Interview: Supervising Producer/Head Director Jake Castorena Talks ‘X-Men ’97”

With X-Men ‘97, Marvel Studios releases their first-ever mutant-related project to the world. Although it is a revival of X-Men: The Animated Series, it’s also a massive step forward into the franchise’s future, as mutants are slowly (but surely) making their way to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Several cameos in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and The Marvels have already set the stage for their arrival, with Deadpool & Wolverine set to make quite the splash in cinemas this July. 

In stepping into the world of the X-Men for the first time within Marvel Studios, Supervising Producer/Head Director Jake Castorena tells Awards Radar on Zoom that it was never unbeknownst to the team that they would bear the massive responsibility of getting the characters right since it is Marvel’s first real venture into mutant-related storylines:

“We’re not going to be allowed to mess it up. That could be daunting, but you usually don’t go into it if anything is daunting. But why not go in when you have a good team with great scripts and a vision while also having the backing of the studio? There is a responsibility to do the IP, characters, and stories justice and validate and bring it back. The themes were why X-Men was created in the first place, with the allegories for prejudice. It always needs to be about that. To understand that we were going on the right path could be daunting. However, you can’t focus on that at the end of the day. You have to focus on making what you’re making. Obviously, we’re fans, too, so when we say we have the fans in mind, it’s us and the fans. But if you focus on that, you won’t be putting 100% into the work to make it right.”

In terms of capturing the animated look and feel of the original animated series while also slightly modernizing its aesthetic, Castorena explained that they had to find a balance between what the original series did and new animation techniques without making too many big changes to the style that the original show had established: 

“We are a spiritual successor or a revival. We’re not a reboot. So if we make too many new changes within the DNA of the show, we’re no longer that show. To achieve that look, we studied what they were doing. We asked ourselves what they had technologically available to them at the time, what they could do in storytelling, camera, and animation-wise what were their limitations, and if they understood their understanding of them? That helps us know what we want to do and what we want to avoid. Understanding all of this, we put it in the final picture, sound effects, and even the writing. How would they have done this back then? How can we mimic that and give respect to their legacy while bringing it into 4K? 

We’re making the show that you remember, not the show verbatim. It’s been 30+ years since the show’s been out, and we’ve learned a lot in TV animation and comic-book storytelling. We’ve grown as storytellers and as an audience. To do the show verbatim wouldn’t do it justice. But to give you the show you remember, bringing that action into 4K, showcasing mutant abilities and power combos that we haven’t seen before, but without breaking canon, is very exciting. Anybody can slap a VHS filter on something and call it vintage. However, we were looking into the artistry and the science of why things were done and looked the way they did back then. For example, no matter what you did in the post, everything got put on VHS transfer for broadcast. You’ll always have a certain amount of VHS grain or broadcast glitch. And we understood that we needed to put that vibe and feel into our sho. That’s one example of the myriad of things every department does and working together to make the show you remember but in 4K.”

For Castorena and the rest of the team, it was incredibly important to have as many of the original cast members as possible back to either reprise their roles or appear as new and recurring characters: 

“If we’re going to be a revival, we can’t not have the theme song and as many of the original cast members still with us and still have that vocal integrity. Hell yeah, bring them back into the sandbox. It was never a second guess. For those who are still with us and don’t exactly have that vocal integrity, we still brought them back into the sandbox to play recurring characters and some new ones that we have in season two. One of the things that excited me about this revival was the reverence, respect, and love for the original show. We understood that we made a damn good show, and everybody has the right to enjoy the work that we did. At the end of the day, we are only here because we are standing on the shoulders of what Larry Houston, Eric Lewald, and Julia Lewald did in the original show. Without them, we wouldn’t have this and definitely not the MCU because the original animated series was the MCU before it.”

We also had a chance to discuss redeeming Cyclops (Ray Chase) in the first episode, “To Me, My X-Men,” which Castorena directed, collaborating with The Newton Brothers on the musical palette of the series, the process of creating different title sequences for each episode, the use of cameos, and his personal connection to the original animated series.

You can check out my interview with Jake below and see all episodes of X-Men ’97 on Disney+ today:

[Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]