The Four Color Media Monitor

Forbes is claiming the woke-infected X-Men 97 cartoon, supposedly picking up from where the previous Saturday morning series left off, has become the "best reviewed" project of all time on Marvel's screen list:

Reviews are in and X-Men ’97, the retro flashback to the old animated series, revived for a new era, is stellar. The first two episodes debuted on Disney Plus on Wednesday, and it is currently the single best-reviewed Marvel movie or show…ever, with a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes with a few dozen critic reviews in.

That places it atop the all-time list, even if it’s not “the MCU” in the traditional sense (it’s probably some alternate multiverse dimension or something, would be the explanation). [...]

It is a tremendous achievement for a project that everyone hoped would be good, but on top of its pure nostalgic appeal, manages to have excellent (old school) animation and interesting new storylines. Also, somehow, an utterly badass Cyclops. It’s the “classic” X-Men we’ve missed on television for decades, and as the MCU spools up its own X-Men (first returning to FOX’s), it’s a classic cast that feels like returning home.

The only strange bit of controversy attached to X-Men ’97 was the abrupt firing of its showrunner, Beau DeMayo, who will not promote the show, and will not return for a second season which will no doubt happen. Disney has not given a reason for his firing, but given the context, it seems serious. Right now there is only unconfirmed internet speculation. Whether the show can continue this level of quality led by someone other than DeMayo from here is unclear, but hopefully that will be the case. He wrote the first two episodes, I’m not sure if he possibly wrote all of them.

No doubt, many of the positive reviews seen so far were deliberate, and much like this puff piece, glossed over any worries about what deMayo did with Morph. Nothing that raised worries about wokeness is mentioned in this superficial Inverse interview with one of the animators, Jake Castorena, either. It merely says, at the end:

Each episode ends with a really great cliffhanger. As a director, how do you build tension to make those twists land?

Well, the twists were in Beau De Mayo’s scripts from day one, so shout out to him. So, from the scripts, we know where to embellish, and where to lead. Sometimes we’re going to cut closer and closer every time we cut back to a certain character to allude to the shoe drop at the end. Or sometimes, we cut wide, and we’ll give the illusion of something, and then, we cut close. A lot of it comes down to the intention of what the story is, and who the cameo might be. There’s also, of course, a long-term discussion about each cameo, and those reveals are about carrying the narrative forward. Everything matters!

In that case, how come the whole flap involving Morph becoming non-binary isn't mentioned in a lot of these "reviews"? In those I've checked so far, Morph doesn't seem to matter, if at all. Yet the part about "twists" sure can be telling, ditto the parts about "cutting closer", and intentions. When I read the San Francisco Chronicle's review, it says:

With “X-Men ’97,” Disney’s first-ever X-Men production, story editors Eric and Julia Lewald and producer Larry Houston return as consultants along with many of the core voice cast reprising their roles, including Cal Dodd as Wolverine, Alison Sealy-Smith as Storm, Lenore Zann as Rogue and George Buza as Beast. But while there’s definitely the comfort of the familiar, the new animated series created by Beau DeMayo benefits from a robust Disney budget that’s evident in its crisp animation style. The show even gets a remixed version of the original’s iconic opening theme music.

More importantly, without the restrictions of network television, “X-Men ’97” has the freedom to push boundaries when it comes to language and content. Rated TV-PG, it won’t have any intense brutality or profanity, but don’t be shocked if you see splattered blood or hear someone say they’re “pissed off.”

Based on the woke ingredients that seeped in, all that would do is suggest this is more about sensationalism. Comic Book Club's entry doesn't raise the issue of how Morph is rendered either, though it does indicate he's in the cast (and his voice actor's name, J.P. Karliak, is listed). And I'm not sure if the animation style is "crisp" after noticing how dull Rogue's design look compared to what came before. Even Storm's doesn't look so appealing. 411 Mania's review continues avoiding any reference to the Morph flap, but again, what's this we're told here:

The other benefit to the new series is that X-Men ’97 is no longer shackled to the TV-Y7 rating. At the TV-14 level, X-Men ’97 provides content that’s edgier and rougher than the original series, but not in an explicit way. Fans shouldn’t expect Invincible levels of graphic violence and language, but characters do bleed and get cut. The dialogue has become far more suggestive and mature, so the show doesn’t have to constantly cut corners with the dialogue and avoid using the words “kill” or “death.” In addition, the show doesn’t have to use contrived, forced phrases like, “You’re destroying him!”

Here's a challenging query: does or will the series tackle issues like sexual relations, besides Cyclops and Jean Grey looking to bearing children (she's pregnant)? And even if it does, how do we know it won't go overboard more than it already does with talk of Morph being turned into "non-binary"? Come to think of it, while it's one thing to depict the new cartoon with more bloodletting, it may not be the best idea to tie it all in with an earlier cartoon, rather than to reboot it, which might've been more plausible a direction to go in. The film director Joe Russo's not improving the situation when he says adapting the trial of Magneto from the mid-80s is today supposed to be an attack on MAGA supporters.

Hopefully, firing deMayo from the TV staff will at least be a silver lining, based on his social justice propaganda positions. But this revival of the mid-90s TV cartoon still doesn't look like such a big deal, and based on Disney's woke directions, it's better not to subscribe to their streaming services.

Update: in another related item, the far-left Mary Sue site, even earlier, attacked dissenters with the character design for Rogue by saying:

You could furthermore try to explain that while maybe this doesn’t entirely encapsulate who you are, the feeling of entitlement you’ve expressed towards women’s bodies (i.e. “look what they took from us”) has proven to be something that you harbor, and despite knowing this, you’ve refused to do the work to shed such a trait up to this point, and thereby continue to be complicit as a conduit for a grotesquely harmful idea that, beyond the unwelcome sexualization that it imposes on women, largely serves as the basis for widespread violence against women as well.

What makes this drivel fall flat is that this same website has been serving as apologist for anti-Israelists following the October 7, 2023 Hamas bloodbath. The double-standard is offensive, not just because it makes it sound like depicting a woman as sexy is inherently a bad thing, but also because it insults women who like to be sexy, and even dismisses that it's men who have to be responsible in how they deal with real life relations and interactions with the fairer sex. It's also offensive to the artists who went to all that trouble to draw up ladies like Rogue in the first place. And then the "columnist" of the item about Rogue even has the gall to call Rogue a favorite of hers. All that reeks of is somebody who approrpriates and hijacks other people's fandoms for her own selfish little agendas that ultimately amount to phony. It's sad anybody wastes time with websites like Mary Sue.

Labels: animation, golden calf of LGBT, golden calf of villainy, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, women of marvel, X-Men