With a troubled production and delayed release, even before the pandemic hit, cinemas finally see The New Mutants on the screen, alongside Tenet as one of the only new films showing. With a slightly different angle to the regular X Men films, and a more YA feel, this could be a new starting off point for the cinematic X-Men.
For the past 12 years, Marvel’s MCU has been delivering a steady stream of solid and sometimes exceptional films, never dipping below a certain threshold of quality. In contrast, many projects connected with the X-Men have been the disappointing cousin, best forgotten. There have been some good films, but overall it has been very hit or miss, and with reinventions and recastings, it’s a bit of a mess. The obvious exception here is Deadpool, which has been the shining light in the middle of the rest. Going into The New Mutants, the question is whether it will lean more towards Deadpool, or the likes of Dark Phoenix.
After a catastrophic event happening on a Native American reservation, the only survivor, Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt – The Originals) wakes up in a remote hospital for troubled teens who are just finding out about their powers, run by Dr Reyes (Alice Braga – Queen of the South, Elysium). The implication is that this is like a pre-school for Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, and already has a few patients, Rahne (Maisie Williams – Game of Thrones), Roberto (Henry Zaga – Trinkets, 13 Reasons Why), Sam (Charlie Heaton – Stranger Things), and Illyana (Anna Taylor-Joy (The Witch, Peaky Blinders). Here, the aim is for them to learn how to control their powers safely, before moving onto the wider world.
You can tell the target is a cross between The Breakfast Club and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, but The New Mutants doesn’t hit the heights of either. While it might be an unpopular opinion, I have always found the characters in The Breakfast Club to be pretty dull and generic, and there is the same problem here. The film doesn’t delve too deeply into each character, aside from some brief inquiry into their worst trauma, instead delivering what feels like a fairly standard teen film dynamic. The most interesting character is Illyana, who has some spice, and Taylor-Joy gives a great performance, clearly relishing the opportunity to be broader than usual. Even here though, the character is a bit of cliché at the beginning of The New Mutants, and only grows into something more later on.
Although clearly designed to keep the mystery alive, none of the inmates question too vigorously who or why they are kept in the manner they are, or why there is only Dr Reyes working at the facility. Generally, there is a strange relationship there, with Reyes being slightly cold and disconnected, but without any real menace. This means you don’t get the Nurse Ratched effect, and equally she isn’t friendly enough to have convinced them she’s truly their ally. There are too many questions left unanswered.
What The New Mutants builds ultimately to, is a big CGI battle where everyone finds their mojo. While this makes some sense, there really needed to be some smaller moments of self-discovery to make the whole plot feel more realistic. It’s far too broad strokes and not rich enough in detail to allow a proper interest in the characters to develop. In some ways this feels like a couple of episodes of a TV series, rather than a feature.
In the end, it’s not quite clear what this will mean for the ongoing X-Men franchise. There is talk of rolling them into the MCU now that Disney own 20th Century Studios, and recasting many of the main roles. This means yet another cleaning of the slate, except for the Deadpool characters you would assume, and The New Mutants. If these five fresh faced mutants are to make an appearance though, there will need to be some work done to establish them more clearly, as at present they wouldn’t hold up. The best we can hope for is that they get a similar treatment to Negasonic Teenage Warhead, who was brought brilliantly to the screen by Brianna Hildebrand in Deadpool.
The best thing that could be said about The New Mutants right now is that at least there are different aspects of the Marvel world being explored. This is a smaller, more insular film than the recent MCU events, and trying something new should be applauded, even if the applause is slightly muted.
