TheVictoriousV
Joined Sep 2008
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In an age where a great many animated TV shows are given the closure they never quite got when they first aired (from Samurai Jack to Clone High), it figures that, since we still somehow aren't sick to death of superheroes, it would eventually happen to 1992's X-Men: The Animated Series.
Released around the same time as Bruce Timm's Batman series, this was a show that ushered in a new era of darker and heavier superhero cartoons when most were accustomed to the tone of something like Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends or Ninja Turtles. Alas, beloved though it was, it ended on a cliffhanger -- one that only now, 27 years later, gets resolved.
The announcement of X-Men '97 made me cautiously optimistic; intrigued but wary. And when we eventually saw that the final product looked more like Invincible and less like Marvel's What If...? (few of us expected a properly 2D-animated show), I became hopeful. Most of the characters looked right, many of the old voice actors were back, the Ron Wasserman theme music went as hard as ever, and, get this, the show seemed to understand that Cyclops is the leader of the group -- now with even more on his plate following the passing of Professor Charles Xavier -- and that Wolverine isn't the main character.
In the first episodes alone, they managed to understand the Cyclops character better -- while making far cooler use of his optic blasts -- than Fox's movies ever did. The show quickly made me realize just how much those films were lacking in terms of what I once adored about this crew of heroes: Beast quoting literature while kicking ass, Storm being a fearsome mentor, Rogue NOT being an angsty teenager, and of course, Wolverine being short, smelly, and unpleasant instead of an Australian Broadway hunk.
Hell, some elements of the show are spot-on precisely because of how "bad" they are, namely the sometimes stiff animation, the odd pacing, and the very "Saturday Morning" dialogue (there's even a "...NOT!" joke). The digital drawings do look a little too clean, which results in more distractingly stiff moments; it's never as charming as the old hand-drawn images. But the action is often spectacular (in choreography as well as speed and sound design) and the themes are handled in a way that works for the temporal setting while evoking modern equivalencies -- MAGA rioters, Jan6, etc. -- in ways that make sense. The stories being adapted are fairly old; nonetheless, their themes resonate just as much today, if not more. The personal drama is just as potent, and while I ragged on the character animation earlier, the coloring and shading intensify the drama something fierce.
And in some ways, I do understand people who feared that this reboot would be, maybe not "suddenly progressive-minded" -- there is nothing sudden about it -- but more didactically, preachily, and simplistically so. As it should, however, X-Men '97 regards issues of injustice and equality in mature terms -- certainly more so than 2021's The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or the throwaway lines about rich white men in Harley Quinn.
Most importantly, it treats the debates between Xavier and Magneto in a manner where we understand both perspectives; both methodologies. A flashback scene between the two includes one of my favorite lines in the series, where Magneto scrutinizes humanity's unwillingness to get better: "They're already the best everything. Best tribe. Best faith. They even fight over who is the best victim."
In an age where more and more people are growing weary of superheroes, X-Men '97 serves to remind us what it is we love -- or used to love -- about these stories and what it is that, for the longest time, has either been missing or been shoddily replicated (not just because men in tights will always look a little silly in live-action, hence why the first-ever X-Men film sheepishly went for black leather instead of colorful spandex, and yes, there is a joke about that in one episode). Hell, this show even seemed to steal all the attention away from Season 2 of Invincible (once regarded as the best and cleverest superhero show of its era), which is no small feat. As tired as we get of both superhero stories and reboots, it's always a joy to see both done right.
Released around the same time as Bruce Timm's Batman series, this was a show that ushered in a new era of darker and heavier superhero cartoons when most were accustomed to the tone of something like Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends or Ninja Turtles. Alas, beloved though it was, it ended on a cliffhanger -- one that only now, 27 years later, gets resolved.
The announcement of X-Men '97 made me cautiously optimistic; intrigued but wary. And when we eventually saw that the final product looked more like Invincible and less like Marvel's What If...? (few of us expected a properly 2D-animated show), I became hopeful. Most of the characters looked right, many of the old voice actors were back, the Ron Wasserman theme music went as hard as ever, and, get this, the show seemed to understand that Cyclops is the leader of the group -- now with even more on his plate following the passing of Professor Charles Xavier -- and that Wolverine isn't the main character.
In the first episodes alone, they managed to understand the Cyclops character better -- while making far cooler use of his optic blasts -- than Fox's movies ever did. The show quickly made me realize just how much those films were lacking in terms of what I once adored about this crew of heroes: Beast quoting literature while kicking ass, Storm being a fearsome mentor, Rogue NOT being an angsty teenager, and of course, Wolverine being short, smelly, and unpleasant instead of an Australian Broadway hunk.
Hell, some elements of the show are spot-on precisely because of how "bad" they are, namely the sometimes stiff animation, the odd pacing, and the very "Saturday Morning" dialogue (there's even a "...NOT!" joke). The digital drawings do look a little too clean, which results in more distractingly stiff moments; it's never as charming as the old hand-drawn images. But the action is often spectacular (in choreography as well as speed and sound design) and the themes are handled in a way that works for the temporal setting while evoking modern equivalencies -- MAGA rioters, Jan6, etc. -- in ways that make sense. The stories being adapted are fairly old; nonetheless, their themes resonate just as much today, if not more. The personal drama is just as potent, and while I ragged on the character animation earlier, the coloring and shading intensify the drama something fierce.
And in some ways, I do understand people who feared that this reboot would be, maybe not "suddenly progressive-minded" -- there is nothing sudden about it -- but more didactically, preachily, and simplistically so. As it should, however, X-Men '97 regards issues of injustice and equality in mature terms -- certainly more so than 2021's The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or the throwaway lines about rich white men in Harley Quinn.
Most importantly, it treats the debates between Xavier and Magneto in a manner where we understand both perspectives; both methodologies. A flashback scene between the two includes one of my favorite lines in the series, where Magneto scrutinizes humanity's unwillingness to get better: "They're already the best everything. Best tribe. Best faith. They even fight over who is the best victim."
In an age where more and more people are growing weary of superheroes, X-Men '97 serves to remind us what it is we love -- or used to love -- about these stories and what it is that, for the longest time, has either been missing or been shoddily replicated (not just because men in tights will always look a little silly in live-action, hence why the first-ever X-Men film sheepishly went for black leather instead of colorful spandex, and yes, there is a joke about that in one episode). Hell, this show even seemed to steal all the attention away from Season 2 of Invincible (once regarded as the best and cleverest superhero show of its era), which is no small feat. As tired as we get of both superhero stories and reboots, it's always a joy to see both done right.
This is the only episode I've seen of the new batch so far, but I'm comfortable saying the season is a "return to disturbing form" for this show.
I've joked before that Black Mirror is becoming an increasingly unnecessary show in a world where nothing these writers come up with could hold a candle to some of the things that have started happening in reality -- the things people actually do with technology now, including letting it do creative expression for them. Dystopian sci-fi satire doesn't hit as hard when we live in a time of suicide pods, gamepad submarines designed to take billionaires on vacation to the Titanic wreckage, apps in place of girlfriends (or even friends), pop stars going to space (!) for fun while others barely make ends meet, and the IDF making wholesome anime AI art of itself.
That said, I think the latest season is a step up from the previous one (with its weird werewolf story and its poorly acted, toothless critique of Netflix and AI entertainment), starting strong on what feels like a decently believable "not-too-distant future" where companies have found a way to effectively make life itself into a subscription streaming service, through a procedure that puts the personhood of a dying patient on a hard drive and then "streams" the consciousness -- for a price, of course -- to a brain implant that replaces the malfunctioning bits. As you'd expect, the service eventually sneaks in price changes, extra costs, and even ads, as per the TOS fine print.
Episodes like this make me rethink my stance: Black Mirror has the potential to hit even harder than before, its dark futures/reflections seeming more realistic than they ever did.
We'll see if the rest of the season is up to par or if it continues to pale in comparison to real life. When a bunch of tech bros took to Twitter and started talking about how nice it'd be if we had a "White Mirror" that talks about how GOOD technology and AI can be for everyone, Charlie Brooker no doubt kicked himself over the fact that he didn't come up with the premise of an AI apologist getting angry at Black Mirror and asking ChatGPT to make White Mirror for him.
I've joked before that Black Mirror is becoming an increasingly unnecessary show in a world where nothing these writers come up with could hold a candle to some of the things that have started happening in reality -- the things people actually do with technology now, including letting it do creative expression for them. Dystopian sci-fi satire doesn't hit as hard when we live in a time of suicide pods, gamepad submarines designed to take billionaires on vacation to the Titanic wreckage, apps in place of girlfriends (or even friends), pop stars going to space (!) for fun while others barely make ends meet, and the IDF making wholesome anime AI art of itself.
That said, I think the latest season is a step up from the previous one (with its weird werewolf story and its poorly acted, toothless critique of Netflix and AI entertainment), starting strong on what feels like a decently believable "not-too-distant future" where companies have found a way to effectively make life itself into a subscription streaming service, through a procedure that puts the personhood of a dying patient on a hard drive and then "streams" the consciousness -- for a price, of course -- to a brain implant that replaces the malfunctioning bits. As you'd expect, the service eventually sneaks in price changes, extra costs, and even ads, as per the TOS fine print.
Episodes like this make me rethink my stance: Black Mirror has the potential to hit even harder than before, its dark futures/reflections seeming more realistic than they ever did.
We'll see if the rest of the season is up to par or if it continues to pale in comparison to real life. When a bunch of tech bros took to Twitter and started talking about how nice it'd be if we had a "White Mirror" that talks about how GOOD technology and AI can be for everyone, Charlie Brooker no doubt kicked himself over the fact that he didn't come up with the premise of an AI apologist getting angry at Black Mirror and asking ChatGPT to make White Mirror for him.
Video game movies aren't ever going to get better. I think this is abundantly clear from the way audiences vote with their wallet -- and continue to defend even the dumbest, laziest, most formulated slop on the grounds that it happens to remind them of other products that they like.
When I reviewed The Super Mario Bros. Movie, my criticisms were fairly mild; even as I filed it as a negative review, I was ultimately pleased with how sincere it came off at times. Yet, this was enough for net objections from fanboys who explained to me all the references I didn't get (those always make a movie better) and branded me a biased film critic who hates gaming.
I let it slide because I didn't think the Mario film was that bad -- I find it perfectly "defensible". But when I saw a similar level of defensiveness over the atrocious Five Nights and Freddy's and now A Minecraft Movie, I realized that we may not be seeing any betterment in the much-maligned category of "video game adaptations" any time soon. (The only game movies that spring to mind where the Audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is as rotten as the Critic Score are Borderlands and The Angry Birds Movie, and even then, the audience scores aren't abysmal.) No matter how bad something is, gamers will largely be pleased, accusing critics of holding a bias toward video games and the movies they inspire.
Funnily enough, video game adaptations seem to do more than fine, review-wise, in episodic TV form. The ratings for things like Arcane, Fallout, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and The Last of Us speak a plain language -- and also utterly shred the idea that the movies get panned purely because critics have it out for your little computer games. What have the people involved with streaming-site shows figured out that big-studio filmmakers have not? And why do audiences not seem to want them to?
I wasn't really planning on joining in on the Minecraft Movie discourse. I care very little about video games to begin with, and my only relationship with this one is that my baby brother was hellbent on playing it on the computer I always wanted/needed to use for other things (I can't remember what) when I was younger, so you can imagine why a film based on this particular game didn't exactly tickle my fancy. On paper, I shouldn't give a single sh* t, yet morbid curiosity -- brought on by the sheer volume of flabbergasted reviews and just as flabbergasted accounts of what it's like to see this film in a theater full of people -- got the better of me once again. And as it turns out, the movie wasn't as bad as I feared. It isn't good, no, but... there's something to it some of the time:
The film is a fairly standard adventure, albeit one that sometimes suggests the same "We don't care how silly this is" attitude as the Barbie movie -- a film that succeeds at being self-aware without being self-conscious. By and large, however, they treat its source material with the same irony and cynicism that's become commonplace in pop culture. There are also moments when they don't seem to know why, exactly, the silly things are silly. This film contains words like "unalive" and "chungus" -- something tells me the writers believed, correctly, that movie-goers would laugh at that, just not for the reasons they did laugh.
We get Jack Black saying "I am Steve", name-dropping the word "Minecraft" (it's an IRL "Morbin' time"), and several other meme moments that reportedly inspired uproarious applause and shouting at more crowded screenings than the one in my CamRip. To Black's credit, he seems to be having a hoot at every turn. I shall also admit that the idea for the CG designs is an interesting one, although the result doesn't always look especially pleasant.
I should note that not everyone in the Minecraft fandom is forgiving towards the film. Apparently there are several offensive errors in terms of how things are designed and constructed (I've heard one kid explain that our heroes also learn how to build "unrealistically" fast), and the power levels of the Enderman character are inaccurate, I guess. Regardless, it obviously makes sense that this film would be a mega-hit; I don't think it's fair, as some Film Twitter-ers seem to do, to pin the box office numbers on those who swear by this film as a new so-bad-it's-good masterpiece and go see it as a joke. (I, too, would've preferred if they had turned it into another Morbius scenario but it's too late for any of that.)
I do think it knows what it's doing -- what it is -- more than the "so bad it's good" label suggests, but much of it is indeed laughable rather than funny; to be laughed AT rather than WITH. Do as you please with this movie. If you need me, I'll be hyping the new Last of Us season.
When I reviewed The Super Mario Bros. Movie, my criticisms were fairly mild; even as I filed it as a negative review, I was ultimately pleased with how sincere it came off at times. Yet, this was enough for net objections from fanboys who explained to me all the references I didn't get (those always make a movie better) and branded me a biased film critic who hates gaming.
I let it slide because I didn't think the Mario film was that bad -- I find it perfectly "defensible". But when I saw a similar level of defensiveness over the atrocious Five Nights and Freddy's and now A Minecraft Movie, I realized that we may not be seeing any betterment in the much-maligned category of "video game adaptations" any time soon. (The only game movies that spring to mind where the Audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is as rotten as the Critic Score are Borderlands and The Angry Birds Movie, and even then, the audience scores aren't abysmal.) No matter how bad something is, gamers will largely be pleased, accusing critics of holding a bias toward video games and the movies they inspire.
Funnily enough, video game adaptations seem to do more than fine, review-wise, in episodic TV form. The ratings for things like Arcane, Fallout, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and The Last of Us speak a plain language -- and also utterly shred the idea that the movies get panned purely because critics have it out for your little computer games. What have the people involved with streaming-site shows figured out that big-studio filmmakers have not? And why do audiences not seem to want them to?
I wasn't really planning on joining in on the Minecraft Movie discourse. I care very little about video games to begin with, and my only relationship with this one is that my baby brother was hellbent on playing it on the computer I always wanted/needed to use for other things (I can't remember what) when I was younger, so you can imagine why a film based on this particular game didn't exactly tickle my fancy. On paper, I shouldn't give a single sh* t, yet morbid curiosity -- brought on by the sheer volume of flabbergasted reviews and just as flabbergasted accounts of what it's like to see this film in a theater full of people -- got the better of me once again. And as it turns out, the movie wasn't as bad as I feared. It isn't good, no, but... there's something to it some of the time:
The film is a fairly standard adventure, albeit one that sometimes suggests the same "We don't care how silly this is" attitude as the Barbie movie -- a film that succeeds at being self-aware without being self-conscious. By and large, however, they treat its source material with the same irony and cynicism that's become commonplace in pop culture. There are also moments when they don't seem to know why, exactly, the silly things are silly. This film contains words like "unalive" and "chungus" -- something tells me the writers believed, correctly, that movie-goers would laugh at that, just not for the reasons they did laugh.
We get Jack Black saying "I am Steve", name-dropping the word "Minecraft" (it's an IRL "Morbin' time"), and several other meme moments that reportedly inspired uproarious applause and shouting at more crowded screenings than the one in my CamRip. To Black's credit, he seems to be having a hoot at every turn. I shall also admit that the idea for the CG designs is an interesting one, although the result doesn't always look especially pleasant.
I should note that not everyone in the Minecraft fandom is forgiving towards the film. Apparently there are several offensive errors in terms of how things are designed and constructed (I've heard one kid explain that our heroes also learn how to build "unrealistically" fast), and the power levels of the Enderman character are inaccurate, I guess. Regardless, it obviously makes sense that this film would be a mega-hit; I don't think it's fair, as some Film Twitter-ers seem to do, to pin the box office numbers on those who swear by this film as a new so-bad-it's-good masterpiece and go see it as a joke. (I, too, would've preferred if they had turned it into another Morbius scenario but it's too late for any of that.)
I do think it knows what it's doing -- what it is -- more than the "so bad it's good" label suggests, but much of it is indeed laughable rather than funny; to be laughed AT rather than WITH. Do as you please with this movie. If you need me, I'll be hyping the new Last of Us season.