In the first episode of X-Men ‘97, the sequel to the classic X-Men: Animated Series cartoon, the titular mutant team finds themselves falling through the sky after their plane gets blown up. To stop his descent, team leader Cyclops emits a massive concussive blast from his eyes, slowing his fall and creating a massive crater in the ground. It’s a spectacular showcase of his powers. At this moment, many viewers had a realization—Cyclops is badass. It led to a lot of claims that X-Men ‘97 redeemed the character, who’s often seen as bland in comparison to the likes of Gambit, Rogue, and Wolverine. But I’m here to tell you that he’s always been this badass, you just weren’t paying attention.
The history of Scott Summers—better known as Cyclops—is as old as the X-Men themselves. Scott is one of the original five team members and has been a lasting presence in the comics, movies, and TV shows starring Marvel’s mutants. But in the six decades Scott has been around, it only took six years to give people the wrong idea about the character. Let’s talk about the Fox movies.
Starting with X-Men in 2000, Fox made a trilogy of films adapting the Marvel comics for the big screen. They were hugely successful and helped inspire Marvel to begin the MCU. Played by James Marsden in X-Men, X2, and X-Men: The Last Stand, the movie version of Cyclops was often seen as an uptight boy scout with no real character. That perception has followed the character ever since and misunderstands Marsden’s portrayal of the character on screen. The films heavily rely on the love triangle between Cyclops, Wolverine, and Jean Grey. Wolverine is seen as the bad boy archetype, and naturally Cyclops is the opposite.
However, there are many moments throughout the trilogy where we see Cyclops’ charm and ego come through. A lot of that happens in his scenes with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, which start as two guys butting heads over a girl and grow into a begrudging bromance filled with constant teasing. As for the power potential of Cyclops, we constantly see him holding back. On a character level, this reflects his stance as team leader and one of the first students of Charles Xavier, who taught Cyclops he needed to control his powers to not scare humans. However, while in mourning for Jean, we do see him let his powers loose at the beginning of X-Men: The Last Stand.
For many, the seemingly boring portrayal of Cyclops became the only version that existed. It wasn’t until X-Men ‘97 that people really saw Cyclops as cool again, but this ignores a vital part of the puzzle—the comics. In the past two decades, Cyclops’s comic arc has been anything but boring. Starting in the 2000s with Grant Morrison’s New X-Men, Cyclops is portrayed as a powerful team leader constantly at the forefront of the action. He’s one of the most important characters in Morrison’s entire run and constantly shows his combat and leadership prowess while also going through some compelling emotional journeys. The 2010s saw Cyclops become arguably the most important X-Men character in the comics, starting with Avengers vs. X-Men. In this story, Scott gains the power of the phoenix force and starts a massive conflict with the rest of Earth’s heroes that eventually leads to him killing Charles Xavier. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that’s not something a Boy Scout would do.
The majority of 2010’s X-Men after AvX was written by Brian Michael Bendis and repositioned Cyclops as closer to longtime villain Magneto than Professor X. In Bendis’s run, Cyclops has become disillusioned with the decades-long fight of Charles Xavier being predicated on appearing as harmless as possible to humans, often at the cost of mutant safety. Cyclops is branded a terrorist and dedicates himself to a mission of saving persecuted mutants and fighting against the many groups trying to eradicate the species.
While I understand that the majority of people may have a picture of Cyclops based on the movies and other screen adaptations, I don’t think it’s fair to expect those to give the whole picture of a character’s identity. Also, I don’t actually think the movies do Cyclops as dirty as everybody says. But even if we want to argue that the movies give Cyclops a bad portrayal, it’s only one part of the picture, and in the two decades since James Marsden first appeared on screen as Cyclops, in the comics the character has continued being just as badass as fans have always known him to be. X-Men ‘97 just reiterated what was always true about him. So don’t call it a redemption.
X-Men ‘97 is available to stream now o n Disney+.
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