Jamie
Ah, the year 2020. Quite something for BMT and movies writ large. Particularly interesting for our BMT film The New Mutants, which got labeled a “cursed” film after moving release dates to avoid first Deadpool 2 and then Dark Phoenix and then again after Disney bought Fox. That took it from the safety of a 2018 release all the way to a fourth delay due to COVID. We weren’t really doing BMT Lives at the time (for obvious reasons), but if we had been this would have had a good argument. Franchise Man would have insisted we watch it. Not much more to say about 2020 other than 1) see yah, wouldn’t want to be yah and 2) the last in theater experience we had before the pandemic was Bloodshot (released the day I started remote work), but I think I was behind on BMT at the time and ended up watching it on Amazon when they released it early to digital… so that kind of sucks as a BMT memory.
To recap, these mutants are funky fresh. Dani is sent to a mysterious hospital after her reservation is attacked by an unknown beast. She is told that she’s a mutant and that Dr. Reyes is there to help her learn to control it before heading off to the X-men school. There are a bunch of other misfit mutants at the school including Rahne (who Dani likes… and I mean like likes), Illyana (who is kind of a bully), Sam (who is poor), and Bobby (who is rich). Dani is pretty ready just to kill herself, but Rahne convinces her not to and starts to show her all the kind of nice things at the hospital (including herself). At the same time some mysterious and kind of spooky things start to happen at the place. Each of the kids start to see what amounts to their greatest fears. It’s clear that it’s somehow coming from Dani and so Dr. Reyes gets an order from above to terminate Dani. You see, this isn’t connected to the X-men at all. It’s actually an evil corporation that captures mutants and turns them into weapons. But Dani is too powerful and uncontrollable. Once they figure all this out Rahne helps to free Dani, but they are caught and all nearly killed by Dr. Reyes. That is until Dani’s uncontrollable fear monster (a giant bear) is conjured and totally eats the good doctor. But Dani can’t control it and soon they are all under attack. It isn’t until they all work together and Dani regains control that they are able to defeat the monster and head back out into the real world as… The New Mutants. THE END.
Oh, poor poor The New Mutants. There are a number of recent films where I was ready and willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I liked the trailer for this one and thought, “well maybe this just breezed over people’s heads because of all the delays and the pandemic.” Ehhhhh, not quite. It ended up reading like a two-part television pilot that was eventually released as a TV movie. How many establishing shots of the school can you possibly do? It’s like I was watching an episode of Seinfeld or something. Anyway, it looked like shit and the acting was not good. Overall poor effort. However, I will give the film some credit because I thought the issues that the teenagers were dealing with felt real and were handled nicely. Really could have worked as a TV drama or something. Just not as a big comic book movie.
Hot Take Clam Bake! So we’re saying that Dani controls a giant monster bear once and we’re all good? Nah, all the kids are dead by sunrise when they wake up to find that Dani has totally conjured another big demon bear. I also want to point out: Sam, Bobby, and (arguably) Rahne do not have control of their powers and so it totally makes sense they are at the hospital. Illyana, though… she’s just dope and seems to have no problem doing whatever the hell she wants with her fantasy sword and little purple dragon friend. Her powers are so weird and she definitely didn’t need to be at the hospital anymore. I call bullshit on that. Hot Take Temperature: Sunspot.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! The New Mutants? I barely know the old mutants! Let’s go!
This is maybe the most famous example of a film almost not coming out. For years they talked about it. There were trailers maybe three years prior to it actually releasing. Rumors swirled that it was shelved completely. And all the actors in it ended up in totally different spots than they were when the movie came out. It is a really weird situation.
The thing I remember was that this was supposed to be a Marvel/horror thing, and I think they completely pulled the punch. The main actress should have been the villain. What a twist’em’up! And then the people who are all kind of dicks to her end up having to join up to defeat the horror world she creates? Seems decent. Even probably sets up the whole Mutant Suicide Squad they were teasing throughout.
But alas, instead we got a bad looking and not very interesting film.
I almost wanted to say the young actors were good … but actually they were all quite bad. It didn’t help that there were some abominable accents mixed in here for no reason.
Yeah, not much else to say except it gets us one step closer to having watched every single superhero film ever. It actually isn’t as hard as I would have thought, I’ve seen so many already.
I maybe can mention that I find it quite odd when comic book films end up just making up new stuff. In this case Magik (Anya Taylor-Joy) has a kind of cool background. You don’t have to go into it in the movie, but she is the sister of Colossus (who is in the Deadpool films at least) and there is a whole explanation of how she rules Limbo. Again, you don’t have to get into it. But … the Smiling Men? A vague allusion to her getting sex trafficked as a child? Uh … no thanks. I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out if these weird demons are in the Marvel Universe, but nope. They aren’t. Just made up … why? Just pick something random from Limbo. Why add this weird shit to the film?
I think we only have a Worst Twist (How?) for the ultimate reveal that the facility isn’t run by Professor X but instead by someone I can’t recall the name of to instead make them all assassins. This movie is Bad because it is boring.
Read about my sequel though in the Quiz. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 