The New Mutants was the last film in 20th Century Fox’s X-Men franchise movies. It’s a spinoff movie based on the comic/team of the same name and focuses on lesser-known mutants Mirage, Wolfsbane, Cannonball, Sunspot and Magik. The premise is simple “Five teenage mutants 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”. I remember watching the first trailer and it was very interesting especially since it portrayed this movie as a horror x superhero movie which was something new. However, it had a lot of background development problems with Fox executives wanting reshoots to make it more horror causing a delay, Disney merging causing it to be in limbo, the coronavirus causing it to be delayed again. It eventually released 3 years after being filmed. The question is was this movie worth the long wait?
Firstly, the cast is pretty good and deliver for the most part. They do a good job for what they have been given and are convincing enough in their accents and portrayal of their character archetypes. Additionally, the chemistry between the entire cast is good even when they are antagonistic against each other. Wolfsbane (Maisie Williams) and Dani/Mirage (Blu Hunt) are great in scenes involving them together and Magik (Anya Taylor-Joy) is charismatic and dislikeable at the same time. Secondly, the third act of this movie is pretty enjoyable to watch with its surprisingly good action scenes and good CGI. Seeing the characters powers are also visually fun to watch. It is also the first superhero movie to give a proper representation to the lesbian community and not in the dumb “Star Wars” way.
Unfortunately,
there isn’t anything else to praise about this movie. The first two
acts of this movie are so boring and extremely slow-paced. The first act
has a lot of setups to introduce us to the characters and the director
(Josh Boone) does this by having constant talking. It was just so
mundane and uninteresting to the point that I was begging for something
exciting to happen. There is a scene where all 5 of them decide to have
fun by taking a lie detector test and it is so draining to watch. The
main character Dani gives a monologue about some Demon bear that feels
like it is going on for way too long. The second act starts to have
things happen but when these things happen they only last 10 seconds
before going back to some boring conversations again.
The
characters aren’t great themselves as they are all cliche archetype. We
got Dani whos the nice POV main character, the nice girl Wolfsbane and
nice boy Cannonball (Charlie Heaton), the asshole boy Sunspot (Henry
Zaga) and asshole girl Magik. They all remain these type of characters
from beginning to end with maybe Magik somehow not being an asshole
anymore with no explanation. None of the characters has any depth to
them and you barely know anything else about these characters as their
past are not completely elaborated on.
None of the “surprises” in this movie is even surprising as the story is entirely predictable. The antagonist is predictable and all the explanation for the things occurring in this movie are also predictable. The horror aspect of this movie is all in the second act and there are barely any of it which is hugely disappointing. Furthermore, they are not even that scary. The superhero aspect of the movie is not handled well either due to pacing issues and boring characters. It also feels like scenes are missing from time to time such as the aforementioned Magik personality change where one scene before she is frightened and then 15 seconds later she is suddenly a badass without fear. Potentially the reshoots were going to fix this but sadly it never happened.
Overall, this movie is a gigantic disappointment. Even though the movie had a great and unique concept, it doesn’t matter when the execution is poor. It’s not a good superhero movie and it’s not a good horror movie either. Thankfully, the movie is just 90 minutes and the third act of the movie can give you some enjoyment but there are better superhero and horror movies than this.
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