Just the use of "Xavier Institute" rather than "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters" is enough to bother me a bit. It's not as bad as some of the other stuff because it's a change I know has happened in the books, but I still prefer the place to actually be called a school rather than an institute.
I completely understand where you're coming from, actually. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I learned about the various versions of the X-Men universe in roughly the following order: movie -> XME -> comics. From the very first time that I saw the movie, I loved the school setting, the mixture of familiar classroom and social dynamics with with both the angst and fun of superhuman powers. It's a very distinctive part of the X-Men canon, and I definitely missed it about XME just like you did, though I ended up enjoying some of the story lines that came from the kids mingling with normal human characters in a "normal" school setting.
I'd worry about the actual safety of the normal human kids if it were something more adult, but being a kids show I expect that none of the mutant kids is really going to lose control badly enough to endanger all of the normals that they're going to school with. I mean the "pretty much any other version of canon" separation isn't just about keeping the mutant kids in a "safe" environment. It's about keeping them from being unintentional dangers to others while they're learning to control their powers.
That's a good point. Obviously, since XME is a kids' show, nobody ever gets badly hurt, but the students do lose control of their powers in front of their classmates occasionally (or deliberately use them in self-defense/to help others/to cause trouble). This is further complicated by the fact that the entire existence of mutants is a secret in this reality, and while Xavier requires the mutants in his care to attend high school, they're not allowed to tell anybody what they are or the true purpose of the Institute.
It's why I'm very grateful that Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender seem to appreciate that Magneto is a more complicated character than that.
Yes! It's a combination of scriptwriting choices and really great acting that make Magneto so complex in the movies.
I've only watched "The Cauldron" so far, but from it the character I was most interested in seeing more of was actually Mystique.
Mystique is wonderfully sneaky and effective in XME. I'm glad that she's captured your interest.
Of course, watching those episodes, I realized that one of my initial problems with XM:E was how many OTPs I've got in the 616 canon. Kitty without Colossus and Rogue without Gambit both feel incomplete to me. Not to mention that Gambit is one of my favorite characters in the Marvel multiverse period.
Gambit and Colossus do appear in XME, later on, although Gambit has a somewhat more prominent role. I'm not quite as attached to those pairings as you are, and I should probably warn you that the show does not really pursue them. I definitely sympathize with wanting to see how an alternate canon would portray something that you liked in the original, whether it's a character, a romance, or a story arc.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-11-16 03:54 pm (UTC)I completely understand where you're coming from, actually. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I learned about the various versions of the X-Men universe in roughly the following order: movie -> XME -> comics. From the very first time that I saw the movie, I loved the school setting, the mixture of familiar classroom and social dynamics with with both the angst and fun of superhuman powers. It's a very distinctive part of the X-Men canon, and I definitely missed it about XME just like you did, though I ended up enjoying some of the story lines that came from the kids mingling with normal human characters in a "normal" school setting.
I'd worry about the actual safety of the normal human kids if it were something more adult, but being a kids show I expect that none of the mutant kids is really going to lose control badly enough to endanger all of the normals that they're going to school with. I mean the "pretty much any other version of canon" separation isn't just about keeping the mutant kids in a "safe" environment. It's about keeping them from being unintentional dangers to others while they're learning to control their powers.
That's a good point. Obviously, since XME is a kids' show, nobody ever gets badly hurt, but the students do lose control of their powers in front of their classmates occasionally (or deliberately use them in self-defense/to help others/to cause trouble). This is further complicated by the fact that the entire existence of mutants is a secret in this reality, and while Xavier requires the mutants in his care to attend high school, they're not allowed to tell anybody what they are or the true purpose of the Institute.
It's why I'm very grateful that Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender seem to appreciate that Magneto is a more complicated character than that.
Yes! It's a combination of scriptwriting choices and really great acting that make Magneto so complex in the movies.
I've only watched "The Cauldron" so far, but from it the character I was most interested in seeing more of was actually Mystique.
Mystique is wonderfully sneaky and effective in XME. I'm glad that she's captured your interest.
Of course, watching those episodes, I realized that one of my initial problems with XM:E was how many OTPs I've got in the 616 canon. Kitty without Colossus and Rogue without Gambit both feel incomplete to me. Not to mention that Gambit is one of my favorite characters in the Marvel multiverse period.
Gambit and Colossus do appear in XME, later on, although Gambit has a somewhat more prominent role. I'm not quite as attached to those pairings as you are, and I should probably warn you that the show does not really pursue them. I definitely sympathize with wanting to see how an alternate canon would portray something that you liked in the original, whether it's a character, a romance, or a story arc.