Jake Castorena is the supervising producer and head director of Marvel Animation’s X-Men ’97 (premiering Wednesday March 20th on Disney+). The show gives us new adventures with these iconic characters in the hand-drawn, comic book animation style of the popular X-Men: The Animated Series from the ’90s. (This Animation Scoop Q&A with Castorena was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: You have been a part of so many animated superhero projects with TMNT, Batman, the Justice League and Scooby Doo. How does it feel to add the X-Men to your superhero list?

Jake Castorena: Honestly, man, I get to feel like I’m playing with all my toys. I get to have my toys and play with them too. It’s been awesome. I was just actually having a conversation about this yesterday — the retrospective, the IPs that I have gotten a privilege to work on and be a part of. Being on X-Men, not only is it just X-Men, but it’s *that* X-Men show. That’s been awesome. That’s been humbling. It’s been exciting. It’s been tiring. It’s been passionate. It’s been a myriad of things. But what I can say is that I’m nothing short of grateful.

JM: People always have their favorite of something. Maybe you grew up with the Gene Wilder Willy Wonka, or the Johnny Depp Willy Wonka, or now the Timothy Chalamet Willy Wonka. When it comes to X-Men, what do you think it is that people love about this incarnation of these X-Men characters and why they’re going to respond so well to this new version with them?

JC: Well, it’s just that, right? It is fresh but familiar. It is a fresh show, but it is a familiar show. It is based on, and in tandem with, the OG show. We are a spiritual successor. We are a revival. We are not a reboot. We are a continuation. Hopefully what this show does is it will help people revert back to the OG show too. It’ll introduce them to those, and ideally it’ll help them come back to this show. One will help the other. And that’s the whole point. That was the whole vibe, the visual aesthetic, the tones, the themes. Everything about this show should help you be able to go into the OG show or help you go from the OG show to this, and it should feel like one cohesive thing.

JM: Professor X has died. How did you want to show the gang grieving and also trying to move on and face the foes that they do?

JC: Luckily, a lot of the story and the Bible stuff [and where] Marvel Studios wanted the show to go was already thought of before I was brought on board, thankfully. My job was to take the parameters and try to expand the sandbox or try to figure out where those parameters of that sandbox really were for visuals. As far as those tones, that’s been in script from day one from writer Beau DeMayo, who wanted to approach the X-Men in a post-Xavier world, because that’s where we just saw them. And to be quite honest, as a fan, as a kid who grew up with that, that’s what I’ve been yearning for, for 30 years. “What happens?” That being the premise of the show and where to start from… how can you not want to do that? And I’m grateful for those decisions that were made well before I got on board.

JM: You’ve got the action, you’ve got the drama. In the second episode, there are scenes at a hospital that are pretty intense — just as intense as what you would see in a big fight scene. So you put a lot of focus on that.

JC: Thank you. Shout out to director Chase Conley and the storyboard team for the second episode. Choreography can have so many different words. It doesn’t just mean dance. It doesn’t just mean fight. Choreography is also how you place characters. The emotional weight, — when do we cut to this? When do we cut back to this? When do we cut to that emotional closeup? When do we pull out the sound? Do we bring in the sound? When do we have somebody’s dialogue over everything? That’s all planned. That’s all thought out. It starts from day one from script, to being able to board, to get to animatics, to kind of figure it out as we go refix spaces and places. “And actually this beat would go better here, or this beat actually works better here now. Ah, that’s it.” It’s a team effort. You do need to have a grand vision. You do need to have a goal, but at the end of the day, it requires all of us to make sure it comes across. And not just with action, as you said, but also it’s the emotional action, right? The heart, the drama, the melodrama, the love triangles — that all has choreography to it as well.

JM: Who is the X-Men character you would most want to play basketball with?

JC: I want to say Wolverine or Gambit — to play against them — but I would want Storm on my team. Wolverine and Gambit would probably just murder the ball. And I would ask Storm to kind of help me with my three pointer, just give a little wind.

Jake Castorena and Jackson Murphy

JM: Yes! Obviously the show is called “X-Men ’97”. In 1997, Disney released a couple of big animated movies, “Hercules” and the “Beauty and the Beast Enchanted Christmas”. Do you happen to remember in 1997 where your love of animation and or comic books was?

JC: Man, that’s asking me a question that was from 700 years ago at this point. (laughs) Wow, ’97. How old was I in ’97? I was 10. So 10 years old. I was definitely obviously watching the show. I was playing a lot of video games. I was reading a lot of the Jim Lee run. Growing up the poor kid, I got my comic books and my movies from my local library. My local library had a spinner rack and trade paperbacks. So I was always at the mercy of what my library had. And what I followed around the time was the Dave Cockrum run — “Giant-Size X-Men”. I got into a lot of “X-Force”, “X-Factor”, because they had individual issues. I was a little backwards in how things were. I saw “Empire [Strikes Back”] before I saw “Star Wars”. That’s just how I was as a kid.

JM: Kelsey Grammer, one of the great voice actors of all-time, plays Beast [in the MCU]. We saw him at the end of “The Marvels”. Any chance he comes in and does a “multiversal” as Beast?

JC: What I can say is I love what they’re doing in the MCU. Why just have one candy? Why not have all the candy? So give us all the X-Men anywhere, how you can. But at the end of the day, we are our own thing. The X-Men animated series was the MCU before the MCU became the MCU. It would be great to have multiple Beasts in the sandbox. But right now, the MCU gets Kelsey Grammer, and we absolutely love and appreciate George Buza.

JM: Absolutely!

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Jackson Murphy

Jackson Murphy is a movie critic and entertainment columnist. He is the creator of the website Lights-Camera-Jackson.com, and has made numerous appearances on television and radio.

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