Part “Breakfast Club” and part “Nightmare on Elm Street”, Josh Boone’s “The New Mutants” has finally stumbled into theaters two years late.
With fans already focusing on what the MCU has in store for the new acquisition of Marvel's Merry Mutants, this new team's greatest hurdle is no supervillain, but instead the attention of an audience that has moved on. Despite seeming like a breath of fresh air on paper, it ultimately proves unlikely to live up to that task.
Sitting in the bed of my truck at the local Drive-In, the sheer novelty of finally being able to safely watch a new theatrical release left me in a positive mood. With the sun finally set and mosquitos buzzing around my head, the projector flickered on and the new world opened up:
Orphaned by a sudden, violent disaster, a young girl awakes in a hospital to discover she is a mutant, considered dangerous and now interred with four peers until they can learn to control their powers. But, as if drowning in teen angst in a thinly-veiled prison wasn't bad enough, all-too-real manifestations of the patients' worst nightmares begin to terrorize them without explanation.
On a conceptual level, the movie starts off impressive enough. Rather than fall back on the expected genre structure of “superheroes combat a cataclysmic threat to save the world,” these young heroes are primarily battling their own inner demons and each other as they try to make sense of the world around them. It’s nothing like any of the X-Men films we’ve seen before and, after the likes of “Apocalypse” and “Dark Phoenix,” that is certainly refreshing.
The atmosphere is appropriately eerie, even if it does draw on the classical expectations of “the spooky hospital.” You have your sickly green walls, your constant video surveillance, your secret attic and air ducts conveniently large enough to be crawled through with ease by the resident teenage malcontents. This one even has an eerie church to add to the creep factor. The lineup of inmates, er, “patients” will also prove familiar to any loyal teen movie viewers. There’s the “bad girl,” “rich boy,” “repressed religious kid,” “awkward redneck,” and our point of view: Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt).
It can be easy to dismiss common film tropes as cliché or cheap, but we see archetypes repeated because they work. And in “New Mutants,” they work well. The atmosphere is effectively moody and the cast (some white-washed ethnicities aside) fit their parts with style. Hunt as Dani is a likable protagonist and the group together has a strong camaraderie. While the elements of horror and action that dominate as the plot develops ultimately fall flat, it is in the quiet moments that these young actors make a solid case that they deserve better than the movie they're in right now.
The best example of this is the romance between Dani and Rahne. The heart of the film, it is by far the most effective, moving and memorable of the many pieces in play. Hunt and Maisie Williams have a natural chemistry that makes their relationship fully believable and easy to root for. But as the film builds to its climax, it is quickly overshadowed by the need to jump into the action, even if very little of it ever quite makes sense.
One thing is abundantly clear, and that is that this movie was meant to have a sequel, a sequel that is now almost guaranteed to never come. Nearly all of the characters are left with significant holes in their development and even in the displays of their powers.
The problem with launching a franchise is you have to make people want to come back for more. Some films attempt to do this by willfully delivering an unfinished product, promising the audience will get their answers if they just come back to the next installment. However, this only works if the viewers want to spend more time with the characters. And despite the actors’ admirable efforts, these new young heroes are neither deep nor memorable enough to sell that “next time” promise. Even if the franchise wasn’t Dead On Arrival, I doubt many viewers would leave anxious for another adventure.
Forbes’ declared this to be “the worst X-Men movie ever.” It is not, and I am personally offended on the behalf of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” by the mere suggestion of it. “The New Mutants” has simply planted itself firmly in the middle of the road. It isn’t great, it isn’t terrible. It just is. I'd say the movie is a proper microsm for the Fox-Verse as a whole: Aggressively average with moments of greatness, burdened by a strange refusal to fully commit to the source, leaving the viewer holding the bag of missed potential.
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