‘X-Men 97’ Is A Perfect Reboot

For comic book, sci-fi or fantasy nerds of a certain age, it often feels like none of the beloved franchises from our youth are sacrosanct these days. Every sacred cow is ripe for the IP slaughter, and so each time they announce some “new” show on a streaming service, there’s a good bet that it’s going to be some cringeworthy and unnecessary “refresh” of a popular movie or series from the 1980s or 90s. Case in point, two of the biggest films to hit theaters this season are (checks notes)…Dune and Ghostbusters. Hence, when Marvel/Disney told the world that they were going to trot out X-Men 97, a new millennium version of X-Men: The Animated Series, which ran on Saturday mornings from 1992-1997, it rightfully scared fans. They’ve done us so dirty so many times, could this possibly be any different?

The answer is a merciful, resounding YES. Rare in the tide of rotten retreads does a network or streaming service get the reboot thing so wonderfully right, it’s kind of astonishing. X-Men 97, now streaming on Disney +, isn’t a hacky trotting out of a revered franchise. Rather, it’s a genuine and lovingly crafted continuation of the series, picking up exactly where the fifth season left us three years before Y2K, only with slicker animation and a slightly longer run-time per episode. It is, in almost every way, the series so many of us dearly loved, with a fresh coat of paint and some neat tricks up its sleeve.

It’s been almost three decades since we last left the animated X-Men mansion, so if you’ve forgotten a few of the plot points, that’s understandable. I can’t remember where I left my reading glasses most of the time. Also, those plot points are numerous and often absolutely bonkers, seeing that the original series tended to careen wildly from sci-fi trope to sci-fi trope, which was a big part of the fun. Picking up the thread from the end of season five, Charles “Professor X” Xavier has departed this world, meaning that he is either dead or on a distant planet, possibly both.

Either way, the X-Men now find themselves understandably rudderless and in need of leadership, with Cyclops stepping into the Professor’s role and doing a competent if not an amazing job at it. That might have something to do with the fact that his wife, the telekinetic Jean Gray, is now pregnant and Wolverine still hasn’t quite stopped pining for her. Still, the core group is mostly there, including fan favorites Beast, Storm, Jubilee, Rogue, Morph and Gambit, among others. Gambit, by the way, still has the worst Cajun accent in the history of film and TV, and yes, that includes Wilford Brimley in Hard Target.

The first episode of the new season gives us some familiar narrative territory for our superpowered team, namely a group of emboldened anti-mutant humans hoping to kill, imprison or enslave anyone with a whiff of a mutation, using some tech borrowed from classic X-Men baddies, the Sentinels. The episode gives us a fun and friendly reintroduction to the characters, their powers and weaknesses, their mission, their messy personal lives, some classic cheesy quips and a lot of truly fun action. Doing this in a single episode is no easy feat, but smart writing and splendid animation make dipping back into this world easy and exciting. And of course we get a sweet twist at the end, when we learn that the Professor’s last act before leaving the planet was to tap none other than arch-mutant Magneto to take over the team in his stead.

Episode two further explores this new leadership change, with the X-Men naturally distrustful of Magneto’s vow to continue his best friend’s work and use the power of mutantkind for good rather than his standard modus operandi of attempting to subjugate humanity. It seems he’s true to his word, and they give us a magnificent scene of Magneto on trial at the U.N. explaining in no uncertain terms how and why humans and mutants should coexist in harmony. It’s one of the most important themes in the history of of the franchise: the persecution of a minority group for daring to be born a bit different, which once more resonates deeply when Magneto, a Holocaust survivor, explains it, even though that explanation drips with resentment and condescension.

It’s a terrific set piece that culminates in a thrilling action sequence, when the “Friends of Humanity” storm the capitol, leaving the feared mutant team to once again defend humans, although their efforts are not without cost, leaving one of the most powerful X-Men without their powers. The first two installment treat us to all the weighty moral and philosophical complexities that made the original five seasons such a success. Oh, and there’s yet another twist ending, this time involving the pregnant Jean Gray, who may or may not be who she thinks she is.

The real treat, however, comes with episode three, a fantastically beautiful and terrifying installment that  trades the traditional political themes for Cronenbergian body horror and trippy psychological mind-fuckery. Based directly on the Jean Gray/Madeline Pryor storyline from the comics, the episode works not only to hark back to one of the wildest arcs from the source material, but it also serves to truly show off how far the animation has come in the past 27 years. The epic, nightmarish world that takes over the X-Men’s minds courtesy of Mister Sinister is literally dripping with flesh and grotesqueries, and I, for one, am one hundred percent here for it.

To be fair, the series has a few minor flaws, but only uber-nerds will nitpick them from their podcast caves somewhere. Personally, I would have loved a few more fun 90s cultural references. Regardless, we should still consider  X-Men 97 the paradigm of how a media entity can successfully mine a beloved franchise for new content.

They gave us everything we loved about the original–the characters, the themes, the animation style, much of the original voice cast, and an updated version of the absolutely bangin’ theme song–while modernizing it just enough to make it feel contemporary. So rarely does a film or series thread the needle of nostalgia and novelty so successfully, it’s almost shocking. X-Men 97 is both old and new, a beautiful, dark phoenix reborn from the ashes of a series created in a world that was just waking up to the promises and perils of the Internet.