Have Yourself A Morlock Little X-Mas

X-Men and Christmas, not always a great combination.

The episode opens to some rather pitiful singing as Rogue, Cyclops and Jubilee decorate a rather enormous Christmas tree and discuss how this is her first year having Christmas with the X-Men. Meanwhile, Jean and Gambit fight in the kitchen over cooking the dinner for tonight. Deciding to go and do some last minute shopping, Jubilee, Storm and Wolverine head out to the mall for a while but run into some trouble when mutants steal ambulance supplies.

After chasing the thieves down, Storm discovers that one of the Morlock's (tunnel dwelling mutants), Leech, has fallen seriously ill. Feeling rather guilty that she's failed them as a leader, Storm and the others proceed to do all they can to pull off a miracle and save him despite the mistrust one mutant, Callisto, shows towards Storm.

The entire episode plays out like a rather bad soap opera and drags down both the X-Men and Christmas shows with it. Hardcore fans might find more enjoyment here than others.

Punisher: War Zone

The Punisher, oddly enough a fitting title given how much of a punishment watching this film can be. Not so much a sequel to the original Punisher, for some reason Marvel decided to reboot things instead.

Now, the film can be entertaining but it still lacks a lot of depth. All of the shootouts are so over the top it gets a bit silly. Our lead, Frank Castle, barely shows any emotion. Now while this might be just part of the character, the actor who portrays him still can't seem to really make the man likeable enough. Our villains are so over the top they make Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey from Batman Forever look sinister at times. Another detracting factor is just how overly done the gore can be for a Marvel film.

Through the film we find that the Punisher leaves a crime boss horribly disfigured. Swearing revenge on him the crime boss renames himself "Jigsaw" and proceeds to do whatever it takes to get even with the Punisher. We also find early in that an FBI agent was killed in the crossfire which brings down some added pressure to our hero as a fellow agent does everything he can to bring him in.

Pryde of the X-Men

Acting as a pre-X-Men launcher, Pryde of the X-Men is a standalone episode that let audiences get to see our favorite mutants in action on television.

Narrated by a rather excited Stan Lee, we follow Kitty Pryde as she is introduced to the X-Men and is offered a place amongst them. Wary of the whole idea, Kitty takes a bit of a disliking to Nightcrawler which will act as a small subplot for the next 20 minutes.

Not all is well though as Magneto is released from containment and attacks Xavier's mansion, stealing an important chip. His plan is to stay safely aboard his asteroid base with his Brotherhood as he redirects a comet to strike earth, thereby wiping out humans. I had a small problem with this, wouldn't it also affect mutants? Perhaps this Magneto isn't quite as smart as the version we will later get in the proper series.

Of course, the X-Men and Kitty are on the job as they blast off to the asteroid to save the day! Fighting back against the evil mutants, Kitty and Nightcrawler manage to destroy the asteroid base and become friends in the process. However, Magneto and his group manage to escape for next time.

This standalone episode, despite it's flaws, does have a few perks. The main thing I enjoyed about this episode was the various characters used. On the X-Men we get the rarely seen Dazzler, as well we get Nightcrawler, Colossus and Kitty who make the rare appearances here and there in the later series but in this episode are part of the team. For the villains we get a rather enjoyable Brotherhood, even with Emma Frost substituting for Mystique.

Some flaws, animation aside, include the corny narration and poor choice on vocals for Kitty and Wolverine. However, it's still a bit of fun to watch even if it has nothing on later shows.