Delayed Reaction: The New Mutants

Premise: A teenage girl gets sent to a sort of medical asylum for young mutants learning to control their powers.

 

Woof...Where to begin? It's hard to be in a worse position than The New Mutants was from production to release. To start with, it's part of X-Men film series, which has an odd history. It really started the comic book boom in theaters and is a relic of the early days that has a confounding continuity over 20 years. This was developed before Disney acquired Fox, so the X-Men franchise was still figuring out its path to relevancy. The pseudo-reboot of X-Men: First Class was already fizzling with X-Men: Apocalypse. The surprise success of Deadpool and the decent success of the Wolverine standalones convinced Fox to try something only tangentially related to the main franchise. So, they tried out The New Mutants. As filming was completing on The New Mutants, they screened a spooky trailer that focused on the horror elements of the movie. This trailer did so well, that they decided to reshoot some of the movie to match that tone more. That caused the first delay. Then, the Disney acquisition of Fox was announced and it was especially unclear where The New Mutants fit in the now massively more wide-open Marvel universe on screen. It's not part of the MCU proper. It's not part of the X-Men franchise proper either. Due to scheduling and shifting studio priorities, The New Mutants kept getting pushed back and looking like damaged goods. It got a release date in Spring 2020, then COVID strikes, shuts theaters down temporarily, and tanks the box office. At this point, Disney just had to be done with the movie. It finally released it in August 2020, nearly three years after filming wrapped. I don't believe any of the planned reshoots were ever done thanks to uncertain studio marching orders and eventually because the cast was noticeably older. The film bombed, and along with the Dark Phoenix disaster the summer before, ends any hope of remnants of the Fox X-Men universe continuing into the Disney era (except Deadpool which is fully in its own bubble). When the MCU inevitably invites the X-Men in, I don't expect it to include Jennifer Lawrence, Sophie Turner, Anya Taylor-Joy, or Maisie Williams as their current characters.

 

The oddest thing about The New Mutants and the X-Men franchise as a whole is how good the casting was. They cast Anya Taylor-Joy fresh off The Witch. Charlie Heaton came from the first season of Stranger Things. Maisie Williams was known from Game of Thrones, but I don't think anyone was sure how well she'd work outside of Westeros. There's even a decent chance that Blu Hunt and Henry Zaga could turn into something. The X-Men franchise at times feels like a smaller soccer club that develops players really well so the bigger clubs can go and poach them later. It's crazy to me to think that the same year that Anya Taylor-Joy blew up with The Queen's Gambit, she also had a major studio Marvel movie that bombed. That's not how fame should work, right?

 

I don't think The New Mutants is great. I do think its reputation is worse than the movie itself. I like the idea of the movie. It's a mid-budget Marvel movie ($60-$80 million). Young cast with a lot of up-and-comers. The idea to make it spookier and more isolated, almost entirely shot in and around this old building being used as their asylum, is cool. I even like how the villain is a little more discrete. They are essentially fighting Blu Hunt's inability to control her powers and Alice Braga's demands from the faceless Essex Corporation. It sneaks in the first same sex romance I can remember in any Marvel movie between main characters, which is cool. I certainly enjoyed the movie more than I expected. Granted, I expected a complete shit show.

 

That's not to say the movie was perfect either. It's a little dull at times. The logic of this facility didn't make a ton of sense to me. Were Alice Braga's powers really the only thing keeping them in? Is Braga really the only employee on site? And how did they even spike her drink? I'm not a fan of the accent work in the movie. Anya Taylor-Joy goes a little too heavy with the Russian accent. As someone from Kentucky, I also get defensive when a character like Charlie Heaton puts on that thick accent. I know it's accurate to the mining regions of Kentucky, but it sure makes my work even harder to convince people that we don't all talk like that. Also, the giant dream bear being the final boss was a little silly and confusing. I get the symbolism or whatever, but if Blu Hunt really has that little control over her powers, maybe she should be in a secure facility.

 

The dark tone and less obvious hook probably meant this movie would never have been a big hit, but I think without all the delays and the COVID it would've been a worthwhile experiment that turned a small profit. I'd certainly rate Dark Phoenix or X-Men: Origins - Wolverine below it. It still baffles me that Fox could never find a way to make the X-Men work even better for them. With the characters and casting they had, how did none of the movie in the franchise ever get over $250 million*?

 

*I'm excluding Deadpool since it functions more as an X-Men parody outside of the franchise timeline.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend