The New Mutants Review

It's hard for me to believe that "The New Mutants" is actually a real movie that came out in theaters. I even purchased a ticket and watched it with my own eyes. For a long time I was convinced that the movie was a myth and that I'd never get to see it. In fact, in a strange way I'm almost disappointed that it finally came out because being in a constant of waiting for it was kinda fun. Every time it got closer to coming out, it got pushed back again. Continuing to follow it was almost like a game of a donkey chasing a carrot that's tied to a string above. But the donkey finally caught the carrot. So now what are we supposed to do?It's like when Leo finally won his Oscar. What's the internet supposed to talk about now? For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, the first trailer for "The New Mutants" was published on YouTube on October 13, 2017. It's actual U.S. release date ended up being August 28, 2020. Josh Boone and Knate Lee, the screenwriters for the movie, with Boone also being the director, started working on this back in 2015, shortly after the release of Boone's "The Fault in Our Stars." The initial release date was April 2018. So yeah, this movie has been on quite the journey and Disney finally releasing it feels like something done out of obligation.

The idea behind this movie is one that I was actually intrigued by. It was advertised as a horror film within the X-Men universe. That's a brilliant idea. We've had so many superhero movies come out as of late that if studios are going to keep releasing them, which they are most definitely planning on doing, they need to come up with ideas as to how to make the genre fresh instead making the same three movies over and over a thousand times. Out of all the genres that have been played around with in regards to superhero movies, the horror genre is one that hasn't really been explored much. But when you think about it, it's an idea that can be done quite easily, especially when it comes to mutants with strange powers that they're not used to. So I was excited for this when I saw the trailer back in October 2017, nearly three years ago. But yeah, then it started to keep getting postponed, which always has me nervous. Fox pushed it back twice, the first time from April 2018 to February 2019, then again to August 2019. Reportedly it was because they wanted to reshoot the movie and make it scarier. Lean more on the horror element. The last two times it got postponed wasn't the movie's fault. Disney bought Fox, then shuffled their whole schedule. Then the pandemic happened.

Now in watching this movie today, this feels like an odd piece of cinematic history and really is a sign that Fox had no idea what they were doing with the X-Men. They never really had much of a direction to begin with. The first two X-Men movies were a huge success, but then they crashed it into a brick with with X3. Then they tried to reboot things by telling the origin stories of all the characters. But after everyone hated "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," they did a full on reboot with "X-Men: First Class." That was going good as well, until they again crashed it into a brick wall with "X-Men: Apocalypse." In the meantime, they started throwing all sorts of things at the wall to see what stuck. They scored huge with the likes of "Logan" and "Deadpool," but failed mightily with "Dark Phoenix." But when seen as a whole, Fox's X-Men universe can only been seen as a giant mess, even though some of the entries are pretty solid. And "The New Mutants" really just feels like one of Fox's backup plans that could've worked had they actually committed to it. But Fox never committed to anything, which is why Disney now owns them. And Disney definitely didn't want this, which is why I believe they're using this as experimental bait to see if people will show up to theaters again during COVID.

Through all of this, I feel the most bad for director Josh Boone, who seems like he was personally committed to this idea of his, but was never given much of an opportunity by Fox or Disney to do anything with it. He is a competent director. I liked "The Fault in Our Stars" back in 2014. And I also believe that "The New Mutants" is a competently made film with some great ideas. I think the biggest flaw is that Fox has been so clueless with the X-Men that we've seen the premise of a mutants origin story done in just about every movie they made. I'm ready to take the next step and see where a team of mutants can actually go, but Fox could never get that plane off the ground too far before it crashed back down and they had to keep starting over. So here we are. Another mutants origin story. But given the challenge of having to do this restart yet again, Josh Boone did a pretty good job. The horror element gives it a unique perspective of it being a darker, more eerie take on it with a lot of mystery and unanswered questions involved. In fact, this is a very small and isolated film. Outside the occasional flashback or vision, the movie only has six characters. Our five mutants locked in an abandoned lab with their doctor that's supposedly there to help them with their powers.

With this small, isolated setup in mind, I think the movie effectively built towards an interesting climax. Our lead mutant is a young girl named Danielle Moonstar, played by Native American actress Blu Hunt. In the beginning of the movie, she awakes to her little town or village being attacked by a bear demon thing. Her father rescues her and tries to save the day, but everything gets destroyed and everyone dies but her. Next thing she knows, she wakes up in this facility where someone has found her and discovered she is a mutant, but they haven't figured out the extent of her powers. So after this traumatic experience, Danielle, or Dani, has to figure out how to live with these four other mutants, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, Maise Williams, Charlie Heaton and Henry Zaga, with Alice Braga playing their doctor. I think this is a solid group of mutants and the movie takes its time to introduce us to these characters, none of whom seem to want to be there, but all of whom are fairly interesting. We slowly get to learn about the backgrounds of all of them and why they are there and it adds more of a connective link to our cast. And I think all five actors in this do a great job of trying to bring their characters to life. This is the beginning of something pretty solid.

Which is why the whole thing is disappointing because you know it's not going to go anywhere. Josh Boone wanted this to be a trilogy when he initially started working on it. I would've loved to see that come about. Anya Taylor-Joy, Maise Williams, and Charlie Heaton are three up-and-coming actors who deserved to be part of something bigger and use this as another stepping stone for their careers. I didn't know Blue Hunt or Henry Zaga before seeing this movie, but I was impressed with both. But yet when the studio doesn't care about the property and the studio itself gets sold in the middle of production to another studio that doesn't care, it's hard to get to excited about anything here. It's like watching the pilot episode to a TV series that you know already got canceled. The emotional weight of a pilot episode or an origin story is not there when you know going in that you're never going to see these characters again. The movie actually does tie into the X-Men. In fact, part of the plot has to do with these mutants thinking they're being trained to be X-Men. I don't know if this is a spoiler, but there's also ties to the Essex Corporation, which was teased at the end of Apocalypse and in other places, but has now been completely abandoned because Disney is going to completely start over with mutants.

As is, the movie is fine on its own. Like I said, there's a lot of good setup here. A grew to care about the characters and enjoyed learning about their backstories. Blue Hunt and Maise Williams develop a relationship that's a solid core to the film. And I do think the horror setup works decently enough. I wish they would've leaned into that a bit more as it never evolves beyond simply being a bit creepy and strange at times. This is not a scary film and it's more of a superhero action flick than a true horror film. Part of the premise does involve the main characters having to relive their worst nightmares, which starts chasing them down. If that sounds like "IT," that's because it kind of is, but the sequences, which I did enjoy, reminded me more of a "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," which was a solid PG-13 horror film from last year. So if you combine "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" with an X-Men origin story, you have "The New Mutants." It's perfectly acceptable. And the ending battle with the demon bear is a really entertaining. It's just disappointing because this is never going to go anywhere, so it was hard for me to really care. But hey, if Disney wants to prove me wrong and bring these characters back, I won't complain. My grade for "The New Mutants" is a 7/10.