In a few short days time the second season of the second greatest X-Men animated series behind of course X-Men: The Animated Series returns for more new episodes. It is safe to say that X-Men '97 was everything that a good revival should be as it respected what came before it but then it pushed things in directions that we never expected it to and as I was not only a huge fans of the original animated series growing up as a kid but I also watched every single episode of this revival when it was first airing you all just knew that I had to produce a tie in review for this second season and well what better tie in the first season finale and so then join me as I review the episodes that see the X-Men get pushed beyond there breaking points with the episodes in question being called simply just "Tolerance Is Extinction" enjoy.
The plot of these episodes is Bastion launches his plan to take over the world by turning humans into living breathing Sentinels forcing the X-Men to fight like they have never thought before but something far more sinister lurks beneath the surface which will change the team as we know them. Now then interms of what I personally thought / felt about the actual plot that's actually featured / presented to us in these very episodes well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual plot that's actually featured / presented to us in these very episodes was in all honesty really good. To put it frankly the plot of these episodes isn't just TV good it's movie quality good as you can very easily see the plot for these episodes being the plot of an X-Men movie. As the plot does give you all of the drama and it raises all of the stakes to not only get you hooked into what's going on but it also keeps you wondering just what is going to happen next and while yes the plot could have been alot more stronger in some places as some characters arcs don't really get resolved but at the same time tho this is a plot that does give you everything that you want to see with it feeling more in line with the classic X-Men show then what they were doing in the movies at the time, yet at the same time tho there are things in the third part of this part finale that do feel undercooked like the stuff with Magneto and Charles which does go nowhere in the grand scheme of things and yet even that is still some really interesting stuff, plot wise this is pretty much the perfect X-Men finale plot as it does give you all of the cool stuff with the characters whilst also giving you a plot that you could see working really well in an X-Men movie with the plot of these episodes also being really rather entertaining and as well as being really rather engaging as well in my freaking opinions anyways / at least.
Starring in these episodes is Ross Marquand as Charles Xavier / Professor X , Doctor Doom and Apocalypse and Matthew Waterson as Erik "Magnus" Lehnsherr Magneto , Overeager Journalist , World Leader 1. Also starring in these episodes is Theo James as Bastion , Ray Chase as Scott Summers / Cyclops , Jennifer Hale as Jean Grey , Female Prime , World Leader 3 , Lenore Zann as Anna-Marie Raven / Rogue , George Buza as Dr. Henry "Hank" McCoy / Beast , Gil Birmingham as Forge , Alison Sealy-Smith as Ororo Munroe / Storm , Isaac Robinson-Smith as Lucas Bishop / Bishop and T'Chaka , Chris Potter as Nathan Summers / Cable , Adrian Hough as Kurt Wagner / Nightcrawler , Holly Chou as Jubilation Lee / Jubilee and A Chinese OZT Member , Gui Agustini as Roberto Da Costa / Sunspot , Chris Britton as Nathaniel Essex / Mister Sinister , Gates McFadden as Rachel Summers / Mother Askani , J.P. Karliak as Kevin Sydney / Morph , Reverened Stryker , Radio Jockey and World Leader 2 , Adetokumboh M'Cormack as En Sabah Nur , Josh Keaton as Steve Rogers / Captain America , Catherine Disher as Val Cooper , Cal Dodd as James Howlett / Wolverine , Theo Chou as Sebastion Gilberti / Bastion and The Sentinels , Ron Rubin as President Robert Kelly , Kari Wahlgren as Rose , Donna Jay Fulks as Trish Tilby , The Bespectacled Teacher and A Female Teacher , Christine Uhebe as Nina Da Costa , Anjali Bhimani as Daria and A News Anchor , Rama Vallury as Baron Zemo , Jeff Bennett as Ford , Eric Bauza as Master Mold and The Prime Sentinels , Morla Gorrondonna as Lilandra Neramani and Rachel Kimsey as A News Anchor , The News Pundits and A Computer.
Now then interms of what I personally thought / felt about the actual acting that's actually featured / presented to us in these very episodes well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual acting that's actually featured / presented to us in these very episodes was in all honesty really good. The fact that we have alot of really good acting in all three of these episodes is something that's not really all that surprising as alot of the actors that re in these episodes are either A a bunch of really good actors in there own right or B are reprising their roles from the original show either way it does make sense that the acting in all three of these episodes would be top notch and heck the same could even be said for the acting in the whole first season of the show as a whole. With the best actor in all of these episodes being Lenore Zann as Anna-Marie Raven / Rogue as she does give us a Rogue that is very much filled with rage and hate and yet the same time you can tell that there is a sadness in her eyes with her knowing full well that what she's doing isn't who she is as a person and is only acting this way as she has lost the love of her life with this being somethin Lenore does just by using her voice and it something that does get across just what this character s thinking and feeling at any given moment in these episodes and it is something that really does shine through in her final performance. With the acting that's in these episode really being helped by the fact that the scripts for these episodes is just so good that all this episodes actors have to do is just say the lines as they are written and a good performance will come out of them naturally which is something that really does help to raise the overall quality of the acting that's in these very episodes.
Doing the animation for these episodes is the legends and the greats that are currently over at Studio Mir. Now then interms of what I personally thought / felt about the actual animation that's actually featured / presented to us in these very episodes well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual animation that's actually featured / presented to us in these very episodes was in all honesty really good. These episodes animation was alot more better then what it really had any right to be as while yes the animation in the rest of the show was drop gorgeous at times there was no guarantee that that would be the case in these final three episodes as the makers of these episodes could have dropped the ball animation wise. Thankfully they did not as these episodes do maintain the series already high bar when it comes to its animation by giving us lots of really nice looking background and creative scenes that could only work in the realm of animation, this is something that the original series did as well and it was fun to see that trend continue in these three episodes and heck the characters do get some really fluid movements to them which is something that does make them feel alot more alive but the issue when it comes to the animation being the fact that there are some shots that do look a little weird when the characters are standing still and the episodes action doesn't get as fluid animation as the rest of the episodes get and while these are indeed small things that don't really harm the episodes on the whole they are also things that could have been fixed before the episodes got released as they are things that the people watching these episodes will notice.
The one common theme threw all three of these episodes is the idea of dreams and how they can be used to either do some good or turn into something that we are not. Like for example with Rogue as she has just lost Gambit the love of her life and therefor her faith in Xaviers dream of a world where Mutants and humans can liv side by side is shaken because of the fact that she doesn't want to loose another friend or loved one with this temporarily turning her into a villain with the same thing being true for Sunspot as after his mother turned him in just for being a mutant he doesn't know who or what to believe anymore so again he sides with Magneto much like Rogue herself does this is something that does make the two characters the very thing that they both not as they not bad people and yet because of the fact that they've both had there faith shaken in different they are forced to become these new people even if its for a little while. The same thing is true for the villains as well as we see Bastion get his dream tested when the X-Men tell him that his beloved mother lied to him and that Charles had come to visit him but that she turned him away whilst this doesn't force him to change his dream it does cause him to somewhat faulter in his dream and the same thing is true for Magneto as he has spent so long being evil that he forgot that he and Charles shared the sake goal only Magneto somewhere along the way did have his ream more warped into what it was during the original series run with it only being when Charles confronts him inside his own mind that he does remember what his original dream was and while it will of course be hard to say if the character is changed for good just based off of what we see in the final moments of the third part of this episode it does seem like Magneto has become more of an anti-hero, these episodes do a good job of showing us just what the power of having a dream can have on us as it can make us into great people or it can drown us and become warped because f the things that we go through in life.
Shockingly this episodes does also include alot of silent cameos from other nineties Marvel animated heroes. As we get both Spider-Man and Peter Parker not only taking part in helping New York City but also finally being reunited with Mary Jane but we also get Doctor Strange , Daredevil and Iron Man all of which were really fun to see as these characters do all live in the same city and therefor they would of course all be willing to help out should a threat come that's two big for any of them to handle and with alot of them having already crossed over with each other before now it does make sense that they would reappear in this episode. With the only downside to this being the fact that alot of them are just relegated to being silent cameos with the only two that get speaking lines being Captain America and T'Chaka who may or may not be Black Panther in this universe as it would have been really cool to hear Spider-Man having a chat with Mary Jane or it would have been awsome to see Daredevil and Spider-Man helping each other out bottom line being here is that there was alot of really cool things that the makers of these episodes could have dine with these characters and while fair enough it might have been seen as being over kill to have all of these heroes play even a small role in these episodes given the fact that the fanbase for this show does skew alot more older then the typical Marvel animated show does it would have been fun to see these characters that we knew as kids talk once again and while it was still great that we got to see them at all does feel like a let down and fair enough this is an X-Men show and therefor you want the focus to be on them but if your going to go out of your way to include several scenes with them then at least have them do or say something that does feel true to there character as there s no way that Tony Stark would just be standing in a room whilst all of this is going down.
Bastion is such a cool idea for a villain with him being someone who like DCs Cyborg can hear machines only he takes it in a more villainous route by using them to build Sentinels that are merged with human beings. Thus making it hard to tell who is a robot and who isn't with this being something that all three of these episodes handle really well as we see that characters that we thought were allies to the X-Men were actually robots this whole time with the only thing that could have made this all the more better being if some of those allies had helped them out in previous episodes and had gotten close to various members of the team as this is something that would make that big reveal at the end of part one be all the more shocking. To be fair to these episodes they do take it about as far as they possibly could have done with humans being robots as they are mainly used as a distraction for our heroes and to give Bastion his own robot army with this being something that does show us the audience that he really does think about two or three steps ahead of everyone else with it only being when the X-Men start to do the same thing that they actually start to gain an advantage over him and this is something that a good villain should do as a good villain should always force the hero to be better and to think outside of the box, heck we even get to find out why Bastion is evil as we find out that he's been hearing machines since he was a kid with being something that does slowly drive him crazy to the point where he thinks that the only way to get rid of the talking in his head is to destroy the X-Men and is to turn humans into robots that could kills them with him even having seen a future where he did succeed and was actually happy and heck he even turned his own mother into a Sentinel as that's how far of the deep end he had gone.
Now then these episodes has / had an exact grand total running time of really no longer then forty minuets. With episode one being thirty one minuets and twenty six seconds , episode two being twenty minuets ad twenty one seconds and episodes three being forty minuets and three seconds, with all three episodes really earning there running time as they are all telling this one epic story and the fact that the final episode of the first season is the longest episode of all of the episodes does tell you just how epic that this three parter is as that one episode does have alot of plot to cover and to do son in shorter amount of time would do a huge disservice to the plot of the episodes as a whole with these episodes really having enough plot there to really cover that large amount of running time in the first place. With the episodes really using there running times wisely as they do take alot of time to fully develop the episodes plot with them adding in things that do effect in a major way be it from Magneto being let go from where he was hidden by Bastion to the leaders of the human race deciding to bomb the asteroid that the X-Men are on in the hopes that it won't fall down and wipe out the earth these are all things that the makers of this episode really didn't have to include but the fact that they did does show us that they knew that they had to give us a satisfactory ending and that does mean giving us a well thought out and developed plot. The same thing is also kind of true for the episodes character development as while we do see what it is that might turn Magneto into more of an anti hero in this next season as it is him that not only saves Charles but also the world and the other X-Men we don't really see what it is that causes Rogue to go back to being a good guy which whilst this is a small thing given the fact that we saw the thought process of her deciding to essentially become a bad guy even if it was for a few minuets it still would have been nice if we got to understand why she flipped back to being a good guy but I really will admit that these episodes really does have some really good pacing to them tho.
So now then as this is an action show that really does mean that I have to actually talk about the actual action that's actually featured / resented to us in these very episodes well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual action that's actually featured / presented to us in these very episodes was in all honesty really good. With all three episodes having some really fun action in them all of which d take as full advantage of the fact that there are being animated as they possibly could have done and while we don't get to see alot of the team fighting together in alot of this three parter whenever we do that's when we get some of the more really cool stuff happening as it will always be cool seeing all of the X-Men fighting together and using there powers together. With the best action scene being in part three as we get to see alot of the X-Men that are still alive on the Asteroid not only trying to hold of Bastion but also trying to stop the Asteroid from falling to earth with them only just being able to defeat Bastion when they put on a collar that cancels out his powers but then the mutants have another problem as the humans bomb the Asteroid which does start to make it fall to earth all the while inside his a mind an unconscious Charles has to get Magneto to remember who he is so that they can escape his mind and which is something that they only just barely manage to do, this one episode is basically one long action scene with there being very few breaks inbetween the action think of it as the Mad Max: Fury Road but of TV animation and you'll get the idea and yet it does oddly work because of it with the rest of the episodes action being just as good as well in my freaking opinions anyways / at least.
Overall if this three parter is anything go by then the next season does have an awful lot to live up to as my god were all three episodes of this show just so good that is really saying something when you take into account that the rest of the show really is just so good as well in my freaking opinions anyways / at least. Now then i've talked about all of the good and as well as all of the bad things that are in these episodes in this very review and as such that really does mean that these episodes really do earn themselves a grand total combine score of exactly a 10 out of 10 from me.
Now then as for where I personally got all of the images that I personally used in this very review well then boys and girls and as well as ladies and gentlemen I personally got all of the images that I personally used in this very review from Blogger , IMP Awards . Com and Google Images. With my personally preferred website to use to get the images from these very episodes that I used in this very post being the really great Google Images really simply just due to the fact that really alot of if not really all of the images that are all really from these very episodes with alot of them really being really better quality then what you'd really think of and all of the images are really of course up and really on Google Images really are also really all fairly high in quality and as well as them all being really fairly freaking high in definition.