Marvel’s First Live-Action X-Men Attempt Went Horribly Wrong

In November of 1994, Marvel Comics launched an X-Men title to feature an almost all-brand-new crop of teen characters called, collectively, Generation X (who were, weirdly, not members of Generation X like Crow T. Robot). The team consisted of the established X-Woman Jubilee, joined by striking superpowered high-schoolers like Chamber, Husk, Skin, Mondo, M, and Synch. The team was overseen by Banshee and the White Queen, and their adventures aimed to be hipper and edgier — in that MTV sort of way — than those of their adult counterparts.

“Generation X” was a modest hit with comics readers, but not enough to stick around indefinitely. The series ended after three years and 75 issues. The characters, however, were perfect fodder for a “young ‘n’ hip” version of the X-Men, a fact that TV producers at Fox latched onto. In 1996, Fox executive producer Eric Blakeney, one of the writers of “21 Jump Street,” felt he could take his previous show’s “teens as undercover law enforcers” shtick, and apply superpowers to it. Using “Generation X” as his jumping-off point, Blakeney penned the pilot for an all-new live-action TV series, set in the near future, and affecting a kind of cyberpunk attitude. It was the first live-action version X-Men movie or TV show in Marvel history.

It also, some readers may know, wasn’t well-received in the least. The pilot episode of “Generation X,” which aired on February 20, 1996, was a clunky, over-stylized affair, more reminiscent of “Hackers” than “X-Men.” Although the pilot cost $4 million, a lot of the visual effects looked odd and artificial. It was filmed with swirling, over-colorful, hyper-edited MTV techniques that felt instantly dated. There are a lot of green gels, and the story was really, really weird.

X-Men fans stayed away from “Generation X” in droves, and it quickly fell into obscurity. Years later, when the YouTube generation found it, however, “Generation X” was roundly mocked for its silliness, and many consider it to be one of the worst X-Men film projects ever produced.