The New Mutants

The New Mutants
The wait is over.....and it was absolutely not worth it
Directed by: Josh Boone Produced by: Karen Rosenfelt Lauren Shuler Donner Simon Kinberg Written by: Josh Boone Knate Lee Based on: New Mutants Starring: Maisie Williams Anya Taylor-Joy Charlie Heaton Alice Braga Blu Hunt Henry Zaga Adam Beach Runtime: 94 minutes Country: United States Language: English Budget: $67–80 million Box office: $49.2 million Franchise: X-Men Prequel: Dark Pheoenix Sequel: Untitled The New Mutants Sequel (Cancelled) Deadpool & Wolverine

The New Mutants is a 2020 American superhero film created by 20th Century Studios, being based off of the X-Men comic book series of the same name and after a series of delays, was finally released in August 28, 2020. It serves as a spin-off to the X-Men film franchise, the follow-up to the 2019 film Dark Phoenix, is the thirteenth film(tho in the chronologically time-line, it's the tenth film) overall of the X-Men film series and is the final X-Men film to be created by 20th Century Studios before the series was moved to Marvel Studios.

Plot

Danielle "Dani" Moonstar, a young Cheyenne Native American, is hidden in a tree by her father as her entire reservation is devastated by a tornado, leaving her the only survivor. After falling unconscious, Dani awakens in an oddly empty hospital run by Dr. Cecilia Reyes, who comforts Dani, explaining that she is not an ordinary human being but, rather, has unique mutant DNA, and she advises her to remain in the hospital until she learns the effects and how to control them.

Dani is introduced to four other teenagers; Samuel "Sam" Guthrie, Illyana Rasputin, Roberto "Bobby" da Costa and Rahne Sinclair. Reyes has brought each of them to the hospital, after they have each either experienced, or accidentally caused, a horrible tragedy. Sam collapsed an entire coal mine on his father and coworkers, killing them all, Roberto accidentally burned his girlfriend to death, Rahne escaped her devoutly Catholic village by killing the priest after he branded her as a witch, and Illyana was enslaved and sexually abused as a child. All of them also possess superhuman abilities due to mutations in their DNA; Roberto can manipulate solar energy, Sam can fly at jet speed, Illyana has inter-dimensional sorcery powers, and Rahne can turn into a wolf or wolf-human hybrid along with having enhanced senses. Reyes herself is also a powerful mutant who can manipulate "plasma-energy" force fields.

During her first day, where Illyana implies there is nothing stopping her, Dani attempts to escape, but is stopped by a force field created by Reyes surrounding the entire hospital grounds. Further frustrated from Illyana's harshness, being stirred by the grief of losing her family, she plans to commit suicide from the church clock-tower, but is prevented by Rahne, earning a friend in Dani. The two begin to form a romantic relationship, but Illyana antagonizes Dani, who discovers that Illyana has a hand puppet of a purple dragon called Lockheed. Collectively, the five teenagers believe they are being trained to join the X-Men, hence the strict supervision. Reyes warns them that they are considered dangerous and should not leave until they have mastered their superhuman abilities. Soon, the group all begin to have horrifyingly real visions of their past tragedies, one of which results in Rahne getting branded on the neck by the same Priest whom she had previously killed. During this, Dani undergoes a neural test, inadvertently discovering Reyes's true intentions. Both Illyana and Reyes deduce that the visions are the result of Dani's powers manifesting themselves: the ability to physically manifest the greatest fears and darkest secrets from a person's mind into reality as tangible illusions. Reyes consults her employers, the Essex Corporation, who instruct her to collect Dani's DNA and then terminate her.

As Reyes straps her to a gurney, Dani's panic causes her powers to go haywire. Illyana and Sam are attacked by physical manifestations of Illyana's childhood abusers - monstrous humanoid creatures called the "Smiling Men" - while Roberto, who was attacked by one of the Smiling Men, tries in vain to break through the hospital's outer barrier, which has now contracted in diameter. Rahne, who was suspicious of Reyes's next "procedure", arrives in half-wolf form and mauls Reyes, forcing her to flee. The five regroup in Reyes's office and realize that Reyes was training them to be assassins for Essex and that, to escape, they must kill Reyes to deprive the force fields of their power source. They find and confront Reyes, who warns them that Dani is too powerful and will destroy them all due to the lack of control over her power.

Reyes restricts them all with force fields and tries to again kill Dani by asphyxiating her with a force field, which unleashes the Demon Bear – Dani's own fears manifested through her power, and the true cause of her reservation's destruction – on her; Reyes is devoured and Dani is rendered unconscious. Rahne tries to reach through to Dani's subconscious and urges her to wake up, while Illyana uses her powers to travel to her "special place" where she retrieves a glowing sword, armor and a tiny, physical manifestation of Lockheed to battle the Demon Bear. Eventually, Sam and Roberto join the fight, as well as Rahne, all to no avail. Dani is visited by her father's spirit, who encourages her to face her fear; she awakens and confronts the bear, calming and thus dissipating it. As day breaks, the group leaves the now unshielded facility to find the nearest town.

Bad Qualities

1. The idea of creating a Horror-Themed X-Men film, tho creative on paper, is falsely implanted as there are barely any horror elements, its only during the third-act were the horror elements actually takes a tole.
2. Similar to the 2016 Angry Birds movie, despite the The New Mutants being an origin story of how The New Mutants came to be, it goes to show throughout the movie that the writers quickly struggled with ideas regarding the plot, since the movie was based on The New Mutants. As a result, this makes a lot of plot points feel tacked on with no setup and causes a film to lack a bigger picture for the most part, this could hint as to why this film was delayed so many times.
3. This film also suffers the same problem that both Man of Steel, the 2015 Fantastic Four film(another Marvel film) and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice had, in that The New Mutants can take itself way, way, WAY too seriously and dramatically, as well as being highly graphical, there's barley anytime of this film lighting up and/or having fun with itself as most of the time it's just pure tension and drama, the only time it takes a moment to breath and starts to have fun with itself is mid-way when the young mutants come together after Illyana spikes Reyes' coffee with sleeping pills and they run amok on the hospital grounds, and later on in the ending after Danielle calms down the Demon Bear.
   • While it is true that some of the previous X-Men films did have their far-share of the dark and/or graphical moments(especially in some of the more darker X-Men films such as X2, The Wolverine and X-Men: Days of Future Past), they never went too far with their tone and still knew when to lighting up and have a bit of fun.
4. Poor casting choices, with Henry Zaga, a white Brazilian actor of predominantly Italian descent, being cast as Sunspot (real name: Roberto da Costa), who was Afro-Brazilian in the original comics, and Alice Braga, another white Brazilian, being cast as Cecilia Reyes, who was Afro-Puerto Rican in the original comics.
5. In a similar senaryo to the 2015 Fantastic Four film, there are barely any action scenes, the only time it happens is in the climax when the New Mutants faces off agents the Demon Bear, which is unacceptable in an X-Men film.
6. Most of the film takes place in the Milbury Hospital, so as such, The New Mutants is entirety a bottled film and makes it visually boring to look at.
7. The multiple delays that Fox had placed on this film made it seem that they are trying their best to prevent the film from being released, as the end product is not much considering.
8. There are barely any call-backs to some of the previous X-Men films or even the X-Men from the previous X-Men films, and even tho this film chronologically takes place sometime before the events of Logan, non of the characters from the previous X-Men films(e.g Storm, Jean Grey, Cyclops and ect) make an appearance, even both James "Logan" Howlett/Wolverine and Charles Xavier, the main protagonist and the overarching protagonist of the X-Men film series, do not make an appearance in this film, not so much as either cameos or even mentions. And al-tho there are scenes were the New Mutants DO call back to some of the X-Men and another were one of the New Mutants look into a video of Essex Corp, they both only get said once and are entirety forgotten about in the third-act.
   • And also, despite Illyana being the sister of Peter Rasputin(a.k.a Colossus), she never mentions anything about him.
     • It was confirmed that the New Mutants were suppose to meet the previous X-Men in the original production, but it was scrapped.
9. Poor visual effects, editing and pacing.
10. The film features racist stereotypes of Native Americans; also, Rahne being a lesbian and Moonstar being bisexual both feel rather forced.
11. With the exception of Rahne, no character development happens in the film, and even the forced teenage bisexual relationship, tho very heart-warming and touching, barely contributes anything to develop the characters and thus advance the plot; the characters here are also no longer their real lifelike sums of their past lives as much as they are shallow caricatures behaving to fit their generic and clichéd roles just so the film can function.
12. Specking of which, the characters, while nowhere near as unlikable, dimwitted or pointless as those in other films, are rather poor and underdeveloped;
    • Danielle "Dani" Moonstar, while very sympathetic and likable, is a clingy, overbearing and bland main protagonist who fallows the "strong female character" that has been done so much better with previous characters in much more better movies, she's also treated so much like a butt-monkey though out some parts of the film that it makes it unwatchable.
    • Dr. Cecilia Reyes is a generic strict mentor of the group which had already been done so many times in much better films made before hand, she is also a clear rip-off of Dr. Zander Rice of Logan, right down to her later on wanting to kill The New Mutants near the end of the film.
    • Illyana Rasputin is a generic mean-popular girl stereotype that has already been done in much better previous films, and also comes across as a gigantic jerk to Danielle.
    • Samuel "Sam" Guthrie is a poor comic relive characters who does nothing but wine about what happen to his father.
13. The New Mutants is one of the very few films in the X-Men film series that has pop culture references, with Illyana making a Yogi Bear reference when facing off agents the Demon Bear by calling the beast Yogi, even tho Yogi Bear is a media that has nothing to do with X-Men.
14. Very poor horror scenes, most of which feel very forced.
15. Aside from its premise, nothing is interesting about this film, and with Danielle "Dani" Moonstar, Samuel "Sam" Guthrie, Illyana Rasputin, Roberto "Bobby" da Costa and Rahne Sinclair not being in their X-Men uniforms, it does not even feel like an X-Men film at all; all audiences can hear about the film are five teenagers with superpowers who are stuck in a Hospitable while being tormented by an evil Female Scientist who also has superpowers, and they can correctly guess the plot. And with very few call backs to some of the X-Men of the previous films, the plot itself is nothing special. It is just another run-of-the-mill horror plot only adding X-Men elements. You could replace Danielle "Dani" Moonstar, Samuel "Sam" Guthrie, Illyana Rasputin, Roberto "Bobby" da Costa and Rahne Sinclair with random teenagers with their own powers, the Demon Bear with another Monster-Of-The-Film and even replace Dr. Cecilia Reyes with another evil Scientist-Type Villain with his/her own power and nothing will change.
16. Somewhat poor ending that does nothing but set up the events of another film that's most likely never gonna get resolved due to the sequels being canceled when the X-Men film series moved to Marvel Studios.
17. Because the X-Men film series was moved to Marvel Studios after The New Mutants was released, it ended a good franchise in the Fox-Era of the X-Men film series on a very bad note. Tho if not counting this movie, Deadpool 2 is the franchise's last good X-Men movie. If not counting the Deadpool movies, then last great solo X-Men movie would be Logan. And if not counting the Wolverine solos, then the franchise's last good X-Men movie would be X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Good Qualities

1. It is great seeing The New Mutants get their own film for the first time.
2. Despite being a tad bit generic and is also somewhat of a butt-monkey, Rahne Sinclair is surprisingly a very likable and relatable character, especially since she's the only female character of the film who is not a jerk to Danielle, is the first character to befriend Danielle and even rescues her when Dr. Cecilia was about to kill Danielle. Besides, unlike most of the characters, she received a fair amount of character development. Rahne is also nowhere near as bland as most of the characters in this film.
3. The soundtrack is great.
4. Despite The New Mutants taking itself way too seriously, there are some funny moments in this film, mainly from Samuel "Sam" Guthrie's over the top performance.
5. Tho a bit forced and barely contributes anything to the overall film, the scene were both Danielle and Rahne spend time together and fall in love is a very cute and sweet moment.

Reception

The New Mutants received mixed reviews from critics and audiences, but slightly better or even worse than Dark Phoenix, while its overall underwhelming and anticlimactic delivery with criticism mainly directed at the plot and characters and called it generic and unoriginal, though the cast did receive some praise. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 35% based on 125 reviews, with an average rating of 4.9/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "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.". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 43 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

In the days leading up to the film's release, several major publications, including RogerEbert.com, IndieWire, The A.V. Club, and The Boston Globe, refused to review the film, citing Disney's lack of socially distanced press screenings or digital streaming links and noting that it was not safe to attend a traditional public screening due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trivia

• This was a second film to use the 20th Century Studios logo after The Call of the Wild (2020).
• This is the last X-Men film released by 20th Century Studios (formerly Fox) before Disney will integrate the X-Men into the MCU as such the sequels are canceled.
• Like Dark Phoenix, The New Mutants was meant to be the first installment of a new trilogy. However, after Disney acquired 20th Century Fox, plans for a trilogy were scrapped. Disney CEO Bob Iger stated that any future X-Men films would be produced by Marvel Studios as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• Bob McLeod's named was misspelled as "Bob MacLeod" in the end credits.

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