• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

90s 'X-Men' cartoon on DVD today

B

Brikar99

Rear Admiral
Rear Admiral
Anyone else pick these up? I grabbed the first two volumes. Only had time to watch "Night of the Sentinels", but it was a fun trip back. Things that seemed really cool when I was a kid are now pretty cheesy. I found myself quite digging the voice cast. For whatever reason, it all seemed perfectly natural to hear the characters speak that way, even after being a huge fan of the recent X-Men movies (and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine). The animation isn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it's not amazing either. The video quality on the DVD is probably about as good as we can hope for - serviceable, but not amazing in anway (much like the animation itself).

I can't wait to get to the second volume and see how the adaptation of 'The Phoenix Saga' holds up after all this time.
 
Marvel.com has also begun releasing the episodes one at a time on their online video channel starting today with "Night of the Sentinels Pt. 1." I guess it was to coincide with the DVD release.
 
So are they just selling the freakin' Night of the Sentinals and nothing else or are there other episodes on it? If its just the two parter, can find that in nearly every used video section in any video store or thrift shop.

Why can't they just release these as Seasons?
 
NickRyder said:
So are they just selling the freakin' Night of the Sentinals and nothing else or are there other episodes on it? If its just the two parter, can find that in nearly every used video section in any video store or thrift shop.

Why can't they just release these as Seasons?
Click to expand...

They're labeled as 'volumes', but I don't know enough about the show to know how well they correspond to the show's 'seasons'. At any rate, each set is two discs and together end up totaling 33 episodes.
 
Interesting. I used to love sneaking these in when I was a kid, but don't remember all that much of 'em now. Worth a rental, perhaps.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
 
Brikar99 said:
NickRyder said:
So are they just selling the freakin' Night of the Sentinals and nothing else or are there other episodes on it? If its just the two parter, can find that in nearly every used video section in any video store or thrift shop.

Why can't they just release these as Seasons?
Click to expand...

They're labeled as 'volumes', but I don't know enough about the show to know how well they correspond to the show's 'seasons'. At any rate, each set is two discs and together end up totaling 33 episodes.
Click to expand...

From what I can tell, Volume One has all 13 episodes of season 1 and the first three of season 2. Volume Two has the other 10 episodes of season 2 and the first 7 episodes of season 3.
 
Brikar99 said:
They're labeled as 'volumes', but I don't know enough about the show to know how well they correspond to the show's 'seasons'.
Click to expand...

Crouteru's pretty much got it. The seasons break down as follows, at least according to the notes I took at the time:

S1: 13 eps
S2: 13 eps
S3: 20 eps (counting the "No Mutant is an Island" episode delayed until S5 in broadcast but taking place just after the Phoenix Saga)
S4: 17 eps
S5: 13 eps (not counting "Island")
 
I'll definitely be picking these up; v.2 has the first half of the big Phoenix epic (which, having read the original, I think the show improved considerably on the "Phoenix" part; they also did an admirable job on "Dark Phoenix", given the limitations).
 
This series sucked ass. Piss poor animation, piss poor updates of classic stories. The voices where not terrible but they did badly with Storms characterisation(sp). They could have and should have done better. the spiderman series of the same time frame was done much better animation wise. The stories where on the same level of yuck.
 
The X-Men series was usually animated by Akom, one of the worst overseas studios working on '90s animated shows. The animation was also hampered by the insistence on emulating the look of the comics, with very detailed drawings of the characters. All those lines were hard to animate fluidly and took time that could've been spent on character motion and expression instead, so the results were stiff and jerky. (This is why most animated shows today rely on much simpler, more stylized designs.)

Some of the later episodes, starting with the "Out of the Past" 2-parter that opened season 3 and including most of the final season, were animated by Philippine Animation Studios instead. Their work was rougher in some ways, but the characters were far more mobile, dynamic, and expressive. I prefer the animation in those episodes.

At the time, I quite liked the storytelling and was okay with the voice cast, though in more recent viewings I realize it was a lot more stilted and melodramatic than I remember. Still, for its time it was a good show.

As for the '90s Spider-Man, it was animated by Tokyo Movie Shinsha, which was definitely the best overseas studio doing US animated shows at the time. Some of its episodes, especially the pilot, are fantastically animated. However, with each season its budget was cut and there was less time and money to devote to the animation, and I think at some point they switched from film to 2D digital animation and that technology wasn't yet fully refined. So the look got cruder in later years.

Storywise, I thought it was excellent. It perfectly captured Stan Lee's blend of engaging, believable character drama with corny and awkward dialogue.
 
I've recently seen the episodes again on toon-disney(don't ask I bareley belive it myself) and they are painfull to watch! Wolvi & the x-men is actually BETTER then this!
 
Robert Maxwell said:
My only problem with this show was that they didn't do enough Cable episodes. :lol:
Click to expand...

Of course not! They were on a broadcast network, not cable! :D

I didn't care for the way they handled Cable, and I didn't care for the character anyway -- too much an example of the overmuscled, overviolent antiheroes that dominated comics in the '80s and '90s. His portrayal was inconsistent, I think because the show underwent a producer change after the first season and some things were tweaked to make them truer to the comics. When he first appeared in the initial Genosha arc, he was just some guy who happened to be around, a mercenary with a big futuristic gun. When he appeared again later on, suddenly he was a time traveller from the future, and his presence in the first-season Genosha storyline was never explained.
 
I got these back on Monday and I've watched a few episodes. I never really watched X-Men that much back when I was a kid (I was more of a Spider-Man person, hopefully that gets this kind of DVD treatment soon) but I'm enjoying it so far. The animation isn't great, but the stories aren't too bad, and I'm really impressed by how it's got a pretty major ongoing storyline so early in the series. Pretty impressive for a kids show.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Qonundrum
Poppin' saucers at Farpoint
Replies
13
Views
2K
somebuddyX
somebuddyX
A
Peak of Fools - a friendship/adventure story
Replies
0
Views
434
a troubled tribble
A
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top