Since its inception, X-Men ’97 has earned the applause of long-time fans and new viewers for various reasons: the “hard core” of fans of the old series, who perhaps were children in the nineties and are now joining the ranks of adult audiences, a skillful management and knowledgeable about the original reference comic sagas and an intelligent, tight and exciting screenplay. All this, of course, “playing it safe”. The first four episodes offered an ‘evolved and updated’ version of the old series that everyone loved, perhaps raising the sophistication of the scripts a few notches to adapt to a necessarily more savvy audience, but remaining within the confines of the so-called ‘comfort zone’. And it would have been fine like that, X-Men ’97 it was already bringing home a large collection of acclaim and applause as one of the best series of recent years, whether animated or live. But with the arrival of the shocking and epochal fifth episode, Remember It, we discovered that we were wrong, and very much so.
The series changes skin
It’s not for the sake of hyperbole that we called Remember Me Marvel’s “Red Wedding.” The X-Men episode follows rhythms and mechanics very similar to those of the infamous and bloody episode of Game of Thrones. A theoretically festive social event, where the contrast at most seems to emerge between the general celebratory atmosphere and the personal and sentimental tensions of the protagonists, and only a creeping feeling of restlessness that manifests itself when it is too late to do anything. And then tragedy strikes, violent, devastating, inhumane. Millions of viewers around the world stared when they saw the characters of the old Saturday morning cartoon (who, let’s remember, went through five seasons unscathed, without ever facing a final death) involved in a literal genocide, in massacre of a nation that wanted to represent a new hope and that does not spare (indeed, quite the opposite) the cast of main characters.
Happy Nation
The recovery of the themes and pop culture of the 90s is one of the strong points of X-Men ’97, and in this fifth episode it happens through the inspired use of Ace of Base’s hit, Happy Nation, which serves as the soundtrack to the social evening in Genosha and the sentimental torments that enliven the lives of Magneto, Rogue and Gambit. In hindsight, the song seems anything but a nostalgic plug-in for its own sake: in fact, it could very well be the initial inspiration for the entire episode. A quick study of the lyrics reveals an almost biunivocal coincidence between the verses of Happy Nation and the mournful events of Remember it, a song that speaks of a happy nation, of those who dare too much, of those who dream of the perfect man, of the ideas that are the the only thing that survives, the search for salvation and… time travel (we’ll get to that shortly). All seasoned with a few verses in Latin that have the flavor of a requiem and which – once again with hindsight – we discover to have transpired in the fleeting premonition that Jean Gray had in the first episode. In short, we are faced with a very high quality design and management of themes, styles and atmospheres which certainly makes X-Men fans happy, but which earns a place at the top of adult animation series Of all times.
Hopes for the future…?
If in the Red Wedding the key word of the episode was Betrayal, here it is Sacrifice. What tears the hearts of the surviving characters and the public is the sacrifice of two heroes of the team to prevent the genocide from taking place to the end. And having reached the end of the episode, dazzled and taken aback, we take note of it: the characters and spectators of the 90s have grown up and become adults. But we find out in the most violent and brutal way. And we find ourselves divided on the reactions and hopes to have for the events to come. The count of victims is merciless. Magneto and especially Gambit fall on the front lines. And if we still dare to have some hope of survival for Magneto (as a good villain of the Golden Age, he has come back to life several times, and even in the comic saga E is for Extinction, dedicated precisely to the Genosha massacre, the Lord of Magnetism miraculously succeeds to escape), for Gambit things seem irrevocably definitive. But in the chaos of the last ten minutes of the episode it is impossible to understand who survives of the countless inhabitants who in the first part of the episode, the “quiet” one, had delighted us with their cameos. Moira, Banshee, Madelyne, Shaw, Emma Frost, Callisto all lie sprawled among the dead and wounded. Maybe really too much for an all-too-extreme twist in the economy of the series.
On the one hand, we find ourselves clinging to a thread… or rather, to a Cable of hope: the fleeting appearance of Cable, the time traveler par excellence in the X Universe, pushes us to believe that the last word has not yet been said and that in a future iteration of his hitherto unsuccessful incursions, fate may be rewritten and massacre averted.
But if on the one hand, justice and redemption for the massacre carried out by the robotic Sentinels is a pressing need for a good part of the spectators, on the other hand one wonders whether it is truly desirable for the developments of the series. We were forced to become adults in the space of 30 minutes, and the solution of a temporal ‘reset’ or alternative realities that put everything right would almost seem too simplistic (as well as being a reiteration of what we have already seen in sagas like Endgame and similar variations with a multiversal theme). Having drunk the bitter cup, perhaps it almost comes to hope that there will be no turning back and that these “stick” deaths will remain and count.
Whatever the solution devised by the author of the series Beau de Mayo (with every success achieved by the new episodes that come out, his unexplained departure from the series hurts more and more), the confidence in the narrative abilities of the creative team is higher than ever. According to his statements, episode 5 was just the “warm-up” match, and the final triptych of episodes, 8, 9 and 10, are the ones where everything really happens. Advertising hyperbole or should we really expect the bar to rise further? We won’t fail to find out, because like all the X-Men who remained “at home” in the final scenes of the episode, we are riveted and terrified in front of the television screen wondering what will happen now. Great job, Marvel!
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