AndrewBloom

5/10

[5.0/10] *Pryde of the X-Men* is mainly interesting from a forensic perspective. If you’re a fan of *X-Men: The Animated Series*, then seeing this embryonic version of it is fascinating. The art style is similar and the basic idea of good mutants versus bad mutants is the same. You have core team members like Cyclops, Wolverine, and Storm represented. And the conflict between Professor X’s crew and Magneto’s rogues, with a philosophical difference over how to deal with normal humans, remains. But then you have Kitty Pryde as the perspective character, inclusions like Dazzler on the main team, and the absence of some of the most popular characters like Beast, Rogue, and Gambit. Wolverine has an Australian accent! Nightcrawler and Colossus seem like bigger parts of the show out of the gate. Toad sounds like Peter Lorre for some reason. There’s even a little X-Men pet to affirm that this show very much came out in the 1980s. The differences between how a T.V. pilot would present the famed mutant team in 1989, versus the major changes they would make just a few years later, is interesting. That's about all *Pryde of the X-Men* has going for it though. Otherwise, it’s a fairly vanilla pilot. Kitty Pryde ventures to Professor Xavier’s school, and Professor X himself basically plays narrator for the audience. He introduces all the characters, the setting, the conflict, and the villains. I’m not saying it’s a terrible device. An experienced character explaining the ropes to a rookie is often something shows and movies do to help orient the audience. But it’s all very very basic. What Professor X doesn’t explain, actual narrator Stan Lee does. It’s neat to have Stan himself setting up the various segments and using his showman’s flair. But it can't take away from the fact that this is a pretty generic 1980s cartoon. The heroes are all generic archetypes, the baddies are pretty much the same, and the “We’re going to doom the world!” plot from the villains is dull as dishwater. On top of that, the pacing here is bizarre. Everything is a sprint, and the line-reads feel unnatural with the various events and moments just smashed into one another. Plus everybody has a cheesy accent, which makes the whole thing feel extra goofy with the bombastic delivery of most lines. The art is a little interesting, but has that choppy, faux-anime style you see in a lot of animated series from the time, which doesn’t do much for me. You can see the show aiming to get a little impressionsitic in places, especially the reentry rescue scene, and while I admire the ambition, sometimes the imagery attacks the eyes. The only interesting throughline here is the friendship between Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawer. It’s not much, but her initially disdaining him because of his demonic look and forward presence, only to appreciate him when he’s self sacrificing and nearly perishes trying to save her and the world, is a decent arc, even if it gets lost in the other things this pilot does wrong. Overall, *Pryde of the X-Men* is an interesting curio for fans of the later X-Men show, but if this version had gone to series, I’d venture to say there’d be a lot fewer fans.