The New Mutants, the final film in Fox’s X-Men franchise directed by Josh Boone, had been plagued with release issues since almost the beginning. It finished filming back in September of 2017, with a release date set for April of 2018. That release date got pushed back a couple of times, first to later in 2018, then late summer 2019, before getting a firm date of April 2020.
Then Covid hit.
Strangely enough, it took a worldwide pandemic and the shutdown of movie theaters for The New Mutants to see the light of day. It almost seemed like Fox was done with the movie and just wanted to get it out to the public. To be fair, it’s hard to blame them; since Disney purchased the rights to Marvel Comics’ properties, and The New Mutants being the last vestige of Fox’s time with the X-Men, they were probably looking forward to releasing the film and moving on. They also probably knew that ticket sales would be less than stellar, so the pandemic gave them the perfect excuse for why they would make so little back on their investment.
Hell, I couldn’t even see The New Mutants in theaters if I wanted to. Living in New Jersey, which still has a few executive orders in place through the rising infection numbers, movie theaters have not been able to reopen like in other states. Luckily for me, the film was released on home video just a few days ago, so I was able to snag a copy from my local Redbox.
The film focuses on Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt), a Native American whose entire reservation is wiped out in some sort of disaster. She wakes up in a hospital and meets Dr. Reyes (Alice Braga). Though she’s never given a first name in the movie, based on her powers this is Cecelia Reyes, a somewhat obscure X-Men character. Why the filmmakers didn’t just steer into this is beyond me, but it doesn’t detract from the movie in any way.
The hospital turns out to be a home for dangerous, wayward mutants. Dani meets the other residents, Rahne (Maise Williams), Sam (Charlie Heaton), Illyana (Anya Taylor-Joy), and Roberto (Henry Zaga). All of the… residents? Inmates? Whatever they’re classified as, they each have their own trauma, which, of course, gets revealed to the audience through a series of escalating incidents.
Several times, Dr. Reyes alludes to her superior and their goal for the hospital. The kids all assume the superior is Charles Xavier and that they’re being prepped to become X-Men, which they later learn is not the case. The subplot was a clever way to tie the movie into the X-Men movie franchise as well as set up future stories. Stories that, disappointingly, will never come to be.
The cast is relatively good given what little characterization the script provides. The only real way the audience gets to know them is through their trauma. For example, Sam accidently killed his father and numerous other people when his mutant power triggered inside an enclosed mine. Rahne grew up under the “care” of an abusive reverend who tried to cure her mutation by beating it out of her. The revelation of these traumas is effective as far as getting the sympathy of the audience and manages to stay true to the source material for the most part.
One thing I enjoyed was how each of these backstories was presented. Boone and co-writer Knate Lee utilize Dani’s unknown mutant powers to basically trap the characters in a haunted house. Dani’s psionic abilities create visions for the other residents, forcing them to confront their pasts. It’s an interesting approach to a superhero film, which is usually just a collection of hum-drum action set pieces. Though we do get some of those here, Boone takes it one step further by incorporating horror movie elements, turning The New Mutants into a sort of horror-light. Many of the best MCU movies are themselves more than just superhero films: Captain America: The First Avenger was a period piece while Ant-Man was a hybrid of the superhero and heist genres. So while The New Mutants doesn’t hit it out of the park with the concept, the fact that it is a superhero/horror movie does make it slightly more interesting than, say, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Boone also doesn’t shy away from some of the more fantastical elements of the X-Men mythos. The climax of The New Mutants features a giant demon bear manifested by Dani’s mutant abilities. It’s an out-there concept adapted from Chris Claremont’s run on the comic books and is foreshadowed by the opening voiceover of Dani telling the “inside of you there are two wolves” proverb with bears in place of wolves. It’s a little hokey considering how often that proverb has been parodied over the years, but at least it ties into the plot well enough.
There are a few other touches that really enhance the film, like Illyana’s purple dragon puppet named Lockheed. I was impressed that this made it into the film and thought it was just a cheeky Easter egg for comic fans, but my mind was blown with how Lockheed was presented during the climax.
There’s also a running gag of the kids watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer throughout the movie. It appears on a television screen twice, both times used as a foreshadowing device. As a fan of Buffy, I enjoyed the show’s usage in the film, but it mostly felt out of place and redundant, especially given how quickly the events the snippets foreshadowed happened.
All in all, I enjoyed The New Mutants. It certainly wasn’t a groundbreaking film in any way, but it was at least enjoyable and featured a few great performances. I’m probably one of the few people disappointed by Disney’s purchase of the Marvel properties from Fox because, even though I don’t doubt Disney will do fantastic things with the characters going forward, I would have liked to see some the culmination of what Fox was setting up. A few seeds were planted in The New Mutants that, once harvested, could have made amazing films, provided they were put into competent hands. But regardless, I definitely feel that The New Mutants was worth the $2 I paid to rent it from Redbox and may even purchase a copy for my collection if I find a good Black Friday deal.
