Going Out With a Bang?
Even though The New Mutants is officially an X-Men movie, it’s tracking more like an off-brand, Vin Diesel comicbook adaptation than the next addition in that sometimes celebrated, sometimes derided, film franchise.
If it comes in on target with around $17 million, The New Mutants will be around half what the second-lowest X-Men movie, Dark Phoenix, opened to last year.
It’s worth noting that both of those movies are 20th Century Fox titles that either got lost in the shuffle when the company was purchased by Disney or were intentionally tanked.
Rumors have it that Dark Phoenix‘s third act was too much like Captain Marvel‘s, so Disney had Dark Phoenix ending reshot and then moved its release until after Brie Larson became the next face of the MCU.
This Is a Disappointment
The New Mutants was never a great comic book but it was always a reliable third mutant title after Uncanny X-Men and X-Factor back in the 1980s.
The characters themselves are some of the most original in Marvel Comics and together they definitely make up the most unique team from that era.
I would probably have shown up to a movie that actually gave us a look at the superpowers of these characters, especially Magik and Warlock.
Unfortunately, it looks like they’ve been strip-mined and inserted into a generic, teen horror movie with a budget so small that the money shot is just going to be a Human Torch-like transformation:
An original horror thriller set in an isolated hospital where a group of young mutants is being held for psychiatric monitoring. When strange occurrences begin to take place, both their new mutant abilities and their friendships will be tested as they battle to try and make it out alive.
An original, teen horror thriller with a decidedly weird villain in Demon-Bear.
No, not that bear. Demon-Bear is the demonically mutated melding of the dead parents of Mirage, a New Mutant with psychic abilities that can make people see… mirages.
We get a glimpse of Demon-Bear is a recent post from director Josh Boone:
Is locking in the sound-mix a month before release normal?
Seems like a little — ah fuck, I’m tired of talking about this.
Here are some TV spots:
The New Mutants opens on April 6th, 2020.
