December 2003 Archives

"Previously... On X-Men..."

For how many of us does that conjure up images from our childhood? How many times did we wake up on Saturday morning, turning on the television and hear that, knowing what we were in store for?

I've tracked down the episodes on VHS thanks to eBay because Fox hasn't released the show on DVD in any significant way. How has the show aged? Well, let me break it down by season.

Season One

The animation is not its best and the dialogue does sound a bit forced at times. Where the show excels is in its running subplots and some of its voice casting (most notably Wolverine, Xavier, Magneto, Beast and Gambit). Indeed, it is impressive that the first season of the X-Men cartoon had as many running subplots as it did. The first season focused mostly on the Sentinels, Apocalypse and Magneto. There were a couple of other one-episode villians such as the Juggernaut but even those had through lines to keep the series tight. The series feels a lot like the comics, where there is no beginning or ending only a continuning storyline.

There are some really nice moments in this season. One of the most surprising is Morph's death. The true fans would know that Morph was sentenced to doom from the moment he stepped on the show as there is no Morph (odds are he's based on Changling, but he died in the sixties). Original or not, Morph's death is handled well, the moment is full of pain and sorrow and gives one of the best moments of the series where Wolverine punches Cyclops in the stomach.

This cartoon gives a glimmer of a what a great series this could've been. It's quite well done but it hasn't aged extremely well (one of the jokes is "makin' copies!" which is a play off of a long-dead Rob Schneider sketch on SNL). The series just can't seem to get out from under the shadow of the Batman: The Animated Series. The big picture, the giant storyline, is better in the X-Men than it is in the B:TAS. The animation, however, is far worse

Season Two

In terms of the technical aspects, the second season of X-Men: The Animated Series is pretty much the exact same as the first. The voice acting and animation is the same quality, which is to say not so great, not so bad.

The writing has changed in that the series managed to both take a step away from the sweeping storyline and focus on the team while at the same time embracing that huge connecting story. For example we got to see more of Gambit (X-Ternally Yours), Rogue (A Rogue's Tale), Storm (Whatever It Takes), Wolverine (Repo Man) and Beast (Beauty and the Beast). To add to the character dilemas, the team has to do this without the aid of their mentor, Professor Xavier, who is missing in the Savage Land.

It's Professor Xavier's adventure in the Savage Land that really links the episodes together. To briefly recap, in case you haven't seen the show, Professor X and and Magneto both get calls telling them to meet up in Antarctica. When they get there they realize it was a trap but too late. They find themselves stuck in the Savage Land without their powers (although Professor X can now walk). During pretty much every episode they cut away to about five minutes of Professor X and Magneto's adventures in the Savage Land as the two try to survive and figure out what's going on. The season finally catches up to them with the last two-parter entitled Reunion where the rest of the X-Men join them in the Savage Land.

This season does have two other two-parters that are neither short character pieces nor are they part of the larger arc: 'Til Death Do Us Part and Time Fugitives. The first one follows Jean and Scott's honeymoon while the second is a Cable/Bishop time travelling story.

The season is also connected by the Friends of Humanity and Mr. Sinister much in the same way that Magneto and Apocalypse and the Sentinels linked the previous season.

Season Three

The season opens with Out of the Past, a two-parter which they aired on prime time forever and a half ago. I still remember it airing for the first time (fittingly enough it was a lead in to the X-Files). Oh I thought it was cool and that maybe it would lead to comic cartoons going more mainstream. I was quickly disappointed.

In some episodes, the animation this season is different from the previous two seasons. The lines are much thicker and the movement is more fluid, neither of which is necessarly a good thing. Although it does look a little less wooden than the previous seasons, it does comes off as too cartoony at times.

Of course the connecting theme of this season is the Phoenix. It is easily to most heavy connector so far and with good reason as it is so all encompassing that it often bogs down the pace of the show (ten of the ninteen episodes are directly connected to the storyline). The season starts with the Phoenix saga and ends with the Dark Phoenix storyline. Much as I felt in the comics, the story starts off interesting but quickly gets bogged down and confusing.

Season Four

The fourth season is structured in smaller arcs. The season is composed almost entirely of two-parters (and on giant four-parter) with a few stand alone episodes in between.

By this point in the series' run, the show has developed enough of a backstory that the stories can have more emotional resoance.

The main complaint? They use a whole lot of previous footage. Although it is necessary to keep the audience informed on who these people are and what their relationships are. Maybe if watched at one a week, these repeating scenes would be easier to ignore but when you watch it one huge continuous streak, you can tell they were just trying to save money.

They also started substiting voice actors for a few episodes. Apocalypse and Magneto. Not only was it distracting, the quality of the acting was much worse.

This really is the season where the writing plummets. The season started off fairly strong but weakened as it continued. The turning point is the four-parter Beyond Good and Evil, which has Apocalypse trying to use to use psychics from throughout time to try to restart the universe with himself as the God. Have Yourself a Morlock Little Christmas is as a schlocky as it sounds. Love in Vain and Secrets No Longer Buried are also weaker episodes (one of them featuring, and I'm not joking here, a space whale. A whale that flies through space that aliens use as a spaceship. Urgh. Brain hurts).

Season Five

The animation takes a sharp decline starting with the fourth episode of the season, No Mutant is an Island. I don't know if Fox decided to drastically cut its funding or what but it took its toll on the animation department. And it gets worse by Jubilee's Fairy Tale Adventure (this also marks the beginning of the horrid new Gambit voice actor).

This is also the season when the show's continuty begins to start tripping over itself. For instance, Magneto is fine and active and then at the start of this season he's a recluse with a beard living in the Arctic circle. Also, Jean Grey is alive and well and gets married to Scott in the fourth season then in the fifth season she's dead and missing.

I can't quite tell what was going on in terms of wrapping the series up. They introduced several dangling plotlines such as the military's plan to take on the X-Men but the last episode was an attempt to wrap everything up and do it quickly. Professor X gives a deathbed sum up of the growth of each of his X-Men before being carried off to join Lilandra in the Shi'ar Empire while Magneto watches over the X-Men.

Wrap Up

The first season is the best in my opinion. Somewhere down the line, starting with the Phoenix saga perhaps... the show became less concerned with the characters and more concerned with the spectacle. Still, it's a good show and is remembered fondly by a whole generation.

There are debates popping up across the land about the Ultimate Marvel universe and whether it will eventually replace the "real" Marvel universe. My thought is that it already has. Which Spider-Man are more comic readers familar with, hmmm? Just because the original Marvel universe is still being published doesn't mean it hasn't become obselete.

I am not advocating getting rid of the original universe, however. In point of fact, I think it's doing a great job as being the minor leagues of Marvel. It's where they can give people a chance without messing up the new precious continuity that the Ultimate universe has established. Continuity is, after all, Ultimate Marvel's strong suit. That's what happens when you only have two writers as oppossed to twenty or so.

It's not surprising that the "official" Marvel universe has such horrid continuity (and anyone who disagrees has already forgotten the Spider-Clone saga) since the company was created before the concept of continuity was so popular, before continuity hounds had started really policing comics. The Ultimate line can't help but be aware of what they are doing and what stories they are telling (and how those stories will affect them further down the road).

Personally, I'm looking forward to a long and healthy Ultimate Marvel.

I hate this movie.

It's stupid and bad and dumb and I hate it.

I hate it so much that I love it. It's possibly the best bad movie ever made. Every time I watch it, I think, 'Wow, this movie is really stupid and this is just another hour and a half of my life I'll never get back.' Note the 'every time' in the previous statement, which implies that I have let this movie eat that hour and a half of my life more than one time. So, to make a kind of thesis statement here, the movie sure does suck ass, but it sucks ass with style.

"Why does it suck, Whitney?" I can hear you asking me now. Well, maybe not if you've seen it, but. It sucks because it has all of the confusing wacky apocolyptic plot nonsense we've come to expect, but none of the goodness known as "character development." This is a movie that says, "Hey, screw you, character development is for housewives and little girls! Oh, sure, we could provide some background or something for Yuuto, or, hey! We could also have Fuuma rip his arm off! Oh, that'd be much cooler." So, yeah, that would be one of the driving flaws. Here we have a giant cast of characters; they sure are cool looking and can kick ass, so we needn't bother with explaining who they are or their existence at all. So, sure, that made the movie just a bit confusing, to say the least.

Ah, confusing. I imagine that the standard reaction to watching X is to just blink a few times after it's over, and then go, "Wow, those wacky Japanese. Uh... the decapitations were pretty cool!" It's what we can expect, really, from trying to condense a giant manga storyline that hadn't been completed (and still hasn't been completed) into about a hundred minutes.

But oh, how I love it. Because it sucks. Specifically because it's a dumb, horrible, beautifully animated and well-acted movie. Okay, if you watched this movie with a hope that it would be faithful to the manga and provide you with a colorful, moving version of all the CLAMPy goodness, you'd be screwed. But if you approach the movie as I did, in a "What the hell is going on and who are all these people again?" sort of manner, you're in for a treat, but only if you have a sense of appreciation for the lame.

The movie does have it's quality moments, however. The animation is downright beautiful. Sure, they gave Kamui the wrong color eyes, but everyone looks great. The voice acting is just dandy, even if the casting is a bit odd in places. We think Yuuki Hiro would have done a better job than Tomokazu Seki as Kamui, but we're just damn otaku losers. Sorata, because he is just great, does not get completely screwed over in the character development department. And he gets to be charming and cute and noble and kickass and speak in his damn incomprehensible dialect. And have a cool outfit. Uh, not that I'm biased or anything, really. Some of the death scenes are really touching. Not Karen's, mind you, Karen's is a "Honey? Karen, honey, MOVE" sort of situation, but what can you do? Yuzuhira's death was painful. Sorata and Arashi's deaths got me a little misty, but, uh, again, I'm not biased or anything. The movie also has the big benefit of giving the world a vague idea of how CLAMP is going to destroy all of our hearts as the manga plays out. Perhaps it's even a death list! You're next, Subaru! I'm sure you're looking forward to it. But I digress.

Take a step back from the movie and give it a good look. Look hard, now. Notice a few big differences? Notice some things that are funny? Notice stuff that's different from what you would expect from the manga you know and love? Oh, hey, wait. This says it's CLAMP, sure... but it's CLAMP dressed in drag. It's CLAMP with testicles. It's CLAMP with a big hairy chest. It's a CLAMP that slaps you on the ass and tells you to go get some more coffee, sugartits. Basically, what I'm saying is that it's pretty fucking shounen for CLAMP. Allow me to point to some examples:

Kanoe's giant knockers. Sure, they're big in the manga, but, wow, those are some serious slutty yumemi boobs there.
Satuski's jiggly, jiggly boobies. Yeah, sure, she's fifteen, whatever you say, boys.
Sorata's giant muscles. Sure, he's brawny for a CLAMP guy, but he's got freakishly huge arms in the movie. I mean, freakishly.
Kusanagi. Come on . He's a pussycat in the manga, and certainly not the kind of pussycat that puts cigarettes out on any bodyparts.
Yuzuriha's panties. You only see 'em for a second, but they're there. Which leads one to wonder why we weren't Arashi-flashed, too, but the answer is probably that she would have kicked all of our asses first.
Kanoe groping Kotori. Which was just kind of creepy, really. But, hey, dude, lesbians.
And, of course, the main, giant, flashing, indicator: THE COMPLETE AND TOTAL LACK OF GAY.

What is CLAMP without the gay? I mean, it's pretty much on every page in the manga. You have to squint to find the heterosexuality. If you don't read Japanese, you can just go through and fill in the text bubbles with "gay gay gay, gay gay gay gay! Homosexual! gay gay!"

But then there's the movie. The movie which kills Subaru and Seishirou (GaaAAaaay!) in about five minutes. The movie that left out Kakyou entirely, presumably because he just looked a bit too girly. All right, logically, those three got shafted because at the time of the movie's release, they either hadn't been introduced or explained in the manga, or they would take up too much precious limb-hacking time to explain. But this is still the movie that just has Fuuma twitching and performing lots and lots of acts of violence, instead of what we've come to expect from him, namely twitching, performing lots and lots of acts of violence, and nibbling and fondling Kamui.

Add that all together and you have one big, bloody, dripping, shounen piece of quality comedy. If you're looking for a movie with a lot of good fight scenes, you're good. If you're looking for a movie with tits in the first five minutes, you're good. If you're looking for a movie that kills Kotori not just once or twice, but four times, you're good. If you're looking for a movie that's horribly confusing and would have made an assload more sense if they'd made one of those damn winged Kamui's a Fuuma, you're good. If you're looking for a movie that pretty much introduces characters for the sole purpose of killing them, you're good. If you're looking for a movie that doesn't really particularly seem to know what it's doing or where it's going, but it knows damn well that it's going to make a mess doing it, you're golden, bubby.

Or you could spend that hour and a half with the manga. But then you wouldn't get the pleasure of hearing Fuuma's head sing the closing theme. Forever love, Fuuma. Forever.

X-Men is a paradoxical big budget sci-fi film as its best moments are not the large visual spectacular but the instead it's the film's smaller character moments. After all, it's hard to get excited by the giant electromagnetic wave set off by Magneto which changes people into mutants because, well, mostly because it doesn't make any sense (that and the effect is only so-so on its own). The scenes where Wolverine shows his paternal-like care for Rogue however read extremely well.

Of course, this is mostly because Hugh Jackman plays Wolverine as a rich, deep character. They could've cast someone who fought better (although Jackman does a good job with the brawling) but I doubt they could've cast anyone who could've embodied the animalistic-human diachotomy that Wolverine embodies. Of course Jackman, isn't the only good actor in the film. Shakespearean actors Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen devour every scene they're in (the only real disappointment is Halle Berry who's Storm feels flat and lifeless... with a horrible wig to boot).

X-Men is full of small moments, good decisions by the actors. Look at the disdainful way Magneto says out "land of tolerance, land of hope." Or when Rogue and Wolverine are talking in his camper, she says, "something happens when people touch my skin... they get hurt." Jackman responds with a small nod and an eyebrow raised as he says "fair enough." It's a small triumph, I admit but it is symptamatic of the caliber of Jackman's acting.

The film doesn't just have good acting, the fight scenes are top notch. Ray Park actually makes the Toad cool, something Marvel's been trying to do for more than than three decades with little success. Instead of being a grovling lickboot, he is spry and dangerous. As I said earlier, Jackman does a good job as Wolverine engaging in a bit of fisticuffs. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, who I doubt was hired for her acting skills, did a good of making Mystique a formidable opponent. I must give props to the fight cheorographer for his good job of coming up with different fighting styles for each character based on each person's power and personality.

I must admit I was a little disappointed by Tyler Mane's Sabertooth. Not for anything he did really, more of the direction the filmmakers chose to go with the character. I prefer him to be a mix between a rapid bear and Hannibal Lecter. He is savage but he is also intelligent, and it is his intelligence which makes his savagery all the more terrifying. Instead they just emphasized his beast-like nature, making him a dumb brute. He is scary and intimidating but not nearly as mcuh as his comic book counterpart who would not only kill his victims but destroy their lives in front of them (i.e. kill friends and family, destory homes, et cetera).

All in all, this is one of the better comic book films. I still remember how long I'd been looking forward to it (there had been talk of this movie in form or another pretty much the entire time I'd been reading comics) and I wasn't disappointed in the slightest. Even if the film has some problems (and it does) it's still a great movie on its own and even better the more X-Men lore you know.

Marvel's Epic Comics has made a liar out of me. Just recently I was bragging about how cool Marvel was, how hip and edgy. They were taking a chance, trying to find new talent. What they were attempting truly was... well, epic. Now, they've shut their door to new submissions due to the large quantity that they've already received (if they didn't think they were going to get flooded then they were seriously naive).

What about the few people who already were accepted? Well, they will get their stories published in a large quarterly anthology collecting the four comics. Well, the creators are not happy about this change of events. Mike Sangiacomo and Mitch Breitweiser, the creators behind Phantom Jack have resecured the rights to their comic and are taking it to Image, which appears once again as the haven for unhappy Marvel creators.

Now, in Marvel's defense, I think they are doing something that is on the verge of being brilliant. Someone needs to publish a large anthology of new rotating talent. It's a way to get new writers and artists exposure without risking an absurd amount of money. Also, if one of the books garners attention, it'd raise the profile of everyone involved. But it does more than make finiacial sense to the publisher, it also makes sense to the consumer who is getting more bang for their buck. The reader can get four or even five stories for the price of two.

I do think that Marvel has made a few mistakes in carrying out their plan, though. First off, they didn't the creators of the plan up front which makes it look like it's a fallback plan and that they don't have any faith in their product (the sad truth probably is that this is a fallback plan and that they don't have any faith in their product). It just makes the books reek of failure. If Marvel had announced this plan from the beginning, everyone would've been fine with it.

Their second mistake was to make it a quarterly anthology that will only have a second issue if the first one makes a decided profit. The only way for this type of project to succeed is with a lot of work. Marvel's gonna have to make this an ongoing monthly and put all their weight behind it or it just won't work.

At this point it comes off like Marvel's doing this just so that they can say that they gave it a try.