Wolverine and the X-Men cancelled

Despite having a confirmed order from Nickellodeon for S2 and being deep into pre-production, Marvel has pulled the plug on W&tXM. No one is quite sure why...

 

They said something about the financing not being able to be handled. Bah!! It's always the case, get something good going, cancel it!

 

Do you know where you read that?

It doesn't make sense. They had a confirmed buyer, not to mention how much bragging they've done about how profitable media tie-ins has been.

 

It was Marvel's Director of Animation Development, Joseph Fine, who said it was a financing problem at the recent C2E2 event this past weekend. But Fine also confirmed that The Avengers: Earth's Mightest Heroes debuts this fall and that "This is bigger than anything we've ever done."

Lose one show, gain another.

 

Seems between that and Spectacular Spider-Man concluding they're going to do a pretty much clean slate of new animated shows.

One doesn't imagine that the X-Men will be without a show for very long.

 

Iron Man: Armored Adventures has a second season in production. So does The Super Hero Squad Show. So it's not a complete sweep of the scythe.

 

On the one hand I'm disappointed, on the other I wasn't that crazy about this series at all. I've only seen it in the past couple months all at once, too.

 

I watched about 5 minutes of this show once, so all I can say about it is I thought it was a cute homage to "X2: X-Men United"* how Nightcrawler's teleportation effect looked.



* Still the best comic book movie of all-time.

 

What, you never saw Sin City?

Anywho, I'm guessing this may have something to do with Marvel deciding they may as well use Disney's animation industry to do their shows from now on. Like how DC uses WB to do all their stuff.

 

Yeah, I saw it. Not enough substance for me. Didn't really care about any of the characters besides Marv (and only a little bit). I loved how over-the-top and creative the violence was, but to be really impressed with that kind of movie, I need to be impressed by more than just the inventiveness of the violence...I need characters and story I can really sink my teeth into.

I have problems with all of the most revered comic book movies (although I love them all). "Spider-Man 2" has too much depressing melodrama about Peter Parker's crappy life (would have liked more uplifting adventure and action), and "The Dark Knight" is too long with too many subplots and Christan Bale's performance as Batman is horrible (he makes a swell Bruce Wayne). "Iron Man" is another movie where the main character is tremendously more interesting out of costume than in (his first scene as Iron Man is stellar, however). Too bad the big showdown at the end is a bit anti-climactic.

Out of all the comic book movies thus far, "X2" is the closest to perfect for me with just the right balance of drama, action, and character development. It drags a little at the end and the crying stuff is awful, but otherwise it is aces. But I digress. To get slightly back on topic, I always like the idea of cartoon adaptations of properties giving little nods to movies.

I like how the character of Scarface on "The Batman" dressed like Al Pacino's "Tony Montana" and used his most famous line. I love the parody of Joel Schumacher in the episode of "The New Batman Adventures" called "Legends of the Dark Knight". In the same spirit, the portrayal of Nightcrawler on this series delighted me, and left a very good impression of the series in my mind, even though I barely saw any of it. Even the title of the series sounds like a tribute to the 2000-2006 X-Men movie series since Wolverine was clearly positioned as the main character in all of those movies. I hope one day we get a Batman animated show where some tribute is paid to Ledger's interpretation of The Joker, either in the look or voice of the character. I don't think anyone should try to do an exact impression since they'd never top him, but a subtle homage would be cool.

 

Eh, I think the DCAU version of the Joker (Mark Hamill) was better than Ledger (he was a great villain, though he was less a character than a living plot device, but I never really thought he was a good Joker).

And don't kill me, but I doubt he'd have been so well-remembered if Ledger hadn't died. Hell, Ledger himself didn't think much of the character either.

I didn't like the X-Men movies EXACTLY because they were too Wolverine-centered. And they minimalized everything by not including references to possible other forces at work like Mister Sinister or the Hellfire Club. I hope that the next batch of X-Movies will have Cyclops as a more central figure the way X-Men Evolution did.

 

That blows...I never caught all of season one due to scheduling changes nicktoons made.

 

You had to pay extra extra to get Nick Toons in Cincinnati on TimeWarner Cable. The only time I got to see it was when they showed a sample or two on KidsOnDemand. I saw some more through NetFlix. I prefer the X-men as a group rather than Wolverine all the time and he's the leader too while Cyclops sits on his ass crying.

 

I'd rather they got over the damn "Cyclops is a loser without Jean" thing and make him more like the Earth X version of Cyclops: The one who kept up protecting young mutants while Jean left him for Logan (who is now a fat slob) and refused to leave Earth to join his father and brother in outer space.

Thanks X-Movies, you've made Cyclops look like a total loser to the general public!

 

To be fair to the X-movies they were only following the comics in their portrayal of Scott. I always despised the Scott/Jean relationship in the comics and how overly melodramatic everything was. This guy was supposed to be the leader of the X-men.

My favorite Scott Summers if the Scott Summers post-Jean. I much prefer Scott/Emma to Scott/Jean and I really liked how Joss Whedon wrote Scott during Astonishing.

 

That's why I liked X-Men EVO for giving us a Scott who was more than just "Jean's Guy".

The Movies shouldn't be afraid of taking a few liberties or rewriting a few characters to soothe the transition from page to screen.

 

LOL@Sin City being anything like the best comic book movie of all-time.

 

Certainly the most accurately adapted comic-movie of all time.

 

^And accuracy has nothing to do with quality. Gus van Sant's Psycho was a line-for-line, shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, but that didn't make it any good.

 

Well, that and I DO think that Sin City was still pretty good while also being a 100% perfect adaption.