Beau DeMayo Co-Signing Cynthia Erivo As Storm Reminded Me Of Some Of X-Men ‘97‘s Faults
Clearly a lot of fans loved X-Men ’97. The revival of the classic Fox animated series from the 90s was a bonafide hit for Disney Plus when it was released in March of last year. Bringing back a majority of the original voice actors and updating the animation were major points in its favor, as well as taking some legitimate risks in terms of some of the storytelling. And lord knows most fans have heaped praise upon its showrunner/head writer Beau DeMayo. So there was a fair amount of shock and outrage when Marvel Studios fired him just before the series was set to premiere.
I don’t want to get into the weeds of the “controversies” that have been speculated on regarding the potential reasons for his termination, but it’s hard not to feel as though some of his posting on social media in the aftermath didn’t rub me the wrong way. This isn’t to say that Marvel Studios can’t be the ones in the wrong, but even as important as it can be to speak up for yourself when you feel you’ve been unjustly targeted, I can’t help but feel like DeMayo has moved like someone for whom the attention was more important than the truth. And with one of his most recent posts, my “clout-chasing” Spidey Sense really kicked into gear.
Now, one of the biggest cinematic stories of the last few months has been the critical and commercial success of the adaptation of the musical Wicked. As such, the stars of the film Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande have been the “toast of the town”, so to speak. Erivo in particular recently expressed that a dream role for hers would be to play the X-Men character Storm, to which Beau DeMayo tweeted this:
I don’t want to be one of these people who says that Cynthia Erivo shouldn’t be considered for Storm at all, but I’m certainly one of those people who falls into the camp of having never once considered her as a possibility. Fans and their picks for who they want to see play Storm are ubiquitous, with a mix of legitimately thought-out picks and woefully surface-level suggestions. But even deeper than that is where I feel Beau DeMayo is feeding into a bit of recency bias or as it relates to this specific conversation what I like to call “black actor of the moment syndrome”.
Basically whenever a potential genre casting calls for a black actor, folks can only think of whoever the black actor of the moment is or pick from a selection of multiple black actors of the moment. This isn’t to say that some of them wouldn’t be right for a given role or that fans are approaching their suggestions without a reasonable degree of thought, but sometimes it can be painfully obvious when almost zero thought is employed beyond, “a physically fit and attractive black person who’s really popular right now!” Cynthia Erivo is great, but there are a handful of actresses I would rather see play Storm.
But all this has reminded me of some of the issues I legitimately had with X-Men ’97, especially in relation to those who believe Beau DeMayo created something without flaw and is beyond reproach. Because personally I felt like he kind of dropped the ball on Storm in particular. Some folks can piecemeal moments from the first season as examples of her being portrayed as a commanding and fully-fledged character that they claim she wasn’t in the live-action films all they want. But by the end of season one I found most of her character development a bit undercooked, especially given what she went through when the season began.
Facing off against anti-mutant bigots, Storm fell victim to a weapon that robbed her of her mutant powers. For a character as proud of being a mutant as she is often portrayed, this was a devastating blow. Leaving the X-Men and crossing paths with mutant tech master Forge, attempts were made to restore her powers that were initially futile. Of course this is all resolved after an encounter with a malevolent spirit and Storm was able to regain her powers . . . after one and a half episodes. . . Because for whatever stupid “Hanna-Barbera” inspired reason, the team behind X-Men ’97 decided to start a deep and introspective story of self discovery for one of the most beloved X-Men characters by making it the second half of an episode where the first half features Jubilee and Sunspot getting trapped in a video game and hijinks ensue.
And it doesn’t stop there. Sure, dropping the bombshell at the end of episode two that the Jean Grey Scott Summers conceived a whole-ass child with was actually a clone was appropriately shocking. There’s no denying that. My problem was them spending just one episode to have the clone discover that she was created by Mister Sinister, turn evil and terrorize the X-Men, have the real Jean Grey convince her not to be evil anymore, and then have to send her and Scott’s baby into the future to treat whatever techno-virus Sinister had infected him with. These were plot points that I think needed at least two or three episodes to space out and let breathe.
Then the island nation of Genosha became a safe haven for any and all mutants, and Magneto was invited to be part of the leadership. Too bad a terrorist attack by Sentinels resulted in tons of mutants being killed, including our favorite ragin’ cajun Gambit! This gave way to the one-two punch of the season’s “big bad” being revealed as Bastion; in the comics an advanced humanoid Sentinel, now some sort of nebulous fusion of a mutant with Sentinel technology that’s just too convoluted to explain, that’s trying to start a war between mutants and humans because . . . reasons. Meanwhile Magneto reverted back to his old ways and broke his promise to Professor X to lead the X-Men, stole a chunk of the Earth to lift into space and proceeded to butt-ream the magnetic field of the rest of the planet. I don’t know about the rest of y’all but that just seemed like a lot.
Let’s not even get into how clunky and potentially problematic Sunspot’s inclusion was in the series. Some fans have previously criticized the X-Men films for never portraying Sunspot as explicitly Afro-Latino. While he’s certainly visualized as having a darker complexion than his live-action counterparts in X-Men ’97, a few fans still called out the series for his look leaning more towards Latinos of indigenous-American descent. Being that the racial discrimination the character faced in the comics was a fundamental trait in his development, it was surprising how dismissive Beau DeMayo seemed to be regarding the criticism.
The original Fox series at least structured most of its episodes to work as two-parters, while also having 13 episodes per season to work with compared to X-Men ‘97’s ten. This allowed stories time to have a gradual progression. They did this for a Saturday morning cartoon for children 30 years ago! But for nostalgic adults making up the core audience for
X-Men ’97, I feel like we got a lot of sensory overload birthed out of the nature of the streaming model and an acknowledgement that for some of our attention spans have quite frankly devolved. The mandate most likely was to squeeze in as much fan service and overlapping storylines as possible to engender immediate goodwill from an audience already excited to relive their childhood through this new series. Which would make sense considering that there would naturally be frustration in having to wait a minimum of a year to 18 months for the next season.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed X-Men ’97 for the most part. However I feel like it awkwardly clown-carred at least two and a half seasons worth of material into ten episodes and it shows. Some of it works in pieces but as a cohesive narrative I just found there to be a lot of noticeable gaps. I know I shouldn’t accuse folks who praise it as being blinded by nostalgia. Trust me, I lose nothing from them getting more out of it than I did. Sure the animation is cleaner and more dynamic, and it’s not without some genuinely good writing. But I won’t apologize for having issues with it when all was said and done. And yes, I’m mad that they didn’t use the original rock music for the end credits that we never really got to hear from the first season of the Fox series, because they would always play a voiceover promo for other Fox Kids shows over it. Yeah . . . I’m salty about that.
