How would we feel about this being the designs for the new animated series?

[AdamFTF]

I don't think that's really the case. I think the consensus leans towards most people wanting a modern but faithful adaptation. I don't think anyone really WANTS a young hero version... more just that some people were ok with it or didn't mind it with EVO.

No . . . I don't really want a young hero version because we already had one as a cartoon.

But I have been suggesting that's how they should introduce the X-Men to the MCU. Hey, they've got a shortage of teen heroes and it's a way to do the school without having to have a million background kids around. Just have Xavier as the teacher and the X-Men as the students.

But yeah, the X-Men is kind of this chimerical thing that goes in a million directions at once. It's a social justice metaphor and a coming-of-age story and a sci-fi/fantasy superhero book and a globe-trotting adventure book and a big, soapy melodrama. This is probably represented best by the fact that it's usually sold to people as a social justice metaphor yet its most famous story is the Dark Phoenix Saga, a story about one member's fall grace that features space opera aliens and set pieces and has absolutely jack-all to do with the racism/discrimination metaphor.

[superjosh]

No . . . I don't really want a young hero version because we already had one as a cartoon.

But I have been suggesting that's how they should introduce the X-Men to the MCU. Hey, they've got a shortage of teen heroes and it's a way to do the school without having to have a million background kids around. Just have Xavier as the teacher and the X-Men as the students.

X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix did the teen X-Men and... it was awful. I mean those movies were awful for many reasons, but it was not fun to see teen Jean and teen Cyclops. And teen Storm just has no appeal to me at all (except maybe a flashback to her thieving days). I don't think I want to see it again lol. I know I'm biased, but I remember when there were rumors that the studio mandated First Class to have a more "Twilight" appeal and a little part of me died.

But yeah, the X-Men is kind of this chimerical thing that goes in a million directions at once. It's a social justice metaphor and a coming-of-age story and a sci-fi/fantasy superhero book and a globe-trotting adventure book and a big, soapy melodrama. This is probably represented best by the fact that it's usually sold to people as a social justice metaphor yet its most famous story is the Dark Phoenix Saga, a story about one member's fall grace that features space opera aliens and set pieces and has absolutely jack-all to do with the racism/discrimination metaphor.

So another behind-the-scenes anecdote from TAS'92 was that the powers-that-be tried to veto the Sentinels story as the two-part pilot. They understandably wanted to introduce Magneto, but the showrunners fought back and wanted to establish a tone... they wanted to make sure they emphasized "the problem of human repression over mutant terrorism". They didn't want to make the X-Men "mutant policemen" or turn the show into a "Bad Mutant of the Week" type series. I think that was brilliant.

[Castle]

I forgot about emo Wanda! Honestly these cartoons really had me thinking she was a core X-Men character so I was shook when I stared reading the comics.

Because Wanda was best known for been the daughter of Magneto. Evolution capitalised on that and we see Wolverine and the X-Men take that further.

Outside of the Emo thing, she and rogue were the best female characters on the show.

I know it will never happen but I will have taken X-Men evolution season 5 above any new Disney XD X-Men cartoon series

[AdamFTF]

X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix did the teen X-Men and... it was awful. I mean those movies were awful for many reasons, but it was not fun to see teen Jean and teen Cyclops. And teen Storm just has no appeal to me at all (except maybe a flashback to her thieving days). I don't think I want to see it again lol. I know I'm biased, but I remember when there were rumors that the studio mandated First Class to have a more "Twilight" appeal and a little part of me died.

Those movies screwed up a lot of stuff. That doesn't mean it can't be done well. I just think it would be weird if they have a bunch of adults attending a boarding school. But I also would like to see a little more character economy than the Fox movies had with their school full of random-ass cameo students. Keep it small and tight with no sacrificial lambs or cannon fodder. Okay, so if they're going to do the school, could they maybe just make the student class smaller and leaner. Maybe it could just be a handful of New Mutants or Gen Xers rather than a million blink-and-you'll-miss-them cameos. Or maybe they could be somewhere other than the school like the Australia base or Graymalkin Industries (maybe not Krakoa. Krakoa would be a lot).

So another behind-the-scenes anecdote from TAS'92 was that the powers-that-be tried to veto the Sentinels story as the two-part pilot. They understandably wanted to introduce Magneto, but the showrunners fought back and wanted to establish a tone... they wanted to make sure they emphasized "the problem of human repression over mutant terrorism". They didn't want to make the X-Men "mutant policemen" or turn the show into a "Bad Mutant of the Week" type series. I think that was brilliant.

I know. I've read the book.

I do kind of worry that the franchise tends to treat non-mutants unilaterally as villains. With the exception of Moira MacTaggert who is, SURPRISE, not even a human these days. There have been other non-confrontational humans but they disappear from X-Men comics really freakin' easily. And the ones that tread the line very rarely appear at all. And thus, what should be a more complicated issue in this fictional world gets reduced down to mutants=good, humans=bad.

[Grunty]

Those movies screwed up a lot of stuff. That doesn't mean it can't be done well. I just think it would be weird if they have a bunch of adults attending a boarding school. But I also would like to see a little more character economy than the Fox movies had with their school full of random-ass cameo students. Keep it small and tight with no sacrificial lambs or cannon fodder. Okay, so if they're going to do the school, could they maybe just make the student class smaller and leaner. Maybe it could just be a handful of New Mutants or Gen Xers rather than a million blink-and-you'll-miss-them cameos. Or maybe they could be somewhere other than the school like the Australia base or Graymalkin Industries (maybe not Krakoa. Krakoa would be a lot).

One always has to keep in mind that a normal X-men cartoon show would not be aimed at the 25+ year old adult fans of the comics who have read a hundreds storylines and know the ins and out of the X-men history, where the school/academy aspect would be old and tired.

Not that an adult aimed X-men cartoon wouldn't be interesting, albeit less likely to be made (no toy sales).

The main target audience of super hero cartoons are still kids and young teenagers for whom a new show might be their first contact with the franchise beyond what they might have learned about X-men from pop culture. It's not just every comic, but also every cartoon incarnations which can be someones first. So the school/academy thing would still be new to them.

Of course that's not to say that a X-men cartoon needs to have a teenager focus or representation. Kids are often very well able to identitify with or just like grown up heros. All to often having characters in there who's only purpose is to cater to them, can actualy end up annoying them. Either they feel the character misrepresents them or they are just flat out annoying in general.

I do kind of worry that the franchise tends to treat non-mutants unilaterally as villains. With the exception of Moira MacTaggert who is, SURPRISE, not even a human these days. There have been other non-confrontational humans but they disappear from X-Men comics really freakin' easily. And the ones that tread the line very rarely appear at all. And thus, what should be a more complicated issue in this fictional world gets reduced down to mutants=good, humans=bad.

"X-men vs. the world" is a general theme, but it can feel weird to consider that a fictional counterpart of humanity (including counterparts of the reader/viewer) would be implied to be united against a fictional group of people and their heros.

Especialy once they exist in the same universe as other sets of heros who the reader/viewer is also rooting for as champions of the same humanity which is implied to be on the same page in hating/rejecting the other heros and their fellow super powered people.

They really need a healthy set of normal human allies as balance.

So another behind-the-scenes anecdote from TAS'92 was that the powers-that-be tried to veto the Sentinels story as the two-part pilot. They understandably wanted to introduce Magneto, but the showrunners fought back and wanted to establish a tone... they wanted to make sure they emphasized "the problem of human repression over mutant terrorism". They didn't want to make the X-Men "mutant policemen" or turn the show into a "Bad Mutant of the Week" type series. I think that was brilliant.

Personal opinion here. Despite being a fan of mechs in various media, i always felt the big purple Sentinels are one of the dumbest part of the X-men franchise. Even as a kid when i saw them in X-men TAS for the first time, they felt odd to me and i switched channel for the time being.

Besides not liking their design, i think another problem i had back then was that it felt so non-sensical for them to exist as main weapon against mutants, not only were they idiots in programming and largely inefficient against the actual powerfull mutants, they also destroyed so much property and if they can be mass produced in such numbers, shouldn't the entire world of the X-men be like a star trek future allready? (Again kids thoughts).

Human sized androids (see Batman TAS), smaller human piloted mechs (see Superman TAS), or people in power armor (see Iron Man) would have felt more appropiate to kid me as "anti-mutant" weapons.

I had less problem with the Spider-slayers in the Spiderman show meanwhile. Perhaps because the slayers were secretly produced by super villains as experiments, their presence was shown as a menance to the general public, they were relative compact compared to the Sentinels and we saw similar tech in the hands of big corperations like Oscorp which used remote controlled laser tanks.

[superjosh]

Those movies screwed up a lot of stuff. That doesn't mean it can't be done well. I just think it would be weird if they have a bunch of adults attending a boarding school. But I also would like to see a little more character economy than the Fox movies had with their school full of random-ass cameo students.

Late reply, I'm sure you've moved on from the discussion lol. Anyway, I liked that the movies implemented the school in a larger capacity. I think this actually inspired the comics in Morrison's run. In the MCU (or even a new animated series) I think I'd rather continue with the young'ns being these students and keep the main X-Men adults. Just my opinion. But I agree that they should be more careful with how they do cameos. The characters either need to be lead characters or straight-up cameos. It's the in-between characters that really ruin things (Juiblee in X2 and Apocalypse, Angel and Psylocke in X3 and Apocalypse, etc.)

I do kind of worry that the franchise tends to treat non-mutants unilaterally as villains.

I could go either way on this. I'm never a fan of throwing in a character that shows "Hey! They're not all bad!"; especially in movies about racial inequality where there's often a token "white savior" cringe type character. But you're right that it wouldn't hurt to show more allies just existing. I feel Claremont created the only really lasting ones. Moira, Stevie, Val Cooper to name a few.

One always has to keep in mind that a normal X-men cartoon show would not be aimed at the 25+ year old adult fans of the comics who have read a hundreds storylines and know the ins and out of the X-men history, where the school/academy aspect would be old and tired.

Not that an adult aimed X-men cartoon wouldn't be interesting, albeit less likely to be made (no toy sales).

The main target audience of super hero cartoons are still kids and young teenagers for whom a new show might be their first contact with the franchise beyond what they might have learned about X-men from pop culture. It's not just every comic, but also every cartoon incarnations which can be someones first. So the school/academy thing would still be new to them.

Of course that's not to say that a X-men cartoon needs to have a teenager focus or representation. Kids are often very well able to identitify with or just like grown up heros. All to often having characters in there who's only purpose is to cater to them, can actualy end up annoying them. Either they feel the character misrepresents them or they are just flat out annoying in general.

Interestingly, this is actually exactly what that the creators of X-Men: TAS addressed. They were against the "dumbing down" of their product because studio execs thought they knew what kids wanted. They proved that kids could be interested in a "serious" show so there really is no need to change much. The MCU characters are all adults and they sell merch like hotcakes.

Personal opinion here. Despite being a fan of mechs in various media, i always felt the big purple Sentinels are one of the dumbest part of the X-men franchise. Even as a kid when i saw them in X-men TAS for the first time, they felt odd to me and i switched channel for the time being.

Besides not liking their design, i think another problem i had back then was that it felt so non-sensical for them to exist as main weapon against mutants, not only were they idiots in programming and largely inefficient against the actual powerfull mutants, they also destroyed so much property and if they can be mass produced in such numbers, shouldn't the entire world of the X-men be like a star trek future allready? (Again kids thoughts).

Human sized androids (see Batman TAS), smaller human piloted mechs (see Superman TAS), or people in power armor (see Iron Man) would have felt more appropiate to kid me as "anti-mutant" weapons.

I'll grant you that the Sentinels were portrayed pretty ridiculously, but I think the creators made the right call with focusing on the oppression element first, and mutant terror second.

I totally agree with you on the human-sized androids thing! If I were to reboot the TAS'92 series, I would start with Operation Zero Tolerance with Bastion and his Prime Sentinels (or whatever they were). Kind of a throwback to Night of the Sentinels, but updated, modern, and a little more menacing. IMO a perfect jumping off point to hit all the greatest hits in one storyline and then expand from there!

[superjosh]

And some more official Marvel images from https://www.instagram.com/patrickbrownart/

Even Prof X's chair got a re-design!

patrickbrownart_123139655_972465406583717_8025857748115953483_n.jpgpatrickbrownart_124007398_132555728268981_8511218114895163635_n.jpgpatrickbrownart_123654057_781751979345831_8356310821662564650_n.jpg

I think Magneto's design is way over-designed. Looks kind of kinky even lol.

[superjosh]

The Hellfire Gala has made me think of old looks from the past... I've always hated Evolution's costumes and art, but Ivan Fiorelli's take on them have made me re-look at them and appreciate their simple and sleek aesthetic! Ivan manages to make the designs look surprisingly streamlined and sleek! Like the gala looks, they really do throwback to some essential design elements for each character.

[superjosh]