Greetings. Today, I'm going to go over a somewhat unknown TV pilot: Pryde of the X-Men. According to Wikipedia, this pilot came out in 1989 and was done by Toei Animation, the guys who did shows such as G.I.Joe and Transformers. If you think the theme song sounds a lot like the theme song to G.I. Joe, then you're not the only one who thinks that. The pilot also served as a starting point for some random arcade game....which is one of the most awesome arcade games EVER!!!!! Anyway, how is this pilot? Considering this didn't get made into a show should give you an answer, but let's see how it goes.
Pay no attention to the bald man behind us!
Plot
After that catchy and cheesy theme song, we start out with the military carting off Magneto somewhere secret I guess. Suddenly, the White Queen uses her mental powers (and energy bolts, eh?) to break the master of magnetism out. Meanwhile, Kitty Pryde has been invited to the X-Mansion by Professor X to see everything and to go through the whole "I'm a mutant, but that ain't a bad thing" thing. He then shows her the X-Men: Cyclops, ...Dazzler, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and everyone's favorite Aussie...Wolverine (Really, he sports an Aussie accent in this thing). Kitty is scared of the Nightcrawler, and I can't blame her for once. He does come off a little creepy here. Anyway, the X-Men are called to leave for an emergency. It turns out that this was only a diversion for them so Magneto and Juggernaut could "sneak" into the mansion and steal Cerebro's main working component (I'll just call it the Broadcast Energy Transmitter or the BET for short). As the X-Men return, they find out what happened and Xavier finds out what Magneto is going to use the BET for. Magneto will use the BET to change the course of an asteroid and send it towards Earth to wipe out most of the population, which will make mutants the dominant species...That sounds...well...GUESS.
The X-Men then set towards Asteroid M to stop Magneto. Kitty sneaks on to the Blackbird because she feels responsible for the BET getting stolen. The X-Men break in and take on the baddies. Nightcrawler is the only one left to stop Magneto, but Kitty gives him a hand. The two are able to get the asteroid aimed at Asteroid M instead of Earth. All of the X-Men escape except for Kurt, who has to keep the machine running. He teleports out in time, but gets stuck in Earth's orbit and seemingly dies. The team and Kitty mourn his loss, but then they hear some knocking and it turns out that Kurt was able to get on the Blackbird safe. The pilot gratefully ends with the X-Men accepting Kitty as one of their own.
Pros:
Well........it wasn't too bad. The animation was really good. It's actually a little better than the animation from X-Men: TAS (I know, right?). The team looks okay. You have the ones from the Claremont/Byrne era. While it is a kid's show and it's from the 80's, we do get a little bit of that mutant vs. human feel and some of that "why am I a mutant" thing. It was action-packed, some (and I mean some) of the voice acting was okay, and theme song was catchy (as well as cheesy) and that's really it.
Cons:
Where can I start? It was so cheesy I had to clean off my computer. The dialogue was campy, Kitty was too whiny, Nightcrawler came off as a little creepy at times, and Wolverine's voice was annoying. While it was action-packed, the thing moved a bit too fast at times. The story is crap and Magneto's plan is really stupid.
..............
So is this the worst thing to have the X-Men's name on it? Probably not. While it's not good, it does have some okay parts in it. It was essentially G.I.Joe + X-Men. Luckily, the next animated series fared better not only in voice acting, but in story telling and a little animation as well. Next time I will talk about one of my favorite animated shows: X-Men.
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