Warning: This article contains major spoilers for the entirety of “Gen V” season 2.
Creating a hit streaming series like “The Boys” that taps into both current politics and broader entertainment trends is unfathomably hard. Spinning off a new series about kids at a school for superheroes with entirely new characters and without living entirely in the parent show’s shadow might be even harder. But making lightning strike twice with a second season that’s not only more heartfelt and sincere than the first (as I reviewed for /Film here), but also pulls off a storyline that multiple big-budget movies tried and failed to do in years prior? That’s the kind of balancing act that “Gen V” has made its bread and butter.
We’re not exactly going out on a ledge here when we claim that “Gen V” is telling a better X-Men story than the (then-named) 20th Century Fox did with its “X-Men” movies. For as much nostalgia and rose-tinted memories that audiences may bear towards that franchise, to the point that the Marvel Cinematic Universe saw fit to bring much of its cast and characters back (with more to come in “Avengers: Doomsday” and presumably “Avengers: Secret Wars”), there’s no getting around the idea that the those movies left much to be desired. Common complaints from diehards included the elevation of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine to leading man status at the expense of James Marsden’s team leader Scott Summers/Cyclops, those awfully unflattering black pleather uniforms, and storylines that took aim at the biggest and most memorable comic book arcs … but missed out on recreating any actual family dynamic between the mutants.
Without ever hanging a lampshade on it, both seasons of “Gen V” accomplished all of the above and more — and it’s long past time we recognized that.
Read more: Every Marvel Character Locked Up In The Raft
Like the best of X-Men, Gen V remembers that the ensemble is everything
Keeya King as Annabeth Moreau, Jaz Sinclair as Marie Moreau, Maddie Phillips as Cate Dunlap, Derek Luh as Jordan Li, Lizze Broadway as Emma Meyer, and Asa Germann as Sam standing next to each other in Gen V – Prime Video
Let’s put it this way: When the “Twilight” movies inadvertently crafted a more faithful X-Men moment than any of the actual “X-Men” films by having a bunch of super-powered people playing baseball together in the midst of life-or-death stakes, something’s wrong. While under Fox’s guidance, both the original movies and the prequels typically found themselves revolving around very specific characters or pairings: Logan, Logan and Jean Grey, Logan and Charles Xavier, Xavier and Magneto, and so on. As a result, much of the supporting cast found themselves pushed to the sidelines (or, worse, treated as glorified window dressing), along with any semblance of an idea that these characters actually considered themselves family or even liked each other.
From that perspective, “Gen V” almost couldn’t even help but pass this test with flying colors. The core ensemble of protagonists — Jaz Sinclair’s blood-bending Marie Moreau, the untrustworthy and borderline villainous duo of Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips) and Sam (Asa Germann), the shapeshifting wild card Jordan Li (played by both Londor Thor and Derek Luh), and Lizze Broadway’s go-getter Emma Meyer — all embark on their own unique emotional journeys throughout both seasons. At times they love each other, at other times they hate each other, but they’ve been through the wringer together and, by the events of the season 2 finale, they seem ready to form a new super-group of their own. In the span of just over a dozen episodes, they’ve displayed more growth and development and depth and pathos than anyone without adamantium claws ever did in 13 total movies.
Like the best of the “X-Men” comics and cartoons, “Gen V” consistently keeps the focus squarely on these prospective heroes (and villains).
Gen V takes the kids to school (literally) in ways the X-Men movies rarely did
Ethan Slater as Thomas Godolkin smirking and holding up his arms in a threatening pose in Gen V – Jasper Savage/Prime Video
We here at /Film are big proponents of valuing one’s education, but that’s nothing compared to how “Gen V” tackles one of the X-Men’s core tenants. While Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters factored into several movies, arguably only 2000’s “X-Men” truly made this setting and its students integral to its plot. The super-team is otherwise too busy dealing with end-of-the-world threats, timeline funkiness, and any other excuse to take the action to more exciting locales. Meanwhile, “Gen V” not only embraced its premise as a superhero school, it actually retconned its own season 1 finale to bring things back to the discomfiting confines of Godolkin University in season 2.
This shared school setting isn’t just a surface-level similarity, either. By taking place almost entirely on the God U campus, “Gen V” becomes a coming-of-age story about the social aspects of these characters. Too many of the “X-Men” movies were content to coast by on simply alluding to the students and teachers that make up the X-Mansion, assuming they depicted them at all. (Does anyone really feel like those films successfully sold us on the idea of anyone besides Xavier teaching full-time when they’re not saving the world?) “Gen V,” meanwhile, lives this reality and foregrounds it for each and every figure.
Sure, “Gen V” features X-Men analogies aplenty: Marie is Jean Grey, Jordan is Cyclops, and Ethan Slater’s Thomas Godolkin (through his “meat puppet,” Hamish Linklater’s Cipher) is the twisted Professor X to Polarity’s (Sean Patrick Thomas) heroic Magneto. But by fully embodying the themes and ideals that the soon-to-be defunct “X-Men” franchise merely gestured towards, the series ultimately delivers the X-Men story fans have been waiting for.
“Gen V” is streaming on Prime Video.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.
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