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by R.J. Carter Published: April 17, 2009
Actually, supervising producer Craig Kyle is well aware of Wolverine's preferred "loner" status, and his awkwardness at being looked up to as a leader; putting him in such a position for this animated series is intentional (and, let's face it, he is the one with the movie coming out, not Nightcrawler or Iceman). Wolverine must lead the X-Men, because the future of the world depends upon it. The story begins with Logan leaving the team for a while -- but as he departs, a mysterious explosion rocks the Xavier Institute mansion. When the dust has settled, the X-Men have lost both of their most powerful psychics: Jean Grey and Professor Charles Xavier. Fast forward one year later, and Wolverine goes against his instinct to help a human family. When they repay his kindness, they are targeted by the mutant-hunting military forces, arrested and imprisoned. Seeing how far anti-mutant sentiment has grown, Wolverine returns to the ruins of the X-Mansion, where the erudute Beast labors alone in an underground facility. Wolverine has only one goal in mind: to free the family that helped him. But it isn't long before Wolverine's idea expands into getting the band back together -- something hardly any of the original X-Men are keen on. As Wolverine approaches former X-Men to come back, viewers see a hero/villain swap-out, as a disenfranchised Rogue joins the ranks of the Brotherhood of Mutants, while former Hellfire Club leader Emma Frost throws her lot in with the X-Men. Wolverine is against her inclusion, but he reluctantly admits that they need a telepath to power the mutant-finding computer, Cerebro. Plus, Emma makes the bold claim that she can locate the missing Professor X! With Emma's help, the team eventually does locate the professor -- but not before first making themselves look like terrorists on national television and tangling with Magneto on his home turf. When they finally do locate the comatose Xavier and bring him back to the mansion, he communicates with them telepathically -- from twenty years in the future, where he's just awakened. Long-time X-Men fans will recognize Xavier's future as the one from the classic X-Men story arc, "Days of Future Past," in which enormous robotic Sentinels roam the land, exterminating mutants (and destroying much property in the meantime). Xavier's warning to the team is that they must stick together to avert this catastrophe, and that only Wolverine can lead the team if this outcome is to be avoided. This first volume release of Wolverine and the X-Men is, to a degree, disappointing, in that there are only three episodes. However, the root of the disappointment is in that the viewer really wants to continue on with the adventure, which seems abruptly terminated. One could compare this DVD to similarly formatted releases of the animated Spectacular Spider-Man, which also have three episodes on a disc. Yet somehow Spider-Man has more of a sense of closure each time despite the ongoing plot threads, whereas Wolverine has a stronger "to be continued" feel about it each time. What's really nice about this disc is that all three episodes have a dual audio commentary track, either with Craig Kyle and Greg Johnson, or with Boyd Kirkland and Steven Gordon. There's a very short "Nicktoons Network Going In/Scene" featurette that features interviews with the creators as well as the voice actors of Wolverine, Cyclops, and Nightcrawler, Steve Blum, Nolan North, and Liam O'Brien. The "Character Profiles" menu offers a selection of mini-clips, with Professor Xavier narrating a brief biography of the selected characters. Finally, there's a five minute "making of" documentary in which Kyle explains the process of designing the characters and building the chosen storyline. Previews on this disc include "Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow," "The Invincible Iron Man," "Speed Racer: The Next Generation: The Fast Track," "Happily N'ever After 2: Snow White, Another Bite at the Apple," and "Battle for Terra." |
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