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- The X-Men ’97 Season 1 finale saw Fortress defeated but the heroes divided across time and space, setting huge expectations for Season 2.
- Directors Emi/Emmett Yonemura and Chase Conley discuss fans’ emotional reactions to the finale, ranging from joy to pain.
- The director overcame the challenge of directing the finale of the trilogy through teamwork, setting a powerful ending and complex emotions for the characters.
Marvel directors Amy/Emmett Yonemura and Chase Conley break down while handling the momentous event X-Men ’97 Season 1 three-part finale. world X-Men: The Animated Series The series has experienced many game-changing moments in its new sequel, X-Men ’97, serves as Marvel Studios’ first official production centered on the iconic mutants. After the fall of Kenosha, the second half of X-Men ’97 Season 1 saw the rise of the heroes’ true newest enemy.
Although the fortress is the main antagonist, X-Men ’97 The first season ended with his defeat. However, as one obstacle is overcome, another presents itself to the mutants, and the team is split in two, scattered throughout time and space.One half is stuck in 3960 AD, the other half is currently stuck in ancient Egypt in 3000 BC, and the other half landed in 3960 AD, which makes people wonder X-Men ’97 Season 2.
Related: 10 best lines from the first season of “X-Men 97”
X-Men ’97 Season 1 has proven itself to be just as iconic as the classic X-Men: TAS, providing plenty of famous scenes and perfect quotes.
return to screen roar An exclusive interview about the three-episode finale, X-Men ’97 Directors Amy/Emit Yonemura and Chase Conley talk about the second half of the season. Yonemura directed episode 9, while Conley helmed episodes 8 and 10, and the two talked about X-Men ’97 A large number of Marvel cameos from the first season appear throughout the rest of the season, as well as in the second season.
Emi/Emmett Yonemura and Chase Conley appear in the Season 1 finale of X-Men 97
Screen Rant: I remember the last time we talked, you warned me that the second half of the season was going to be tough, and I thought, “Oh, it’s just their media training talk. Of course there’s a happy ending.” I was wrong, there have been so many emotions over the past five weeks. Have you looked on social media to see how people have reacted to the last five series, especially the finale? What have you taken away from that?
Emi/Emmett Yonemura: It’s overwhelming because we’re fans and we’ve been working on this for three years and there’s a part of us that’s just happy that now the rest of the world can hurt with us and also fully enjoy this with us Expand together. Because what we talked about last time was not only Gambit being a big deal, but just seeing Rogue’s arc and what happened to her, what happened to Magneto. Honestly, the fact that it resonated with everyone because I couldn’t help but watch it, it meant a lot and it was like, ‘Oh cool, we’re fans and we’re making it because other fans are happy too. Well, just be happy…
Happy and painful!
Emi/Emmett Yonemura: Yes, absolutely! [laughs]
Chase Conley: Yeah, no, I can’t completely stay awake because generally speaking, I try to stay away from that stuff, especially in production so that it doesn’t affect me one way or another, and I just like to trust my instincts and trust what I think is going to work, story-wise, action-wise, in terms of how we approach the show, but it’s unavoidable in certain situations.
It’s nice to see something go viral, in the form of an animated clip or being tagged on Twitter or Instagram, and seeing the engagement on posts where I’ve been tagged makes me think, “Oh, these people are really into this!” 90% is love, which I think is an amazing ratio. So I do think that at some point, once the dust settles, I’ll go check it all out and see how it goes, so to speak.
X-Men: Season 1: Strom’s Rebirth
Image via Disney+
In terms of the reaction, for you, Chase, because I loved the next episode after Episode Five, when Storm gets her powers back. People made a lot of comparisons when she got her powers back; I think Beau Demayo even said somewhere that it was definitely inspired by man of Steel.How long did it take to do that sequence and get to that moment from a production standpoint and making sure it looked absolutely perfect?
Chase Conley: Well, I know that when Beau wrote that, he was probably referring to Man of Steel. For me, I try not to directly reference anything specific because I like to come up with something on my own. If someone tells me that it reminds me of a certain scene, I might watch it to try to understand their reaction to it. Now I rephrase this in a different way.
To me, that’s the basis of it, but the typical animation process, I would say we boarded it. That scene, we were on a deadline and I remember I had to get on that scene in a day and a half. I remember our first board proposal I just wrote, “Storm regains her powers – cool, this happened” and they edited it into our proposal and everyone trusted me to do it and I Thinking, “It’s going to be cool when it happens” was done. And then, of course, we hit the point where you have 16 weeks before you can resume animation. I believe we chose it as one of our wedge tests to see how the studio would handle the Tiger thing [Animation’s] Episode one.
When we got the final animation back 16 weeks later, it was reworked again by animation supervisors Jeremy Polgar and Naseer Pasha, who did another rework of the animation in-house to tighten up the poses and reworked much of the horse’s animation. Especially the shot where Storm is flying down to the ground, I think they actually reworked most of that shot based on the results they got. I did a couple of animation reworks just to get some elegance because I wanted Storm to not fly like a traditional superhero like Superman or be blown around by a gust of wind so that her movement in the air would be a little different. Beau also gave us some reference of her riding the wind, which was from a music video, and you can clearly see that the projection is not a person, but almost like a leaf, but more controlled.
X-Men ’97 Season 1’s Great Cameo
Custom image by Kai Young
We have to talk about how many cameos there were in the last few episodes. I thought Jake Castorena was just joking and thought we might get a cameo or two. It’s almost like seeing the early MCU, like in the finale. As a production team, did you try out other guest appearances that you could afford, whether it was a matter of timing or I guess if there were any licensing issues, or were you able to get everyone on board that you wanted to come on board?
Emi/Emmett Yonemura: Oh no, there are so many, so many we want to see! Because the Marvel universe is huge, even the X-Men universe is huge. It’s hard, but sometimes we’ll queue them up and put the name of the person we want to see, and then Marvel will sometimes say, “You can’t touch that person.” It’s funny because then we have to say , “Okay, so who’s number two on my list? Who’s number three on my list? But there’s a lot, and we can’t always tell who it is in case they have a plan – and sometimes they don’t. I think sometimes they just want to torture us and make us wait! It’s funny because we’re fans too, so we’re like, ‘Well, who do you want to see? ‘ Psylocke was obviously an easy choice.
I know Beau tweeted that Deadpool was apparently off-limits to the show, was that one of the people you tried to get into the finale?
Chase Conley: No, I don’t think so, not at any point and not in the finale.
The Challenge of Directing a Three-Part Finale
Custom image by Simone Ashmoore
Very few animated shows have three-episode finales. How was it for you two to handle these three episodes? What challenges were encountered during processing?
Emi/Emmett Yonemura: Yeah, so Chase has [episodes] 8 and 10., I have to like the cream filling, I like it, I like it in the middle. But I love that because I can see where he is and what he’s doing because in our production schedule, that episode is still produced before me and we’re still producing them in order. I just like being able to set up the pitch so he can knock the ball out of the park, which he always does no matter what. What’s great is we already have a very similar style and feel, and we have great writers on the script, and I know Anthony Cerlitti really helped set up a lot of what was going to happen, and then it was very easy to do it Making sure I did my part and making sure Chase could finish really strong. [go,] “Oh my god, he killed it.” It was amazing.
Chase Conley: It was awesome, and I leaned heavily on my editor, Asher Lewis, because of his ability to help stitch these threads together, especially as someone who was looking at it from a macro perspective, and I was looking at it in the micro, these individual scenes. But like Emi mentioned, Anthony killed it in setting up episode 8, and it was just a tonal shift, and it felt like we really accelerated from that point on. It was also rewarding because a lot of this season has been a lot of build-up, and I love all of that stuff. But I also enjoy the huge reward of being able to wrap this stuff up, and the poetry of it also has a message.
Seeing Bastion’s transformation and realizing “I might be wrong” and acknowledging that with his turn of phrase, “A lot of people would never want kids like us,” and “Oh, now you’re a mutant, huh?” and kind of accepting that and realizing “I’d better destroy myself,” because he still can’t get over some of his original programming, which is the literal programming from Nimrod. It’s hard to get it all in one moment. [where] Bastion realized, “Maybe I shouldn’t kill all these people, maybe I should just kill myself.” I also don’t have to deal with the consequences of all of this.
We tried to express a lot of mixed emotions in a small window, but hopefully we can hold on. But we’re a great team, and I couldn’t have done it without Emmett, and I feel like there were moments where we were going back and forth and throwing a lot of balls at each other.
Before I sign off, will you be back for season 2? Have you directed season 2 yet? Still keeping it a secret?
Emi/Emmett Yonemura: Yeah, we’re moving full steam ahead with season two, which is definitely fun. Now we have to wait a little longer before you guys can see what we’re building. I mean, it’s already hard to keep Season 1, and now, ‘Do we have to keep Season 2? What are you doing to us? ! ” So right now we’re super excited and we can’t wait for everyone to see what’s coming.
Chase Conley: Yeah, yeah, of course!
about X-Men ’97
X-Men ’97 relives the iconic era of the ’90s as the X-Men, a group of mutants who use their incredible gifts to protect a world that hates and fears them, face unprecedented challenges and are forced to face danger and a new future of unexpected things.
View our X-Men ’97 Other interviews here:
Watch every episode
X-Men ’97
Season 1 on Disney+.
X-Men ’97
X-Men ’97 is a direct sequel to the hit ’90s animated series X-Men: The Animated Series. Marvel’s revival picks up where the third season left off and brings back famous mutants like Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, Gambit, Cyclops, Beast, Magneto and Nightcrawler as they battle villains like Mister Sinister, the Sentinels and the Hellfire Club.
Actor Jennifer Hale/Chris Porter/Alison Seeley-Smith/Lenore Zane/Carl Dodd/Catherine Disher/Adrian Hough/Ray Chase/Chris ·Britten/George Buza
Release date March 20, 2024
Season 1
Streaming service Disney+
CreatorBeau DeMayo
expansion