The New Mutants
So, for the first time since Covid started, the theaters have opened and I was one of the first ones back in the movie seats. I had a choice of two films: ‘Tenant’ by one of the greatest Directors of all-time, Chris Nolan or the much production delayed and re-written ‘New Mutants’. Of course, against my better judgement, I let me inner comic geek come to the surface and decided on going to see the X-men spinoff; ‘New Mutants. I knew I was wrong when I chose that, but I had no idea how wrong I was.
I’m not sure why I chose to see this film as I was never really impressed by the comic series of the same name. I thought the stories were weak and the character’s were cliché with confusing powers. All the major comic properties have been mined and the studios are digging into 3rd and 4th tier characters. That being said, there have been some surprises like ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’, but for the most part when they dig this deep the results are lukewarm at best (similar to their receptions in comics). The one aspect that did intrigue me is that this was the first attempt to vary the super-hero genre as to focus on a horror aspect rather than an action-adventure. I’m all for trying new things and I will even grade on a curve just to reward artistic chances. However, even with a curve, this movie just failed to deliver no matter how much I wanted it to succeed.
The story’s premise is that teenage mutants, who are just discovering their powers, are taken to a secretly remote and secure hospital under the guise of helping them. The implication from the head doctor Dr Reyes (‘Queen of the South’s Alice Braga) is that the hospital is under the oversight of Prof Charles Xavier of the famed X-Men. In reality, they are prisoners being groomed for something far more sinister. I’m usually against forced ‘wokeness’ as the cast of mutants were checklist racially and sexual orientedly diverse. In this case, it wasn’t heavy handed and fit with the story, so I didn’t feel it was a distraction or lecture point. The focal character was Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt) a Native American with ill-defined powers of manifesting someone’s greatest fear. After a promising prologue involving the destruction of her village, the story finds Danielle waking up chained in the hospital with several other mutant ‘patients’. While Dr Reyes insists they aren’t prisoners, the protective energy field around the school grounds and the over restrictive punishments for rule infraction makes it very clear to Danielle that she is indeed being held against her will. She soon meets her fellow “New Mutants”: Raina Sinclair (GOT’s Maisie Williams) with the powers to turn into a wolf, Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton) the West Virginian coal miner who can turn himself into an unstoppable ‘Cannonball’, Roberto de Costa (Henry Zaga), not sure what his abilities are exactly, but his super-hero name is Sunspot. He can do something with fire, but he’s all black and invulnerable and stuff. Finally, the resident eye candy, Russian Ilyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy). For the in-comic crowd, they will recognize this character as the sister of famed X-Man Pietor Rasputin, Colossus. For the rest, you will be treated to the resident teen-aged angst girl with the most confusing powers of them all. Somehow, she makes a sword, complete with right arm armor appear and she’s also able to transport to limbo dimensions. I won’t go into her complicated backstory but suffice it to say she’s there for the ‘hot girl flash’.
As we are taken through all the teen-aged trials and relationships worthy of a CW show (and not even a good one), images of horror and terror start to arise in an already horrific hospital prison situation. I’m not against CGI, but in many cases (such as this), bad CGI really detracts from the effect the film is trying to have. I didn’t feel the horrific CGI manifestations were all that horrific. I was too distracted by noticing the bad quality of the CGI. In the end, it takes more than just special effects to make a movie. Garish and badly done CGI can’t make up for a weak story.
This is by far the worst ‘X-Men’ universe movie to date. Sure the source material was weak, but good writing and vision can make up for that. Kudos again for trying to experiment with the genre, but that is all that I can really say positive about this movie. This is the last offering of the Fox owned X-Men franchise as it transfers ownership over to Disney/Marvel. If anything, it serves as a satisfying reminder that Marvel is where this franchise belonged all along. Au revour Fox studios. Thank you for years of sometimes up, but more often than not downs in bringing this team to life. Rest well knowing that the franchise is in better hands now.
I rate this film ** out of 5 stars
So what was your rating for this film?
ReplyDelete2 out of 5 stars
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