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'X-Men' at 25: The Unlikely Story of the Animated Hit No Network Wanted

HadesHotgun

HadesHotgun

Member
Oct 25, 2017
871
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/heat-vision/x-men-animated-series-story-90s-cartoon-hit-1052263

The Hollywood Reporter has a nice look back at the impact of the X-Men cartoon from the 90's.

This series is what got me in to comic books and I think it is one of the most important animated series or childrens' series to date.

I can't really think of any kids series that dealt with racism, sexism, and discrimination the way this show did. And it was unlike most other shows in going out of it's way to have a diverse cast with powerful female characters in prominent roles.

Also, it is worth remembering that this show helped make the X-Men crazy popular household names before the movies ever came out.
 
No Depth

No Depth

Member
Oct 27, 2017
18,294
Will read. Watched the show regularly during the early 90's and now 25 years later I am finally reading X-Men comics(going through Claremont's long run currently).

After I get through Dark Phoenix and DoFP, I kind of want to re-watch those episode arcs to compare.
 
JCG

JCG

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,537
Looking back, it's impressive how the show managed to be simultaneously very faithful to major storylines from the X-men comics (costume and roster changes aside) at its best while also doing some very weird and inexplicable things once you put each episode under the microscope. That's almost charming, in retrospect, and adds to the nostalgia value of the production. Mind you, I think I never really saw the last season of the series back in the day so my memory was mostly spared from the worst animated sequences.
 
dallow_bg

dallow_bg

Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,629
texas
Chris Potter, Gambit: I was in Toronto at the time filming a Kung-Fu series [Kung-Fu: The Legend Continues] with David Carradine, who was a big comic book fan. When he found out I was cast, he was really excited. I didn't know anything about X-Men at the time … The Cajun accent, I cobbled together, and they liked it enough to keep me around for the next five years.
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That's neat.
Good article!
 
UnpopularBlargh

UnpopularBlargh

Member
Oct 26, 2017
8,206
Haim Saban is "that" guy!
Eric Lewald: Haim Saban didn't own any of the property. He was getting a fee. Whether we spent $1 million making an episode or $200,000, he was getting a certain fee. If the budget went up, it came out of his pocket. So, from the beginning, he was looking to economize. Fox wanted the shows to be glorious and Marvel wanted them to be glorious. Saban was going, "I know you want a great show, but I'm not going to lose money on this thing. Let's keep costs down." For years, his reaction to just about any creative decision was, "What's that going to cost?"

Saban: The production of X-Men was so long ago that I can't even remember what type of budget was given to us by Fox or any of the cost challenges. What I do know, is that it all starts with the script. If you haven't crafted a compelling story with memorable and likable characters, it doesn't matter how big your budget is. Case in point: this year's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword which had a massive budget of over $175 million but didn't resonate with audiences and was a bomb at the box office. "If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage…regardless of the budget."
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Eric Lewald : The Hollywood normalcy is you provide a number one hit and the money starts flowing. What happened with us was we had a number one hit, but it was four or five companies working on this. One of them was Saban. What he did after the first season was cut $500 off the script fee for the writers.

Julia Lewald: Me being one of the writers.

Eric Lewald: His rationale was, "it's a hit. They want to be part of it, so they'll take less money."

JuliaLewald: "And if not, there's a line out the door of people who will."
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RiZ IV

RiZ IV

Member
Oct 27, 2017
803
Favorite cartoon growing up. I can honestly say its portrayal of discrimination and persecution made a big impact on my 12 year old brain. Also, aside from the first season, I think it still holds up very well.
 
Himynameischris

Himynameischris

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,617
Had no idea it was that big of a hit, kinda reminds me of how Married with Children helped out fox when it was first starting out

Eric Lewald: There was incredible pressure to change it around and make it younger, sillier, or give them a pet dog. To dumb it down or make it younger. Luckily, everybody on the creative side banded together and had, "No, you'll have to fire me" moments. [Marvel would say], "Put toys in or give Wolverine some Wolverine curtains." "No we're not going to do that." If you were a 30-something serious defender of right and justice in your world, would you be wearing pajamas of yourself or would you be calling yourself on your Wolverine phone? No, you wouldn't. He's a serious guy. This is not a toy show. Sorry. "You'll have to fire me to change it."
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That's awesome
 
Medalion

Medalion

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
12,203
I have this show to thank for my love of the X-Men, but the movies also solidified it further
I thank them for showing me the Dark Phoenix saga instead of the abomination of X3 and Apocalypse
 
Namiks

Namiks

Permanently banned for usage of an alt-account.
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
274
I really do not like superhero stuff, but I always love hearing these little BTS stories; and how something managed to improve the lives of others.
 
TheMirai

TheMirai

Member
Oct 28, 2017
151
JCG said:
Looking back, it's impressive how the show managed to be simultaneously very faithful to major storylines from the X-men comics (costume and roster changes aside) at its best while also doing some very weird and inexplicable things once you put each episode under the microscope. That's almost charming, in retrospect, and adds to the nostalgia value of the production. Mind you, I think I never really saw the last season of the series back in the day so my memory was mostly spared from the worst animated sequences.
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It's exactly as baffling as you think it was.

I think it was Chris Sims over at CA (RIP) who talked about how it's both incredibly, obsessively fixated on what was happening in comics and what were the biggest storylines of all of X-Men history...but it also does all of them astonishingly (heyo) poorly and changes huge swaths of it in ways that are weird. The Dark Phoenix saga even aired out of order, so Jean just cold dies then the next episode nobody even mentions the insane space adventure or the new Phoenix powers, the ending of her death is just "oh no she's fine, everyone just do a Care Bear stare." Entire character arcs appear and disappear, Ms. Marvel shows up and everyone's like "oh yeah that's who Rogue stole her powers from" and Rogue makes peace with this character she nearly killed that we've never heard of.

I compliment it for its ambition but it pales real badly in comparison to Batman, which has aged beautifully and aired the same year.
 
Mr_Black

Mr_Black

Banned for having an alt account
Member
Oct 27, 2017
969
X-Men cartoon was great until the latter seasons where some voice actors changed.

Apocalypse was so well executed.

Apocalypse Arc, Savage Lands Arc, The Mutant Vs Centurion arcs. Amazing shit.

Best animated cartoon of the 90s? Sure, it's up there.
 

lupinko

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,154
Definitive X-Men voices and Catherine Disher did get her chance to play Storm from X-Men COTA to MvC2.

It's also how Capcom got Alyson Court to play Claire for all those years and how she worked for Capcom as a producer iirc since she named all the X5 Mavericks in the English localization.
 
Keldroc

Keldroc

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,987
I was a huge X-Men fan from the comics when this started, and I remember being completely floored by how legit it was. All the other comic book cartoons were silly puppet show adaptations that only vaguely resembled the source material and then suddenly here's this show straight up telling the great story arcs from the comics with a pretty decent success rate. A lot of stuff was different but they got the tone right, which had never happened with a Marvel show ever, and had only happened with Batman: The Animated series two months before X-Men premiered. B:TAS has aged waaaaaaaay better but X-Men will always have a special place.
 
GallianGeneral

GallianGeneral

Member
Oct 25, 2017
185
Loved this series growing up, the opening theme is iconic.

However, the series has not aged well, I prefer X-Men Evolution
 
AnansiThePersona

AnansiThePersona

Started a revolution but the mic was unplugged
Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,682
I was born after this show was big so I wasn't exposed to it outside the opening and out of context clips on Youtube. Also the dub overs lol
 

Deleted member 19003

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,809
Alright you egg sucking piece of guttertrash!

Best clean insult of all time, lol. Loved this show, was my childhood.
 
thefit

thefit

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,243
There is an anime ending credits that ran a few times in the US but I cant find it. Shit was epic.
 
ThanksgivingDinner

ThanksgivingDinner

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,142
Loved the show as a kid. I re-watched it a while back and it didn't hold up well. I'm not sure if anyone could watch it and love it now (on a first viewing) as much as I did when it was originally airing.
 
Killthee

Killthee

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,169
davepoobond said:
why dont i remember the show looking like this?
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Cause it didn't. The JP dub got a localized opening, but the actual episodes never looked like that.

X-Men originally aired on TV Tokyo from 1994 through 1995. For the TV Tokyo dub of the series, the intro was replaced with a new, Japanese-animated sequence as well as a new theme called "Rising" (ライジング), by the band Ambience (アンビエンス). Starting with episode 42, a second new intro was used, featuring the song "Dakishimetai Dare Yori Mo" (抱きしめたい誰よりも…). The end credits sequence was also changed: it featured shots of American X-Men comic books set to the song "Back to You" (バック･トウ･ユー), also by Ambience.

The TV Tokyo dub was directed by Yoshikazu Iwanami and featured scripts rewritten to include a more humorous, self-satirical tone as well as an emphasis on comical adlibbing (a hallmark of Iwanami's dubbing style). Episodes were edited for time so that new segments could be added to the end which promoted the X-Men: Children of the Atom video game from Capcom. The dub actors would pretend to play the game as their characters and make humorous asides and remarks. X-Men was dubbed a second time in the early 2000s for broadcast on Toon Disney (Japan). This dub was more faithful to the original English scripts and episodes were not cut for time. The Toon Disney version used the original American intro and end credits rather than the unique ones created for the TV Tokyo version.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men_(TV_series)#Other_versions
 
Knight613

Knight613

Member
Oct 25, 2017
20,785
San Francisco
X-Men cartoons were like Marvel's golden goose back in the day.

X-Men TAS, X-Men Evolution, and Wolverine and the X-Men.

All were pretty decent to good shows that unfortunately didn't continue to go on longer.
 
SatoAilDarko

SatoAilDarko

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,824
The reason why I have no interest in other Marvel vs. Capcom games other than 2.

hqdefault.jpg


Loved the cartoon character designs and voices.
 
Shauni

Shauni

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,728
TheMirai said:
It's exactly as baffling as you think it was.

I think it was Chris Sims over at CA (RIP) who talked about how it's both incredibly, obsessively fixated on what was happening in comics and what were the biggest storylines of all of X-Men history...but it also does all of them astonishingly (heyo) poorly and changes huge swaths of it in ways that are weird. The Dark Phoenix saga even aired out of order, so Jean just cold dies then the next episode nobody even mentions the insane space adventure or the new Phoenix powers, the ending of her death is just "oh no she's fine, everyone just do a Care Bear stare." Entire character arcs appear and disappear, Ms. Marvel shows up and everyone's like "oh yeah that's who Rogue stole her powers from" and Rogue makes peace with this character she nearly killed that we've never heard of.

I compliment it for its ambition but it pales real badly in comparison to Batman, which has aged beautifully and aired the same year.
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About how I feel about it, too
 
TheDestructiveSquirrel

TheDestructiveSquirrel

Member
Oct 25, 2017
27,856
Sorry for the DP but this quote is interesting

Houston: Some of my favorite easter eggs [in the show] were the unexpected ones that I added for the fans, like Doctor Strange, Deadpool, the Black Panther, all of whom are now superstars in their own feature films. I never added cameos if it distracted from the main story. … The powers that be did stop me from adding a Spider-Man cameo though, so I had to sneak him into another episode, but it was just an arm, shooting webbing to save someone off-camera from falling debris. I never asked for official permission again and I never stopped adding cameos. … That first season, we were operating way below the radar of everyone's concern, unproven, not a hit yet, which was the best place to be, for all of us involved.
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I need to see these easter eggs....Deadpool?!?
 
Temp_User

Temp_User

Member
Oct 30, 2017
4,702
Good cartoon series. Wish it had the same $500,000 per episode budget as the WB's produced DC cartoons though but for what its worth, what we got is excellent.
 

VAD

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,529
Oh yes it was legendary. The theme song is engraved in my brain. Many of the serious subjects treated flew right over my head though, I was just here for the laser eyes guy, the metal claws guy and the dude with the cool coat dating the flying strong girl with the cool jacket.
Whoever wrote the lover's quarrel between Trask and Stryker while they were in hiding from the Sentinels (iirc) deserves an award.
It's a travesty the way Rogue was treated after the show, she became a whiny teen in the movies and a supporting character with an annoying accent in the comics. Jubilee was done dirty on the big screen but at least they made her fun in the comics.
 
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