it, if the players will disregard the Pathfinder options, (remember, they’re supposed to be suggestions), and go with the flow. Not to mention that the DMs usually do not want to fight with their players, because often the latter are their friends too, on one hand, and on the other, RPGs are a luxury item, they aren’t needed, they cater to whims, and if they don’t, people will find other options (such as D&D) that do. Onto X-Men ’97, then?

Yes, pretty much. Not unlike the RPGs, this cartoon series is also a luxury item, it is trying to tickle the audience’s fancy with a lot of Easter eggs and references, and when they stop, we are left with something else.

For example, Magneto – in this episode – restarts the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, taking Rogue with him, as well as Roberto. Well, Magneto and Rogue’s relationship aside, firstly, Magneto actually saved the day – or at least helped a lot – in the first part of the season’s finale, so is he really evil anymore, or did the scriptwriters want to write yet another Magneto vs. Professor X fight? (The two of them did fight here, sort of). On the other hand, since Roberto is with Magneto now… err, with the Brotherhood now, Jubilee seems to be actually missing him… why? Throughout the season, Roberto was essentially a prop; his chemistry with Jubilee was nonexistent, and so was his role on the show, and now that he is with Magneto and Rogue, Jubilee actually begins to miss him? Can we say – ‘forced relationship’? And In the past, it looked as if the relationships on AoS were contrived. Anything else?

The bulk of ‘Extinction 2’ episode was about fights, with little being done, to be frank. The non-relationship between Jubilee and Roberto feels forced, and so’s the conflict between most of the X-Men and Magneto, Rogue and Roberto. This entire specific episode feels like filler, albeit an exciting one, so odds are is that it is. In fact, as it was said before, the entire X-Men ’97 now feels like a luxury product that is getting a bit desperate for whatever reasons. Ah well, it is no skin off our back.

…Meanwhile, for now, this is it. See you all soon!

X-Men/Mufasa - May 1

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Now onto the home stretch of the X-Men ’97 season?

…Well, rather not, because by now we got the gist of the conflict in this season: it is the X-Men and most other mutants against yet another sentinel version – the Prime Sentinels. As far as Sentinels go, they are the X-Men version of the Mindless Ones, complete with glowing eyes. They can hardly be stopped, they can barely be reasoned with, they are yet another incarnation of the ‘evil mob’ kind of foe, and as such they cannot be sympathized, not really – and (the now dead) Gyrich is behind them. Of course he is. He is the mastermind behind the mob, (not to be confused with the actual X-Men character named the Mastermind). It was said before and it is said now, the X-Men ’97 franchise is going around in a circle like a snake in a wheel and going nowhere.

…Ok, this was uncalled for – with Magneto’s help the Prime Sentinels are defeated, but since the season’s finale is a 3-parter, and this was only the first part, so more excitement is ahead, really. Hell, even Jubilee and Roberto will be given something to do! Back in the 90s, Jubilee was all but written out of the main narrative, because it was no longer obvious what she was needed for in a show with a big cast, and the same is happening now, her and Roberto’s adventure in Mojo-land notwithstanding. This time she and Roberto are being dragged along for the ride like a couple of accessories to the main suit, and-

-and yes, Jubilee may grow up into a formidable warrior if she doesn’t die, and Morph is used as a prop to showcase various other Marvel mutant characters without them being actually around, and professor X is back, and everyone is excited, and the audiences are eating the show up, and there’s no specific background, unlike what is shaping up in the ‘Deadpool 3’ movie, and we’ve been here before, remember? Therefore, instead of beating up a (existential status undetermined) Deadpool, let us briefly talk about the upcoming ‘Mufasa’ film.

This is a spin-off of the ‘Lion King’ films, focusing on the childhood of Simba’s father instead. In this trailer, we see that 1) the (spotted) hyenas might be present, but they are playing a smaller role than they did in the original movie (both incarnations), which is good, because they need more good PR (the hyenas do). 2) Is that Mufasa’s brother Scar is not very prominent in the trailer either, but there are scenes of two lions of different ages fighting each other. In one scene, the background is on fire, and we get a glimpse of a small creature attacking the (enemy?) lion – perhaps it is Timon, who, alongside Pumba, is also supposed to be appear in the film. In the second fight, the background is icy, so either we are going to have a flashback into the past, into lives of cave lions instead, or Mufasa is going to get onto the Mt. Kilimanjaro or somewhere similar.

…The geography in the ‘Lion King’ franchise is just as bad as zoology is – in RL Africa has deserts at the ends, the jungle in the middle, and the savanna in-between, broadly speaking. In the world of Mufasa, Scar and Simba, we get the desert between the savanna and the jungle instead, therefore, an ice and snow covered mountain could fit quite well into this ensemble.

3) – in another scene, we have a lion cub, or cubs, having a misadventure with at least one Nile crocodile. In RL, this reptile is the only challenger to the saltwater crocodile in size and strength; the royal lion can defeat it, however – on land, and preferably in a pride. One on one, and especially in the water, the Nile crocodile has the upper hand, however. Since Mufasa (and his companions) are just cubs, they are in big trouble.

Finally, 4) – Rafiki. He is a mandrill, and this monkey, as well as its’ only true relative the drill, are not baboons, nor are particularly close cousins to them; rather, their closest relatives are the crested mangabeys, a group of guenon-like monkeys that don’t look anything like the drill/mandrill duo, as the latter look much more like the baboons and the geladas instead. Moreover, unlike the latter, the drill and the mandrill live in the African jungle, and as such, they appeared in Disney’s animated Tarzan-verse, and avoid the savannahs instead. Disney is certainly playing fast and loose with Africa in the ‘Lion King’ franchise; it will certainly be interesting to see how the movie will come out in winter of 2024.

For now, however, this is it. See you all soon!

X-Men/Deadpool 3 - April 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the X-Men ’97 instead. Um. This is akin to using capitalism to distract from feudalism, or reverse, or something along those lines anyhow. Shall we try again?

As we have been talking increasingly in those previous weeks, X-Men ’97 are fan service; the scriptwriters and co. behind them are outright adapting the older comic storylines for the episode plots. For the entire season’s plot too, for that matter. AoS had its’ own share of flaws, but at least it tried to be original, for the first 2-3 seasons of its’ run anyhow. X-Men ’97 does not. Rather, it has plenty of fan appeal; in this week’s episode, ‘Bright Eyes’, we saw a Steve Rogers/Captain America; last week, it was Ronan the Accuser. Therefore, where is Uatu? Shouldn’t he be watching – never mind. He is probably watching the live-action adventures of Wolverine and Deadpool instead.

Now that trailer is something else. Not unlike the X-Men ’97, it is a classic – it is shaping up to be a tale of redemption and resurrection; Deadpool flat-out proclaims himself Jesus, aka the Savior, and he’s saving Wolverine. Well, a Wolverine, but the fact that HJ is playing the character also clears up some things, doesn’t it?

Let us roll back a bit. To date, humanity has invented only two versions of religion: polytheism and monotheism. The two models are simply different, and it does not matter which is better or worse, but what matters is that salvation and damnation, temptation and redemption, and all the other ‘tion’ words matter only in monotheism; in polytheism, not so much. By talking about salvation, Deadpool, and ‘Deadpool 3’ flat-out tries at least to tap into monotheism, which in US means Christianity, at least the Protestant version of it. Pause.

The problem is that these days the U.S. does not acknowledge itself as a Christian country, not how it did before, before the 1990’s, at least. The entire wink-wink nudge-nudge approach does not work too good either – for example, Ms. Meg Cabot’s novels have plenty of Christian/Protestant moral values, (and they are not half-bad from the technical point of view), but because she never openly admits this, her novels fall flat, and instead of being mouthpieces for those values they… do not. They may be making Ms. Cabot plenty of money as people are buying and selling them, but not much else, and the same will go down for the ‘Deadpool 3’ film as well – it will make Disney/MCU/anyone else a lot of money, it will help establish the mutants in MCU somehow most likely, but the Christian imagery, motifs, and what else have you will just dissipate, and that is it. Still better than X-Men ’97, who don’t even have that. The ‘Deadpool 3’ film is clearly having a lot of effort behind it, effort and money, and so it will deliver, much more so than the ‘Madame Web’ movie had, for example. (The latter had potential, in fact, but it was squandered).

Therefore, to sum up, whereas X-Men ’97 is purely entertainment and fan service, ‘Deadpool 3’ is setting itself up as something more – much more than that. Will it be able to achieve this is another question, we just have to wait and see.

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

X-Men 'Lifedeath 2' - April 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks; it is raining all day long, so onto the X-Men ’97 episode of the week? In this case, we get to see more adventures with Storm/Ororo Munroe, as she, well, adventures. I could elaborate in some detail, but – spoilers?

Ok, not so much, as this week’s episode flavor is space and Kree, bringing back such favorites as Deathbird and the Gladiator. Listen. X-Men ’97 are playing on the audience’s nostalgia and they are playing it hard. If you like it, it is your thing; otherwise, why are you watching the show?

Again, unlike the live-action/MCU shows, X-Men ’97 is not trying to be realistic, and without the live-action’s constraints, it is not. Rather, we got some very outlandish designs, such as the last week’s variant Sentinels and this week’s aliens. X-Men ’97 is doing its’ best to be outlandish and outrageous – and it is succeeding there. No, seriously, it does, as people are certainly enjoying the titular characters battle various bizarre foes – such as the angry mobs of F.O.H., the crazy sentinel robots, and this week there are alien villains, (in a manner of speaking). Moreover, by outright adapting X-Men comic storylines, the show is… playing it safe and certain, as well as avoiding any controversies that could arise with outright new materials, such as the SW movies 7-9, (the sequel trilogy).

…Maybe the latter is not the best example, but it works: the Sequel trilogy was supposed to expand and to add new lore and dimensions to the SW-world. It failed (for various reasons) and since then… Disney was trying to play it safe; because it loves to make money, and hates to lose money, among other reasons. Controversy ruins everything is Disney’s opinion in all of its’ franchises and branches these days, and it shows.

…But wait! Hasn’t it tried to sneakily show as to how the world of SW passed from the one seen in the movie 6 to the one seen in the movie 7? Yes, and once the audiences began to realize it; the hate was back, and since then… Disney/SW is sticking to ‘the Bad Batch’ cartoon; once it runs out, it is anyone’s guess as to where it will go, (especially since ‘The Mandalorian’ seems to have ended for now). Anything else?

No, not really. X-Men ’97 are expanding their initial universe, but they are doing through visual pageantry and the like, so for now, this is it, as there is nothing specifically new to discuss. See you all soon instead!

Solar Eclipse/X-Men - April 10

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but the solar eclipse-2024 deserves a special mention, (and not just because X-Men ’97 are not all that either).

Where to begin? On Monday, April 8, 2024, the sky where my family lives – southern Ontario – was overcast. The people of science claimed that the skies will clear up because of the eclipse-2024 and all, but in reality the cloud cover just wasn’t breaking-up, not at all.

We went for a walk. The weather was quite cold, even if it was just early spring – the days before and after it were much warmer, in fact – and there were relatively few people outside. Still, we walked around, had our daily exercise, and returned home before three o’clock in the afternoon.

At 3:10 pm, it began to get dark, so we turned on the lights. By 3:15, it was as dark as it is in evening, about 20-30 minutes after the sunset. By 3:19-3:20, when the solar eclipse was complete, and it was as dark as… during an especially heavy local thunderstorm, when it come become almost as dark as night for a few minutes. Here, it was the same, as immediately it began to clear up, and by 3:25 or so, it was daylight as usual, or even more, as by 3:30 the sky actually began to clear-out from the clouds, and by 4:30 pm, it was clear completely. Mother Nature, (or God, or etc.) has trolled us.

On the other hand, the people who went to Niagara Falls, either from the Canadian or the American sides, got to see the same sight, (in a matter of speaking); only they paid several thousand dollars for this, so our family isn’t complaining too much. Real life sucks, as this blog mentions regularly, but sometimes it also rips people off.

As for this week’s X-Men ’97 episode ‘Remember’… listen. Magneto is dead – apparently. Gambit is dead – apparently. Uncle Ben Parker says hi and promises that they will be back. Cyclops still likes Madeline better than Jean even though the ‘real’ Jean is back. Can we bring back the JG/Wolverine relationship back, then? No offence, but now that the initial excitement is slowly wearing down, it is becoming more evident that the X-Men ’97 aren’t delivering anything truly new, but the same old delivered in a new way – not through comics, (ink and paper), but through cartoons, (2-D style, rather than the 3-D). Hooray for those who really love the X-Men franchise, for everyone else – not as much. (Not to mention that character deaths in cartoons just are not the same as they are in live action).

Anything else? Aye, the JP’s Joker part 2 is coming to movie theatres in October 2024. Already it promises to be something different from the regular Joker and Harley story. We will have to wait and see just what it actually is.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

X-Men ’97 "Lifedeath1" - April 3

Obligatory disclaimer – real life sucks, lately our entire family life feels like a bloody house of cards, (in a bad way), so let us talk about this week’s episode of X-Men ’97 instead.

Regrettably, it is a weaker one. On one side, we have a reboot of the ‘Mojoverse’ episode from the original X-Men series: back then, Mojo kidnapped six of the adult X-Men, (not Jubilee), and forced them to act out live video games, with their lives hanging in the balance, until they burst free (with some local help) and went back home. (Mojo was not a regular character/villain in this TV-verse). Here, we have basically the same thing, but just with Jubilee/Roberto, and a computer-graphic-version of Jubilee instead…

…My problem with Jubilee and Roberto is that their relationship is… not so much forced, as rushed: in various other previous Marvel incarnations, (live-action, comics, cartoons), Roberto was often competent at worst and formidable at best. Here, however, he seems to be nothing more than Jubilee’s love interest… not that Jubilee herself is doing much better.

The problem with a big cast is that not all of the main characters get the same amount of exposition, especially if they are all on screen at the same time. Some shows try to fix it by alternating characters: i.e. one episode features – mostly – characters a, b, and e, while on another it is c and d, and on the third – it is d, e, and f – the sort of thing. The X-Men cartoon, on the other hand, tended to show most of them en masse – Cyclops and Jean, Gambit and Rogue, Wolverine and Storm, (the) Beast and professor X shared their onscreen adventures episode after episode… Jubilee was mostly pushed out… she all but disappeared, (technically speaking), in the later seasons, because she was not contributing anything to the plot, not really… Now, however, she is back, and it is again not clear as to what she is contributing to the overall plot specifically, and ditto for Morph – in the original series he was more of an episodic character, a former teammate, an unwilling enemy, an ally to the X-Men, but not part of the team. Now, however, he is back, possibly depicting sexual minorities in the show…and also allowing the showrunners to depict the various mutant characters without actually bringing him into the show just yet.

Speak of the new characters? In the other half of the episode, we also get to meet the Adversary; he was an occasional foe/antagonist of the mutants in the comics; he often clashed… with Forge and his team. Here, their relationships is less clear-cut, and Storm appears to maybe be caught in the middle.

This brings us to the following feature of X-Men ‘97: the scriptwriters just took several old comic plotline and are trying to adapt them to the silver screen. Sometimes it works out, (such as the first two episodes of the new season), sometimes, (as in the last week’s and this week’s episodes), it does not – not really. AoS, it can be noted, did something similar, especially in the later seasons – it recycled and rebooted its’ original plotlines in order to keep itself going… and now it is gone, and MCU is pretending that it never existed at all – no S.H.I.E.L.D., but also – no S.W.O.R.D., and the state of S.A.B.R.E. is also in flux – but this has nothing to do with the X-Men franchise. Instead, just as AoS recycled its’ old ideas, the X-Men ’97 is recycling Marvel’s old X-Men ideas, from comics than from other media, but regardless… The original X-Men cartoon was somehow better than this…

Is there anything else? No, not really. The new Godzilla/Kong movie is out, and it is a good one, but it deserves a discussion of its’ own, so for now, this is it. See you all soon instead!