“X-Men: The Animated Series” Review – Enter Magneto

Previously on X-Men, we got a wonderful introduction to the entire team and a great flashback to the 1990s. Also, this episode doesn’t have Cyclops uttering, “Previously on X-Men.” That will start soon enough. Let’s usher in Magneto!

Not-So-Short Summary: We start with Beast in jail, reading Animal Farm by George Orwell. The imagery! The parallels! The explosions! Wait, scratch that last one… all of the lights around the jail are exploding, the electric fences are being bent, and Beast assumes it’s Wolverine.

It’s Magneto! With a force field around him and his deep, husky voice and lots of purples and reds in his outfit, he’s just like I remembered him. Magneto is here to break out Beast–that is, until Beast mentions Professor X. The two get into an argument; Magneto sees Xavier leaving a mutant rotting in prison for a crime he made Beast do while Beast sees his subsequent trial as a chance to bring about the righteousness of their cause… whatever that may be.

Magneto hates humans. Mutants are superior, all that jazz. Best stays in jail to prove mutants shouldn’t be feared while Magneto completely destroys a ton of tanks out front.

Professor X has a tape of all this, of course, because it’s going to be on the evening news. Jubilee asks who Magneto is and the Professor goes into a back story of how they met; Xavier worked at a psychiatric hospital after the war and had an awesome assistant named Magnus (Magnus, Magneto, get it?), but for Magnus, the war wasn’t over. When the hostiles of the country returned and kidnapped their patients, Magnus and Xavier use their powers to save their patients. Magnus, however, harbors a lot of hatred toward these hostiles and attempts to kill them, but Xavier stops him and tries to talk sense into him.

Magnus will have none of that and starts calling himself Magneto and starts leading a large uprising and rebellion until Xavier stops him.

Now, it’s Beast’s court day. The whole crowd is full of rabbling. Also, how do they get shirts that fit someone the size of Beast? While Beast loses the favor of the crowd (not like he had it anyway), they start throwing tomatoes. How does someone even get a tomato into a court? The 1990s were a strange time.

The judge denies Beast bail. Just before Wolverine can go on a slicing rampage, Sabretooth appears in the court and starts messing up everybody’s crap. Cyclops insists they save Sabretooth from being killed, but Wolverine will have no part of it. Regardless, they bring him back to HQ. More on that next episode.

Professor is searching for Magneto with Cerebro but can’t find him anywhere. Wolverine tries to take out Sabretooth while he’s unconscious, but Cyclops, Jubilee, and Professor X (and then Storm) tell him no. Then, an alarm goes off in the mansion and Professor X immediately knows that it’s Magneto.

Magneto is at a military base and arming the missiles to target the base and destroy all humans (he’s starting to sound a lot like Bender Bending Rodriguez). Insert a wonderful action montage of everyone fleeing the base along with the X-Men standing off against Magneto, who’s launching all of the missiles still. Because equality or something.

To stop the launch, Wolverine starts clawing at everything and anything, but it’s no use. The missiles go off and it’s up to Storm to stop them. Much like Tony Stark in The Avengers, she’s going to lay on a wire while letting the other guy climb over (I just recently watched The Avengers if you couldn’t tell). But Professor X breaks into her mind and feeds her information on how to stop the warheads by short circuiting the control systems and sinking the missiles into the ocean. Wolverine catches her before she hits the ground and their mission is accomplished.

The episode ends with Magneto asking himself why Xavier has turned against his own kind. So, the usual.

Badass Moment of the Week: Magneto takes three tanks and makes them shoot each other. I mean, it’s not that impressive in a cartoon, but imagine it in an action movie. Michael Bay would make that sequence last about fourteen minutes.

Best One-Liner: “May I address the court on the subject of mitigating circumstances?” Beast asks the judge. Heck, even I don’t know what that means. Don’t outsmart the humans, Beast. They don’t like it.

I like Jubilee’s passing comment of “something about him reminds me of Wolverine” when she’s talking about Sabretooth. That was always one of my favorite story lines when I was little. Also, my younger older brother had every Wolverine comic growing up, except for like… Issue 3 or Issue 37 or something weird. So we had a thing for Wolverine in my household.

I forgot how much I enjoy seeing Magneto’s magnetic force fields. You know, that weird lightning around him that metal totally makes in real life.

When does Magneto make Asteroid M? That two-part series I always loved, mostly because it was right around the Phoenix Saga, which I also love (and which The Last Stand ruined completely).