'X-Men's Animated Theme Has A Weird, Forgotten Controversy

For those of us who grew up in the ‘90s, it’s hard to hear the term “X-Men” without that sweet guitar lick from the opening of X-Men: The Animated Series immediately flooding your cerebral cortex. 

Clearly the beloved cartoon is going to be a key influence as Marvel is set to introduce the X-Men into its cinematic universe  (sometime between the near future and the day you die) as indicated by how snippets of the theme song keep popping up in MCU projects; most recently, in Ms. Marvel, and before that in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – which also gets bonus points for giving Professor Xavier a hoverchair painted the familiar shade of a jaundiced Minion.

But this iconic melody isn’t without some controversy; back in 2019, Marvel, Amazon, Apple and a slew of other companies were sued by a man claiming to represent Gyorgy Vukan, the “late composer” of the theme song for the Hungarian TV show Linda – which, we obviously don’t have to tell you, was the 1984 “comedy thriller” about a young woman who decides to become a cop in order to take down bad guys while, apparently, imitating a cartoon mouse.

Which all might sound a tad farfetched, if not for the fact that the show’s music does sound remarkably like the X-Men theme.

The lawsuit also attempted to claim that the kickass theme song led to our society’s widespread love for X-Men, which then contributed to the success of the film franchise, which was available to buy or rent through Apple and Amazon, hence why those “trillion-dollar companies” were “named as defendants.” That kind of seems like Reed Richards-levels of stretching, to be honest. While there don’t seem to be any formal reports on the outcome of the suit, experts speculated at the time that it was somewhat hopeless despite the obvious similarities between the two melodies. 

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