I can’t believe we’re almost done with this season of X-Men ’97. Not content to bask in the glory of season one, the writers, directors, and animators continue to make the most vibrant, action-packed animated series we’ve seen in a while. The mutants never disappoint. Not only is season two giving us Apocalypse in all his glory, it’s given us X-Force, X-Factor, the Acolytes, and more. We spoke to supervising producer Jake Castorena about the metric ton of new characters, big moments, and who we won’t see in season three.
NERDIST: Going from season one to season two, what was the biggest challenge after seeing the success of the first season?
JAKE CASTORENA: Honestly, that. We’re all fans, we’re all nerds, we’re all artists and creatives on our end. So it’s like, cool, now we just got to do better than what we did before. And that’s sort of the same synergy that we already have amongst the crew, especially when we have animatic screenings or when we have meetings where every so often we all come together. Whether it’s in the episode getting animated or whether it made the cutting room floor, just like to highlight the work.
Because when you work remote or hybrid, you don’t get to see what everyone else is working on. So we try to make an effort to make sure we showcase what everyone’s working on together and that can’t help but just, “Oh man, oh, so-and-so did that. Damn, all right, I want to step it up now. Oh, they did that such-and-such cool thing. Okay, cool. I want to do something cool now too.” So we already have that synergy. So that wasn’t too much of a leap for season two. It was just doing it after already being timed from season one. But yeah, man, it never falls short on the responsibility and the genuine gratitude that we have to get to bring these characters and these stories to life.
I’m always blown away every episode by the action sequences and how big they get and how it seems like they translate the panel into this massive, extended sequence. What was your favorite and/or most challenging one from this season to get timed out properly?
Honestly, for me, Magneto’s death.
Oh, man, yeah.
The death of Magneto because we’re killing off a main character and we want to give a good sendoff, but it’s as much about the main character’s death as it is about Xavier watching Magneto die. And it’s also about apocalypse coming into his own as Apocalypse. So there’s three things you have to juxtapose against all each other. All need the same amount of screen time, all need the same amount of justice and all need to hit. And so delicately balancing that.
Also, just shout out to Chase Conley, director for that episode, because he and I got to work together closely and craft that whole thing together, which is pretty awesome. And just as you see, just making it all work. For me, it’s in a fast-paced show like us always remembering, and our team does this in kind, not being afraid to let things breathe, not being afraid of silence. Because ideally what you slow down helps to sped up stuff and vice versa.
So for me, the challenge was making sure that Magneto stuff hit. And then the other challenge was something that’s not out yet, but in the finale, just a certain character coming back and molly whopping a whole bunch of Multiple Men.
Intriguing! Speaking of multiple men and multiple characters, this season has several different X-teams and dozens of new characters. That has to be a very hard situation to be like, we have to make sure we’re giving every new character the same kind of gravitas as some of the returning characters without forgetting some of the returning characters. What was that sort of like in the prepping process for this season?
Yeah. One thing I’ll say is I don’t envy our head E.P. Matthew Chauncey and our writers room. I don’t envy them. It’s like, oh, 22 new characters plus the other 18 to 20 that we already know? But the cool thing is my unique position and my ability is, I don’t necessarily work on the scripts in Genesis phase, but I do get to have a say or get to have some input.
Matt Chauncey is gracious enough to ask me, “Hey, how do you feel about this? Is this hitting the way I’m looking for it to hit? Or what would you do? What are you looking for? ” Or sometimes it’s even like, “Hey, I wrote this and this. Whatever the action says, I’m not really married to it. Please work with directors and whatever you want to do to that, just as long as we hit this and this. ” It’s like, great. That’s not different from season one either.
Is there a new character this season that you’ve felt came out the best?
Honestly, I’m loving everything about having X-Factor and X-Force. I’m a little partial to X-Factor because that was my first foray into the actual X-Men Comics. So X-Factor, when the original X-Men were part of X-Factor before Havok and the secondary team came. So that was my intro, I’m very partial. Even though it’s only a name, it’s not the right team, but it’s okay, I’ll take it.
Well, congrats on the season and thank you very much for your time. I do want to say one thing. People here on staff are big Kitty Pryde fans. We would really like to vouch for Kitty Pryde going forward if that’s ever a possibility.
We would love that too. The one thing I can and will say is, and this comes from the OG show too, so long as Jubilee is present, we most likely won’t get Kitty Pryde.
X-Men ’97 drops Wednesdays on Disney+.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.
The post X-MEN ’97 Supervising Producer Jake Castorena on Magneto, Apocalypse and More appeared first on Nerdist.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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