Today Talkin’ Nerdy probes X-Men: Evolution.
For the uninformed, X-Men: Evolution was a Canadian-American animated television series about the Marvel Comics superhero team X-Men, which originally ran on Kids’ WB! from November 4, 2000 to October 25, 2003. XME’s major selling point was that in this incarnation, many of the characters were teenagers rather than adults.
That’s not so unusual, after all, the original X-Men were teenagers.
Also, the main X-Men attended Bayville High, where they interacted with ‘normal’ kids and teachers.
So it was basically X-Men Meets Saved by the Bell.
Since the principal characters were teenagers, the show quickly became a favorite among fangirl shippers.
“SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Magma should totally date Pyro! BEST SHOW EVER!!!!!!!!!”
My personal opinion of the show was…
I thought the animation was pretty decent (Evolution was easily one of the best looking X-Men cartoons to date) and it was a refreshing change to see an X-Men cartoon in which Wolverine wasn’t chewing up all the scenery for once…
“Hey, Bub! It ain’t my fault that I got the skills that earn Marvel big bills!”
…But the high school setting just never gelled with me, largely because I’ve never been big on high school based stuff in general. As a kid I hated, Hated, HATED school, so the last thing I wanted to see when I turned on the tube was a show about kids attending school. Basically I agree with the Blockbuster Buster about X-Men: Evolution: it was an OK show, though you had to slog through a ton of high school BS.
“The show was badass…except when it wasn’t.”
However, even Evolution‘s biggest fans and most staunchest admirers have to admit that there’s a HUGE, GAPING HOLE in the show’s premise.
Namely, the main kids on the show attended Bayville High (a public school) in this series, yet they still lived at the Xavier Academy for Gifted Youngsters. Let me repeat that: they went to a public school while living at a private school. They attended one school while living at another.
“That. Does Not. Make. Sense!”
Now usually when I bring this up, some fanboy (or girl) will pipe in with…
“Obviously they were learning regular school stuff at Bayville and mutant stuff at the Academy. Duh!”
Yeah, I got that. Great. Sure. OK.
Except…
On this show, the existence of mutants was kept tightly under wraps. The general public didn’t even know about mutants until they were publicly outed in season 3, so what did Joe and Jane Average think these kids were doing at the Academy while they were concurrently attending public school? These kids had non-mutant friends; didn’t any of them ever ask one of them, “Say, you go to school here and you live at that other school. So you’re in 2 schools? What’s up with that?” What did Xavier’s staff and backers tell the public about the Academy? That it was a day camp? Chess club? A campus for LARPing?
Or did everybody just think the X-Teens were in a cult?
I’m not saying fans of X-Men: Evolution can’t or shouldn’t enjoy the show. The ‘Mutant High’ premise wasn’t really my thing, but I know a lot of people who thought it was awesome. If the show tickles your fancy, fine, but you’ve got to admit…
“It’s a plot hole big enough to drive a Mack Truck through!”
Twin Images 
I tried getting into this show when Cartoon Network started airing it (I didn’t watch the Kids’ WB! run). It was decent, but I found it too angsty. I didn’t watch past the first season.
LikeLike
Yeah, that’s an issue I have with X-Men in general, not just this show, but all of this franchise’s various shows and movies: they take themselves too dang seriously and they’re all so gloomy. As a geek who’s never really fit in anywhere, I like the idea of people who are born ‘different’ finding a place where they fit in, but why so serious all the time? Why not just have wacky antics and fun in the big high-tech mansion instead of saving the world and protecting racist douche-nozzles who hate and fear them nonstop? If Marvel made an X-Men show like the former scenario I described, I’d watch the heck outta that. The Super Hero Squad Show’s version of the Muties remains my favorite take on the franchise to this day.
LikeLike