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Rendering a list of potentially explosive ingredients mostly inert, The New Mutants is a franchise spinoff that's less than the sum of its super-powered parts.Read critic reviews
Watch The New Mutants with a subscription on Disney+, rent on Vudu, Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, or buy on Vudu, Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video.
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The New Mutants videos
X-Men Movies Ranked
24:35
The New Mutants: Movie Clip - Smile
CLIP 0:52
The New Mutants: Movie Clip - So Am I
CLIP 1:09
The New Mutants: Teaser - Meet Our New Mutants
TRAILER 1:00
The New Mutants: Escape Teaser
TRAILER 0:30
The New Mutants Cast and Director Promise It’s Not Like Any Other Comic Book Movie
The New Mutants (2020)The New Mutants (2020)The New Mutants (2020)The New Mutants (2020)The New Mutants (2020)The New Mutants (2019)The New Mutants (2020)The New Mutants (2019)The New Mutants (2020)
Five teenage mutants -- Mirage, Wolfsbane, Cannonball, Sunspot and Magik -- undergo treatments at a secret institution that will cure them of their dangerous powers. Invited by Dr. Cecilia Reyes to share their stories, their memories soon turn into terrifying realities as they start to question why they're being held and who's trying to destroy them.
For how much of a struggle this film went through and how it almost never came to be, I expected it to be much more of a mess than it is. It's still a mess, but it almost works, and the fact that it almost works is kind of a miracle. The idea of doing a horror movie with powers is great, and new mutants first discovering their powers is a great outlet for that. Add a creepy institute on top of that? Hell yeah. But they still have to have their big cgi fight at the end, and even with a way smaller cast than usual I never felt like the characters got the room to breath they needed. For what it's worth, everyone is interesting. The problem is, we just get a taste of how interesting they are, a little background trauma, and then we move on. Any one character could have had their own story, but they're all crammed together. I don't know how you would make this movie better, as it is it's probably as good as it could be. It's certainly one of the more interesting X-Men movies, and I'll be honest there's quite a bit I liked about it, even if the overall product is cluttered and a bit sloppy.
As both a horror and X-men fan, I was looking forward to this mashup since the first trailer dropped. Even recently with mostly bad reviews and press, I wanted to see it for myself.
And ... it pretty much sucked. That doesn't bode well for future work from Josh "The Fault in my Stars" Boone (e.g. "The Stand" mini-series.
We pretty much know the gist from the trailers. Young mutants are haunted/harassed by something in a mental hospital.
The best parts are pulled from the X-men series in which mutants first find out their powers, typically represented effectively on screen. Most times these scenes are fun, but the special effects are a mixed bag, jumping back and forth from decent to cheesy.
Most of the ensemble cast are relatively new up-and-coming stars such as Maise Williams ("Game of Thrones"), Anya Taylor-Joy ("The Witch/Queen's Gambit"), and Charlie Heaton ("Stranger Things") but the acting is mediocre, and worst of all, they butcher whatever accent they are supposed to have (Irish, Russian[?], and U.S. southern respectively).
And the story -- disappointing to say the least.
If you drop your expectations to a bad 90 minute "Buffy the Vampire" episode, then maybe you'll find something to like.
The story behind The New Mutants is decidedly more interesting than the movie itself, the last of the twenty-year span of Fox X-Men movies. There was a three-year gap in between trailers for this movie, an adaptation of a Marvel comics series and fronted by co-writer and director Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars). It was originally supposed to come out in 2017, and then it was delayed with the rumors that Fox wanted to push for a more prevalent horror angle. There were rumors of extensive re-shoots, possibly half the movie, and then the Disney merger effectively froze the post-production process, and then the rumors were that the film was removing all the elements to tie it into the X-Men universe, to stand on its own. Apparently, all of this speculation and the talk of re-shoots was a lot of hot air and the finished film is what was originally back in 2017, before the X-Universe imploded with the great Disney takeover. Because of the many years of delays and gestating rumors, The New Mutants became a strange artifact of another time and fans began anticipating how bad it might be and whether they might ever really see it. Finally released at long last, The New Mutants is only aggressively mediocre and thoroughly boring.
Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt) wakes up in a strange asylum. She's the only survivor from her reservation where something powerful and supernatural attacked. The medical facility is run by Dr. Reyes (Alice Braga) and secluded in the country. It's also kept under a force field until the mutant patients make breakthroughs on their paths to processing their trauma and controlling their volatile powers. Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams) is from Scotland and was hunted as a demon by religious extremists. Illyana Rasputin (Ana Taylor-Joy) was terrorized by Slenderman-like intruders as a young girl. Roberto de Costa (Henry Zaga) accidentally burned his girlfriend alive. Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton) lost control in his town's coal mine and is responsible for several deaths, including his hard-working father. Together, they uncover the sinister forces keeping them trapped and confront a powerful menace from the past to gain their freedom.
Even with years of curiosity and anticipation, once it got started, I found myself nodding off during The New Mutants. This is because the script by Boone and Knate Lee (Kidnap) is predicated on predictability. Of course, you know exactly what will be revealed about this so-called helpful medical facility. Of course, you know who will be revealed to be part of that conspiracy. So then we wait for the obvious plot turns and bide our time for close to an hour with each mutant experiencing their own It-style scary encounter with a trauma of their past. Since we have four additional supporting players, each contributes a PG-13 studio spooky set piece until we reach our most obvious reveal about who is responsible for their worst nightmares coming to violent fruition. Seriously, just having read the above, I guarantee that the majority of you can figure out all the spoilers I'm dancing around. This is the kind of movie that quotes the "two wolves" metaphor ("Inside every person are two wolves…") though the internal animal is changed into bears to align more with Danielle's native culture. Makes me wonder if every person has two of different animals fighting for dominance within them ("Inside every person are two really irritable ducks…"). This metaphor is hammered home multiple times so you better believe it's going to relate to our final climax. Normally, I would cite this as smart screenwriting, layering in setups and connecting theme to a personal confrontation. The showdown though is so goofy and the final villain free of personality, because ultimately the final villain is a symbol, an idea, and that is too vague and prone to basic platitudes on fear and responsibility.
The characters are also a major flaw for The New Mutants. It feels like somebody was trying to follow a formula of popular teen movies and sticks with the stereotypical stock roles but gave it a slightly modern twist. Our lead character is indigenous. There's a chaste lesbian romance. There's a level of diversity here even if fans of the comics also have expressed insult at possible white-washing of a Brazilian comic character's ethnicity. At its core, the characters are still the same high school cliche roles: the Mean Girl (Illyana), the Outcast (Rahne), the Tomboy (Danielle), the Jock (Roberto), the Poor White Trash (Sam). It's not too difficult to imagine The Breakfast Club faces being reapplied into these familiar roles onscreen. They even have a cheesy "cutting loose" montage when their authority figure is away that might remind you of that John Hughes classic. Worse, the characters just aren't that interesting, each defined by their past that figuratively and then quite literally haunts them. This leads to some intriguing moments of them reliving horror but no sequence makes any character more interesting. The fears don't provide further insight. Illyana might be the most annoying character of the group. She's immediately pushy, malicious, racist, and her combination of powers just doesn't make any sort of sense (teleportation and a disappearing arm sword, huh?). The boys are boring but Danielle is just as boring as our lead. The only character with a spark of possibility is Rahne and her push against religious harassment. If you're going to be trapped in a contained thriller with a group of super-powered teens, could they not be more interesting than this sullen lot of underdeveloped high school cliches?
For a movie that was supposed to be something different, it's the flashes of horror that made me wish the extensive Fox re-shoots had been real. As a mystery or an action movie, The New Mutants isn't going to be able to compare to the highlights of its fabled franchise. The action at the end feels rushed and sloppy. However, it could have found a tidy place for itself as a more adult horror movie within the broader X-Men fold. The spooky set pieces don't have much to them because they're meant as passing torment, reminders of negative feelings rather than extended sequences. They can be eerie and made me wish we could dwell further with this. A horror movie in a confined space with teenagers with powers they didn't fully understand or couldn't control, I can see the possibilities there aplenty. That's what makes it all the more disappointing how predictable Boone and the filmmakers go with their one-off genre riff. The creepy Slenderman creature design is actually good, though I don't really know if they are real in this world or a figment of Illyana's childhood imagination. I don't really know much about the rules of The New Mutants, so when it takes its turns, I was mostly shrugging and saying to myself, "Well, okay then." Why do these super powered and angst-ridden teenagers never attempt to overthrow the one woman who patrols this otherwise empty facility? I watched Roberto repeatedly wash a giant soup vat in the empty kitchen when he could have been plotting escape. Who is consuming that much soup on a regular basis between the six of these people?
In short, The New Mutants was not worth its unceremonious three-year wait. It's a middling super hero movie with flashes of potential, especially when it could have been something so different and new than any of the previous X-Men flicks. The movie is so easily predictable that I'm shocked more effort wasn't put into its scary set pieces to better compensate. There are more twisted accents in the movie than genuine twists and genuine scares (your ears may bleed). It's barely 85 minutes long and you feel like it's gasping for breath by even that modest run. It never quite feels like the concept of a horror movie set with super heroes was ever really well imagined. If this is the actual preferred version Josh Boone always had in mind, it still manages to feel incomplete and underwhelming in execution. It's not exactly a good comic book movie, or a good horror movie, or even a good movie. Thus ends The X-Men. Rest in peace.
Nate's Grade: C
The New Mutants finally limped into cinema's after a long delay. The delay have been attributed to the studio buyout by Disney but when you view the final product it's clear it was more about the quality of the film. The film played out as a horror film in the trailers but it's clearly a film in need of a tone and its overall disappointment comes from too much build-up and no payoff. Josh Boone had previously directed Fault in our Stars and due to the success was granted what was to be a trilogy of New Mutant films. The buyout might have impacted this plan but when I finally viewed the film it was evident it lacked an overall tone. The horror elements aren't scary and the generic story-line feels out of place. The film establishes character but we learn little and when it comes time to shine, the blue print left by the successful comic book run is left in the wind. This is why studio film-making is the worst. I remember a time when a film threw everything they had at the first film and worried about sequels later on. New Mutants feels like a soft entry with the intention to build in later films. I walked out of the film disappointed and when your a fan of the source material its easy to understand why. This isn't an event film and the reshoots might've fixed some of the horror and pacing issues. The X-men world was beginning to fall apart at Fox with only Logan as the shining beacon towards the end. New Mutants is only a film worth viewing for fans of the series and others will find little of substance here. 03/09/2020
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