"Mutants Rising"
Episodes Included: "Growing Pains"; "Power Surge"; "Badda Bing, Badda Boom"; "Fun and Games"
Month Released: April 2003
Average Price: $15 (U.S.)
DVD Extras: Previously-Deleted Scenes, X-Men "Comic Book Adventure", Episode Introductions with Boyd Kirkland, and Specialized Character Bios
Packaging: The nice art at first catches the eye- until you look at it a bit closer. The faces on the X-M:E teens on the bottom doesn’t…look…right. Especially on Spyke- he looks like an ugly girl. The rest is nice, though, and it’s interesting to note that the background is from the Fundraiser Carnival in the “Bada-Bing, Bada-Boom” episode, which is on this DVD. The back has a nice layout, with some cool screen caps- but the description of what’s inside will probably turn off people who haven’t watched the series yet, what with sentences like “As students at Xavier’s School for the Gifted, their daily homework is to save the world… as if trying to blend into the popular crowd wasn’t enough pressure!” Excuse me while I puke, here…
Previously-Deleted Scenes: “Growing
Pains” probably has the most important cut-scenes put back in.
They all take place during the brawl between the Brotherhood and the X-Men
in the soccer field. One involves Principal Kelly pushing away from Jean
after she rescues him from Quicksilver, in which he hurriedly dials 911
on his cell phone and asks for the police- but before he can tell them
anything else, Jean telekinetically lifts the phone from his hand and cracks
it against a nearby beam. The fight scene overall flows a bit smoother,
without any brief transitions between scenes. After Rogue touches Blob
and knocks him out, the benches collapse on top of them, and Kitty helps
dig Rogue and some other kids out. However, Avalanche's constant earth-shaking
in his fight with Scott causes the fiery eagle statue (which, you’ll remember,
was slammed into the school’s roof as the fight started) falls off the
roof. Avalanche sees this happening, and immediately breaks off his fight
with Scott to push an unaware Kitty out of the way as the fiery statue
collapses on top of him. Kitty phases back through the statue and pulls
Lance out… and then Storm arrives, and you know the rest. Although this
last part is seemingly inconsequential, it’s actually very important to
the overall story arc. This actually explains why Kitty “suddenly” decided
to give Lance another chance in subsequent episodes, and how they became
good friends- y’know, since he practically saved her life, and all. Also,
one of my questions when I first watched the “cut” version of the episode-
“Why didn’t anyone call the police?”- is obviously answered with the first
cut scene. There’s also some new sound effects added in, which you probably
won’t notice unless you’re an absolute Evo freak like I am.
“Power Surge” also has some
significant scenes put back in- again, all during the final action scenes.
This time, instead of just seeing Scott and Logan blown back by the first
“psychic shockwave” emitted by Jean in the medbay, you actually see the
room explode as well. Xavier, Scott and Logan go back down to the others
(as you know), and Spyke makes a previously-cut comment, “It sounds
like somebody’s nuking us up there!”. The scene where the X-Men fight their
way to the center of the psychic whirlwind is also about 190% as long as
it was before. Most of the new scenes are short “dodging” scenes, but a
few- like Xavier describing how Jean’s telekinesis appears to be rearranging
the furniture at a molecular level, and Kitty phasing an entire desk through
the wall to keep it from hurting Logan and Spyke- are noteworthy. Quite
a bit more background music has also been added.
“Bada-Bing, Bada-Boom” has,
like, four seconds of extra footage, and that’s it. Basically an ever-so-slightly
elongated scene with Tabitha and her dad up on the broken gym roof, and
that’s really about it.
“Fun and Games” also has
some rather inconsequential stuff put back in- just a slightly-extended
fight scene in the Danger Room and out in the courtyard, but considering
that this stuff is some of the most intense fighting in the entire series,
it’s all good. The background music and sound effects have also been turned
up a little to show how hectic the Mansion is.
X-Men "Comic Book Adventure": “The X-Men Comic Book Adventure” is the worst piece of cruddery I’ve ever seen as a “DVD bonus game”. Basically, you are given several sets of choices where you have to “choose what the X-Men would do”- and if you get them all right (and it’s pretty darn obvious which one you’d pick- hmmm, protect the other humans or let a fellow X-Man get harmed? I wonder…), then you’ll get a stupid “Congratulations- You’ve survived a day as a teenage Mutant!” voiceover and a long read-only bio on Scott that really reveals little that we didn’t already know. But even this wouldn’t be that bad if you weren’t told to “get ready for an awesome adventure!” beforehand. Ugh.
Episode Introductions with Boyd Kirkland: These are nice, and give a good background to the episode and what the writers had in mind, but they’re waaay too short. I don’t think one of them goes over 20 seconds. As such, the only real piece of information worth noting is that Boom Boom was originally intended to be a Season 1 character with the Brotherhood, but didn’t make it until the next season for “various reasons”.
Specialized Character Bios: The Specialized
Bios, themselves, have two parts: One is a picture and essential information
about the selected character displayed onscreen, with a voiceover that
describes the personality about the character. However, the voiceover writer
is… well, he’s not one of the X-M:E writers, that’s for sure. Corny stuff
just like on the back of the DVD case- “Most teenagers have to deal with
acne and squeaky voices- Nightcrawler has to deal with blue fur and a forked
tail!” Um…. ‘kay… At least we now know for certain what each of the main
teenage characters’ grades are, though:
9th: Spyke and Shadowcat
10th: Toad, Nightcrawler, and Quicksilver
11th: Blob and Rogue
12th: Avalanche, Cyclops, and Jean
For each character, you can also select
a special 30-seconds-or-so scene that compiles some of the cooler scenes
with the character, with some really cool background music, and usually
one or two voiceovers. Most are pretty good, but Avalanche’s and Rogue’s
are especially awesome.
Bios for Storm, Wolverine, and Magneto
are oddly absent, however.
Last Words: So, there you have it. Although most of the “extra features” on this DVD are enough to make you hack, the episodes are good, and the scenes added back into them make them flow a bit better. You basically get some better-flowing, more cleaned-up episodes with some nice character-focused scene compilations, but the rest is pretty lame.
Overall Rating: 7/10 Good