The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - PTFO - A Long-Awaited X-Men ’97 Breakdown, with Mina Kimes and David Dennis Jr.

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

This episode is what happens when three X-Men superfans wait roughly three decades to devour a cake made of nostalgia. Unapologetic, horny nostalgia — with important lessons for the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe therein. Also: Casual Gambit, Magneto being right, adamantium strategy, thruples, and Metal Jason Whitlock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. I didn't click skip intro once throughout the whole the whole series. The percent of people who click skip intro has to be sub 10%. I was watching this show in the morning like getting my son ready for school and was making him late every Wednesday and we were really really late this Wednesday and I pushed skip intro and he yelled at me in a way that children should not yell at parents I just let it slide because it was fair because I feel like he was justified

and yelling at me for skipping the intro. He yelled at you like Nathan Summers yelling at Cyclops for abandoning him in the future. Who doesn't sometimes want to just send your child into a portal 2000 years in the future and say somebody else handle this I'm done. Alright so I should confess that I too feel like a child who has been sent into the future. Because I have been waiting to do this since 1996. Okay? 1996.

Which is when the finale of X-Men the Animated Series aired. And when that show went away, when my favorite television show went away, it left me and my childhood hanging in the balance. Waiting for the series to pick back up, waiting for the sequel, which has finally arrived. X-Men 97 is the title of the animated series over on Disney Plus. It is the subject of today's show. And I guess I should remind people who aren't familiar that X-Men is a massively popular comic book series about these mutant superheroes that inspired the aforementioned animated series

in the 90s, and then a whole bunch of live action movies, which are, importantly, not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And the Marvel Cinematic Universe, if you somehow have been asleep for a decade, that's the highest grossing film franchise of all time, despite having zero X-Men projects. Until now. Until X-Men 97. Which we are going to talk about in full, by the way. So yeah, spoiler alert. What you're about to get is me and two of my similarly obsessive friends,

Mina Kimes and David Dennis Jr., discussing what we all found out while inhaling this show. Which means that yeah, you're also about to hear the greatest intro in television history. And the song is... Dun dun dun. Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. Do do do do do. Yeah. What's your name? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. David Dennis Jr. Mina Kimes. I've assembled a brotherhood of mutants as it were to talk about a thing that I need people to appreciate even if they don't really appreciate X-Men. David, how old are you? I am 38. I 38. Okay, so I am 38, turning 39.

I know Mina is in that same boat, so we're all the same age. I'm 38 too, wow, that's kind of weird. We're all the same, exactly 38. And so for us, for people like us, Avengers, I think it's safe to say, didn't mean shit. So the whole idea that we just watched the Marvel Cinematic Universe

take over Hollywood entertainment in real ways, like change the economy of everything, IP, comic book movies, how everything is done, that they did it with a comic book franchise that I didn't care about, because I was too worried about X-Men, sort of explains why it is that I think a lot of people in our age range have been clawing and thirsting

for something that lives up to expectations I've had for, I don't know, 30 years. When the cinematic movies were coming out and it was like Iron Man, they have Captain America, they have Thor, I remember being like, who cares? Like these are the dorky Avengers, like they are the B team. The only time I read Avengers was when they had an X-Men crossover.

And I'd be like, let's try to get into Avengers. And I was like, nah, I want to get back to X-Men. That's what I care about. And for them to turn it into something where like kids, like the generation younger than us, think that they are the premiere franchises is absolutely, it's crazy. And it was also offensive is the way that Marvel has deprioritized X-Men over the last 20 years, which is like one of the most inexplicable decisions I could think of any sort of business

or creative entity ever making. We are watching this at a time when the MCU has deeply disappointed me, which also sets the stage for like why it is that I'm so thirsty for a cake made of nostalgia. I'm with you guys. I was an X-Men person growing up, not a comic books person per se. I'm so thirsty for a cake made of nostalgia. I'm with you guys. I was an X-Men person growing up,

not a comic books person per se, but an X-Men animated series fan. And we can talk about our love of that series and what this series does in terms of building off of that and continuing it. So I was never interested in the Avengers. I was always interested in the X-Men, but I will say even as someone who grew up so passionate about these characters,

I was never really drawn in by the live-action movies. Some of them are a little bit better than others. Logan, which I guess doesn't really count, is obviously pretty well done. But for the most part, I kind of stopped caring. And this pulled me in so immediately and so aggressively and allowed me to experience like a level of nostalgia that I really haven't partaken in with anything. Yes, I am unapologetically invested in this X-Men 97,

essentially sequel to what was a truly formative cartoon in my childhood. And I'm not a person who's into cartoons in this way. Like I'm a big Star Wars guy. I should say, full disclosure, my screen name on AOL was Yoda, followed by six numbers. And those six numbers, David, if you did not know, were two X-Men comic book numbers.

Oh, okay. All right. And so that's the level of nerdery I brought to this. Wow. But I say that also because I did not give a f*** about the Star Wars animated series stuff. Like Rebels, I'm just not an animated guy in general, but I am a comic book guy. You know X-Men, the comic books in the last five years has really sort of picked up steam

also. And the show has really, it's almost unlocking a part of my brain that I've like kind of had felt like I'd said goodbye to, you know, like I had spent years thinking that I was never going to reach this level of fandom with X-Men again, which is something that dominated the entirety of my life as a child. And rewatching this show, it's almost like listening to an old song from 20 years ago and be like, oh, I actually remember every single word. Like there's deep cuts and deep things. I'm like, I distinctly recall this moment

from when I was seven years old. Now that we've established we're all the same age, when the animated series came out, we were eight, I think, eight through 12-ish. Yeah, six to 10, six to 11, eight to 12. Okay. So basically the perfect age insofar as old enough to kind of understand what was a pretty complicated series in terms of plot lines, multiverse stuff, some adult themes, but young

enough to be totally obsessed with it. I would say, you know, I haven't revisited the animated series in a while. The new Next Man 97 does feel more mature and more geared towards adults, which is not entirely surprising given that it is made for adults who watched the original animated series. But I will say, like, my brother and I were obsessed with the animated series. So much so that when they would re-air it, we taped them all on VHS, which is a thing you had to do back then for people who were on Virginia Fair. David and I are both nodding hard.

Yes, did the same thing. Yep, exactly, right? And would still go back and watch the Apocalypse stuff, the Dark Phoenix saga, all the little series within the series from time to time, I think through high school, which is crazy. I don't remember which came first. So as much as I love the comic books,

and there are lots of references in X-Men 97 to the comics, David, and I think you're probably the biggest comics guy among the three of us. But I don't even remember, that's how formative the show was, the cartoon was. I don't remember if I love the comics or the cartoon first. I just know that they sort of coexisted in parallel for me into my puberty, basically. Yeah, so I was a comic book kid first. You know, my mom would take me to the grocery store or the mall and I'd sit in the bookstore sit in the corner I still have my very first comic book which is X-Men 1 the Jim Lee Chris Claremont was like the biggest selling comic book of all

Time that was it so when X-Men came I was like this is this is a dream come true There's these people I love and these characters I love and they are on the screen And I was why I was a kid watching this like this is Different from the comp like what do you guys like I was that kid and I was like so incredibly Locked in at the time like the thing about how spoiled kids are now to watch like in game in the movie theater like X-Men the cartoon was the end was in game for us like every Saturday morning for years Which is like an incredible thing Who are you guys's favorite characters?

My favorite characters from being a child and watching the animated series were Wolverine and storm who were Arguably the best X-Men. I think we can debate that and what and which made it really interesting I thought that this version, X-Men 97, kind of downplayed those. I mean, Storm got a very cool plot line. But Wolverine, I thought, who is a lot of people's favorite X-Men growing up, probably because of the animated series, because he was just the coolest one. Yeah, yeah. Kind of was slow played in this series and wasn't really present in the finale, Storm, as well. I thought that was an interesting decision, David, because I'm sure I wasn't really present in the finale storm as well.

I thought that was an interesting decision, David, because I'm sure I wasn't alone in loving those two characters. Yeah, I was gonna say, those are my two favorite characters too. And like to the point, like it was everybody's favorite character to the point, like I don't know if you guys experienced this as children,

but I remember my friends would say, we're watching Bart Simpson. And then they would say, we're watching Wolverine. Like that's what they would. What they would watch Wolverine. To echo everybody, I was a Wolverine guy, number one, far and away, like super, super fan. Put like knives in between my fingers,

like did all of the shit about, you know, pretending I had claws. You know that phrase, like a poor person's idea of a rich person, you know, pretending I had claws. You know that phrase, like, a poor person's idea of a rich person? Yeah. You know, Wolverine was a kid's idea of the coolest person on earth. Absolutely.

Oh, and the fact that he was also short. Sure, he was short. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, none of it stopped him from being a cigar-chomping badass. His one-liners, I thought, were, I was like, oh, oh, they did it again. Yeah, I'm trying out.

I'm trying out saying bub to people, you know? When he cut Cyclops' car, I made you a convertible. I was like, damn. Tell Cyclops I made him a convertible. But in retrospect, especially compared to this series series which actually has legitimately good writing and legitimately funny one-liners those ones weren't quite as Sophisticated I wrote a note to myself I believe it was right like literally seconds before on a pivotal scene that we can now spoil the penultimate episode Where I'm like Wolverine not really in this and then at the very the very end, he gets his Adamantium skeleton ripped out of his body.

No, for the love of God, don't do this. And an echo, David, of maybe the most famous panel you could argue in comic books, X-Men 25, right? And they basically frame for frame kind of tried to recreate that. It would probably say like seven through 11 most traumatic moments of my life before 13. It's right up in there. It's like watching Magneto do this. I took the comic book.

It has a holographic cover yeah of a game card oh yeah on the cover yeah and then I brought it to school and I showed everybody I was like look and what this son of a bitch did to Wolverine and you guys believe it it traumatized me and I could not believe I couldn't believe they did it it gets to like why it is that I enjoyed this so much which was when I read it in the comics, it was sort of a mind-blowing thing because I was like, oh my God, of course Magneto can do this. He like controls metal. It did not occur to me until I saw the panel. And in this case, I was waiting for it. And that's it was sort of like, this felt like a fan

service truly in a way that was unapologetic. Yeah, like a reverse fan service. of, well, like David said. So we weren't, I wasn't a huge comics book, but I did have some of the comics. My brother and I splurged on some of them and this one was obviously very widely discussed and traumatizing. I would love to see a list of David's top five most traumatizing childhood moments. Mine includes the end of Bridge to Terabithia and my girl when the kid dies because of the BHAs. And this one. Oh and all dogs go to heaven which is really scary. That was kind of like the general tenor of this entire series. It's like oh my god they're doing

it. They're really doing it. Oh god they're doing it again. Oh god. To the point where it was like a little relentless and I appreciated in the finale that they slowed things down a bit because And I appreciated in the finale that they slowed things down a bit because if I had one tiny critique of the series, it would be like, wow, they did, they squeezed a lot into a very short period of time. We got Inferno, we got E is for Extinction, we got Outrage Zero Tolerance, Executioner Song, all of these big moments that happened that they condensed pretty well actually, because you know, they can get bloated but I do I do want to mention you know as we're talking about Wolverine getting his antimantium ripped out we have talked

about the first text I sent you guys about this show which is Professor Rex's Doc Rivers. Why do you take Wolverine to go fight the master of magnetism? Also Professor Rex episode one leaves Jean Grey Omega-level mutant at home and sends morph to fight the Sentinels like can we get somebody else in here to make some like actual strategic decisions for this man who is proving to be like a more terrible person he's already a terrible person comic books he's more terrible by the day in X-Men 97 yeah historically blowing 3-1 leads all over the place.

Like, Professor X, again, look, I'm not here to complain about how I'm confused still about how Professor X could be also an Omega-level mutant, and also sort of like useless enough to the point where these battles end up becoming such nail biters. But were we as mad at Professor X as kids as I was during this series? Because I don't recall being so, but now when you see it through the lens of like what he was,

again, this is now introducing the whole like Magneto was right aspect of the thing, which was actually said aloud in a reference, a fan service, he referenced to the meme. But the scariest thing about Genosha wasn't the death or the chaos. It was a thought. The only sane thought you can have when being chased by giant robots that were built to crush you. Magneto was right. Enough.

But also to the philosophy of what's happening in X-Men, which is about essentially a minority group asserting itself against a genocidal oppressor, in the case of Genosha, quite literal on the nose version of it. I was just furious at Professor X pretty much the entire time. It's crazy for a seven or eight-year-old, but I remember as a kid having it explained to me in Malcolm X and OK terms.

I can't believe I understood that as an eight-year-old with Magneto and Professor X. All I was just to say, he was not vilified. He wasn't as stupid or naive, I think is the proper word to describe his approach to tactics or lack thereof in this series. But there were moments where I thought he seemed selfish in the first run. And like, I mean, can you imagine he being any child's favorite character?

Or any child being a fan of him? And a lot of characters got sort of image rehabilitations in this series. We talked about this is the best Cyclops has ever been by far. You'll never hurt my family again! Speaking of Malcolm X, we are getting Malcolm Summers. Like, we got a little hint of the Malcolm X Cyclops.

Can we get the Malcolm X glasses with the Ruby Quartz photo shot over this hint of the Malcolm X Cyclops. Well, Edgy. Can we get the Malcolm X glasses with the Ruby Quartz photo shot over this part of the conversation? He has the line when he's being interviewed. Yeah. Where he like flips on Trisha and he's like, you don't deserve our help. You're ungrateful.

We fight, risk our lives for you. Evil mutants, robots, crazy aliens. I gave him up. I gave him up because you can't say thank you. Because I have to stomach your questions and prove that I'm a person. I lie because the truth is we're nothing like you. Thank God because it's the only reason you people are still alive. Literally I got like goosebumps when he said that because it was so unexpected coming from him. I need the ether beat to play in the background

while Cyclops was doing that because... If we're talking bar of the series, I think it's a tie between the Landra sister calling us the Milky Way ghetto. Xavier would see his Milky Way ghetto become our new throne world. Which is like something that I like texted and called people that like you called it the Milky Way ghetto, which is an all-timer.

And Magneto saying, hey, you wouldn't marry your little bird alien or whatever, bird queen. When you abandoned us for your sheer bird queen, you bequeathed it to me. Asked me to walk your path. Are you prepared to walk mine? Those are two absolute keepers. The diplomats like... Most other nations don't allow a terrorist

to be their leader. Yet so many allow their leaders to be terrorists. Damn! Ooh! So many good lines in this series. For people who don't know Cyclops at all, like he is like the generic loser, captain of the football team, but boring. No one likes him like straight arrow Wolverine. The anti-Wolverine. The anti-Wolverine, well put.

Wolverine was cool because he was the opposite of Cyclops, who was like the boy scout, was Professor X's like favorite pet. And in fact, the whole series, sort of part of what starts the momentum of the series is, Professor X has gone to be with his bird queen, and leaves his X-Men, keeps on calling them my X-Men, which feels paternalistic in ways

that we're all frustrated by, I think as adults, in the mutant minority metaphor, but Professor X leaves the X-Men to Magneto instead of Cyclops. Magneto, what are you doing in our home? Your home? I beg to differ, Cyclops. The last will and testament of Charles Francis Xavier,

as you all will see, his fortune, his school, everything he built, everything he fought for, now belongs to me, my X-Men. and so now we get this tension of like what's happening here and is this a more radical version of what we were familiar with as kids? Cyclops really goes through it in the series right between not getting to be the leader finding out that the mother of his children was maybe a clone and it's very unclear when the switch was made and having to reckon with that and then he kind of is side texting his old wife on the side telepathically yeah yeah and then at the very end he goes full

Cyclops and tries to basically say you know this is not who we are, Bastion, come join us. I know how it feels to have the things you trusted, the future you were building, crash down on you, and refuse to let go even as you're buried by what should have been. You're not alone. Ha-ha-ha! I think older versions, I would have rolled my eyes,

but I actually, it felt earned in a way because of who he was throughout this entire series that made it actually feel like a cool moment. I still kind of rolled my eyes. And look, if I have criticisms of the show, it's not that they shouldn't have leaned into these comic book themes. And this is like the eternal one, which is the X-Men fundamentally, the reason they're Professor X's X-Men is because they will not give up on people

they will look for the good in you it just felt of course almost classically melodramatic. I think this is the part where we should talk about the the through line between the two series the thing that that they maintained that you know one of the things that struck a chord with us as children is that X-Men fundamentally is an incredibly horny franchise and an extremely, extremely horny cartoon that children probably should not have been exposed to the level of horniness.

And we got some real dirt dog moments. Professor X being like, hey, treat me like a dog. I wouldn't mind it. Your man speaks as if I am your pet. Not an entirely displeasing thought. Hush now, beloved. You may bark later. Morph and Wolverine, hello.

Morph and Wolverine, can we talk about that? So Morph is like a stand-in for truly like, as a shapeshifter, a non-binary character in the most literal mutant senses and basically and I was reading an interview with the now and this is a fascinating subplot of all of this the now Departed writer of the series in which he basically says that Morph loves Wolverine And he took on the character of Jean Grey to express it at the moment at which Wolverine recovering from having the f***ing adamantium ripped from his skeleton needs like a psychological boost

basically to stay alive. She can't say it, but I can. I love you, Logan. Stay with me. And that, I'm just like... that's some heavy s***. As well as some super horny s***. Even before then, like, you know, the glimpses were there when Wolverine was sad and Wharf turns into Sabretooth and they like, he brings a picnic basket to him and they like go out

to like frolic and fight in the woods and then there's like they save Rogue and like Wharf is like snuggled up under Wolverine and Wharf's like murder dream, like nightmare sequence is Logan in the shower. Like what are we talking about? juggled up under Wolverine and morphs like Murder Dream, like Nightmare Sequence as Logan in the shower. Like, what are we talking about? And it is important to also note that now Wolverine is semi-canonically in a throuple, has been in a throuple with Cyclops and Jean Grey for the last few years due to like the horniest diagram in X-Men history, which is Cyclops and Jean Grey's bedroom

with a back door to Wolverine's bedroom, like which set the internet world on fire. And now we have a show where Wolverine is, I, in my opinion, canonically banging Morph at some point. You guys haven't even gotten to the entire finale where Professor X is in Magneto's head and every scene of them, their faces are like one inch apart. I'm like, come on. Come on, guys.

Can I go back to more for a quick second though? So I thought that the character was largely successful. I thought the decision to make him like, you know, gender-binding, it really made sense and they were very consistent with it. Like he brought some emotion to the series, you know, with his memories and all of that. But he brought some emotion to the series, you know, with his memories and all of that. But, explained this to me. If he can morph into everyone, why is he not like the most powerful? Like, did they ever really address that in the series? Did I miss

it? No. Bo DeMeo has said that morph can morph into anybody who has a physical power. So he can morph into the Incredible Hulk, he can morph into Mr. Fantastic in Stretch. He can't morph into Cyclops and shoot beams out of his eyes. Okay, so strength and speed, basically. And Morph is another character from the series. My memory of Morph is basically that he was a throw-in

in the first cartoon that I hated because he was useless. And now they did find a way to also rejuvenate the concept of Morph. But also, let's point out too, right? Like you mentioned, amid all of the cucking that was going on through the series, Rogue and Magneto basically, you know, intimately dancing while flying in Genosha. As everybody was watching as a political move, I suppose. as a political move, I suppose.

But also setting the stage for another huge subplot, which is Rogue having to choose between Gambit and Magneto, choosing Magneto, watching Gambit die, and then going back to Magneto, which was a lot to process for me. And it seemed exclusively to choose Magneto because they can have sex. Like telling Gambit the dang truth. I can't touch you, Remi.

Your heart may beat for me, but I can't feel it. You, you light up everything you touch, but never me. I love that part, by the way. She tells she's like, you can't touch me, sure. Yeah. She says it. I also look, I'm willing to me, sure. She says it. I also, look, I'm willing to just take a lot at face value. The whole thing of like, due to Magneto's electromagnetic field, they can f***.

I'm like, I'm not going to ask follow-up questions, but sure. He comes in as her mentor and teacher and then, you know, it's a little bit glassed over. It's sort of groovy. It's groovy, yeah. Very groumpy. How do we feel about Magneto generally in this series? Like what did you guys think of his portrayal and then just how things wrapped up with him in the finale? I love Magneto.

Magneto was bars, all bars. So many bars. Episode five, which is the Gambit death and also like the further radicalization, the, and also, like, the radic- the further radicalization, the re-radicalization of Magneto, um, it just felt like the whole Magneto was right thing came to a head there because I was like, now I- now I've watched the Morlocks,

all these mutants get genocided. I'm not afraid. Omega Threat eliminated. I felt like he was the guy I was rooting for the most. Out of every character basically, which I didn't necessarily expect. But Mina, how did you feel about him? Magnino was right. Definitely has a stronger case than Thanos was right. Another reason why this series is better. Because it's a case that's actually supported by characterization and writing. Motive. Motive, all of it. It makes sense. And at the end, I did feel conflict.

I wasn't quite sure what outcome I was rooting for. I mean, I was rooting for the survival of the characters I like. But in terms of like, the humans in this series are awful. They are incredibly unsympathetic. I mean... Including Captain America, by the way. Well, and that's the other thing, by the way. Also useless. Well, at the end, so thing, by the way. Speaking of the Avengers... Also useless.

Well, at the end, so when they cut and there's all these cameos of like Avengers from around the world and various Marvel, none of them are doing shit. Sir, King T'Chaka is right. We know next to nothing about Asteroid M. This could do more harm than good. Why aren't they doing anything? Like, this is a planetary risk. I think that was very deliberate and meant to like kind of illustrate like, oh wow, like, okay, the Avengers, Captain America, they're still they have these ties to the government. They're in the room when they just make the decision to activate the Magneto protocols.

They call T'Chaka, who's kind of, you know, raises some questions, which is he gets a little bit of a better showing. But for the most part, it really does illustrate and I think complicate cooperation. And you know, the title of the final trilogy, it's tolerance is extinction. Yeah. And it really raised like pretty heavy stuff for children to watch. My issue with X-Men and the way that people who write about X-Men in general is that like when bad things happen to Spider-Man, it's like happens to Spider-Man, right? Like Barry Jane breaks up with him, he loses his job, he gets beat up, same thing. You know, like these things happen.

But when bad things happen to X-Men, it happens to an entire race of people. And like it's really difficult to watch, especially an allegory for black or queer folks and or queer folks, marginalized folks, to watch like they do genocide a lot. Like X-Men have experienced genocide in a lot, especially in the last 20 years. It is not subtle. There's Genosha, there's Scarlet Witch saying no more mutants. There's like all this genocide that is a part of the franchise that you have to endure and one of the things I think was important and an important meta conversation about this was that the Genosha genocide

is something that is locked in. I've tried it all over and over. Each time we attempt to stop the attack on Genosha, we are temporally pulled away from the event. Like it is locked in across multiverses that this will always happen to these people and you all are gonna have to deal with it. It's really heavy stuff, but at the same time,

it's tough to, you know, to experience sometimes. Like there are people who have real visceral reactions to these because these are characters we love, but also these are like a reminder that, hey, if you are of the minority, this will happen to you no matter what. One thing I did not like on just the pure, like comic book cartoon series thing, the Prime Sentinels thing.

Do these people even know what you're doing to them? I admit the more technical details, but they know they're joining something far greater than themselves. After this, they wake up in their daily lives with no memory of ever being here. Then, who knows, maybe a mutant flirts with one of them at a local dive bar and... ... You said you were building a new sentinel, not weaponizing civilians. You sound like a dinosaur

fretting the fate of an asteroid before impact. I-I just, the whole, like, we turn people into sentinels. Like, eh, I got, eh, eh, eh. I mean, they signed up for it, which I feel like is not too unrealistic. Like, you know, I guess, I guess. I mean, they signed up for it, which I feel like is not too unrealistic. Like, you know, they were taking our jobs. Like, they're mad because Colossus in the original series, like, was like a construction worker

and was able to build buildings faster than everybody else. So they turned themselves into sentinels to go and murder mutants. Like, that seems- It does feel like when your neighbor storms the Capitol and you're like, yeah, I probably should have seen that coming. There was a scene with President Kelly, I can't remember what episode it was, where he says, I'm not giving you guys what you want.

He's talking to, I think, Cyclops. But he says, imagine if it was someone else, they'd be way worse than me. And if scared voters see me helping your kind... Sorry, son. Just unfortunate optics. Optics, sir? Guess if Genosha had looked more human, you would be more focused on death tolls over polls. Now hold up.

I'm playing politics here to ensure someone less kind to your cause doesn't end up in the office you're so quick to disrespect. Be patient, Scott. But I was like, oh my God, if this is not the most nuanced depiction of like moderate politics I've ever seen. And like, I, yeah, I mean, there's just so the allegory in this series felt a bit more intense and heavy handed at times than the child, the 92 series. But again, I think that's just because it was for adults. So we've mentioned Thanos a couple of times here. I do wonder like how we would be seeing all of this

if we weren't reacting also to the latest slate of just Marvel stuff that has been deeply disappointing. If I watched this after I watched Infinity War or Endgame, would I be so blown away by the basic idea of good writing and historical analogy? Because I just feel like I've been thirsting for stuff because it's just been so blah across the board that they soared over a low bar as well.

My frustration with a lot of the latest Marvel stuff and I actually haven't caught some of it so I don't want to paint too proud a brush. Aside from like, it always seems to end these overwrought action sequences and just so much CGI is like the really the excessive multiverse aspect of it and the complexity and that seems to be replacing, you know, in some cases plot.

This I appreciated the simplicity of it, even though it is a complicated show. And I'm actually a little bit worried about the teaser for next season. Yes. When they do... So, this is not... If you're listening to this, you've finished the series. The X-Men are not sucked into the black hole that, you know, fixes the asteroid problem. They are split up into two groups across different timelines. Half of them go into the past Egypt where, ancient Egypt, pardon me,

where you see the original mutant, aka Coppocalypse, which, you know, I grew up loving the apocalypse stuff, so I was like, yeah. And then some of them will go into the future where they see a young Nathan Summers, and then I forget the woman's name, but it's Rachel Summers' character as well. So it's cool, but I'm almost like,

ooh, I really don't want like multiple timelines and like confusion. It actually, David kind of made me think of some of these latest Marvel movies where I personally, I don't enjoy it that much. There was a lot of sort of hypothesizing that this could lead into Deadpool and Wolverine, which I'm glad it did not.

Like I'm glad that this had its own standalone thing. You know, the speed at which they've been moving through these things, maybe we'll get like three episodes of this time, timey stuff, and we can move on. I really like the fact that after the Genosha thing, everybody just assumed that there would be a time travel and it would get like wiped off and it'd be non-consequential. And we would do, and they stayed away from that which I'm happy about One of the lessons of the series that I think Marvel could learn from with their other stuff and one of the reasons why I liked it aside from the writing being amazing and the

Characters is how simple the fights were I mean this the fight scene and granted its animation obviously so you can do whatever you want But I found the fight scenes the battle scenes to be very easy to follow, even when they're being fought on multiple planes. And I think to like the latest Marvel movies, off the time I have no freaking clue what's going on. And that was something that I think was like really remarkable about this series is like the action was amazing.

I mean, look, what did animation teach us about how the MCU, and by that I mean, just like movie, live action movies, are going to be disappointing is an interesting question because I I now prefer the animation just because they don't have the confidence in the live-action and I say that as somebody who watched I think every I think I've seen David every MCU series or movie and no it it's just, I watched like Quantumania and I was like, this looks like shit. Yeah, and was confused.

Like, and has ended up like confused sometimes about what's going on. And somebody was like, read some of the comic books. I'm still like, this was so, the work, it was just competently done. Competently done fight scenes, giving every, Jubilee got a moment. Game over, sleazoid.

Everything matters in these fights. It's not just like we're just throwing stuff and just making people fight. Rogue gets her moment. His name was Gambit. Remember it! Literally clapped his ass. Incredible. No, but I would draw like something instructive to me. I saw Cheng Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in the theater. The fight scene on the bus rules.

It was a martial arts scene. It's the same, it's like that Marvel, like, oh my God, I can't believe what's going on, there's all that **** coming on, the CGI, keep it simple with these fight scenes because they don't have to be that convoluted. On the point of Jubilee, I do want to ask you guys. So I hated her in the original series, which was really tough, you know, as Asian representation because she was a dork and her power sucked and she wore like a raincoat. I thought she, along with several other characters,

was pretty heavily rehabilitated for me in this series. Even the video game episode, which is probably the weakest one, was still entertaining. She got funny lines. So I have to ask you, like we nodded to this earlier, which characters do you think in this version got the biggest glow up from the previous X-Men. I'll go a little bit off beat with this, which is to say,

I really liked what they did with Gambit, including killing him. And my disappointment is that the end of this, the mid-roll credits scene indicates that he's not actually gonna stay dead. Is that he will be the horseman of the apocalypse, probably death. And I'm just like, ah, I thought it was a little braver what they did with Gambit, including, by the way, his outfits, which I was like, yo, casual Gambit? Casual wear.

Casual Gambit. Oh, Gambit upset a lot of people. Beta Gambit with his showing his belly button. How dare he while cooking beignets? What a beta male. Yeah, he got a huge glow up. Jean Grey, I thought, had a pretty cool glow up and the fact that the joke is that there is a really disturbing, but kind of hilarious super cut of Jean Grey fainting in the original

like every time anything happened. But we got like super power Jean Grey here and Jean Grey who was like, you know, pushing Cyclops a little bit. I mean, I know we can be angry at her because she definitely made out with Wolverine before she got mad at Cyclops, but that's neither here nor there. But she was dealing with her clone. It's a tough time. Yeah, she had stuff going on. But Jean Grey and the Jean Grey storm relationship was really, really cool. I loved that. Yeah, that was cool.

Mind your weather, weather your minds. Whoever wrote that, they took the rest. I know they wrote that and just took the day off. Make them mind your weather, sister. And them weather your mind. They just put their pencil down and was like, I'm going to Cinnabon. I'll catch y'all tomorrow. Like that. They had a really beautiful relationship.

Storm cheering when Jean Grey turned into Phoenix was like really awesome to see too. So that, you know, yeah, Jean Grey, I think for me. There was another thing, like again, there were some new interpersonal dynamics that I really liked in this series that were different. You see the Storm-Jean relationship. Another smaller thing that I loved was Magneto, like Storm being the only one he respects. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then ultimately her, what they did to her, driving him to retaliate when, you know, in episode three when Storm loses her powers.

I really liked that, like, it just checked out, it made sense, and it was something kind of new and fresh. Is it telling that we haven't even mentioned Bastion by name, who is the super villain of this thing, the guy that ostensibly the X-Men were fighting and then trying to convert and then quote unquote killed, although it seems like he may also be alive at the end. The mutant who hates his mutinous so much that he wants to destroy all mutants. Who exactly

is Bastion? Bastion, he's he's a sentinel given human form. Do you understand the futility of fighting the future? By the time we got his origin story. I just started referring to him as metal Jason Whitlock, but that's neither here nor there We needed someone saying to bastion you You bitch You bastard. He was a good villain. He was a good villain. He stood for something.

David explained it. And I think it was believable. The way they gave him some backstory was believable. He was sort of in between a lot of different factions and that he was his like motives and ends were changing as a result of that. And I think it made sense. He wasn't, like, an apocalypse level baddie, though. And it's season one, right? You can't immediately come out with one of the best villains in season one.

Right. Another little touch that I loved was when, at the end of episode five, when Gambit dies, they do the thing the NFL does with the, like, piano acoustic version of the theme song on the way out. They do it in the finale too. Yes, yes, yes. With the choir backing them. The orchestral, oh my god, yes.

Yes, the orchestral choir version in the finale was fucking amazing. ["Spring Day", by The Bachelorette, by David Bowie, and the and lore and beyond like the fan service. I'm trying to think of like what other lessons are gonna be taken forward by Marvel having now experienced a thing that has pulled so crazily well. And I think a basic one might just be, please make less stuff every year and make better stuff. Maybe that's the most simple one. It's just like, if I'm thinking about what I consume

from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, broadly speaking, including the cartoons this year, I'm thinking about X-Men 97 and not anything else. When it comes to making content, stories, writing are what matters. That is why this series was great. I mean, there's a lot of things we liked about it. The look of it, I thought, was good as well. The voice acting was excellent, but the writing is why this rocked. I mean, it just, from start to finish, it was so unbelievably well written. We've been talking about some of the quotable lines, but it's beyond that. There was no... I didn't cringe at all. I mean, there was no... The exposition felt seamless. The dialogue felt realistic. The characters were all very

true to their stories. And I think when we think about like these big, you know, huge action series and action movies, that tends to be what seems seems to be overworked and sacrificed and overwrought in the name of fan service or, you know, these overly CGI action sequences. So I, to me, that's whoever, the people who wrote this series just knocked it out of the park. Yeah, for me, I mean, along those lines, is give me characters I care about.

Like give me people, like you've given me so many of these like big explosions and all this other stuff. Like you mentioned Shang-Chi, by the end of the movie, I didn't really care about the characters as much as like, are they gonna defeat the like dragon or whatever monster that popped out of that thing? Like to me, I'm looking at the like, scale of the cinematic universe and looking at the new event, the new people who are going to be Avengers, for instance.

And they've been around for years and I don't necessarily care about that many of them in terms of like, what they're going to do. What is their moment going to do when Endgame happens, or even before Endgame, when Infinity War happens and Spider-Man disappears and he has his moment with Tony Stark and they have, like you care about that, right? X-Men, I care about the characters. I care about what Wolverine's gonna do next.

I care about Cyclops and Gene's relationship. When Storm does something badass, I want you to cheer. When Rogue said his name was Gamber, remember him. I'm like, that's, that's it. You know, like I care about the characters and I just don't, I think they, we've sacrificed a lot of that for the big moments. When Rogue scolds Professor X about how Gambit should be remembered. Remi was the most Cajun man I ever met. As much as he wanted to escape the Bayou, he knew our lives are about what bits of us we leave behind

and what we carry into the future. Maybe if you saw us as people and not students, you'd have realized that. The nuance in like you only thought of him as a mutant. Yeah. And actually he was this other thing that everybody should have a three dimensionality that is acknowledged was also just a level of character development and investment. And the other thing that Marvel has sort of like fallen into, I think a lot of what happened

with the Avengers stuff is where we started the conversation is that they sort of realized okay people like funny. And so they started foregrounding funny. And so many of the movies have tried to lead with humor. And some of it has worked. Thor Ragnarok is amazing. But the imitators of that, and it gets to Guardians of the Galaxy, which started off funny and then started being less and less so, because it tried to foreground it.

I was like, foreground what X-Men 97 foregrounded, right? Which is like a sincere appreciation for character and superpowers. Like don't ever underestimate how you need to be culminating this shit in an awesome fight sequence. Yeah. Like please reverse engineer from there because that's ultimately why we're watching this stuff and not just watching, you know, documentaries that can give us the character development and the history,

but not the superpowers. Like a series of memes is what like a lot of movies these days. It feels like if you tell good stories with good characters, people will come. And then everything else is sort of incidental to that. The humor, the callbacks, all of that. That's not the point. It's not the main thing. The stories are the main thing. Mina, all of that. That's not the point, it's not the main thing. The stories are the main thing. Mina, David Dennis Jr., thank you for doing this.

Thank you for reliving our childhood together. I just want more. That's all I want now, I just want more of this. When is season two coming? Can we hurry up? It's already been written apparently. Gotta get it. So let's do it, let's do it. Hurry up. This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a MetalArk Media Production.

And I'll talk to you next time. Thanks for watching.