As PARAMOUNT+'s FRAISER demonstrates repeatedly, reboots aren't easy.
Having an easier time is DISNEY+'s X-MEN 97. Call it a reboot or a continuation, but the animated series picks up where X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES (1992 to 1997) left off. Or pretends to. Professor X is presumed dead, Scott and Jean (or a clone?) are married and expecting a child and all the voice actors are pretty much back.
Except Catherine Disher. She voiced Jean in the original. For whatever reason, she's not coming back. Why? No one knows but much is made of the fact that Alyson Court did not return as Jubilee so that the Asian-American character can be voiced by an Asian-American actress (Holly Chou).
The reality is that every single one of the voice actors should have been recast.
It would have been great, for example, to have American accents for American characters. Instead, the reboot is done on the cheap the same way the original series was and it's voiced largely by Canadian actors so you get "evolution" pronounced eve-o-lew-shun instead of ehv-o-lew-shun. During the 1992 to 1997 run, that might not have mattered much. Children are generally more accepting of flaws and into the story. But X-Men are now much, much bigger than they were then.
As the 70s were winding down and the 80s beginning, the X-Men were Marvel's biggest attention getters when it came to the physical comic books. In the fall of 1989, a 30-minute pilot X-MEN: PRYDE OF THE X_MEN began their run as Saturday cartoons. After X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES ended production in 1997, it was followed (in 2000) by X-MEN: EVOLUTION (which ran for four seasons), WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN followed (for one season) in 2009, and then one season of an anime series entitled X-MEN (2011). There were also three video games. However, the biggest impact that X-Men have had since conquering Saturday cartoons was the film series that began in 2000 and has resulted in 13 films so far (the fourteenth, DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE, is set to be released this summer). Point being, we've had many actors play Storm, Jean, Rogue, Scott and Wolverine.
The reboot also carries over some visuals. For example, especially in the first episode, they tried to re-create the color scheme and a similar drawing scene in many. By the second episode, especially with events taking place at the United Nations, that effort was largely dropped. It should be dropped. 30 years after an animated series first started, you don't bring it back with new episodes and ignore the technological advancements that have taken place.
Not only that, but it's also true that to ignore these advances is antithetical to what The X-Men stand for and have always stood for which is advancement and progress.
If you've missed it, the usual cry babies are having a fit and insisting MARVEL, DISNEY and their Aunt Fannie have yet again injected 'woke!' to a little John Wayne village where the steers and queers were kept out of sight, the only people of color were the Native Americans that John would mow down and the women folk were absent or knew their place -- you know, that fantasy world created by oppressors and embraced off screen by physical weaklings who identified with the oppressors because that was easier than admitting that they were drones themselves, the enslaved, the proletariat -- call it whatever you want, the reality is that they were those with no real power or agency who were identifying with their own oppressors.
You have to wonder how that mind-set ever got hooked up with a MARVEL character to begin with. Stan Lee's characters were never the Nietzschean Superman, they were instead the targeted, the scape goated.
The ones who were different.
And that's especially true with regards to The X-Men. A mutant gene created an advance, a progression, which is why The X-Men should never strive for retro -- it goes against their very origin.
That origin also includes that they are "hunted and despised."
These elements are in the spine of the story and predate the latest cartoon series.
Somehow, butt-hurt conservative cry babies miss that reality. They miss out on a lot.
People sometimes see things that just aren't there. For example, billionaire Nelson Peltz is convinced DISNEY is churning out all these all-female cast films and all-African-American cast films. As Elaine points out, that's just not reality. Apparently, Peltz is still outraged over the 1967 all-Black cast of HELLO DOLLY (headed by Pearl Bailey) that was a big success touring the country as well as on Broadway. The self-deluded need to stop pretending they're truth tellers.
