Since the COVID-19 pandemic came to the United States I have reviewed two other films based on comic book properties. First there was Bloodshot at the start of the present crisis and the films shift to be among the first films to try a premium video on demand release. After that was the sudden appearance of Random Acts of Violence on the streaming service Shudder. And now, finally, we have the release of The New Mutants which I watched at my local drive-in as part of a double feature with the first Iron Man film. Watching film, in general, this year has emphasized how much the context in which viewing occurs can affect the audience’s reception. There is a fitting symmetry to the double bill with Iron Man, the film that started the chain of events that would lead to Mutants being dumped in August 2020 that gnawed at me after the first feature was over. The Josh Boone directed film never achieves great heights and is passably generic in its best moments, but they just aren’t going to make movies like these anymore as everything must be subsumed into the Disney-Marvel mothership.
The New Mutants is a strange brew of genres and tones that fit perfectly within the formerly Twentieth Century Fox way of using the X-Men property. At their best the FoX-Men films weren’t superhero movies, they were making genre movies that happened to feature people with mutant powers. Mutants carries on this tradition with director Josh Boone, who is also credited with co-writing the script with Knate Lee. The film reconfigures “The Demon Bear Saga,” best known for introducing comicdom to the modern Bill Sienkiewicz, into a hybrid haunted asylum film. Mutants in several ways acts as a bit of a dark mirror to the basic plot of the first X-Men film after Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt) wakes up in a hospital with her fellow mutant patients Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams), Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy), Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton), and Roberto da Costa (Henry Zaga), all under the care of the Dr. Reyes (Alice Braga) who give the film a Breakfast Club vibe as they try or resist “bettering” themselves under Dr. Reyes program. The film, by which I mean everyone involved and yet who knows how much involvement Boone had in recent years considering in the interim he went and produced a 10-part adaptation of The Stand for CBS, fails to synthesize these varied yet emotionally similar tonalities. The horror is built on the anxieties of their young adult and mutant status and it never fully comes together cinematically leaving it in this awkward liminal space of never having enough of either. Several moments from the various marketing material are noticeably absent, those expecting a lot of horror will be disappointed. There are some good ideas and introductory elements here on the surreal psychology and body horror side of things, that are also homages to films that did those moments better.
Dani’s mutant abilities are an easy justification for the films horror elements and gives the film an easy-going episodic structure built around each member of the group experiencing their nightmares. These sequences, however, neither stay around long enough to have a horrifying impact and fail to expand on the conscious anxiety the given character is experiencing. A noticeable side effect of the various reshoots and edits is the how much the film tells as well as shows the audience.
Josh Boone is best known for directing young adult romantic films like The Fault in Our Stars. That sort of background might be anathema to a certain sect of the audience, the director has shown a knack for getting performances out of actors and representing characters. It comes through in fits and starts here like when Dani sees Sam training, or potentially self-flagellating, himself in an attempt to master his cannonball like powers. There is a wonderful preening quality to Henry Zaga’s performance that captures the characters class privilege and body horror anxieties. It comes through in Blu Hunt and Maisie Williams’s characters queer relationship – something that has been sub textually written between the two for years in the comics. Is there relationship the effective emotional heart and center of the film wants it to be? Not really due to the condensed runtime of the film and yet it is still more textual queer representation than the MCU has ever given audiences on the silver screen.
Continued belowThe films tonal and emotional shortcomings can be easily attributed to the 98-minute runtime, which puts it about 10 minutes shorter than both the first X-Men film and Origins: Wolverine. Watching this cut of New Mutants was like watching the theatrical cut Justice League both are clearly cut together to not violate continuity and move along but never stay long enough to build emotional buy in, or more importantly tell a story, despite engaging basic storytelling elements being apparent. The whole thing feels like it’s missing about 20 minutes from the second act where we would have spent more time with the ensemble and the film could develop the group and Dani-Rhane dynamic more. The first X-Men is a quick 104 minutes that is actually quite dense with its mixture of plot and characterization. What makes that movie continue to work is that it is built around the relationship between Logan and Rogue, they create emotional purchase for all the other world building nonsense. The film obviously wanted Dani and Rhane’s relationship to serve a similar function and it just doesn’t really work despite chemistry between the actors and fairly good opening sequence between the two. It isn’t that their relationship isn’t coded explicitly as romantic, this is something that’s new for Rhane, and maybe Dani, it’s an exploratory process. There just isn’t any follow up between their kiss and Rhane slashing Dr. Reyes to save her girl friend. That same lack is felt in the overall group dynamic that seems to change scene to scene depending on plot demands.
All of this leads to an awkward final act wherein the films superheroic spectacle roots clash with the smaller horror elements of the film. The fight with the Demon Bear is neither all that spectacular nor emotionally engaging, despite it being the culmination of an increasing series of nightmares shared among the group. There are a couple of good sequences of Taylor-Joy’s Illyana, these moments due to the reshoots and edit of the movie overall cause them to fall flat. The character of Illyana previously was shown to be an at best awkward mix of stereotypical Mean Girl and assumed mentally illness, everyone in the cast has mental health issues of one form or another. So, when the film gives her this slow-motion hero reveal that she is Magik it’s supposed to be this triumphant reveal. However, audiences had already seen the Soulsword and Limbo, Lockheed was given away in the SDCC trailer. You can have effects driven spectacle in horror movies, the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise is built on it. The finale to the first Nightmare is this triumphant turning of the tables because the film had achieved emotional buy in from the audience. New Mutants finale and message about how they saved each other is unearned as they walk off into the sunset Bender style.
The New Mutants is far from good and at best OK. There is better horror, teen dramas, and X-Men, films you could watch. At the same time as Tony Stark was declaring that he was “Iron Man” I couldn’t help but feel a little wistful about the whole thing. If not for the film itself, the conditions that allowed it to eventually get made, if not eventually get released. The hegemonic control Marvel and Disney have over mainstream spectacle-based films and the centralization of intellectual property will lead to less chances and different takes being made. The FoX-Men films were different and helped shape the modern rendition of the genre in a lot of ways. They weren’t always good, some of them are terrible, but there is a willingness in that franchise to look at the property from a different point of view and find something new that just isn’t found in the MCU as a whole. I found the promise of superhero comics and their variations in the FoX-Men films, while the MCU feels like the set in stone one true interpretation of a character.
