"Fox TV and Marvel Comics decided. By summer of 1993, the show had been a runaway No. 1 hit for six months and we had completed writing the second season of scripts, bringing the total stories to 26. At that point, Fox committed to three more seasons (39 more episodes), and I, executive Sidney Iwanter, producer Scott Thomas, and director Larry Houston visited Marvel’s New York offices to brainstorm and discuss various characters and bits of storyline we would all like to see in the next 39 half-hours.
“Phoenix” and “Dark Phoenix” were at the top of Marvel’s list.
The only direct adaptation we had made so far was “Days of Future Past,” which we had suggested, and it and the two Phoenixes were the only direct adaptations we ever committed to. Every other story used bits and pieces from the books, but these were the “big three.”
Primarily we focused on Jean Grey (who was going through the Phoenix transformation) and on those people who cared most about her. Secondarily, we focused on Xavier, whose connection to Lilandra brought the worlds beyond Earth into our stories for the first time.
When we looked at the many subplots in the books, we trimmed them away or bolstered them, depending on how they helped support these two central through-lines.
We were excited to do it because we had felt that we had underused her in the first two seasons and this gave us a chance to give her more screen time. Second, by now we had established that she was a kind of emotional center for the team–someone who could talk honestly with any of the others, who understood them–so we knew she would sustain a good story focus for our team of X-Men.
As a “children’s show for Saturday morning TV,” we were always aware of the tight limits we had on sex and violence–limits far tighter than the comics had.
Luckily, since we were focused on Jean/Phoenix and Xavier and Lilandra, adjusting secondary characters wasn’t a big worry for us. Also, we believe we got the intensity of Jean’s Black-Queen sensuality across in her dialogue and in Catherine Disher’s performance. Jean-as-Phoenix is so much bigger, more dramatic, in animation than Jean-as-Black-Queen that we never felt the loss.
First, we knew from the beginning we couldn’t have Dark Phoenix destroy an inhabited planet, so we worked with that disappointing limitation from day one. We hope we got across how deadly she could be. Second, we very much believe that killing Jean off would have been the proper heroic sacrifice for the story.
We didn’t for two reasons. First, we needed her for the remaining 20 stories–a problem in all comics and serialized TV.
And second, we’d had a convincing seeming-death in “Phoenix,” which was then revealed to not be Jean’s end after all. We didn’t want to repeat that.
We thought up the shared sacrifice of the rest of the team (10% of their lives–a handy cheat) as a way around it.
I wish I knew (and that they had asked us to help). Animated TV comics-adaptations and live-action feature comics-adaptations are similar but not the same.
The great TV critic Brian Lowry thinks animation suits super-hero-comics adaptations better than live action–something about suspension of disbelief. Mutants with super-powers are hard enough–then in these cases you add space aliens. You can get lost in the spectacle.
I believe that the recent Spider-Man animated feature was better than any of the live-action movies, most of which I enjoyed a great deal. When in doubt, keep the story simple and trust in the characters to propel the story (the movie Logan is a good example).
She asserted herself. As writer Mark Edens and I laid out the first, then the second season of stories, we kept coming back to needing to use her in scenes, often to reveal depths of other characters.
She was an emotional center, trusted, a glue that helped keep the disparate team together. Luckily, she was a true legacy character, so no one ever felt we were being intrusive by featuring her."
