The New Mutants (2020)

 Score: 3.5 / 5

It's difficult to talk about this movie in glowing terms, as it rings the tragic death-knell of one of my favorite film franchises. Post mortem knell, in fact, as The New Mutants is indeed released not by 20th Century Fox but by 20th Century Studios, the new name of the old company now under the Disney corporate umbrella. Much as Disney cancelled the four magnificent Marvel/Netflix Defenders superhero shows, here they have effectively put a stop to all productions not in line with their vision for the MCU. For better or worse (much worse, I fear), we'll not be seeing X-Men the same way again.

Yet hope remained, while the company was true. Despite what some critics and fans might say -- given the ridiculous delays this movie's release has endured, and the studio's odd choice to have no socially distant options for press screenings or streaming -- The New Mutants is a lot of fun. It grants us a fresh take on a genre consistently on the verge of becoming boring. Keeping with its source material, the film works best when it fully indulges its idiosyncratic YA horror. The original three X-Men films featured notably older cast members and characters, and even young Rogue putting her boyfriend into a coma wasn't filmed as horrific, just sad and awkward. But put enough young people trying to understand and control their feelings, bodies, and minds in stressful enough situations, and horror is a perfectly logical way to branch out in this franchise.

Here, we follow young Dani Moonstar (played by Native American actor Blu Hunt), a Cheyenne girl whose reservation is destroyed in a freak storm that kills her family. She suddenly awakens in a remote hospital (or perhaps asylum), handcuffed to her bed and given the bad news by her doctor, Cecilia Reyes. Reyes is seemingly the only staff at this medical facility, and is played with austerity by Alice Braga. With Dani, we are quickly introduced to the other patients at this facility, all of whom seem to be the more sad, more rebellious, more angry versions of the students at Xavier's school. Their superpowers, we learn, have each been triggered by some trauma or dark secret, and Reyes tries to research them while helping them examine themselves. She also uses her own mutant powers to keep them locked on the premises, with the implied promise that once their "twelve steps", you might say, are completed, they can go to a better place under her superior's tutelage. It's gotta be the bald man in the wheelchair, right?

The very basic plot notwithstanding, we are mostly carried along by our understanding of these characters. In remarkably simple yet effective ways, the film twists a generic coming-of-age formula into troubling understandings of childhood trauma and its lasting effects. To give a brief rundown: a badass Russian girl who talks to her sock puppet and conjures magic, a hunky Brazilian boy whose sexual history isn't as hot as his powers, an abused sprite of a Scottish girl whose bite is far worse than her bark, and a battered and broken human torpedo from Kentucky. Then there's Dani who has no idea what her mutant powers could be, but she is plagued by nightmarish visions. After initial conflict with each other, the kids finally begin to band together and question the nature of their "treatment."

As a film, The New Mutants is nothing remarkable or groundbreaking, despite its depiction of a lesser-known branch of my favorite superhero team. Its editing leaves a lot to be desired, as does its leading actress; it relies as heavily on CGI and a dangerously vague screenplay as IT did, but is less effective in its scares and emotional depth (and nostalgia, but really there's no comparison to the two beyond the rising action of the plot). But as a work that finally gives me some of the Marvel mutant stories I've always wanted more of, I can't deny my absolute pleasure in having seen it. We finally -- finally -- get explicitly queer characters (in the most queer superhero comics) who aren't exploited by the camera, and whose queerness is as natural and organic as any trait of the other characters. Watching Magik and Sunspot and Lockheed and Wolfsbane and the Demon Bear come to life before my eyes was nothing short of awesome, even if the frame of the movie was less than spectacular. By the CGI-heavy finale, I was at once elated and exhausted, and even depressed that it was over.

This was supposed to be a spin-off trilogy of movies to buttress the already existing X-Men franchise. This was supposed to lead into the Essex Corp. plotlines, the rise of the Hellfire Club's Madelyne Pryor, and finally Mister Sinister (who was going to be played by Jon freakin' Hamm) bringing about the Inferno apocalyptic horror event. I'm devastated that won't happen now.