This is silly, I know. X-Men Evolution is not a bad show- decent animation, plot, and sort of a story arc.
The problem- what the hell kind of super heroes are these? They don’t ever even go so far as to stop a mugging, yet EVERY episode, they cause milions of dollars worth of damage. Not only that, but they KNOW who the bad guys are- they go to school with them! They don’t even bother with masks! So why exactly has one side not wiped out the other by now?
Even non-super powered feuding street gangs tend to kill one another every once in a while.
And can you see yourself as a student at that school? or a resident of that area? Or someone watching the destruction on the news? Guess which way I’ll be voting during the national referendum on Mutant Rights.
Sorry guys. Off to the Genoshan re-education camps with you.
sigh
-stonebow, x-men comic book collector for the last 20 years
A while back I made a thread basicaly stating that, in fact, the anti-mutant crowd is dead right. Mutants are extremely dangerous and the fact that they get their powers in the worst possible time (puberty) makes it vastly vastly worse. Think what would happen in Avalanche lost control one day, or used his power in LA? We’ve already seen how a PO’d Magneto nearly wiped out humanity on a whim. And Professor X really, really does have the ability to invade people’s minds and ferret out their thoughts. And he does so quite often.
I had the same realization back when the X-Men movie came out. I saw it with my dad, and about half-way thru the movie he commented to me, “You know, I find myself siding with the anti-mutant guys.” I realized that he was right. If I lived in the X-Men’s universe, I would be in constant fear of getting blasted, crushed, sliced open, or whatever by some mutant who was pissed off because he got a parking ticket or got cut off in traffic or the ice cream parlor ran out of tutti frutti or whatever.
I’d definitely be a member of Friends of Humanity, and I would probably support a proposal to forcibly remove the mutants to some isolated island somewhere.
I haven’t seen the show, although I have followed the original X-Men comics.
I think you all are missing the point. Yes, mutants are dangerous and scary. That doesn’t mean they deserve to to be locked up, deported, segregated, or discriminated against. They’re still human beings trying to live in peace. When they commit crimes they should be prosecuted, but just because they can cause damage doesn’t mean they will – after all, we let people drive cars and carry guns, too, and they don’t get prosecuted until they use these dangerous objects to harm others.
I’d be jealous that I wasn’t a mutant and couldn’t have nifty powers, personally. They’re people, just like anyone else, just with really cool parlor tricks.
some mutants own the equivilent of shotguns… some the equivilent of nuclear weapons… others have powers to control or read minds.
the mutant registry seems like a minor inconveniance compared to the power they have. especially with the fact that the number of bad mutants is not low, in fact it seems not a minority, there is far more bad mutants than good mutants apparently.
I’ve read the comics since I was a kid. I KNOW that they don’t deserve to be locked up, but jeez…they need to start earning their keep. Face it- if you have super powers, you’re not going to be working in a donut factory. You’re either going to be a super hero or a super villain. Xavier seems to be setting up the kids to be super heroes- except that they don’t ever really do anything heroic. They are generally only able to stem the bad guy’s destruction after its mostly over. Hell, for that metter, half of the plots are them screwing something up themselves!
And like I said - the bad guys keep trying to KILL you. You KNOW who they are, where they live. Yet the idea of taking them out- Christ, how about calling the cops? after they’ve terrorized, destroyed, and otherwise menaced society seems to have escaped them.
I’m jaded- i’m used to the heroes being grown people. I know that the show is trying to ‘connect’ with pre-teens. But jeez, grow some sac, dammit!
-stonebow, whose first X-Men comic was Uncanny X-Men 263, where they face off against Dracula. You hear that? Dracula! How can you be anti-Dracula fighters!
The problem is that the genre is all about mutant heros vs mutant villains. Just an occasional scene of mutants working with humans to put out fires or stop normal crimes would be nice. If Spidey can do it, why not them?
Haven’t seen the show, but the problem with the Mutant Registration Act in general is that it lumps all mutants together – even if you’re a mutant with a lame-ass power such as Jumping Very Tall or Blue Fur And Forked Tongue, you’re considered as dangerous as Nukkleo, the Human Bomb. Some mutants are dangerous and evil and whatnot, but that’s not the same as saying they all are.
That said, the Marvel mutants definitely need some work with their PR; at the very least, they should try to help clean up whatever messes may arise from their super-powered activites (or have Damage Control on retainer).
Oh, I dunno – given some of the attitudes in this thread, if I had a mutant power, I might consider being an anonymous donut-factory-worker to be a preferable fate than “outing” myself.
Yeah, I often wondered, while watching Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, why:
(a) any sane human being would remain in Angel Grove more than five minutes after the last Giant Monster Vs. UltraMegaZord battle wiped out the downtown area, and
(b) why the U.S. government never figured out what part of the moon Rita Repulsa lived on in order to nuke it into a big smoking crater so she’d quit throwing her foam rubber freaks down to the West Coast every other day or so…
Some superhero metaphors hold up better than others, I guess…
I could probably tolerate the mutants if the Mutant Registration Act was passed. After all, there are restrictions to gun ownership, and we have a national registry of convicted sex offenders, so I would say that there would be ample precedent for requiring people with dangerous abnormal powers to register this fact. (Wouldn’t you want to know if Sabertooth or Mystique were living in your neighborhood?)
It also doesn’t help that about 2/3 of mutants seem to worship Magneto like he’s a mutant messiah.
Certainly I would, because they’re known and dangerous criminals. But if Beast, say, or Jean Gray wants to live in my neighborhood, that’s their business. I have no more problem with a registry of mutant criminals than I do with any registry of criminals. But I absolutely have a problem with any registry which includes conscientious, law-abiding citizens, due purely to something which is beyond their control.
I must say, I would oppose any registrion of mutants prior to them committing a crime. That sort of thinking leads to segregation and civil rights violations. Of course, law breaking mutants should be forced to register themselve after any prison term they have served, much like sex offenders. However, I am also opposed to most forms of gun control, and in mutant world, I believe humans should have the right to carry all sorts of heavy weapons, to allow normal humans(and mutants with worthless powers) to deal with high powered mutants on a more even level.
I see your point, and I’m acutally quite sympathetic to the mutants’ plight, but there are a lot of mutants that are really, really dangerous, even if they don’t mean to be. (Rouge comes to mind, as does Proteus.)
Actually, now that I think about it, I would probably be OK with just listing mutants with criminal records. But you would have to make sure that the X-Men don’t weasel out of it. If the X-Men get into a big fight with some of Magneto’s mutants, and lots of stuff gets destroyed, then for God’s sake charge them with disorderly conduct or something. That way, they’ll appear on the list, and you’ll know if someone who regularly causes millions of dollars in property damage is living nearby. Remember the old X-Men animated series? In the first episode, Storm rips a building off its foundation and drops it on Juggernaut. Even as a kid, I realized that this was a horribly irresponsible thing for Storm to do. She could have killed dozens of innocent people. Sorry Storm, but you’re a menace to society.
I will give X-Men Evolution some credit, though…it turned what could have been a lukewarm concept (“They’re the X-Men! And they’re teenagers!”) and turnd it into a pretty decent adaption. (Emphasis on “adaption,” of course.) They’ve gone from “teenage angst, w/superpowers” to “battling Apocalypse for the fate of Earth.”
They DID change the location of the Xavier Institute to “Bayville”, however. I guess you can have a “bay” on a not-so-large lake. Maybe.
