The original short featured Daniel Stern and Shelley Duvall as the parents of a young boy, who after his dog dies from a hit-and-run car accident, goes all Dr. Frankenstein and resurrects his pup. Disney has a release date for the film on March 9th, 2012. I loved the 1984 short, that can be found on the Nightmare Before Christmas Blu-ray and DVD, so it’ll be curious if that can recapture the magic from the 28 minute running time into a feature length.

The Film:

On paper, the idea of Tim Burton directing a modern live-action version of Lewis Carroll’s famous story of Alice in Wonderland seemed too good to be true. Tim Burton certainly has established himself over the years as a kooky director with his finger on weird, and even more certain, is that Alice in Wonderland is weird. The classic Disney animated film from 1951 as become a polarizing film from the Mouse House, a film one either loves entirely or one hates it entirely. Despite the fact if you like or dislike Tim Burton, the very idea presented to us with his adaptation of Alice in Wonderland was one of the most perfect marriages one could assume on paper. Notice how many times I’ve said on paper, because a Tim Burton directed version of Alice in Wonderland should not have been this ordinary.

I can’t help but wish this film came during the world’s introduction to Tim Burton back when he was doing things like Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, because for all of the razzle dazzle of (and if you see it in) IMAX 3-D, the film is largely flat and dare I say, boring. One of the sole problems with the film is that there’s little actually going on. Taking a cue from the sequel to Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, called Through the Looking-Glass, the re-imagining of this oft-told tale gives Alice adulthood, but that’s its sole new contribution. She’s still naive and sweet, and is only progressive outside of the Underland. Character depth is as surface level as the visuals here, making it really hard to grasp onto anything in the film as an emotional anchor. The Red Queen (Helen Bonham Carter, Fight Club) has now overthrown the White Queen (Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married) and has made Underland into a desolate place ruled in fear, and that fear is the Jabberwock.

Burton’s style is here, as in the duality of real versus dreams in the cold normalcy of the real world and the kooky, wild Underland, yet the film gets rather plain as it goes on, something no fan of Burton would have expected from his version of Alice in Wonderland. Maybe aiding the Plain Jane affair is his use, or over-abundant use of CGI. This is where I wished this film was made during that heyday of his around Beetlejuice. I felt the CG ran rampant, making a question of why didn’t he just make an animated film then, instead of live-action. Curious, no? The CG is fine at times, like with the White Rabbit or the big red head of the Red Queen, but for Tweedledum and Tweedledee or the army, it looked too cartoon-y when it needed to be weirder.

The one great scene is Alice’s appearance at the Mad Tea Party, which is a prime example of what we thought Burton would bring to this adaptation: humor, kookiness, and odd. One cannot finish a Burton review without mentioning Johnny Depp, and his Mad Hatter is a strange creation. Depp is never afraid to take a wild chance, and what failed for his Willy Wonka, sort of works here for Hatter. Sort of. Still, the promised weird and kooky partnership of Lewis Carroll and Tim Burton is a passable event. When it should have been the weirdest thing around, it’s a generic descent into the rabbit hole.

The Blu-ray:

Audio/Video: Disney has released a near-perfect transfer. Helping the picture quality is the fact Burton shot the vast majority of the film on digital and colors and details are vivid, rich, and highly detailed. There’s really no flaws here, so fans can expect a beautiful looking film in HD. The DTS track is very active with constant musical cues, rare speaker effects, and dialogue. Deep bass rumbles underneath all of that as well. I don’t want to go on and on about how great it looks and sounds, because I’ll run out of adjectives. Disney is stellar on Blu-ray once more.

All extras are in HD.

Wonderland Characters: This is a collection of six mini-documentaries (all accessed individually as well) that cover the characters we know and love as reinterpreted via Burton’s eye. You’ll get the casting of Alice and how they went about getting and finding an unknown, a bit on the Mad Hatter’s funny dance at the end of the film, Helen Bonham Carter’s make-up, and more featuring interviews that feel very electronic press kit type of fluff. For someone hoping for a deeper look at the wild landscapes and CG, we get little, making this all 27 minutes of material really light on info.

Making Wonderland: Similar to the above feature, we get six mini-documentaries again, but this time focusing on the FX, the props, the stunt work, Danny Elfman’s score, and the distortion FX. Sadly, all just graze by the subjects without much depth. This is especially aggravating because it’s a case of a ‘what could have been’. With no commentary track, all these features are really a wash.

Sneak Peaks: We get plenty of HD trailers here for future theatrical films and Blu-rays from the Mouse House.

Conclusion: Not Burton’s best, but not his worst. The disc’s presentation is top-notch, yet the extras are pretty fluffy-sadly.

The Film: Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

The Blu-ray: Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

It seems more of wishful thinking than a possibility. They have aged, considerably, and Burton is stacked with projects right now. If we lived in the early 1990′s, I would be excited, but we’re 20 years since Burton and that film exploded onto the scene, so stacked this up to just a rumor.But I wouldn’t mind seeing Geena Davis back in something soon.

Source: The Movie Hole

I can’t help but wish this film came during the world’s introduction to Tim Burton back when he was doing things like Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, because for all of the razzle dazzle of (and if you see it in) IMAX 3-D, the film is largely flat and dare I say, boring. One of the sole problems with the film is that there’s little actually going on. Taking a cue from the sequel to Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, called Through the Looking-Glass, the re-imagining of this oft-told tale gives Alice adulthood, but that’s its sole new contribution. She’s still naive and sweet, and is only progressive outside of the Underland. Character depth is as surface level as the visuals here, making it really hard to grasp onto anything in the film as an emotional anchor. The Red Queen (Helen Bonham Carter, Fight Club) has now overthrown the White Queen (Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married) and has made Underland into a desolate place ruled in fear, and that fear is the Jabberwock.

Burton’s style is here, as in the duality of real versus dreams in the cold normalcy of the real world and the kooky, wild Underland, yet the film gets rather plain as it goes on, something no fan of Burton would have expected from his version of Alice in Wonderland. Maybe aiding the Plain Jane affair is his use, or over-abundant use of CGI. This is where I wished this film was made during that heyday of his around Beetlejuice. I felt the CG ran rampant, making a question of why didn’t he just make an animated film then, instead of live-action. Curious, no? The CG is fine at times, like with the White Rabbit or the big red head of the Red Queen, but for Tweedledum and Tweedledee or the army, it looked too cartoon-y when it needed to be weirder.

The one great scene is Alice’s appearance at the Mad Tea Party, which is a prime example of what we thought Burton would bring to this adaptation: humor, kookiness, and odd. One cannot finish a Burton review without mentioning Johnny Depp, and his Mad Hatter is a strange creation. Depp is never afraid to take a wild chance, and what failed for his Willy Wonka, sort of works here for Hatter. Sort of. Still, the promised weird and kooky partnership of Lewis Carroll and Tim Burton is a passable event. When it should have been the weirdest thing around, it’s a generic descent into the rabbit hole.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

The Film:

Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice! Beetle-oh, yeah, I’m going to say it-Beetlejuice!

It’s so easy to take Tim Burton’s style for granted now days, since it’s been accepted by the mainstream, and has been copied by lesser artists, but with his second feature, even after 20 years, it is still a memorable film. It’s highly imaginative, the real driving force behind the film, and nothing since has compared to Beetlejuice‘s non-stop assault of creative juices on our eyes. Bright reds, blues, and green pop out at us with a strong juxtaposition to the drab grays when the new family moves into the home.

Burton might just be a slave to his style with recent films, but here it only compliments the characters and the story. The duality of a square, boring real world, and a wildly, colorful alternate world is another theme Burton has explored numerous times in his films, notably Corpse Bride and his take on Alice in Wonderland. Also, let’s no forget about Burton’s use of dark humor against the scarier elements in the story, another trademark that began here.

Beetlejuice is a lot of fun. It’s funny to think that Michael Keaton was cast as Bruce Wayne in Burton’s 1989 take on Batman, for his wildly outlandish portrayal of the Betegeuse, a completely maniacal nut job. It’s the type of performance that is instantly recognizable and iconic, something that feels like a visual cue Jack Nicholson took note of, for his take on the Joker, a year later for Burton. It’s funny how nostalgia works, because as a kid, we remember everything Beetlejuice does, and we remember the film for that character. In reality, he’s only here for a little over 20 minutes of a 95 minute film. In conversations about great characters, why isn’t Keaton’s Beetlejuice ever considered? He has my vote.

Burton seems hit-or-miss recently, and I still love him, but his first real film (not discrediting the PeeWee Herman film, but c’mon, that really wasn’t Burton) here in Beetlejuice is not only a career highlight, but a cinema highlight. A perfect marriage of artist and art, humor and the grotesque, and a fine cast, that make the film’s replay value so high. Plus, who doesn’t love the Banana Boat song! Daylight come and I wanna go home…

The Blu-ray:

Audio/Video: For a film 20 years old, WB did a fantastic job on its first high def release. Details are high, contrast is sharp, and the transfer’s best quality, the color is gorgeous. The bight greens, blues, and reds are vividly reproduced here. Grain is minimal. The DD 5.1 is pretty decent, although it lacks any low end. While not completely devoid of bass, it’s just very light. The rest, like score and dialogue, come across clear and robust. All in all, I was very pleased in this Blu-ray.

Isolated Score: Danny Elfman’s great score is sectioned out. No commentary or anything, but one can solely listen to his score via this option.

CD soundtrack: Not advertised, but included on a separate CD, you get 15 minutes worth of the best themes from the score and of course, the dinner table scene’s song. Pretty cool, especially if you’re a fan of movie scores. Wish it was the complete score though.

3 Beetlejuice episodes: Remember the early 90s ‘toon of Beetlejuice? I do, although I was hard pressed to remember much from the series. The episodes here, “A-ha”, “Skeletons in the Closet”, and “Spooky Boo-Tique” are really fun and cheesy. It’s nice to see these here, hopefully WB is testing the waters for a full season set release. Alyson Court voices Lydia here. Fans will also remember her (my interview with her here) on X-Men: The Animated Series.

Conclusion: Lacking a great selection of extras, one could call the extras weak here, the Blu-ray picture quality is the selling point here. Audio is fine, no little low end. Overall, Burton fans and Beetlejuice fans should consider this an easy purchase.

The Film: Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

The Blu-Ray: Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

More so now than ever before in Hollywood, are we seeing remakes, sequels, reboots, offshoots, of our favorite franchises and characters. Think about this year. We’ve seen the return of some welcomed and unwelcomed returns of characters we didn’t think we’d see. Dominic Toretto from Fast & Furious, Jason Voorhess in Friday the 13^th, Inspector Clouseau in Pink Panther 2, and heck, one could even assume Walt Kowalski from Gran Torino, is some alias for Dirty Harry.

But I feel as if Hollywood is missing out not bringing back certain characters we love and hate. I don’t know the reason why, but this list compiles characters I feel are wanted back in cinema. I left off obvious ones, especially if we know sometime soon they’ll be back, and I left off characters we love that we know there will never be a sequel for. So don’t get mad if Tyler Durden isn’t here or Charles Foster Kane. Without further ado, here’s Killer Film’s Top 10 Characters We’d like to See Come Back!

10 – Leon from The Professional (1994): I know he valiantly died at the end, but you know how Hollywood works, if it’s a hit, they’ll find a way to bring back a dead character. Maybe some assignment prior to this film? Leon (Jean Russo) is a great character: a natural loner, but warm and compassionate. Luc Besson has made a career of giving us badass characters, so why not bring back Leon? Possibility? None. But at least Besson gave us Bryan Mills in Taken.

9 – Nikolai from Eastern Promises (2007): Viggo Mortensen’s Nikolai was just getting started at the end of this film. Besides successfully infiltrated a Russian mob family, and overthrowing the head honcho and his son, he a meantattooed dude who will kick your butt, even if he’s naked! I think with a solid screenplay and David Cronenberg coming back, who wouldn’t love to see how far Nikolai goes into being undercover? Possibility? There’s been talks of a sequel, with Viggo and Cronenberg both interested, but nothing concrete yet.

8 – Matt Murdock/Daredevil from Daredevil (2003): It seems almost natural to talk about further adventures on screen for superheroes today, so why haven’t we seen a Daredevil 2? I know some people didn’t care for this film, or couldn’t get past Ben Affleck in the title role, and while I’ll say the Director’s Cut is a better film, why hasn’t Marvel/Fox gone the route they did for Hulk? Just reboot it! I, for one, think there are plenty of great stories left untold from Daredevil, so bring him back! Possibility? Right now, zilch. But I can see them bringing him back, especially if something like Thor is a hit. Remember, Daredevil did make over a $100mil at the box office in a February date.

7 – Leslie Vernon from Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006): Ever masked serial killer comes back for a sequel, and while that’s an obvious cliché, Leslie Vernon is a complete satire on cliches. I feel, and I know Donny does too, that there’s plenty of steam left in Leslie’s tank. The film is fun, original, and maybe what the Scream films should have been. Leslie in the film, aspired to be the next great killer, and even a mediocre killer gets a sequel. Possibility? Well, there’s been talks, and until I see a trailer, I won’t believe Leslie will be back.

6 – Riddick from Chronicles of Riddick (2004): For reasons that are a bit of a mystery to me, people dislike Vin Diesel. I think he’s cool and an ass kicker, and his Riddick character is his best role yet. Pitch Black is a great flick, and while Chronicles of Riddick might have over-achieved a bit in ideas, the character is as good as any badass killer this side of the 1980s. David Towhy didn’t deserve the slap he did for the Chronicles of Riddick that he did, and while it did make money, obviously not enough to please Universal. At the end of that film, it left us on a cliffhanger. I want to see where it goes. Possibility? Well, his Xander Cage from XXX is coming back, and there’s a new Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena game out, so it that sells good, if the Blu Ray of the two prior films sell good, and if XXX3 does good (much like Fast & Furious did), then I think Riddick will be back.

5 – Catwoman from Batman Returns (1992): I know there’s a hideous “spin off” film out there, but I want to see the damaged, deranged, dangerous Seline Kyle that Michelle Pfeiffer put on screen. I love her fragile psychosis in that film, as she was absolutely beautiful, but a worth foe for Bats. Plus, that was one of the best all-time costumes, not to mention, Tim Burton’s take on the character, being one of his most developed female character. At the end of Batman Returns, we see the Batsignal and they her head pops up showing us she isn’t dead. Bring this Catwoman back. Possibility? As for a solo adventure again, I think the Halle Berry version killed that idea, but she could return in Nolan’s third Batman film. But as the Burton/Pfeiffer collaboration, she’s as good as 9 lives dead.

4 – Roger Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988): Besides being a great film, a great piece of the marriage of live action/cell animation, Roger Rabbit is a great character. A fun, clever spin on the Looney Tunes-type of characters, he’s perfect for more adventures. I mean, if we have to sit through a Madagascar 2 and an Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, let’s do our kids a favor and bring back Roger Rabbit and yes, Jessica Rabbit too. Charles Fleischer, the voice of Roger Rabbit is still around…Possibility? Outside of a few shorts they made around the time of this film’s release, there’s been nothing. I once remembered some talks, but again nothing.

3 - Beetlejuice from Beetlejuice (1988): If this film was made today, you would see a sequel within 2 years, guaranteed. Michael Keaton is still around not doing anything, Burton’s making a wanna be sequel in his take of Alice in Wonderland, so why not? He’s fun, mischievous, and his world has endless opportunities for his misbehaving ways to excited us. Possibility? Zip, sadly. Why don’t we all just do this: “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!”

2 – Capt. Mal from Serenity (2005): If a film ever deserved more love, it’s Joss Whedon’s Serenity. First of all, the TV series was superb, but Fox canceled it. Then the film supposedly under preforms. Nathan Fillion established himself as a 100% badass, something we haven’t seen since Han Solo put down his blaster. Mal is always cool and witty, no matter what the circumstances. He’s someone I would ride off into the depths of space with (in a non-gay way). Possibility? I heard that if Serenity sold well on DVD, then Universal would consider a sequel. I personally know it did, as well as the TV series, Firefly, so that damn suits need to give us what we want!

And the number one character we want to see come back…

1 – Frank Black from Millennium (1996-1999): A vastly under appreciated TV series, has sparked a cult following as loyal as any. The stories were dark and mature, and while this show was Cris Carter’s kissing cousin idea to The X-Files, I was never bored with the themes, stories, or Black. Lance Hendricksen will forever be an awesome actor and all around badass, but he needs to come back for one last apocalyptic threat. I know the show ended before Y2k (kind of the point) and his character appeared in an episode of The X-Files to “end his story”, but I think I speak for the people when I say “We want Frank Black back!” Possibility? Carter has had talks recently about bringing him back, and I know Lance would do it, it’s just X-Files: I Want to Believe bombed so bad, Frank might just stay retired forever.

Agree or disagree? Leave a comment below or email me at jon@killerfilm.com

Previously on Remembering the X-Men: Animated Series…we talked to Lenore Zann, the voice of Rogue, as she gave us her look at the show from an actor’s perspective. We have been also talking to Sidney Iwanter, the Fox network executive at the time, on all things about the behind-the-scenes and the casting of this great animated series. From the three previous articles (here, here and here), you should have a good idea on the production of the show, now it’s time to continue talking to the cast.

Finally, for the first time on DVD, X-Men: The Animated Series comes roaring to the format in all of its glory in season sets (dubbed volumes). You can almost hear Shuki Levy’s score now, the pulsating theme tune that is so memorable a decade after the last episode aired. To mark this special event, Killer Film takes a look back at the ground-breaking series, through the words of it’s creators, writers, and voice talent in Remembering the X-Men: The Animated Series. This is the final part as told by Jubilee herself, Alyson Court.

Why are they doing this to me? I didn’t ask to be a mutant.

The character of Jubilee was created by the great X-Men writer Chris Claremont and artist Marc Silvestri for Uncanny X-Men issue # 244 (May, 1989). Wolverine and Jubilee developed a father-daughter like relationship, that becomes a mainstay in the X-Men universe, this is seen throughout X-Men: The Animated Series, as well as in the Bryan Singer X-Men films, except Jubilee is replaced by Rogue for those films. Her character in the beginning was a minor one, and it wasn’t until the 1992 pilot episode that Jubilee a popular character.

While her character is seen very briefly in the X-Men films, notably in X2 during the Storm and Nightcrawler’s rescue of some teen mutants in Stryker’s holding cell, and a one off shot of her in X-Men: The Last Stand.  In further X-Men animated ‘toons,  her character is homage because of the popular status she received in the 1992-1997 animated series. In Wolverine and the X-Men, whenever her character is seen outside of her X-Men uniform, she is always seen wearing the yellow trench coat as she is memorably known for, thanks to this series we’re talking about now.

A spunky mall rat, and a mutant with the ability to shoot fireworks from her fingers, her character was the audiences introduction into the X-universe in the first two episodes Night of the Sentinels. Through her we see the hatred from ignorance as she is targeted throughout the show by Sentinels and mutant-hating humans. Her naivety is well expressed through the great voice work by actress Alyson Court.

The Mall Rat Talks

Alyson Court remembers how she was cast as Jubilee: “I was a replacement, actually. I had just finished voicing Lydia Deetz for the Beetlejuice series (also carried on Fox), during which I worked with a man named Sidney Iwanter. He was an executive at Fox Kids and had grown so sick of hearing my voice as Lydia that when it came time to cast Jubilee, his instructions were: “I don’t care who plays Jubilee, as long as it isn’t Alyson Court!”

“Dan Hennessey on the other hand, was very much in favor of casting me in the role,” she says. “Another actress was initially cast, but I guess they felt it wasn’t working so I was brought in on day three or thereabouts. It was crazy! So many people were there for the recording session. Sidney from Fox, Joe Calamari from Marvel, Winston from Saban, a few other execs, it was like we were doing a feature film! There was so much pressure to get this show exactly right, everyone wanted to have a say. Everyone had their own vision of each character, how they should sound, what the level of intensity and seriousness should be- it was unlike any other animated series that had come before.”

Alyson Court was no stranger to doing voice work for animated shows, but this one was tough at first. “The recording sessions were brutal. We re-recorded those first few episodes three or four times. And during all of this, every time I opened my mouth Sidney would shout “No! Sounds like Lydia (her character from Beetlejuice), do it again!” He drove me nuts, but I have to say he was right. It was like voice acting boot camp, and Sidney forced me to really explore my voice and character to find the right performance for Jubilee. Funnily enough, Sid is now my best friend from that show!”

The show brought Jubilee to the forefront, and Alyson speaks of how she developed the character outside of Eric Lewald’s team of excellent writers. “Figuring out Jubilee and making her more than how she had appeared thus far in the comics, was hugely important since the entire series premiere (Night of the Sentinels) focused on her. We really worked hard to bring a sense of drama and depth to the character. She had to have sass, but she was also still just a kid, so her fear, confusion, and naivety had to come through. Yes, she was still very much a brat, but often that was just to hide her vulnerability. Part of why I ended up in the role was because they needed someone who sounded young but could push the seriousness of the performance, and put her on a level that could keep up with Logan (Cal Dodd). Remember: This wasn’t your typical Saturday morning cartoon where someone pitches a fairly simple straight forward idea for a kids show.”

“X-Men was totally different,” she continued. “Everyone involved with the show (all of the guys I mentioned earlier) were extremely passionate about this property. EVERYONE CARED. At times it seemed like people cared too much, because they spent so much time arguing, nothing was getting recorded. At any rate, I had plenty of source material in those guys to help me develop the character, plus all of my artist friends were huge fans, so they never stopped giving me advice either!”

“They were walking a fine line-making a Saturday morning cartoon that would appeal to that younger viewer ship but keep the property’s integrity and adult dramatic essence,” she explains of the effort everyone was doing for the show. “We worked very hard to make sure those initial episodes which featured Jubilee demonstrated to everyone what this show was going to be. I really appreciate the effort the show creators put forth to make Jubilee a legitimate, interesting and appealing part of the X-Men: The Animated Series cast.”

Jubilee and Wolverine had a unique relationship in the series, and Alyson remembers fondly working with Cal Dodd, who voiced Wolverine, and working with him in the recording booth throughout the years. “Cal is great! And in a way, he and I had a very similar relationship away from the mic. We had been neighbors for years, he’d known me since I was a little kid. On the show, Cal was one of, if not the most experienced performers, and I was the youngest cast member. He always had a big brother protective vibe towards me. At cast parties, we would inevitably end up moving away from all the craziness happening at the party, and just talk for a while. In the studio, he would really get into character, and it was a hoot! He didn’t say much, but every now and then he would growl out some dry sinister but sarcastic remark that would send the room reeling in laughter. He is a very smart and funny man.”

While Alyson Court is remembered for Jubilee, she is also the only actress to have voiced Claire Redfield from the Resident Evil video game franchise, as well as the character’s recent role in Resident Evil: Degeneration. There is a well of voice acting talent out there that gets easily brushed aside for celebrities, when a casting director casts for a feature film. Alyson offers her opinion on the industry: “Using celebrity voices is a tricky thing. It really depends on the role and the actor involved. I think Pixar usually does a very good job with their casting. Ellen DeGeneres was perfect for Dory (from Finding Nemo). Can you imagine anyone else in that role? She brought so much to Dory, they probably let her ad lib much of her own dialogue. Hank Azaria (The Simpsons), John Ratzenberger (Cheers, Toy Story), Mark Hamill (Batman: The Animated Series), these are incredibly talented actors who deserve to be cast as voice actors, not because they are famous, but because they are really, really good! Then there are other celebrities- big Hollywood blockbuster types- that don’t really bring a lot to the table when it comes to voicing a character. Their on screen presence is incredible, but all of that charisma gets lost when the image is taken away. In this kind of situation usually the movie studio is depending on the “big names” to sell their movie. Probably because the movie itself isn’t very good.”

“It doesn’t bother me, though,” says Court about the casting of celebrities over voice actors like her, “actors should be allowed to take any role they like. It’s up to the producer to make a good decision in casting. At the end of the day, if your property is for kids, then using a celebrity for namesake alone really isn’t necessary, since kids don’t care!”

Finally, Alyson says she’s still having a blast working in the industry, as she wants to thank fans of the Resident Evil franchise for their loyalty and support. “Fans whose dedication and loyalty are what made the property so successful in the first place, is something I think should be respected.”

“I hope everyone enjoys the X-Men series on DVD,” says Alyson excitedly. “I know I can’t wait to show it to my son as he’s never seen it before. Lastly, I want to thank Sidney Iwanter who, although he didn’t initially want me in the show, is responsible for making the series the ground breaking success that it was!”

And so that completes Killer Film’s mammoth look back at the X-Men: Animated Series. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did, and if you missed any part of this four part series, go back and give them a read, as well as check out Killer Film’s DVD reviews of the two volumes recently released. None of this could have been done without the X-Men themselves, Lenore Zann (Rogue) and Alyson Court (Jubilee), and the amazing team of Eric Lewald (Lead Writer), Scott Thomas (Supervising Producer), and Sidney Iwanter (Fox network executive).

Feel free to contact me at jon@killerfilm.com for any questions or leave a comment!

Finally, for the first time on DVD, X-Men: The Animated Series comes roaring to the format in all of its glory in season sets (dubbed volumes). You can almost hear Shuki Levy’s score now, the pulsating theme tune that is so memorable even a decade after the last episode aired. To mark this special event, Killer Film takes a look back at the ground-breaking series, through the words of it’s creators, writers, and voice talent in, Remembering the X-Men: The Animated Series. This is part one as told by the Fox network executive Sidney Iwanter and Supervising Producer of the show, Scott Thomas.

Pryde of the X-Men

It late 1989, the X-Men started off as a one off pilot episode, trying to get the Fox network interested in the property, called Pryde of the X-Men. Focusing on Kitty Pryde, the episode was well animated, but a flop in every other regard. It felt like a collection of bits, edited together like a superhero introduction montage. Wolverine was vastly butchered as they cast him having an Australian accent. Sidney Iwanter, a Fox Kids network executive at the time recalls this pilot: “It was crap! I remember making a real smart ass remark about that, and that was a Marvel production in 1987, in one of my interviews. It was like every conceivable mistake that could be done to the X-Men series, was right there in that show. I’m not talking about the animation compared to ours, that’s a financial problem, but storytelling-how you developed the characters, like the slip-shot approach to who Wolverine was. I think they gave him an Australian accent! It was the worst kind of slopping storytelling. Why in the name of God would you do a show around Kitty Pryde?! I don’t understand that, I mean who the f**k is Kitty Pryde! She’s not one of the major X-Men! It was a simple show; it was a throwaway. They used it as a pilot to get the network interested. The network looked at it and said, what’s the point? We don’t get it, who cares.”

The majority of fans felt the same way, despite it airing a few times before being released on VHS.

“I’ve looked at that, and I was slack-jawed!” he confesses. “This was Marvel and what the hell were they trying to do? I knew what they were trying to do, they were being safe. They were trying to take Moby Dick, and turn it into the most generic fishing story! When I got hired and my boss said, ‘What would you do?’ Remember, I was never a comic book geek. I would read them every so often, but I was not somebody who knew what was going on, on panel 62, issue 312. I was a normal reader of comic books as a kid, then moved away to the graphic novel later on. But a fanatic I wasn’t. However, I was aware of the history of the X-Men, like many of the story lines, but I was also aware of how complex and sophisticated these characters had become. Remember, the X-Men started in 1961, and so as they grew, their world grew, and more characters came to developed within the universe, the stories became very sophisticated especially with the Claremont stuff. You can’t do X-Men properly until you really, really, do them as sophisticated as ever been seen on a Saturday morning.”

Even though the property failed to excite the network, Sidney was well aware of how to get it right. Luckily, Marvel was listening.

We are talking about 76 of the best action/adventure shows for kid’s programming!

Sidney Iwanter had an idea of how to get this property the respect he knew it deserved, as well as the fans. “You have to ask yourself: what was it about these episodes that made you want to sit down in front of the TV on a Saturday morning? I’ve given a couple of interviews on this in the last couple of years, and I’ve been in this game for a long time, I just turned 60, and I’m one of these geeks. When you look at these shows from your age, you see the type of sophisticated writing- forget the animation, the animation was what it was, and that was due primarily to budget. They didn’t have the same resources as Warner Bros for Batman: The Animated Series, who spent $500,000-$600,000 per episode, that’s the reason they look as good as they do.”

Scott Thomas, the supervising producer for the series adds this about the animation quality control of the show: “You know, it was later with this studio, a good Korean studio, but I don’t think the problem was there with them. The cost of the episodes were getting more expensive, so they were experimenting with looking at a studio in China, the Philippines, and Vietnam. They would all do one minute tests. It’s amazing to see the differences in each studio. Some would have good animation, but the characters would be completely different. It just would be to much of a change so we stuck it out with the studio we had, but they were experimenting with different avenues.”

“I was the network executive for Fox for Batman, Beetlejuice, Spider-Man, Silver Surfer eventually, and X-Men,” says Sidney Iwanter, “all of the shows the kids watched in the 90s. I remember when I first got into this business, the Hanna Barbara from the 60s, and I knew the guys who did Scooby Doo, and I examined the scripts and they’re  okay, it’s Scooby Doo. But when they do action/adventure shows, they were very linear storytelling. It was like reading spark notes all the time.”

Recreating X-Men

“So I thought to myself: why do they have to be this simple?” remembered Sidney Iwanter. “Somebody once asked me who my influences were. My answer was this: it was not animators, when it came to this kind of world, mainly because I can’t draw. I liked cartoons and all of that, but I was always intrigued by story. Why do some shows work and others don’t, whether it be live-action or animation? It always boiled down, not to the visuals, it was story. Go back to Scooby Doo. It’s visuals weren’t anything to write home about; sure you got a cute dog, goofy characters, but there’s nothing really about those characters that are life affirming. The stories were very simple, but were always very show eccentric. You really couldn’t have any new format. Scooby always had to get scared, Shaggy and Scooby, there was a format that worked. In an action/adventure shows, that’s not that easy to do. You can’t really do formulaic writing because what happens is that you know exactly what happens. In comedies, that works. When Scooby opens a door and gets scared it works. Okay, fine, we laugh.”

Iwanter continues: “You can’t do that in action/adventure. You’re not going for humor, you’re going for drama, suspense, and mystery. In the 1980s, I spent a lot of my time watching prime time shows, even though I was in children’s programming. The shows that I saw that moved television way beyond anything prior to the 60s and 70s, were Hill Street Blues. I looked at Hill Street Blues and I saw “holy mother mackerel! This is sophisticated storytelling, multi-dimensional characters, didn’t end at end the of each episode, as they continued. It had the level of characterization that I had never seen before on prime time programming in this country. I thought: ‘I wonder if you could do the same thing in kids programming?’ You would have story and character arcs, sophisticated dialogue that didn’t sound generic or without meat behind it. Wonder if you could do characters with depth. If you remember the G.I. Joe, the Transformers, stuff like that, those were very, very, linear, straightforward stories. Did you know anything about these characters before hand or after? No, not really. Those G.I. Joe’s were G.I. Joe’s, you know, sometimes they would delve into something or another, but there wasn’t meat behind those characters.”

“We did stuff here that had never, ever been done on a Saturday. Fox had just started in 1990, one of the first networks who got into the market since the 50s. I kept saying to people, how do we make this not to look like G.I. Joe? Let’s go back to the stuff I’d seen in Hill Street Blues. Everyone thought I was nuts, crazy. Multilayer story arcs, that remained open week to week, character development that dealt way beyond the superficial, you know?”

The kids aren’t stupid!

“From Saturday morning to Saturday morning, how are you going to keep kids interested? You’re going to have to remember what happened the week before. It was a totally different kind of world back then. Why don’t we do what they did on prime time, like the previously on? If I remember correctly, I don’t think anything on Saturday morning prior did that. I got a lot of blow-back on that idea. They said, you can’t do that, kids aren’t going to follow that, no matter how sophisticated the ‘previously ons’ are. I don’t believe kids are that stupid. I have never underestimated my audience,” remarks Sidney Iwanter.

“If its edited properly,” says Sidney, “then I’ll give you a one minute recap that will bring everyone up to speed. If adults can figures this out, then kids can figure it out. So that’s what we did. They hit the high points of the previous episodes, really edited well. Also, I wasn’t afraid to get melodramatic. There was a love gist between Wolverine, Cyclops, and Jean Grey. I had people question why I was getting involved with that. ‘Why would an 8 year old want to see that? They are going to turn this off!’ You don’t understand kids I said, this has nothing to do with girls having koodies, this is exactly what life is about. Kids see this all the time, whether its their parents or siblings liking each other. We’re hardwired for this stuff, hardwired from the womb. You can have this stuff as long as it’s between fight sequences. No matter how powerful the X-Men are, let’s face it: they’re f**ked!”

“People don’t like them although they’re saving the world, they go to jail, their social lives suck and with all that power they have, they somehow can’t settle anything in their own lives. That was the key. Seven or eight year old kids are powerless. No matter how much power the X-Men had, they too were powerless. Not to be feared, not to be alone. We were tapping into the basic nature of being a kid. That was the genius of the creation of the X-Men; when you developed you’re powers it was at puberty. The world gets more confusing. Society is forcing limitations, but you’re branching out socially and intellectually. Okay, that’s exactly what we did with these characters. No matter how much power Cyclops has, he still cannot get the girl of his dreams.

Wolverine is more than insubordinate. Here’s a guy who is really pissed off. His life didn’t go the way he thought. Even Beast would’ve loved to be a simple professor. Giving Beast a form of intellectualism when he spoke was a character trait. I said to Eric (Lewald, the story editor for the show) you put into his mouth stuff as if he lives by a Thesaurus. So in the middle of fights he would quote philosophers as if they were throwaway lines. It’s a personality quirk. I wanted to make sure none of these characters talked alike. Even thinking as logically as that, was break through,” confesses Sidney Iwanter.

“Sidney (Iwanter) was really involved with this series,” remembers Scott Thomas. “We’d have fights with the censors, sometimes our villains and characters were rather risqué, for Saturday morning, so we had to go back and change that, which was always funny to me. Each episode was different, and we would get a memo saying what was way too risqué, you know and changed it. Little things like you couldn’t have a devil’s tail on this character, you know all kinds of different things.”

“If it wasn’t for the writing this show would be as forgettable as anything in the 80s,” Sidney Iwanter proclaims. “It all boils down to how good the writing was on these characters. For what we were trying to do, and we couldn’t do this without Eric Lewald and his team of writers, the reason for the shows success was the writing.”

To be continued….

Come back soon for part two of this multi-part look at Remembering the X-Men: Animated Series as Eric Lewald joins us, along with Sidney Iwanter and Scott Thomas again, as they give us a detailed look at the writing of the shows episodes and the casting of the X-Men. Future parts will include the voice talent and their fond memories, so don’t miss out on those! Feel free to contact me at jon@killerfilm.com for any questions or leave a comment!

Land of the lost screenwriter Dennis McNicholas will penn the script through Working Title and  Marc Platt Prods. producing the film which in the modern take will be more in the vein of Beetlejuice.

Source: THR