That doesn't excuse not exploiting the movie.

X-Men Evolution, Batman Animated et al. are primarily marketed at kids yet they still exploited their movie counterparts and also worked at appealing to adults too. I find that Animated has very few elements that are intended to appeal to adults other than Easter-Egg homages/tributes. They're nice... but they're the icing... and it's kinda like having icing with no cake.

Beast Wars and the movie gave us cake with our icing!