Sadly, I’ve got to agree with Honest Trailers on this one all the way since The New Mutants had such a huge amount of hype for almost no payoff that could be seen. Much as I’m a fan of the New Mutants and have been for a long time, particularly Ilyana/Magik, this movie didn’t do the young heroes any justice and wasn’t worth the buildup that’s been on hold since 2018. It’s a serious disappointment to be certain, but it’s also evident that those that are taking on the most current mutant movies really don’t know how to handle them since the whole line of ‘that story’s been told’ just isn’t cutting it any longer. If the origin stories would be focused on, if the source material would be followed, and if the characters would be given the respect they’re needing then it might work out, but as of now, it feels that every mutant that’s being used is being treated like a gimmick, where the other heroes in the Marvel universe have been given quite a bit more development and care when it comes to bringing them to the big screen. From start to finish this movie was kind of a mess, which is hard to say since it was so highly anticipated, but while there were a few good moments it does feel as though it became a teen movie that was trying to act like a horror movie and somehow got lost amidst the angst and otherwise heartfelt feelings that kept popping up here and there.
When the comics are preferable to the movie, which has been the case in a lot of instances over the years, it’s evidence that those that are being given control over the movies really have no clue what they’re doing. People will gladly point to the box office numbers for the Avengers movies and the rest of the MCU when this statement is made, but the mere fact that Kevin Feige has stated that it will be a while until the X-Men are brought into the MCU means he and many others don’t know how to handle them. The excuse that so many other projects are underway at the moment can only be used so many times until it becomes apparent that the energy needed for another X-Men project is being repurposed simply because they have no idea what to do with any of the mutant movies, and are likely going to focus on what they’ve been doing for a while since it would appear that they have that on lock. It sounds cynical doesn’t it, maybe a little immature? Well to be quite honest it’s coming from a place of frustration since the X-Men movies started out great, inaccurate but great, and slowly surely took a downward turn as the filmmakers continued to run stories that fans recognized from the comics but couldn’t figure out once they were put on the big screen.
The sad part of this is that as much as people want to defend the filmmakers that are working for the MCU the thing is that box office numbers are misleading. Yes, movies such as the Avengers and Star Wars, and many others did make a lot of money and continue to do so with various merchandising. But when a person thinks about how vilified the most recent Star Wars trilogy has been the box office numbers cease to matter since what this means is that people paid for a ticket to see the movies for themselves so that they could make up their own mind, but it doesn’t mean that the money was well spent. Since acquiring the MCU, Star Wars, and Fox, Disney has been making some rather irritating and even disturbing decisions concerning its own properties, and where the Marvel universe was once a very disjointed but unified collection of stories, it’s swiftly becoming a disconnected bunch of universes that have little if anything in common with each other due to several reasons, one of the biggest being that people can’t work together to bring forth a worthwhile mutant movie. The New Mutants could have been great, but unfortunately, that just wasn’t in the cards since this movie felt slapped together in a manner that brings to mind people in the writing room throwing darts at ideas that have been tacked to the wall.
If the New Mutants ever make a comeback to the big screen, and that’s a big ‘if’, then hopefully they’ll find someone that knows the story or will at least read through the source material and will possibly pull for the inclusion of other mutants, such as Colossus, Ilyana’s big brother, or even add in a few of the later members that came along since the group did change after a while. This current movie had a chance to be entertaining, but it took a hard left into a deep hole and kept falling.
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