X-Men: Switching Sides

After seeing the completely disappointing X-Men Origins: Wolverine, watching half of X-Men: The Last Stand and beginning my journey through season two of the stellar 90s animates series (now available on DVD!), I stumbled onto the one thing that separates that great cartoon from a lot of the recent missteps in the franchise.

Heroes that become villains.

This disturbing trend has been in all of the bad adaptations of Marvel's mutants and absent from all the great ones. The 90s animated series kept the X-Men firmly aligned with the good guys, even if they weren't members of the team (Colossus, Angel and Bishop all aided the core team), and were never used to fill in as villains. The same thing can be said for the first and second X-Men films, where the writers and director used actual villains from the comic book instead of using formerly heroic characters. Lady Deathstrike, Mastermind, Stryker, etc., all villains in the comics and films.

With X-Men: Evolution things get a little murky. Both Gambit and Colossus were introduced as members of Magneto's Acolytes, which fits with both of their characters since Gambit has always been shady and Colossus actually was an Acolyte in the comics. But since they were introduced as bad guys, it make it that much harder for them to ever align with the X-Men, which is where most all fans want to see them. I'd rather see Colossus being friends with Wolverine than fighting him. I didn't follow Evolution much after season one, so I never got to see the episodes featuring Gambit and Colossus. Maybe I shouldn't even comment on this, then, but still it's weird that they would draft these two long-standing X-Men to Magneto's side, especially when there are tons of other energy projectors and muscle men to use that are villains (Random, Ramrod, Scalphunter, Blockbuster, Sunder, Slab, the Kleinstocks, Forearm).

X-Men: The Last Stand turns this up a notch and is even worse. Okay, making a cartoon is relatively easy. It doesn't cost any more money to do great affects and accurate powers, so seeing your favorite characters in a cartoon isn't that big of a deal. It's cool, but whatever. You see them drawn every month on a page. But seeing them on the big screen, being played by a real flesh and blood person? That's a big deal! So...why does Multiple Man have to be a bad guy? I know Madrox's power makes him the perfect cannon fodder generator, but he wasn't even used in that way in the film. Any other faceless mutant could have played his role. Even worse was Psylocke, who was put in the film, made evil, never called by her name, displayed none of her actual powers and was then murdered. Seriously? Psylocke isn't the most widely known X-Man (pretty sure her thong kept her out of the animated series, and thus out of public consciousness), but she's been a pretty constant presence in the team for over two decades. To have her senselessly killed after a non-part was just insult to injury. They should have just not named that character Psylocke and everything would have been fine.

From the first seven episodes I've seen, Wolverine and the X-Men is a very well executed cartoon that is much more faithful to the source material than Evolution, but there's an insane amount of good guys turn bad guys. From just the episodes I've seen, Rogue and Domino have been made members of the Brotherhood instead of various other candidates. At least Rogue made the decision to become evil within the first couple episodes. But looking at the future episodes on Wikipedia, Blink, Scarlet Witch, Mercury and Polaris are all Acolytes and Multiple Man and Archangel are Marauders. Why? There are enough members of both the Acolytes and Marauders that are actually evil, you don't have to use random X-Men as filler characters!

Quicksilver has been a bad guy in the last two of the three X-Men animtead series. I guess his snotty nature and parentage makes him an obvious bad guy, plus he was a bad guy when he first appeared. But I hate that a character that is now much more defined by his role as an Avenger and member of X-Factor is now known as a menace to the public.

Now we come to the latest offender, X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The movie gets a lot of the allegiances right. Deadpool is a mercernary, Gambit is just mysterious and not evil, Blob is played as oafish (even though they destroy his character in every other way) and Wraith is void of anything memorable much like his comic book counterpart. But what they did to Maverick was completely out of this world bad. Much like Psylocke's misuse, all they had to do was not call the character David North or Agent Zero (Maverick's other code name). First, he's not Asian. Second, he's not a ruthless killing machine. Third, he's not a jerk. And having him be all of these things didn't really add much to the movie, it just provided a small bit of comic relief in one scene. That's it. Also, apparently Dominic Monaghan was playing Bolt, a very very bit character from the comics. Who knew that?

I know this is all really nerdy and nit-picky, and I think these switches are fine if the character isn't jeopardized or ruined. Quicksilver being evil in the cartoons is fine. That's accurate to how he started out. The same can even be said of Rogue in Wolverine and the X-Men since she herself has a bad streak in the comics. I even can look past Multiple Man being a bad guy in The Last Stand because he was played as a witty guy with a flippant attitude similar to his comic book counterpart. It's just when characters get so many alterations added to them that they are unrecognizable, like Maverick and Psylocke, there's no reason to give them the same name.

Overall, there are enough evil doers in the X-Men mythos that the mass media doesn't need to play switcheroo on us. Right?

Meh, I'm going to go back to watching my 90s X-Men DVDs.