A Marvel Project Finally Gets a Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Score

James Hibberd
·2 min read

A Marvel project has received the studio’s first perfect Rotten Tomatoes score since the launch of the MCU.

Disney+’s newly launched animated series X-Men ’97 has a very rare 100 percent “Fresh” rating.

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While many of the reviewers are from more niche fan-focused sites than for a typical live-action show or feature film, the score nonetheless edges out Marvel’s other top-scored projects like 2022’s Ms. Marvel (98 percent), 2018’s Black Panther (96 percent), 2013’s Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD (95 percent) and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame (94 percent).

Marvel Animation’s X-Men ’97, which premiered Wednesday, reboots 1992’s X-Men: The Animated Series. From the official descriptions: X-Men ’97 “revisits the iconic era of the 1990s as The X-Men, a band of mutants who use their uncanny gifts to protect a world that hates and fears them, are challenged like never before, forced to face a dangerous and unexpected new future.”

A sample of some of the reviews:

CNN: “Taking advantage of the streaming format and passage of time, X-Men ‘97 is a little more adult in tone than the original, though it remains true to its spirit and incorporates plenty of familiar trappings, from the animation style to the memorable musical theme.”

Slashfilm: “X-Men ’97 is tighter and cleaner, a brushed-up version of the ’92 series, complete with the Jim-Lee-era X-Men costumes that mutant fans seem to be the most fond of. It’s trying to re-create in 2024 your memories from 1992. Luckily, that semi-insufferable nostalgia carries with it an efficiency of storytelling that has been lacking in the previous 15 years of superhero entertainment.”

The Daily Beast: “The harder it leans into its heroes and scoundrels’ overwrought internal and external dilemmas, the more the series resembles not simply a skillful example of fan fiction but a potential template for the MCU’s preordained X-Men movies. Highlighting their bedrock principles, ideological debates, strained bonds and creative collaborative combat, the show recognizes that what makes these do-gooders so compelling is the way in which their personal and political concerns combine and clash until the two are inextricably intertwined. It may not reinvent the wheel, but in a certain sense, it does lay the groundwork for what Marvel hopes will be an, ahem, x-citing future.”

The series consists of 10 episodes and includes voice actors Ray Chase as Cyclops, Jennifer Hale as Jean Grey, Alison Sealy-Smith as Storm, Cal Dodd as Wolverine, J.P. Karliak as Morph, Lenore Zann as Rogue, George Buza as Beast, A.J. LoCascio as Gambit, Holly Chou as Jubilee, Isaac Robinson-Smith as Bishop, Matthew Waterson as Magneto, and Adrian Hough as Nightcrawler. Beau DeMayo serves as head writer; episodes are directed by Jake Castorena, Chase Conley and Emi Yonemura.

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