Adaptations are always a challenge, but for comic books it’s an especially daunting one, as the new medium must consider translating the saga told through years of issues and continuity changes. in most cases, X-Men ’97The latest episode does this task as well as it can, but the sacrifice it makes comes at the expense of a character full of potential for further exploration.
this The third episode ’97“Fire Made Flesh,” immediately following the cliffhanger Premiere, when a second Jean Gray appears in distress at the X-Mansion, surprising our heroes. People soon discovered that the real surprising twist was not the existence of the second Jean Gray, but the Jean who appeared at the door——and collapse quicklyimmediately gives us perhaps the biggest clue as to her identity—actually The original Gene, and the woman we see having a baby and planning something beyond real life X-Men and Scott The premiere featured a clone impostor.
What follows is 28 minutes trying to condense the most famous X-Men story plot One of the most iconic stories of all time—the legendary 1988 crossover “Inferno”—is adapted into a single episode for animated television.That’s already a tall order for any show, even one as enjoyable as this ’97 Already is (and inherits) animated series‘ Adaptation method before it), and things needed to be cut and changed.A half-hour TV show simply can’t cover the crossover stories and events that span more than 20 comic issues, and X-Men ’97 Understand this from the start. It’s commendable for what it covers in a coherent version of this story, but the series has to adapt to more than just “Hell” in doing so.It has to try and tell the entire history of comics before and after Madelyne Pryor’s transformation Enter the Goblin Queen——a crossing event decades From the 1980s until Over the past few years—underneath it all. It is here that, in most cases, X-Men ’97 Really stumbling.
While “Fire Made Flesh” carries over the basic beat of “Inferno” and its setup – the discovery of clones and Sinister manipulating Gene and Scott into accessing their genes through their child Nathan Summers, the clone Falling into evil and making a pact with Hell, our hero eventually convinces her to turn away from the darkness—it rarely centers on Madeline’s character in the comics, which had years of preparation and payoff before Hell began.In fact, it is more true to say this idea The character of Madeleine is more important when it comes to ’97, rather than a separate character itself. She is only called Madeline once in the entire series, and after her redemption in the climax, she seemingly picks up this name for herself out of nowhere as she decides to move on, away from the X-Men, and live her life The life you want. She is Jean Grey. Otherwise, she’d just be framed as Jean Grey’s imposter: first as a clone who was suspected by her friends and even her husband, then as Sinister’s tool for his own plots, and then when she became the Goblin Queen (nothing of any kind of) really explains why she suddenly has demonic powers) and even when the “real” Jean psychically enters her mind to try to help the two of them sift through whose memories, even so, this episode Come to the conclusion it doesn’t matter because they could all be Jean Grey.
See Madeleine as a turning point to be revealed rather than as a character in her own right – which in itself is part of the truth X-Men: The Animated Series Having resurrected a post-Phoenix Gene, not giving Scott time to grieve and move on, like he did in the comics when he met Madeline—X-Men ’97 I didn’t quite believe the arrival of the Goblin Queen at first.we never see the story scott and madeline have In the comics, the former has to battle his doubts as to whether he can actually find the new love of his life after Joan’s death, while the latter has to constantly battle the doubt that she’s somehow reborn Or reinvented Joan in some ways. (Even if that’s what she ended up becoming after she decided to resurrect Jean). The episode spends a lot of time without first giving her an identity of her own, its take on the events of “Hell” and the impact they had on these characters, especially Jean and Scott, integrating the hellish environment and the Goblin Queen ‘s lineage as nothing more than spectacle and scenery.
That’s shameful enough, but for much of the episode it essentially puts Madeline’s own personality aside, ultimately repeating a mistake that pushed Madeline into the position she was in the comics A Horrible Deal with the Devil: A woman so committed to who she is that she refuses to deny that she is herself, someone more than the Jean Gray clone she was rediscovered, someone who has built her own life, loves, and dreams. Man, she was willing to tear the earth apart in hell fire and brimstone to accept a world that allowed this to happen. Flesh from Fire never had this kind of emotional core in the fight between the X-Men and the Goblin Queen and ultimately Scott and Madeline’s fight against Sinister – leading to Nathan being infected with a techno-organic virus and being sent to his future destiny become a cable— because of its reluctance to explore Madeleine’s individual identity outside of her role as a clone, serving only as a catalyst for the plot and for other characters like Scott and Jean.
Like I said, adapting a massive comic book story into a single TV series was always going to be impossible.There is a case to illustrate that even though X-Men ’97 Despite turning it into a multi-part storyline, the inherent premise of its predecessor with Jean Grey’s adaptive choice would still complicate or confuse things and wouldn’t be condensed into this format anyway. The show does everything it can, except for the specific failings of Madeline’s character, and it still ends up pulling off its own version of “Hell” in such a short amount of time.
Of course, there is potential X-Men ’97 Revisit Madeleine and explore what is not discussed here. Unlike the original “Hell,” her awareness of the dark path she’s fallen down doesn’t culminate with her death (this is the comics, she gets better).Now at least there’s a possibility of her return, especially with her memory of her life intact – a real gift to her in comics In the latest miniseries incident dark web, When Gene shares memories of raising baby Nathan with her, she truly becomes her own person and not just a shadow of the “real” Gene. At least she has a name now!But as it stands, Fire Made Flesh and its ambitious retelling of such an iconic story X-Men The storyline could have been much richer than it ended up being, and at the expense of time, it could never have done justice to one of the most fascinating and misunderstood characters in the history of Marvel’s mutant comics.
watch X-Men ’97 on Disney+.
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